Last time I checked, B & H had the VRM for $75. Never managed to visit the store despite its proximity due to their weird opening hours (like, being closed from 2 pm on Fridays!).

Rain


Last time I checked, B & H had the VRM for $75. Never managed to visit the store despite its proximity due to their weird opening hours (like, being closed from 2 pm on Fridays!).

They drive me nuts. Every time I go they're closed. I cannot seem to grasp their opening hours. 

I personally use this when I have to mix on phones,
http://www.toneboosters.com/tb-isone/

From the same people as reelbus

15 euros, and a fully functional trial.

Worth trying. 

I use Arc when on monitors and this on phones. It works really well .

HTH

Jeff Evans


I see a small speaker (s) such as the Avantone the second option and headphones the third option. I prefer one speaker to two as well. The mini monitor(s) could be a great solution for those who still want to work with a speaker but do it at very low volume so it does not disturb anyone.

They are amazing at getting your mixes sounding so good. By taking the extreme lows and highs away you hearing the all important mid range components of everything and once you get all that mid range stuff in balance the rest takes care of itself. One speaker highlights the situation where two parts in the music are sounding too similar. It forces you to modify one of them a bit more, improves separation.

Once you have got the balance of everything sounding great in the small speaker you switch back to your main monitors and this is when you need them. Your main speakers allow you to:

Complete/create the stereo placement of everything.
Observe extreme bottom and high end and allows you to bring those parts of the spectrum back and into balance with the well balanced mids.
Hear very well reverb and other more subtle effects and set their levels accordingly.

The small speaker is an amazing thing. Anyone who says otherwise is mis informed. When you listen to a great ref mix on your main speakers and then you switch to the small speaker the mix changes. You learn how a great mix sounds on the small speaker. You sit in front of it directly. There are no room acoustics involved with using it. It basically allows you to get a fantastic balance of everything in your mix. It allows perfect vocal/music relationship to be set once and for all. This is harder to do on big speakers up loud. The small speaker also is great for checking mono compatibility from stereo sources. It makes your ears open up and listen harder. The idea is to work with the small speaker at quite a low SPL level such as 65 and 70 dB SPL.

Then the fun part. You listen on your main speakers at 100 to 105 dB SPL. (for a little while only!) Then you hear any other problems that may be still around. But after doing the work previously mentioned first this last bit is usually a home run and god it sounds bloody great!

Is it possible to output to mono in Sonar?

Jeff Evans


I see a small speaker (s) such as the Avantone the second option and headphones the third option. I prefer one speaker to two as well. The mini monitor(s) could be a great solution for those who still want to work with a speaker but do it at very low volume so it does not disturb anyone.

They are amazing at getting your mixes sounding so good. By taking the extreme lows and highs away you hearing the all important mid range components of everything and once you get all that mid range stuff in balance the rest takes care of itself. One speaker highlights the situation where two parts in the music are sounding too similar. It forces you to modify one of them a bit more, improves separation.

Once you have got the balance of everything sounding great in the small speaker you switch back to your main monitors and this is when you need them. Your main speakers allow you to:

Complete/create the stereo placement of everything.
Observe extreme bottom and high end and allows you to bring those parts of the spectrum back and into balance with the well balanced mids.
Hear very well reverb and other more subtle effects and set their levels accordingly.

The small speaker is an amazing thing. Anyone who says otherwise is mis informed. When you listen to a great ref mix on your main speakers and then you switch to the small speaker the mix changes. You learn how a great mix sounds on the small speaker. You sit in front of it directly. There are no room acoustics involved with using it. It basically allows you to get a fantastic balance of everything in your mix. It allows perfect vocal/music relationship to be set once and for all. This is harder to do on big speakers up loud. The small speaker also is great for checking mono compatibility from stereo sources. It makes your ears open up and listen harder. The idea is to work with the small speaker at quite a low SPL level such as 65 and 70 dB SPL.

Then the fun part. You listen on your main speakers at 100 to 105 dB SPL. (for a little while only!) Then you hear any other problems that may be still around. But after doing the work previously mentioned first this last bit is usually a home run and god it sounds bloody great!

I'd usually agree w/ the order of importance. But in this particular scenario, since Sharke specifies that he must do all his work using headphones (and I can understand that as I've lived that myself for over 6 months in Europe and Russia), I'd say good headphones come first. Then monitors, then auratones/avantones, whichever you can put your hands on.


Agreed that it may be handy to really work out the mids on those small speakers - and anyone who's heard Thriller will be forced to admit that the method can work, indeed.


That being said, I find myself asking - why not just temporarily put an EQ on the mix bus and cut out those lo and hi frequencies to reproduce the sound of those small speakers? And, even have the output set to mono. In essence, that's what the Auratone do to your sound? No?

I think most DAW's have some sort of plug that can achieve a mono output. I have a small passive mixer that combines the stereo signal from a spare output on my digital mixer so it is always in mono.

The reason why one small speaker is better is because even if you feed mono to two small Avantone type speakers you are still hearing stereo to a certain degree. The sound won't arrive matched on both your ear drums you will start perceiving this as a form of stereo. You don't need it at this critical balancing stage.  A single point source speaker works very well in this context.

I would not rule out the software that can simulate rooms while on cans either. I think this is a very interesting area of development.

Yes I understand if the option to use speakers is very difficult then of course headphones are going to be the number one priority. 

I have thought about the EQ idea Rain has mentioned on the main monitors. It could be worth trying it for sure. I think the fact though the sound suddenly moves away from your main speakers, goes into mono and jumps into a small speaker somewhere else has quite a profound effect on its effectiveness. It's nice to sit a foot or so away from it too looking straight at it at low volume, something you cannot achieve easily with your main speakers. As you can tell I love the small speaker. I spend much more time on it. But when you do go back to your main speakers the rewards are high.

I would like to add something extra the small speaker is good at and that is highlighting the situation where you have unnecessary or cluttered musical parts that don't need to be in your mix. This sounds worse on the small speaker. Turn that stuff off and the mix sounds clearer with more space around things. A good analogy might be a lot of parts can exist in a mix like a lot of people can be in a large room without issues but cram them all into an elevator and see what goes on then. There may be some conflict or issues. That is what it is like when you feed a complex mix into a small point source speaker. Everything is trying hard to coexist there. It could also be a reason why EQ ing your main speakers may be not be as effective.

Hence the link I posted above Jeff, it's a really nice piece of software. 

Now my last post looks redundant since you edited your post :-) 

It's still a nice piece of software that addresses the OP issue.

Guitarhacker


Interesting gizmo there Jeff.... 

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-u_7DWP8Ng&feature=player_embedded 

do you use this? 

I have the VRM box and can readily recommend it.  For one thing, you get a nice quality headphone amp in the bargain, which you'll need anyway.  The only reservations are, first, that the driver for Windows 7 doesn't always do the initial handshake with the computer when starting up.  When that happens I unplug and replug the USB cord.  That normally resolves the problem.  An annoyance, but a fairly minor one.
 
The other thing that might be problematic is when you set reverb levels.  The room VRM simulation adds some of its own reverb-ish sound manipulation, so doing reverb adjustments with speakers is probably a much better option.  Or you could just disable the VRM room simulation and continue to use the headphones.
 
 

Jeff Evans


I think most DAW's have some sort of plug that can achieve a mono output. I have a small passive mixer that combines the stereo signal from a spare output on my digital mixer so it is always in mono.

The reason why one small speaker is better is because even if you feed mono to two small Avantone type speakers you are still hearing stereo to a certain degree. The sound won't arrive matched on both your ear drums you will start perceiving this as a form of stereo. You don't need it at this critical balancing stage.  A single point source speaker works very well in this context.

I would not rule out the software that can simulate rooms while on cans either. I think this is a very interesting area of development.

Yes I understand if the option to use speakers is very difficult then of course headphones are going to be the number one priority. 

I have thought about the EQ idea Rain has mentioned on the main monitors. It could be worth trying it for sure. I think the fact though the sound suddenly moves away from your main speakers, goes into mono and jumps into a small speaker somewhere else has quite a profound effect on its effectiveness. It's nice to sit a foot or so away from it too looking straight at it at low volume, something you cannot achieve easily with your main speakers. As you can tell I love the small speaker. I spend much more time on it. But when you do go back to your main speakers the rewards are high.

I would like to add something extra the small speaker is good at and that is highlighting the situation where you have unnecessary or cluttered musical parts that don't need to be in your mix. This sounds worse on the small speaker. Turn that stuff off and the mix sounds clearer with more space around things. A good analogy might be a lot of parts can exist in a mix like a lot of people can be in a large room without issues but cram them all into an elevator and see what goes on then. There may be some conflict or issues. That is what it is like when you feed a complex mix into a small point source speaker. Everything is trying hard to coexist there. It could also be a reason why EQ ing your main speakers may be not be as effective.

So, here's a question as I am listening to a track through buds with both HP and LP filters on. Here's the question - do you need different mixes? It's easier to discard clutter in the arrangement, but as I said in another thread - not everybody has to play on the stage floor.


You've heard before that the mix has to sound good across all types of speakers. It's impossible to get this 100% accurate unless you're and ME, but that's mastering and not mixing. And yes, I agree how using smaller speakers can point out problems. However, to me, it's unnecessary to have a "Frequency Combination" of mixes. Do so to compare, but again, some things are going to be lost when going to smaller speakers anyway.


That's like converting a WAV to MP3. Bits end up getting lost and there's this feeling of compensation.


Small speakers have no bass, so crank that up, but the bass is still lost due to the frequency pickup/response. EQ or Filtering (LP/HP) is a great way to gauge this (even on your main monitors which have what small speakers don't). Btw, if you have just a 2.0 main system (or completely silence the sub) you are missing alot of low end as the satellites can only pickup so much low end (Range is effected by filter if present). This is where pitch comes in.


So, again, I ask, do you need a "Main Speaker, Small Speaker and Headphone Mix"? (by headphone mix, I don't mean how they are traditionally used).


Main Speakers - EQ 1-Comp. 1 Small Speakers - EQ 2-Comp. 2 - Headphones/Buds - EQ 3-Comp 3.


That's even less effective because if you fix problems in one area, you've got problems in another. Especially with busy/complex mixes - and arrangement reduction only fixes so much as does EQ/Compression. Same when compressing files. Digital Information is lost (quality) despite the file size being smaller.

Big Speaker-Large File-Every Nuance (Frequency/Pitch-Digital Data). Smaller Speaker-Smaller File-Nuance Reduced (Reduced Frequency/Pitch) ... you get the point.

You're right. but the issue is every set of speakers is different since they are really like a set of ears and we know that they're different, too.