Mixing live tracks: headphones or monitors

Re: Mixing live tracks: headphones or monitors

I usually find if you can talk comfortably while running tracks then that'll do, this works for me with most forms of music and has done for more years than I care to think. G
 
Re: Mixing live tracks: headphones or monitors

John Chiara said:
Actually, many famous mix engineers mix at very low levels, and just check at higher levels.
Mixing just a little too loud can create all kinds of fatigue and maskIng problems. I don't know how one determines the playback volume while mixing?
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I got used to mixing somewhere between 90db and 95db depending on the style of music and always doing a final check on the big monitors at around 100db. I don't remember ever changing anything after the check but it has been a long time. I did do periodic checks for bass content before the final mix though. I always had to work to get the mix sounding good on the NS10's and listening to the Westlake's was always a pat on the back. The Westlake's were like turning on a light switch as far as being able to hear EVERYTHING. I could hear all kinds of subtle things and details and really appreciate the content but the relative balance was always perfect coming off the Yamaha's and the mix always sounded better on any decent system.
 
Re: Mixing live tracks: headphones or monitors

Reading the last few posts, I realize that I probably failed to realize the levels we were actually talking about, so I did a quick check just to make sure.
To me, 65 to 70 with 75dB peaks are comfortable for long term listening, anything above 80 dB starts to get tiring after a while and 85 to 90 dB is as far as I want to go with realistic listening levels. Louder than that is just LOUD.
So what are these very low levels that the famous mix engineers work at? If what is comfortable for us 50+ folks with representative hearing damage is considered to be low level, then I'm definitely low level too.
Then again, I'm very comfortable wearing my 10dB plugs at concerts and my 20dB plugs at festivals (when I'm in the audience, not behind the desk) so maybe my hearing is too damaged to be considered normal.
 
Re: Mixing live tracks: headphones or monitors

I used to track at lower volumes but for critical mixing I found my perception changed at volumes much below 90dB. For lack of a better term I would say the resolution was much better for me on the equipment I mixed on for years in the 90-95db range. I used to use a RadioShack dB meter a lot and those were the numbers that always worked for me. Who knows how accurate it really was but it was at least very consistent. There was a point at which the midrange seemed to all run together at higher volumes and a point at lower volumes that I could not really distinguish everything well enough to make accurate mixing decisions. In that range I mixed in I could hear less than 1dB changes and when I lowered the volume the mix was still well balanced. Those numbers are for where the meter was peaking.
 
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Re: Mixing live tracks: headphones or monitors

The Equator D5's arrived today.

On first listen, just out of the headphone jack of my Mac and itunes (Allison Krauss), I am extremely impressed. I do like them better than anything I heard at the dealers and since I got them on the 4th July sale, the price was definitely right.

I brought everything in to give them a measure, but I just got a call for a last minute show, so I have to go dig some speakers out of the basement.
 
Re: Mixing live tracks: headphones or monitors

John Chiara said:
Equator D5's. Then get a $200 sub and you are good to go.
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+1 For the price the D5s are astonishing.

Mix at a low volume, run it up loud only briefly to check things.

Switch between your mix and a well established reference in the same genre (sometimes others can be useful too).

Reference on as many systems as you can but rely mostly on your main rig.

Take breaks at least once an hour... walk away. Nap on it. Have a snack. Pet the cat. Come back and re-evaluate things.

Save often.
 
I bought a pair off the recommendations in this thread. Definitely glad I did. I also took advantage of the sale over the 4th.

Currently working on designing a sub to go with them. Currently working on the design. I'll post more as o finish it up.

Sent from my neural implant
 
Re: Mixing live tracks: headphones or monitors

I like things designed together. I am hoping the big things coming announcement on the website is a sub.

but for general listening in my office/studio, they sound great without a sub.
 
Re: Mixing live tracks: headphones or monitors

A sub in a poorly treated room can cause more grief than mixing without one, I've had that issue in the past where backing tracks were given to me for a tour and the low end was either non existent or very thin because the guy mixing it had biggish sub in a small room with no bass traps or any such. Sure you can go the other way and have too much low end but in my experience that is easier to fix than nothing in the lower registers, both in a live situation or if mastering tracks for release. G
 
Re: Mixing live tracks: headphones or monitors

Best advice I can give is this:

Get to know your monitors WELL. That will help you far more IMHO than owning an ATC SCM25 , Barefoot MM27 etc. As long as you have a reasonably good/linear monitor, the biggest barrier is translation, and that has everything to do with knowing your monitors.

I have found that a slight bit of EQ ( for me = minor adjustments on a Klark 5 band parametric , nothing crazy) helps to a significant degree. Play some tracks that you are VERY familiar with, and use a slight bit of EQ to arrive at a setting that sounds "right" to YOU. This will give you a big head start as opposed to guessing and playing head games (ie it sounds this way on my monitors but I think it will sound different on something else). The starting point should be that well recorded tracks sound "right" to you on your monitors. If that is not the case, you will get into guessing games and translation mess for months (or years) until you "learn" your monitors.
 
Re: Mixing live tracks: headphones or monitors

George Friedman-Jimenez said:
Anyone use an Avantone mixcube speaker rather than an NS10? They are supposedly similar sounding to the NS10 and have the advantage that you can still buy them.
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The Avantone is a clone of the old Auratone 5C, it is not like the NS10.....

The design uses a single full range speaker (which thus avoids crossovers), and is meant more to be a reference check rather than a primary mix tool. Really any single full range speaker can serve this purpose, though the Avantones are a reasonable, if a bit overpriced IMHO choice. I use a cheap single driver speaker in mono, and checking on this helps to track down masking issues. Most of these designs sound like crap, but that's kind of why they are useful.
 
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Re: Mixing live tracks: headphones or monitors

Rob Spence said:
I use JBL LSRs with the sub and it sounds nice. I have to shut off the sub when mixing to get enough Bass for lesser speakers.
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Rob, if this is the case, then commercial tracks should sound overly bass heavy. Adjust your sub level until commercial tracks sound "right" and then you shouldn't keep running into this problem.
 
My biggest problem seems to be the sound changing from the multitrack to the master to the aac to the audio CD on the same speakers. The low mids seen to randomly change in each conversion.
 
Re: Mixing live tracks: headphones or monitors

Always mix on a system that goes deep. Sometimes there's stuff down there that you need to get rid of (such as an electric-acoustic with a very deep thump that went unnoticed on NX10s). (And sometimes there's good stuff down there that gets cut off because the knucklehead cranked the high-pass up until he heard a difference on his ball-less monitors.)
 
Re: Mixing live tracks: headphones or monitors

Jay Barracato said:
My biggest problem seems to be the sound changing from the multitrack to the master to the aac to the audio CD on the same speakers. The low mids seen to randomly change in each conversion.
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Most likely you are recording at 24bit on the multitrack. The 16bit CD is not going to sound quite as good. That is usually noticeable more in the mid to upper range than the low mids though. The other issue could be the digital to analog conversion on what you are listening to the 16bit CD from. All converters sound slightly different just like all preamps sound slightly different. I assume you are staying 24bit through the entire process until the final conversion to a 16bit file.
 
Re: Mixing live tracks: headphones or monitors

The phase flip and magnitude bump around 8K are the only thing that stands out in this measurement, these are two way but I would be surprised if they were crossing over that high - and had managed the crossover so poorly. That would be pretty sensitive to being off axis even a tiny but, but a wide bandwidth boost like that is kind of strange. 6dB bump from a boundary over such a limited bandwidth with no other apparent consequences is also pretty unusual. All the boost in the LF can surely be attributed to a boundary.

Glad they sound good, and of course for the price they can't be beat. Might get a pair myself and attach an Airport Express to them for listening in the kitchen. I am amused that they say they're using an expensive proprietary coaxial, though - proprietary maybe, but definitely not expensive.
 
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