TIP OF THE WEEK #01 - MIXING ON DIFFERENT SPEAKERS

TIP OF THE WEEK:

For those of you who are out there mixing your own records.  I have found a great tutorial written by a guy named. Björgvin Benediktsson  

He wrote a tutorial called the Ultimate Mix Translate Cheet Sheet, and the Ultimate EQ Cheat Sheet.

Needless to say, its helping with the mixing of the next John-Paul Jones Group EP. Also I want to recommend a product for helping you mix.  Even if you have a perfect set of Studio Monitors. 

You need to be able to LISTEN to your mix on different systems. Here are some things I have in my studio to make a matrix of different speakers in the recording studio.

Main Studio Monitors Behringer Truth B2030A

These speakers are my main active monitoring speakers they are connected directly to my Behringer  X32 CORE Mixer/Interface.

Now everything sounds GREAT through these flat response perfectly placed monitors.  But what we found is we are not always translating our mix so they sound good in ear buds, on cell phones, in cars and on cheap computer speakers, because lets face it most of our fans listen to music on crappy speakers.

So the first Speaker I added was my "Phone Speaker" Simulator.  Which is a speaker with relatively little bass response.  So in comes this tiny Speaker

Which hooks up to my main recording speaker via USB hub.  This speaker helps me compare my mix, and I found that you have to CLARIFY the bass frequencies so as not to overdrive a speaker like this one.  Its very easy to change the default settings in Windows and use it like a "Switcher"

This was working okay, but I found I still needed another speaker to do comparisons on. So enters into the equation is another speaker,  

Björgvin Benediktsson  suggested getting a MONO CUBE.  I couldn't find a USB MonoCube, 

but I have found the next best thing from this company.

DURHERM  Speakers makes this and it works great.  I mix directly out from my laptop, by plugging into the headphone jack on the laptop.   Which allows me to use it as a MONO BLOCK.  This is a very clear speaker system with a 3" Sub in the bass what's ice is that this is not a fancy speaker its three drivers. I mix in DUAL mono first then get to spread a final mix into stereo.

These Frisbee Speakers are my next "GO TO" speakers I have just added these speakers to be able to again have another DUAL MONO block.   They are USB powered.  But use a headphone jack so to make sure I could keep it separated I use one of these  USB Adapters for these speakers.

This little adapter is perfect for adding more "audio outputs" to your laptop.  

With these 4 different speaker systems, I can compare my mixes from the main speakers to how they will sound on speakers comparable to what listeners would be listening on them.  Most of our fans are NOT listening to music on BOSE 901s (dated myself).

Okay next week we will try to give you some video of the set-up.

Thanks

Jp Jones

http://www.johnpauljonesgroup.com/about.html