--- Joe Hartley <jh@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Tue, 2 Mar 2004 10:12:55 +0000 > Anahata <anahata@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > I knew a band who used to keep a crappy tape > player in their studio, > > > the portable kind that has built-in speakers > either end. When they'd > > > finished a mix, they would run off a cassette > copy and play it back > > > on this machine to see if it still sounded good. > > > > This is common practice. Also switching to small > "lo-fi" speakers in the > > control room and sticking a cassette mix in the > car sound system to > > listen to on the way home from the session or > wherever. > > I swear by this approach. I routinely come up with > a mix that I think > sounds good, only to take in the car and have it > sound like garbage. This is something that all of us experience. Joe, your statement is almost a direct qoute from the opening paragraph to a document on mastering that I've written but never finished. I probably don't have alot of mastering experience. Reguardless, I think your example is the point where mastering the audio needs to happen. If the mix sounds great in the control room, it can sound great on many systems. Our studio has control and mastering rooms. Each room has its own accoustical design for reverberation times and flat EQ responses and different monitors. If the mix sounds good in the control room, the mastered version sounds good in the mastering room and the mastered version sounds good in the control room, then we're approaching sonic potential. Basically what I'm adding to the many reference monitors discussion is room accoustics and mastering. What I'd suggest to Joe and all of us when we experience "sounds like garbage on other systems" is to move from mixing to mastering. Send these mixes through JAMin and even if you only have one room to work with you should expect very significant improvements in how the audio sounds on many systems and in many environments. But do not master until the mix sounds great. Always master control room mixes because compression and limiting ontop of compression and limiting will fail. I think it's a potential mistake to build a great sounding mix in a control room, discover it sounds bad in the car and then return to the control room and remix by pulling out bass energy. Sending the great sounding control room mix through equalization, compression, limiting and gain stages can help you control and keep that bass energy. My studio partner Bill and I recently designed and built a studio for someone. I have spreadsheets for the room accoustics design and photos of the construction. The photos are interesting but only for sound containment. I'll try to add these materials to my documents. I just haven't had time to make them presentable. The spreadsheet formulas are for simple cube shaped rooms. We're not dealing with angles and such. I think they are simple enough to be comprehendible and they could help audio engineers understand the distinction between mixing and mastering. Some of what I'm stating is probably beyound obvious for many of us but not for everyone and it doesn't become simple until we're exposed. If I'm to redundant and simple shoot or suggest I shoot myself. :) ron > Part of that is that by the time I get to the final > mix in the studio, > I've worked on it for hours and my ears are just > tired. I've spent so > long on focusing on individual parts and tweaking > the EQs that I lose > track of the piece as a whole. > > There's nothing like taking the mix elsewhere to get > perspective on it, > and if it holds up on a mediocre system, then I know > I have something. > > -- > ====================================================================== > Joe Hartley - UNIX/network Consultant - > jh@xxxxxxxxxxxx > Without deviation from the norm, "progress" is not > possible. - FZappa __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Search - Find what you?re looking for faster http://search.yahoo.com
