Quote: (05-23-2016 08:21 AM)Mr. D Wrote:
My personal rule of thumb being: If it sounds full at any volume, it's good.
I think I see where you are coming from with that, but that only applies to music that has been finally mastered and is 'out there'. End product. The opposite is true when music is being made and 'produced' in the studio. Not all volumes are equal.
When you are monitoring, you have to take into consideration the non-linearity of human hearing. You have to know what a Fletcher-Munson curve is.
The vast majority of mixing is done at a level where people talking among themselves is audible within the control room. There is a reason for that. And it's not just because the people in the studio don't want to go deaf. Though fatigue is definitely a factor.
A solid foundation in psycho-acoustics is called for.
Mixes need to sound full at low volume, at high volume, in stereo, in mono, on unbalanced systems like cars where the bass may be disproportionately high, and most tellingly of all, on a good system where everything else sounds wonderful, so why does your shit sound like crap? ;-)
Then we have mixing on headphones. There is a major school of thought that says this should never ever be done under any circumstances. And then there is the other school of thought that says it is possible with programs like TB-Isone-Pro and all the other speaker simulation software. Professional mixers use it, and it obviously does work for them. So where does the truth lie?
I think I may be guilty of the very thing I am railing against: Becoming too technical for its sake. It's a rabbit hole. Perhaps another thread is in order for us to just knock this stuff about.
Apologies once again GS, if I took your thread too off-track.
And apologies Mr. D, if I took your quote out of context.