Wont get fooled again - unless I fool myself

[garyb]

do as you like!

meters are inferior to ears.

if you don't know your speakers, you will make mistakes, that includes headphones. i am not a fan of low priced tannoys, but others are.

there is a reason that mixes that matter are done on speakers, but again, your RESULTS are more important than any dogma. if you cannot tell the difference, then it doesn't matter what you use, anyway.

[dante]

So what do you use ?

[garyb]

Blue Sky System One, but there are many great speakers...
i also have a studio space with some basic acoustic treatments(diffusers and bass traps). built the space in a shop on my property. it's two 15x30foot rooms with 10foot ceilings. before that, in my old house, i used an extra bedroom and 1/2 of my sitting room, with basic acoustic treatments and the same speaks. before that, i had an industrial space with older jbls and a very nice dual woofer box(pair). before that, i had a number of other industrial spaces, and even used home stereo speakers for mixes. before that, i used a living room/sitting room combo, but it was always temporary. home computers didn't even exist back then.

[dante]

I checked out https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/bl ... system-one - so you mix in surround ? Do you turn off the extra speakers to see how it sounds in stereo only ?

[garyb]

no, i have the stereo configuration, left, right, sub...
no control box...

[valis]

If you do mix in surround, you swap to stereo mixes in your DAW (and possibly soundcard software as well), not just by disabling speakers. A stereo mix and the various surround formats all are discreet and must be mixed separately--or at the very least concurrently but as separate mixdowns from the same project.

Also, when it comes to the delivery format some surround formats are 'encoded' into the stereo mix, while others are discreet (separate streams of data entirely).

[at0m]

I really should play some reference tracks or albums more, especially in the studio environment. And although I do appreciate the good comments on my mixes, and I lack a sub, I tend to forget to play those reference tracks, "known great" productions in whatever the genre I'm working on, when going there only for working on productions.

My struggle is in writing the tunes and getting the tech to collab, not in the mixing. "Wow it's very technical," someone remarked not long ago. Me: "Yea, this is called Techno" ;p

Personally, for mixing and monitoring, I never use headphones. I use them for recording miked stuff, and for enjoying the details in the music afterwards. And mixing at 4am? From my own experience, my best mixes are with fresh ears - in the morning. Ideally, the track and its finesses still fresh in my head from the night before.

Mixing surround? Tough one. Most people can't even do a proper stereo mix. I might even suggest to mix mono first, then look into what needs placement where. While stereo placement can really open up and give space to specific instruments, it will not make it a great mix when the mono wasn't good to start with.

[dante]

And mixing at 4am? From my own experience, my best mixes are with fresh ears - in the morning. Ideally, the track and its finesses still fresh in my head from the night before.

4am IS in the morning - that's when I wake up to do them sometimes - maybe as early 3:30am:)

[valis]

I use headphones for certain critical analysis. Keeping in mind that I've done all kinds of audio stuff over the years, headphones can be invaluable to identifying certain tiny details and other critical analysis functions. Pops & clicks stand out much more to me without the room, i can sometimes hear distortion on certain parts (like the initial transient & resonant peak of a kick, or the first portion of a bass note) than I can with nearfields + room noise, and so on. Of course they're also useful when one otherwise can't listen on nearfields (family, neighbors etc).

But I do agree with the rest who say nearfields are probably your best initial reference point and what most overall mixing is best done on. My current set are speakers I've had since 2002, and I have 3 other sets now and still find these work best.

[garyb]

can't argue with that...

[dante]

The way I see it - theres 3 stages in the process where phase can cause issues :

1) During live recording - you have a string section and 2 mics and due to mic placement or room conditions there's some phase cancellation capturing the string section to stereo. To me, as well as ears, this is where a phase correlation meter might be most usefull.

2) During mixing - you do something like parallel processing but theres delay on the processed track compared to the clean track. Which may be less of a problem if they are panned apart but placed in same pan position phase cancellation may cause signal weakening. Remember Niceboy and his feedback trick (?)

3) During mixdown monitoring. Your monitor placement or room are causing reflections that may cause some cancellation, potentially being mistaken for phase issue in the recording itself.

[garyb]

if your problem is #3, then you need to fix you room and monitoring position. again, there are no excuses.

i realize that most people don't care anyway. they are just amusing themselves. it makes me understand why they are always complaining about the cost. their true purpose is not making music to be listened to. even if someone fails, after investing lots of money and more importantly time, then try again.

i can't imagine wanting to try to cheat the process. there are no shortcuts. there is no cheap and easy way. computers DO help keep the cost down, but they don't fix everything, and if they did, why the heck should there be humans involved at all? music is about a human being's struggles, successes, failures and triumphs, not a function of RAM or samples.

you cannot get the best results simply from buying things(i like buying things, and things can assist or impair, of course!).

there is every reason to do things correctly, if music is the ultimate goal.

[dante]

Of course. I’m just interested in phase.

[garyb]

sure, and phase is important. it's not the only thing happening, of course.

it can't really be a stress, even with all my pontificating. we keep working, we keep improving.

[dante]

So your new space in shop - is that the one you hurt your foot during construction ? How’s the foot these days no permanent damage I hope.

[garyb]

no, the injury wasn't from construction, it was from falling off a ladder while changing a security light.
it's the heel bone, on the inside of the joint that was damaged. it'll never be right again, but i can walk fast or jog now, so it's good enough. we'll see if i ever run again. fortunately i am 57 years old, and i don't need to run as much as i once did. getting old seems to be all about permanent damage building up.

[dante]

Sure is. I cant jog much fast, due to injury from 4 decades ago but with slightly modified footwear I can kinda sprint short enough distance to get to train in morning if running late. I try to walk 10- 15K steps a day whereas during US visit this time last year I could only manage 1/2 that. Yep over 60 and its all about damage control (weight loss, lifestyle modifications, research bla bla)

[garyb]

[dante]

A friend of mine uses all kinds of speakers to get his mixes finished. ( monitor boxes, cheap mobiles, mono bluetooth boxes..)
Is there a strategy to turn headphones into perfect monitoring boxes by compensating their glitches with EQ ?

Oh yeah - forgot to mention - Sonarworks is the other one that I see mentioned in other audio tech forums (goes way beyond EQ):

https://www.sonarworks.com

Reference 4 is the main one I see mentioned "Reference 4 removes unwanted coloration from studio speakers and headphones."

Interestingly, there's a cheaper version 'True Fi' that works from a database of can brands freq response and the Sennheiser HD280 Pro is one of them.

https://www.sonarworks.com/truefi/headphones

Anyone here used this stuff ? Not about to introduce yet more software into my chain but interested in the tech if others think it actually works or just makes things more complicated.

[valis]

For most: complicated.

Did you invest 30K in soundproofing the room, and have well positioned $18,000 midfields with a mastering console and couch in the finely tuned sweet spot, and want to get the last few fractions of imbalance out of your frequency response? Well, you wouldn't be using that software anyway but tools that are considerably more expensive that they are basically emulating, much like the rest of our software.

On the flipside, a huge portion of the prosumer/consumer market does little to no work on their room and simply plops money down on this.

For the tl;dnr on this:

Much like the butterfly effect in chaos theory, which states that to accurately predict/model a planet's atmospheric (climate) system to any reasonable degree, you would need to exceed putting sensors at the equivalent of every 1 cubic inch over the ENTIRE planet up to the ionosphere and beyond (well, we probably need to include solar wind, other planets, and heck let's just put those sensors in warp space or hyperspace at every millimeter for several quintillion light years around us while we're at it). In other words, the butterfly in Tokyo (hi Ken!) that flaps its wings and causes the wind to shift on the coast of her Majesty's porch...how could you measure that?

That's a bastardized summary sure, but you can extend the same idea to our acoustic spaces.

Where your ears sit is not 'one' sweet spot, but two really, plus your head and its transfer function, and the interactions between all of the reflective and resonant surfaces around you. Because these reflections are passing all over the place, especially the first direct reflection series (nodes) and low end resonant peaks and valleys, if you move your head an inch or so this way or that, you're likely going to get a COMPLETELY different acoustic response (different peaks and valleys than where your head just was). Want to lock your head in a vice to ensure that mic's impression of your 'sweet spot' (and the countering filter response that is created to 'flatten' that response, or cancel those peaks and valleys) isn't altered by moving just a tad?

Now, it WILL sound different. And with certain fundamental frequencies, the nodes are large enough that there may actually be a measurable improvement in that sweet spot. But for the rest, start with the cheap acoustic foam and realize it doesn't do as advertised when stuck directly on surfaces and graduate to building small frames to 'elevate' that stuff. Then realize you could have built your own panels (there's several DIY variations that work but rock wool insulation or other similar things stuck between layers of fabric with a frame, or inside of large 'pillows' that you can hang...) for a fraction of the cost and hang them appropriately spaced off of the wall as well. Invest in fancy 'diffusion' surfaces and then realize some shelving and a nice book collection is basically the same thing... Hang a few posh floor rugs on the walls and give your mixing room a nice luxurious soft look and you'll begin to realize that now that you've tamed all those upper freqs you basically left the low end nice and 'muddy' because almost all of that simply isn't effective in that range so you've 'dried up' everything above and left that alone. Build some bass trapping and play around with putting your sub (if you have one, if not speakers) where you SIT and then move around the room near where you want the sub to sit (or speakers to sit--on stands) until you 'hear' the most balanced response of a crescendo/decrescendo of bass notes (or frequency sweeps). Then swap the sub/speakers there and sit in your spot and have a listen...

And you'll have done WAY more to balance things out than that software + mic solution.

Just my 2 cents.