Photo courtesy of John Bell
August 9th, 2010 – Thanks to DigitalLush for the question. As always, please feel free to email me questions and I will do my best to answer them.
Stumbled upon your site the other day and have been checking back reading different articles of interest. I came across one you had written on mixing. So here’s a question that I don’t know if it was covered indirectly, but I’m still curious about:
When mixing for live performance or theatre, are there any methods to figuring out or at least hypothesizing about how sounds will manifest in systems that you can’t actually test on?!
My problem is that while my mixes sound really good blasting through my speakers in my basement, they aren’t quite holding up in my headphones (and I’m curious for vice versa). This has happened a lot, and not being in a position to purchase large scale equipment for live venues, I’m curious as to weather or not you have experience with establishing a method for designing sound for speakers that you may or may not be using!
I know this may sound silly but this unfortunately happens a lot. I understand you ideally have time to do sound checks and mixing before a show – but 1. this isn’t always the case and 2. I’m wondering if there’s some method I should use when creating stuff in my basement that may be helpful when I actually get to a venue etc.
Thanks for your insight and keep up the good work.
Unfortunately, there is no way you can tailor a mix exactly to a system you’ve never heard before. Every sound system will be different and even speakers that you have going through the exact same amp at home, will sound different in another room within your house.
That being said, there are things you can do to try and sound as good as possible. I realize that you are primarily worried about what your mix will sound like in various performance venues but mix engineers who only work in one studio face the same problem: they cannot control the sound systems that listeners will be using. Someone could be listening on an iPod, in their car, or on a $100k home stereo system.
Mix engineers will do a mix on their own setup, and then bounce a copy to listen in as many places, and on as many stereo systems as they have time for. This helps them understand how their mix will sound on other systems, and allow them to create a mix that will average out well across different systems. In your case, you’ll want to do something similar. Create a mix that sounds good on your speakers, on your headphones, your friend’s systems and play it in as many places as possible to get a good idea on how the mix will translate across different sound systems.
As well, a great way to fast track the process is to listen to a song from your favorite artist that sounds good on your speakers and headphones, and use that as a guide to mix your own tracks. If those bangers are working well in a club, then yours probably will too. Hope that helps!
Do you guys have any other suggestions?
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