Your speakers and headphones are probably lying to you and you don't even realize it. If we don't fix this it will ruin your mix.
Hi, it's Spencer Miles the owner of Spencer Studios which is a recording studio in downtown Lancaster Pennsylvania. When I work with clients there are really three stages to production: recording, mixing, and mastering. When at all possible I try to bring the client back in-person to the studio for a post mixing session and the reason is because many artists and at home producers simply don't have a reference set up. Every speaker, to be more technical every type of transducer (something that takes energy and uses it to create sound in this case) has what we call a frequency response. Some transducers due to size have trouble accurately recreating bass while some low cost transducers might have trouble creating frequencies from low to high in an even manner. Some transducers are made to edge out the competition such as beats with their well known increased bass while others are aimed at accurately recreating the signal present and those we give the title reference grade.
What you need is a reference monitor or reference headphones. What that means is that the manufacturers goal for the product is to accurately recreate the exact signal of the music by having a flat frequency response. Let's take a look at the frequency response of a the popular Apple Airpods gen 2.
We see a pronounced dip in the midrange as a whole with peaks in the treble and bass.
Now compare it to a popular reference studio monitor which is ruler flat.
A reference monitor or reference headphones will give you an accurate picture of how your mix actually sounds. If you were to make mix decisions off of say the apple Airpods, your initial mix might sound like it has too much treble and bass causing the vocals to become lost. In this case you might increase the mid-range . While this might sound good on the Airpods the second you switch to another speaker system that is flatter say like the Bose portable Bluetooth speaker (frequency response shown below) suddenly you will be overwhelmed by mid-range and the song will sound dead as treble will be non existent.
In the studio we mix on reference monitors so that we have the best chance of making your music sound great no matter what type of transducer is playing it.
When evaluating a mix make sure to have a reference grade set of speakers and an acoustically balanced space or eq balanced headphones on hand. If that's not an option for you go work in the studio with a pro engineer who has these resources on hand so your mix sounds like your mix no matter where you hear it.
If you want to know more consider scheduling a free session with us,
Spencer Miles Spencer Studios 313 W Liberty St, Lancaster, PA 17603
spencerm96@comcast.net
7176348955
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