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The Lowest Common DenominatorBy: Alex ScheibeAlex is an electronica reviewer and the audio tech article guy at raw42 music. He has a degree in Audio Engineering and plays around making his own music on his spare tire. |
| When I talked about making sound clips for the web in a previous article, i mentioned that most people will be listening to them over a standard connection and a standard pair of computer speakers. this also goes for your music as it is distributed on cd or tape. most people will not have a major setup like some who are serious about their audio. they will have a regular cd-player, connected to a regular amplifier or sound system, and pretty boring sounding hifi-speakers. making your music sound good on a $2000 amp and similar speakers does not mean it will sound good on someone's boombox. In an interview with some A & R people I read, they said that most demo tapes are listened to in a car on the way to work. while it is true that some car stereos can rival the best hifi systems in the world, chances are the A & R guy you send your music to will not have one of those. at raw, we often do the reviews on a small jvc boombox. a conscious effort to listen to your music mixes properly will ensure that you have a better sounding result on all sound systems. One of the first things you should do, before even starting to think about making a mix, is listen carefully to the speakers that you will be using to monitor your mix. this is what sets apart the good sound engineers from the merely mediocre. good engineers know their equipment inside and out, and for sound, the important ones are your monitor speakers. listen to them, crank them loud, turn them down, drown them in bass, and turn up the treble. make sure you know which end of the frequency spectrum sounds more pronounced and which frequencies are less noticeable. when you have a reasonable idea of the highs and lows of your monitors, you can take this into account when mixing. if your speakers add more bass to the sound (because of their construction or to make a more powerful sounding system), you would add a little more bass to your mix than sounds perfect on your speakers, because there might not be a boost in another sound system your music will be played on. Keeping the limitations of your speakers in mind, make the best mix you can and listen to it a few times to make sure it sounds good on your system. think of the worst sounding stereo you've ever heard, borrow it and play your music on that. take it out to your car and play it on that stereo or on your mother's kitchen stereo. Things to look out for: Are the drums still noticeable? Can you understand/hear the lyrics? Are instruments drowning each other out? Is there a lot of background hiss? Sometimes these things can be hard to notice in a mix when played on an expensive amplifier/speaker set up. basically it all boils down to the fact that if the stereo sounds like shit and your music is still listenable, you've done it right! it costs money to have perfect production. if you're working within a budget, take the time to know your equipment and know it well. Article first appeared at raw42 music. Reprinted with permission. |