bitflipper


The biggest problem with most affordable studio monitors is lack of low end. If you can't hear it, you'll only ever get the bass right by sheer luck. Having full-range speakers is a prerequisite, regardless of their classification. I'll take a hi-fi speaker that goes to 30Hz over an expensive nearfield with a 5" woofer.

Though, to be fair, if they have a small, completely untreated room, the greater low end extension might make things even worse in some ways.

Ok I have been keeping out of this one because I have a definate opinion on the topic but I will keep it to myself.

Realisticly though monitors really are just fancy stereo speakers as bitflipper points out how many monitors are actually flat?, then there is the room to take into consideration as well.

My belief is that to mix well you need to know what pocket each of the instruments sit in eg: the snare has a fullness at 250hz but so do some of the toms, which instrument do you want to stand out more in the mix?? decrease the frequency of the instrument that you don't want to stand out as much.  This cuts out some of the guess work.

Another thing to do is use a spectrum analyser, this will cut out some of the guess work when trying to find the hottest part of the instruments frequency.  So not only do I know that the snare and the tom are roughly in the same frequency but I can pin point where the instruments fundmental frequency.  This helps with overtones as well.

You also have to learn or train your ears to hear that 3db cut or gain when EQ, you have to know what pumping and breathing sound like.  The only problem I have with the above technique which is mine, is I get lazy and sometimes and when I mix I sometimes do forget to actually listen to the song but I am getting better because I know I have a tendency to turn off.

Finally another thing to learn is the theory behind some of the effects you may want to put on a track, things like slapback echo, if you know that to get slapback echo you need a delay of up to 120 milliseconds once again it takes the guess work out of mixing and helps combat cheeper speakers and or a bad room.

Just my two cents.

Peace Ben 

Ben, I find spectrum analysers are generally a complete waste of time. You can get so much more useful information out of a piece just be doing a quick eq sweep. Gives you all the information a spectrum analyser will show and then what it actually SOUNDS like rather than 'this bit is loud'.

I think you can/could get great mixes out of consumer speakers, but I think it's sometimes a bit more luck and it's harder to do. I've only got Yamaha HS80s and they provide so much more clarity and let me listen into the music so much more (than my stereo speakers) which allows me to chose things like reverb and eq and fix clashing instruments etc so much easier. I don't think it takes much to get monitors good enough to do the job, but I think it really does help a lot. In the future I'd love a set of Adam A7's or some KRK VXT8s. Love them both. Oh and never get 5 inch monitors... You just can't hear the bass...

I find spectrum analysers are generally a complete waste of time.

You're certainly not alone in that opinion, Matt, even if I don't completely agree with it. 


Spectral displays can be quite useful, especially when dealing with the extreme ends of the spectrum that you can't hear well, or accurately, or can't hear at all. I hear little or nothing above about 16 KHz, and my room often lies to me about what's going on below 100Hz. That's where visual aids are indispensable. 


The danger is that we are conditioned to let our eyes overrule other senses, leading us to make decisions based on what the spectral display shows rather than what we hear. This will happen even if you make a conscious effort not to do it. It's just the way our brains are wired.

For that matter, just watching waveforms scroll across the screen can be detrimental to mixing. Seeing a snare hit can make it seem bigger than it really sounds in the mix because you know it's coming. To paraphrase Lennon, mixing is easier with eyes closed.

bitflipper suggested to spend time just listening to music. I heartily agree. And I wanted to add that listening to unamplified music is vitally important as well. From a simple whistle up to a full blown orchestra, it's good to simply listen to instruments when not worrying about how to mic and record them. I'm incredibly lucky to have a good concert hall and decent orchestra in my town and going to one of those concerts is a great way to recalibrate my ears. My mixes (of any genre) always sound better when I do them the day after a good dose of orchestra.

I'll add my 2 cents.  When I moved up to Canada, I left a lot of my studio equipment behind, specifically my Event 20/20 monitors.  When I got to Canada, I realized that I was lacking any form of decent speakers to listen to music on.  As luck would have it, I bought a set of Altec Lansing computer speakers with a sub at Tiger Direct for a special sale of like $30.  When I got home, I found that there was a problem with one of the speakers and took em back for a replacement set.  The replacement set worked perfectly.  

I plugged them into my Stereo and to my surprise, I was quite content to listen to music with them. I further, connected them to my DVD and found that they were excellent for watching video's with, as well. So I decided to put them to the test and try them with my DAW. I used the Beatles #1 CD to use as a reference because of the diverse, yet excellent mixing of the various songs. I was able adjust the treble/bass and subs to get a very natural sounding reference from the complete CD. 

With these settings, I performed Bit's suggested room analyzer using Voxengo Span, a white noise sample and a decent condenser mic. The results were actually acceptable with one specific spot around I think it was 200 hz which was a bit problematic.  I now use these as an alternate listening set of monitors which helps with the bass.  

It is important to listen to quality reference material on your speakers and in your room for sure but note the emphasis on the word quality. Abbey Road is not a good example of a fine sounding recording. Sorry, it sounds pretty bad actually when you compare it to say well produced recent album from people like Steely Dan etc done with the finest technology in the last few years. None of the Beatles albums sound that great to my ears. (not talking about the music of course here only the recordings) Beatles albums are not on the Hi Fi enthusiasts list for testing equipment take it from me.

People need to get off this stupid idea that everything that was recorded in the 60's is fantastic. It is simply not. How can it be. Old 4 tracks etc you have to be joking. Yes they pushed the boundaries for sure and I am amazed at how well they did considering but it does not even compare to the finest recent recordings though.

And before the Jazz fanboys get on here and say the finest Jazz recordings were made in the 50's and so on, err not really. Not compared to the finest jazz recordings of late. Not even close. Cant you hear it?  If you cannot then you have got big problems with your ears.

Listening to poor quality reference material on your speakers in your room won't tell you very much at all and certainly won't help your mixes other than you are more likely to end up with a mix sounding like the poor quailty ref material! Great mixes are in the hands of the mix engineer not the DAW or the monitors. So in a way I agree with what Paul999 was orignally saying.  As long as you have got great ref tracks around while you are mixing and mastering you can almost eliminate the monitors and the room acoustics from the equation.  A good habit to get into is to switch to the ref material at anytime during a mix or mastering session. We all tend to forget to do it and I can understand as we tend to get deeply involved with what we are doing at the time on our own music.

But where great modern monitors do come into their own is when you don't have quality ref tracks around and you have to rely on the monitors to tell you what is going on.  Also mixing through old hi fi speakers is also OK except that I kept blowing drivers and things because they are not really designed to cope with the dynamics and transients that can come out of a modern DAW. That is where modern active monitors are fantastic, they can cope with all of that and have protection etc built in to stop things from being damaged etc..

I'm curious if anyone has found that their taste in "what good music sounds like" changes over the years.

You have to draw a distinction between good music and good-sounding music. When I choose references, I choose them for sonic quality, not necessarily because they're favorite records. 

Case in point: Donald Fagen's The Nightfly. The ubiquitous DX7 annoys me, as sometimes does Mr. Fagen's vocal and it's often melodically and rhythmically boring. But man, is it CLEAN and meticulously-recorded! So it's a favorite reference and inspiration.  

What long-term critical listening changes in you is that it eventually (over)sensitizes you to flaws in recordings. Today, when I listen to Creedence Clearwater Revival, I think "jeez, what did they do, hang one cheap mic up in a garage? Those drums sound like oatmeal boxes!". I still love the music, but I'd never use it as an audio reference unless I was specifically after that sound.

But long-term critical listening can also make you better appreciate some stuff because you notice the details, craftsmanship, and the subtleties that might have sailed over your head years before. First time I played Dark Side of the Moon on my current setup, I couldn't believe how much was going on in there that I hadn't noticed before, despite having heard the album literally hundreds of times.

It may just be me but WAR Low Rider seems to be a good mix. Old but good.

Julien

A few more thoughts on reference music...

Most of my references tend to be from the 90's, which was a golden era for recording IMO. In that decade we'd gotten past the ridiculous overproduced excesses of the 80's but hadn't yet mobilized for the loudness offensive to come. 
Another benefit of raiding the 90's is that you can buy those 20-year-old CDs second-hand for peanuts, making it cost-effective to accumulate a large collection. Many of mine were purchased for less than a dollar (plus $4 shipping) on Amazon.

It also helps to study references that demonstrate how you DON'T want to do it. Especially if you have an opportunity to pick up both an original and a later remaster. A good example is George Harrison's All Things Must Pass. Listening to the original (preferably on vinyl) and then comparing the overcompressed "Digitally Remastered!!!" travesty that came later is enlightening.

One last thought...a reference needn't be extremely high-fidelity to be useful. There is, after all, much more to a great recording than technical purity. To that end, any Beatles album is worthy of study. Without George Martin, those guys would have just been the Rolling Stones with better lyrics.

I listened to Talking Heads 77 4 days ago.

Woah... it's still doing it for me. :-)

Oh, yeah. Talking heads. "The Name of This Band is Talking Heads" is another favorite of mine. Live. Rough recording. Technically iffy, but pretty good sounding nonetheless... Love it.

bitflipper


A few more thoughts on reference music...

Most of my references tend to be from the 90's, which was a golden era for recording IMO. In that decade we'd gotten past the ridiculous overproduced excesses of the 80's but hadn't yet mobilized for the loudness offensive to come. 
Another benefit of raiding the 90's is that you can buy those 20-year-old CDs second-hand for peanuts, making it cost-effective to accumulate a large collection. Many of mine were purchased for less than a dollar (plus $4 shipping) on Amazon.

It also helps to study references that demonstrate how you DON'T want to do it. Especially if you have an opportunity to pick up both an original and a later remaster. A good example is George Harrison's All Things Must Pass. Listening to the original (preferably on vinyl) and then comparing the overcompressed "Digitally Remastered!!!" travesty that came later is enlightening.

One last thought...a reference needn't be extremely high-fidelity to be useful. There is, after all, much more to a great recording than technical purity. To that end, any Beatles album is worthy of study. Without George Martin, those guys would have just been the Rolling Stones with better lyrics.

Hmmm ... "just the Rolling Stones"..     :)

What you did there Flywheel was very important and that was to compare several sets of monitors. It is good to do it with really great reference tracks as well, tracks that you know the sound of especially on expensive speakers.

You are going to be sitting in front of your monitors for quite a long time and do all your work on them so it pays to invest time into finding the right ones. That suit you and the music you are most often likely to create. (or overall)

I was fortunate to have recorded and mixed an album in one of Sydney's top studios. (Sony) It was a Jazz album I was in there with these $70,000 reference speakers for over a week. I had my ref CD with me at the time and got to check out my favourite tracks on the speakers when no one was around at various times. (Steely Dan tracks among some notable others)

I had to choose a new monitor just after that album experience and found in my case the Mackie HR824's had the closest sound to the $70,000 speakers out of all of them at the time. (1998) I am still very happy with them. (since putting them on concrete stands they have only improved more with the bottom end smoothing out, becoming a little more transparent and extending down a little further. Mids and highs changed as well as a result. Talk about getting new speakers for the price of two stands!)

There are some damn fine monitors around today and I say go out and find them and use them. Compile a fantastic reference CD and keep it with you in case you come across some fancy monitors at any time. Then you can just play it and get another perspective on the tracks you already know well. This goes a long way to finding the right monitors for you.

Quiet!!  I'm analyzing!!!!!