Week 130: The “How Does It Sound in a Car?” Tester I’ve alluded to mixing with noise, but haven’t covered the details...so let’s get into it, and create an FX chain.
This tip is for those of you who won’t sign off on a mix until you’ve heard it in a car. I think there may be an actual scientific reason why this is beneficial. Noise tends to mask sounds, so if one instrument gets lost in the noise and another jumps out, it’s time to try a mix that raises and lowers those levels, respectively.
The ear doesn’t discriminate level differences as well as pitch differences. So without noise masking a sound, the level may seem okay,. But as soon as you mix in noise, the sound disappears. If you increase the level just a bit so you can hear it, when you remove the noise there’s a very good chance you’ll like the new level setting better. Think of this as doing something similar to compression, but without applying any actual dynamics. You’re just making sure the levels that need parity, have parity.
Of course this doesn’t mean you want everything jumping out of the noise—those tambourine and shaker parts are probably just fine as they are. The main sounds to listen to here are vocals, leads, drums, and bass, and their relationship to each other.
This also doesn’t mean you should mix consistently with noise, as it will bias your hearing (and besides, it’s truly annoying). I add noise in with a mix as a last diagnostic step. If the mix has sounded fine up until then and passes this final test, I consider it ready to master. And I don’t need to go driving anywhere, either.
THE FX CHAIN This is a
signal-generating FX chain, not a signal-processing one, so it needs to go into a bus FX Rack. I usually drag it into a bus I don’t need at this late stage of the mixing process, like the Metronome bus. Or you can create a bus and dedicate it to The Car Test FX chain. You might even want to make this bus a part of your normal project template.
The "Noise On" switch controls the Sonitus Surround processor’s Test Noise button. 0 turns off the noise, 100 turns it on. The other button is called "Noise/Car," and the screen shot shows the control settings. Noise doesn’t include any filtering; Car drops the highs and adds more low end.
So, how much noise do you add? It’s kind of like maximizing. Set it 6 dB below the mix’s peaks, and you’ll hear what occupies the upper 6 dB of dynamic range. Set it 12 dB below the mix’s peaks, and you’ll hear what’s in the upper 12 dB of dynamic range. This isn’t an exact spec per se, but it provides a rough standard of comparison.
As crazy as this idea sounds, try it sometime and tweak your mix. Then turn off the noise, take a short break so your ears get acclimated back to normal hearing, and check the mix again. You just might find it’s a whole lot better.