The Car Test

Danny Godwin posted a thought-provoking article in the Cakewalk Blog about the longtime practice of testing out your mixes in the car, asking if it was still relevant (spoiler alert: yup, it is).
 
This took me back to my early days struggling to get a handle on the translation problem (meaning: make your mix sound good everywhere, not just in your studio). I'd been recording for 40 years at that point, but had only decided to get serious about mixing in 2004. I became an obsessive student, buying books, experimenting, and learning to listen. Yeh, 53 years old and just then learning how to listen.
 
After a year or so things were starting to sound pretty good, so I was excited to put my stuff on CD and take it out to the car. I had what I thought was a pretty decent sound system. I'd even taken a favorite reference CD (Dire Straights' Brothers in Arms) with me on the test drive before I bought the car because a crappy sound system would've been a deal-killer.
 
To my great dismay, my first CD sounded absolutely awful in the car! I threw it in the trash, cursing. Then I made another one, this time attempting to resolve the most glaring issues I'd heard in the car. Crapola again. Third try, it was starting to sound OK but nothing to brag about. I took that CD downstairs to the entertainment center, and was shocked to find that every change I'd made to accommodate the car stereo made it sound MUCH worse on the hi-fi.
 
Confused and frustrated, I made a fourth CD that was somewhere in between, something that didn't sound cringeworthy on either system. I took that CD to a pro studio and listened to it on high-end monitors in an acoustically-treated room. It sounded pretty good there, which was a relief but did nothing to dispel my confusion. Listening to it on the drive home, an epiphany struck: my car was a TERRIBLE place to listen to music!
 
It made sense. I'm in a small space with glass all around, so there's bound to be all kinds of weird resonances. I have tweeters that point up from the dashboard, bouncing off the windshield. I have woofers in the doors that don't have anywhere near enough space behind them for low frequencies. And what space there is was acoustically engineered in Detroit to make a satisfying thump when I close the door - intentional resonance! Four cross-fired speakers assure loads of destructive and constructive interference. And, as later measurements revealed, the amplifier itself was adding an 80Hz bump, an intentional design decision meant to disguise the poor bass response in the car's interior.
 
Fortunately, I had just bought Bob Katz's opus, Mastering Audio, and it couldn't have appeared at a better time. Bob explained that all playback systems are deficient in some way, but no two are deficient in exactly the same way. So unless you're mixing for a fixed installation such as a Disneyland ride, it's literally impossible to create a mix that sounds "right" everywhere.
 
The solution is to mix in a neutral space on neutral speakers and shoot for the statistical middle ground. I set about attending to acoustic treatments, upgraded my speakers, and re-arranged my recording space to get the speakers away from walls. Later, when I converted a garage for the purpose, I knew what needed to be done. I now have a reasonably flat space and great speakers, and mixes translate better. How do I know that? I take 'em out to the car.
 

I read the article too.
 
I test all my mixes in/on/with:
 
1. ATH M50 with and without Sonarworks 
2. Sennheiser IE6 earbuds
3. Ultimate Ears IEMs (for flat response)
4. Sennheiser HD600s
5. Mackie monitors with ARC 2
6. And yes, in the car
 

I examined a track today. A modern dance CD from 3 years ago.
 
In Harbal, it measured -4.9dB Average and 9.06dBTP. Yet when analysed in Mediamonkey it rated the average loudness as -12dB RMS (Average loudness) and it looks like soundcard was falling about 4-5dB of the peak volume between times.
 
So I'm not really sure what this says about the accuracy of two readings. I will listen to it later in Sonar with some more meters as I'm just looking for a working method for all my projects rather than referring to multiple meter standards.
 
I'm also trialling and testing LM1n for TC Electronic which is going for a good price.
 
Never read the article yet because it is probably beyond my grey matter and it's nice to just observe from the outset.
 

Well essentially from what I read is, it's the same but different. I use test-tones initially to setup levels, pink noise to create balance between the peak output because this will save me a lot of time adjusting later on. I guess in the situation where I can have a purpose designed studio, all this calibration can be mostly done and save me time in the long run.
 
Thanks for the info.
 

auto_da_fe
I have a speaker in my car that rattles when the bottom (kick or bass) is too much.  (No decent commercial recordings make it rattle ) I was going to try to fix it but I decided to leave it alone.

 
That is great except in my case it is my teeth that rattle instead!   I agree with this though and for me it is about the bottom end.  That is why you don't have to sweat how the rest sounds so much in the car because as Dave correctly points out the car is not always ideal.  I am lucky in that my car sounds pretty decent overall.  But the bass end in many good commercial CD's has this nice depth to it but does not rattle anything.  It has taken me a while to get it but I have devised some tricky low end curves which I can apply in mastering that achieve the same result now.  Thanks to my car I was able to get onto this and sort it out.  It makes a huge difference as well.  Everything else in the spectrum seems to be lifted once I apply this curve and overall it can sound louder too. 
 

auto_da_fe
I have a speaker in my car that rattles when the bottom (kick or bass) is too much.  (No decent commercial recordings make it rattle )
 
I was going to try to fix it but I decided to leave it alone.
 
 
JR

That was a good decision.

That's very true. However, I just can't bring myself to do it because everything sounds bad on my laptop speakers.
 
That's why I travel with proper headphones, so I can watch a movie on the laptop if I get bored. As it happens, I am leaving within the hour on a business trip and had to make the agonizing decision not to take the good cans...compromised for the Shure IEMs, which work much better on airplanes anyway. Those stay in the laptop bag all the time - I would never insert those nasty little plastic things they hand out on airplanes into my ears! Even if they might serve well as the ultimate "bad" reference system.

I've been driving a Jetta with the Fender sound system. It's head and shoulders above what most cars are equipped with, but I would never judge a mix even on a better than average car audio system. Like you guys mentioned, it's an inherent acoustic nightmare. One thing I didn't see mentioned elsewhere is road noise. Even with a solid car and a decent audio system, there is the rumble and whoosh of driving that has to be overcome either through volume or EQ. What sounds good at a stoplight will sound a bit empty or lackluster at 65.

I'd say the car test is fine to make sure the most important sounds in a track are heard, but if you're concerned about subtleties being lost, you're fighting a losing battle.

P=no road noise.

it's reassuring to see that we're all having the same experience :)