DonM - you are clearly a professional expert and have a great setup. When you do a mix and it sounds great on ear buds right away you don't need to add ear buds to your list of checking devices. I don't have a good setup, nor the experience you have. I check in my car and now on ear buds, more out of conveinience than anything. I have a mobile DAW and a home studio. I can do a lot of non-mixing work (arrangement stuff, soft synth tweaking, etc) sitting on the couch, etc. Ear buds are a lot lighter and easier to deal with than carrying my bigger studio headphones all over the house. But then I noticed things in my mixes that weren't apparent on my studio monitors which helped me get a better mix. And it got me thinking that a lot of people that listen to my music do it with ipods, and maybe I can kill two birds with one stone. I have to resist the temptation to acually do "mixing" on them though.

While we are at it...I bought M-Audio IE-30 IEM for use with my laptop when they were launched, and I never really got used to them. They sound great, but I find very difficult to adjust them properly, and the slightest variation in their position inside the ear canal seems to have a huge impact in the way they sound. I am puzzled by this, because they are marketed as suitable for critical listening, and reviews seemed to agree. I am sure that properly custom fitted they would sound consistently enough, but with the suplied tips it is too hit and miss for me. Is it that my ear canals are the wrong shape , or is this a common problem with this things?

I have not pursued this myself, but I have read that you can go to an audiologist (hearing-aid guy) and have a custom sleeve made just for your ears. This is apparently standard procedure for the really high-end in-ear monitors (the ones that go for $1K+ that you see in use as stage monitors on live TV performances).

It sounds like a potentially great solution. Apparently my ear canal is smaller than normal, a fact that only became evident when I discovered that most of the standard sleeves were too big and I had to use the smallest ones available. Getting a good fit makes all the difference when it comes to consistency of sound quality.

may i remember that the op never stated that he wanted to mix with earphones?
he wrote: "Anybody else using ear buds to check mixes? "
btw: just in case he would be able to mix well with earphones (which i do NOT believe) it would be ok too..

ORIGINAL: info@tomflair.com

may i remember that the op never stated that he wanted to mix with earphones?
he wrote: "Anybody else using ear buds to check mixes? "
btw: just in case he would be able to mix well with earphones (which i do NOT believe) it would be ok too..

Thanks for the reminder. Yeah - the title of this thread is "Mixing with ipod ear buds" which is a little misleading, but it catches attention. But I do not mix with ear buds. I really have to resist grabing for any volume faders or EQ settings while listening on the ear buds! I learned my lesson long ago that even mixing on good headphones isn't a great choice. For some reason, putting a lot of air inbetween the sound source and my ears is the best.

ORIGINAL: guitartrek

ORIGINAL: Crg

Well, it sounds like making a mix for CD-DVD audio and making a different mix for Mp-3 players might be the option. Make the MP-3 mix using IEM's? Different mixs for film are already a mainstay. I wondering if the differences heard through the earbuds is partly due to the Mp-3 formating.

I'm not sure. To tell you the truth I haven't been able to tell much (or any) difference between a decent MP3 file and a wave file coming out of my studio monitors (so much for my ears!).

If it's 192 or above depending upon the music you may not hear a difference.
I don't always hear a difference either.
Listen more for phase type problems, swishing, flanger type noise and so forth rather than frequency response and you will begin to notice the difference more.

But again, it depends on the music.
Stuff with a lot of high frequency content like big bang jazz, symphonic music with a lot of cymbals in it tend to be very revealing with mp3 files.

IOW it's more the *mixing* of the high frequency sounds with the rest of the spectrum during the encode/decode process that screws things up.

Sorry the logic of this whole thing escapes me. On first noting that some do a great deal of testing on "other systems" seems on first blush a reasonable approach . Further the notion that one should check a mix via ear buds for ipod consumption again seems a great idea. The problem I have with all of this as an approach is that two basic things are missed. First since when was any audio meant for the ipod unless its speach? Second it seems as if by testing on a number of systems that one could be sure of a good sounding mix by doing that. I look at it very differently. If you think that what systems you use to "test" the mix on is most likely going to be a one of a kind in the real world. Outside of an audio lab with very controlled instruments and environment its very unlikely to reproduce any results you may get from doing this. The question is who else has that system in that room of yours? The answer no one.

The idea of mixing is to create the best sounding mix with full frequency response and hi-light those parts that should be prominent. The lead vocal for example should be clearly heard over the backing tracks. Mixing was and is done on suitable monitors with no care taken to mix to the lowest common system (boom box) type system. The notion that it needs testing on a number system goes against the notion of what mixing is all about. We have seen on a very few occasions where bands have offered alternative mixes. As a rule they don't do all that well. A song or a performance that is recorded is a thing of itself. It is not the song played live or a performance done live. It is its own thing. The mixer needs to be able to create this thing that will on its own stand alone above and apart from any other mix. If not its a poor mix or not well thought out to begin with. In a way its like a photograph that is capturing a moment in time. It will look great if the darkroom does it job right as will the mix if the mixer does his/her job right. But you don't need to check it in any other darkroom to know if its good or not.

One point is that so many people rip songs to whatever and no consideration was given to those songs for this use when they were mixed. Why should we do any different? If we do as they did we should get the same quality as they got.

In the end if you can't trust your mixing setup then its time to get a better setup.

ORIGINAL: wormser

Let's face it, our audience today is the iPod crowd.

That's true. I gave my CD to a friend of mine's son who is in college. He took the CD and quickly ripped it into his itunes, uploaded into his ipod and GAVE ME BACK THE CD! He says he listens to my CD on his ipod at full volume! (ouch!)

John - I agree with you. I don't have an ideal setup with my monitors away from the wall so many feet and and equilateral triangle, and a lot of sound absorption material, perfect acoustics, etc. I wish I had the room, but I don't. So I listen on a lot of different speaker systems to check things out.

One day I happened to listen on my daughter's ipod ear buds and noticed an imbalance in my mix that I didn't notice on my full range speakers. I fixed it (not on the ear buds, but on my full range monitors). I was glad that I used the ear buds, otherwise I might not have noticed it. And then it got me thinking that if more and more people listen on ear buds, I better make sure my mix sounds good on them. Not that I am going to mix for them exlusively - I still mix for a full frequeny range. Like you said, if it's a good mix it will sound good on the ear buds.