It often happens that your mix sounds good in the studio; Bass, kick and vocals are quite clear and loud, like birds singing on the first day of spring. Then you play your music in the car…
Sense of sadness
Why do mixes sound good in one place and bad in another? Different broadcast systems can have different stories to tell. One system may amplify the bass, another system may reduce the intensity of the bass. If you have a pair of HS8 monitors without a subwoofer, you will not hear much bass. You will hear a lot of bass when you take the mix into the car and raise the bass equalizer all the way and have 12-inch woofers in the trunk. In this case, you have mixed the bass a lot with your monitors and then you have increased the base intensity too much inside the car.
Then you hear a piece of music that a professional has done mixing and mastering, and it sounds good in any system. Did magic happen? No. That mix engineer has learned techniques and can predict how the mix he makes will sound on other systems. In this article we will tell you how to do it!
Improve monitoring
This may be obvious, but the first thing we need to do is optimize our studio environment as much as possible. The good news is that you are not going to do that by buying super expensive monitors. Any monitor that has a uniform sound and comes with a subwoofer will have enough sound for playback.
The most important factor is the room itself. It is not possible to have a sound similar to professional studios with high quality acoustics in a small room filled with inexpensive equipment. But there is a lot you can do to improve its quality. Acousticizing the room is not very expensive and even with a little spending, it can be significantly changed. Placing absorbers in the areas of the room that provide the most reflection can make a big difference in the accuracy of sound monitoring.
We say this because some people do not know that the room itself is part of the equation. Even if they are aware of this, most of them feel that Auralex brand foams or library and armchairs are enough to make the room acoustic. These things can improve the acoustics of the room a bit, but a few quality fiberglass panels will make a much bigger difference.
