How to mix on any speakers in any room

[Shiny Beast]

Here's what I came up with in the days I could barely pay the rent and grocery bill, much less buy "real" monitor speakers:

This does require that you have a decent graphic or parametric EQ, either hardware or plugin- and know how to use it. And it is somewhat time-consuming.

First, gather up a bunch of well-made CD's of every imaginable style of music, from every era. The more the better. Sit at your exact ideal mixing position with your cheapo speakers, and stay put while listening. Don't move around. Play the CD's one after another, listen critically, and EQ carefully until they all sound as good as you can make them. You're making adjustments to optimize the sound at the exact position your head is located.

Then, when you mix, keep your head where it was before. This is important. With crappy speakers/room acoustics, moving your head even slightly can pick up bad room modes and/or speaker quirks. The "sweet spot" is tiny with this method, like 1 cubic foot where your head is at. (But it will get easier as you get used the sound of your monitors and deal with it.)

I have done good mixes on awful speakers this way. I know this does very little about time coherence & dynamic range, but that's another story.

[psycho_monkey]

If your head isn't in a reasonable place to start with though, it's doomed to failure. For example, if your listening position is in a bass anti-node, you'll never be able to eq in enough bass (because the more you add, the more it'll cancel out). You may be lucky and it may help, but it's pretty hit and miss - and easy to make things worse.

[Shiny Beast]

If your head isn't in a reasonable place to start with though, it's doomed to failure.

That's true. For starters I've always moved my mixing position to where there are minimal glaring problems. Pretty important first step I left out, my bad. And there is no substitute for room treatment which isn't necessarily expensive.

[mrc]

i think the option of using an eq to correct room/monitor problems is limited due to the fact that you can't do anything to the comb filtering efect and the decay times.

[goodone]

i like the idea a lot of listening to all kinds of records first in order to make your mix how you want it and i practice this as well ... and i appreciate the idea of wanting to have a controlled experiment. but it seems more important to me people just get the general gist of this idea ... if you want to make a good mix in a particular room on a particular system, you need to learn how a lot of well-produced songs sound in that room on that system ... i feel like if you listen to a lot of songs in a room, you gain a general instinctive anchor or handle on the room. conversely if you then listen to a bad mix your spidey-sense will tingle and tell you "too boomy" "too screechy" etc.

but it's important for me to keep my ears loose and never feel like there's only one way a mix can sound and still be *good*. this is why when i'm doing finishing/mastering on projects i nearly always ask the artist to provide me with some tracks they already really like the sound or feel of, and i try to match the air, the grit, the sparkle, the color, or (gasp) the mood of those tracks. it breaks me out of my personal aesthetic a bit and reminds me forcibly that there are all kinds of ways that a track can sound amazing... i love listening to a hot fugazi track back to back with like, sufjan stevens or something for mix inspiration. whoa!

sorry if this all sounds too hippy-ish. i'll quit while i'm ahead with a paraphrase of a passage from one of my favorite books, Kurt Vonnegut's Bluebeard:

"How can you tell a good painting from a bad one?" ... "All you have to do my dear," he said, "is look at a million paintings, and then you can never be mistaken."

[Silent Sound]

Well obviously this situation is less than ideal, but I do appreciate the post.

I also recommend getting as many different speakers as possible, no matter how bad they are. The more systems you can test on, the better. But that's kinda standard practice, with or without a large budget.

I used to mix on a pair of Bose 301's and some Sansui 3-ways. If I could get a mix to sound good on those two, it would sound good almost anywhere. Of course, getting a mix to sound good on those two wasn't usually an easy task.

[scottyjneilson]

Originally Posted by psycho_monkey

If your head isn't in a reasonable place to start with though, it's doomed to failure. For example, if your listening position is in a bass anti-node, you'll never be able to eq in enough bass (because the more you add, the more it'll cancel out). You may be lucky and it may help, but it's pretty hit and miss - and easy to make things worse.

+1 monkey

I couldnt say it any better monkey. The first time i mixed in an untreated room after countless hours of trying to get the mix right....... i realized i had a freaking window two feet behind my head for the sound waves to bounce off of and create all sorts of problems.

[CJ Mastering]

Originally Posted by mrc

i think the option of using an eq to correct room/monitor problems is limited due to the fact that you can't do anything to the comb filtering effect and the decay times.

Bravo!!! Treatment is needed.
You cannot get rid of standing waves with EQ. You need something to catch and absorb them..
Cj