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Head here to learn more, it’s worth the upgrade price, and worth looking at for sure!
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The game is really simple and you can do it too, if you are like me and have absolutely nothing better to do on a half hour flight from ATL to BNA. The theory is that you pay very close attention to the tinny noise leaking out of the guy’s headphones and try and pick the songs. For this you’ll also have to ignore the fact that if you’re hearing tinny noise outside his phones on a plane it means he’ll be deaf by the time he’s 50 at that rate…. But I digress.
That’s the easiest part of the game though.
The next part is to analyse the sounds you’re hearing and work out whether its good production or bad production. How many of the separate instruments can you identify? What it is the EQ like on those instruments? But as I said, I have NO life outside audio most weeks.

There’s an article that I wrote for Audio Technology Magazine in Australia, and  I was explaining about the perfect mix, and how if you mix a track at a low volume, you’ll get a better mix with everything sounding a lot slicker than if you mix it incredibly loud with the bass vibrating you off your seat. It still works like that and I’ll explain it more another time.

All I’m doing here is taking that a little further, as obviously mixing your project at low volume isn’t going to help turn shit into strawberry jam unless you’ve got the session laid out properly, and honestly, with today’s technology and digital audio workstations being what they are, setting out your project so that all tracks are where you want them, and all the sounds sit well in the mix is not as hard as it used to be in the old days when we had to use those things called our ears as our main tool.

So what is this obsession that I have with mixing at low volumes and where did it come from? Well it’s certainly not a theory originating with me. It’s a theory that has been worked out by many producers and engineers over the years, all sharing theories, tips, tricks and all learning from each other. People use it because it works.

To learn more about you it you have to start thinking more like a radio listener or club-goer. What is going on around you while you’re listening to music? What sounds does the music have to compete with? How loud are you all talking over the music?
In every day life whether it be in a club, down the pub, in the park, in the office, in the car on the way to work, on a bus with your iPod on, or just in your room doing your homework, you’ll see that music always has other noise to compete with. In the car your potential number one hit that you’ve just got added to the radio station’s play-list has to compete with people talking, traffic noise, air conditioning noise, babies crying etc.

While all of this is going on, most of the time, the radio is not at a high volume because otherwise people can’t hear themselves talk. So why then….this being the case would you bother mixing your precious tracks at a volume that they will very rarely ever get listened to at. By all means crank the volume up, get comfy in your fave chair, and listen to it at Sydney Stadium volume a couple of times, but if you do that BEFORE you’ve actually finished mixing it then you’ve just become your own worst enemy as your ears just lost a level of hearing accuracy that won’t be back for another few hours now.
Turn. It. Down.

new site, new look (well kind of) and on this lovely Sunday morning …..ok its midday ish, I’ve read ALL the instructions and taken it live…..
Ok Crap, I haven’t read anything, and its probably going to break as soon as hit the OK button, but its the thought that counts. Right?