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.