has anyone found a mixing solution to mixing in an untreated room?

[read]

has anyone found a mixing solution to mixing in an untreated room? i'm still waiting

[SoundGuyDave]

Yep, there are three, with varying levels of success:

1) Just don't. Rent time in a studio to do the final mix, or at least do the polish. You can get 90-95% of the way there at home, untreated, but you need accuracy to get that last 5-10%. Two hours of studio time is plenty to CHECK the low-end, stereo imaging, and ambience balances on a few mixes. If it's all out of whack, then yeah, that could get expensive in a hurry. This is also not the time to play around with production ideas, this would be strictly confirmation and final polish.

2) Treat the room. Particularly with smaller rooms, just load it up with bass traps. Not the cheapest solution, but not all THAT expensive. Don't do foam; it doesn't control low enough freqs that are generally the problems. Concentrate on corners and first reflection points. Buying commercially, figure on US$1000-1500 in traps to start.

3) Get REALLY good open-back headphones (US$500+) to use as your primary monitors, and then double-check the results on the boxes in the room, rather than the other way around.

4) Failing all the above, LEARN your room and monitors. Do several mixes, then listen to the results critically in other locations, like a living room, car, etc. TAKE NOTES about what changed, and then go back and listen again in your untreated room. Assess what needs to be changed, execute, then lather-rinse-repeat. Eventually, you'll start to "hear" what works and get closer to translatable mixes as your ears become accustomed to what is "right" in the acoustic hellhole that you mix in... ;-) If you have low-end issues, but you simply CANNOT hear the freqs in question in your room, then you're pretty much screwed, and it's back to options 1-3.

[akademie]

Maybe also adding a spectral analyser plugin to master or monitor section, to SEE what you cannot HEAR
It may give you a better insight to frequency spectrum of audio mix idependent of used speakers, headphones and the room.

Note: But, use it only as a helper, do not let yourself to be dictated by your eyes only then. Ears First!

[georgemickel]

Like SoundGuyDave suggested - I also use headphones. Or without treatment of your room, the alternative solution would be something like Sonarworks Reference 4 Studio with Mic, link below.



https://www.sweetwater.com/store/det...tudio-with-mic

[DVDdoug]

Of course you can do it and a lot of people do, but you're not going to get "professional results".


You can still use some "pro tricks" such as using a known-good reference recording and checking the mix (and comparing to your reference) on everything you can get your hands on.

3) Get REALLY good open-back headphones (US$500+) to use as your primary monitors

IMO - You don't have to spend THAT much. There are good headphones in the $100-$100 range and very-good headphones if you go up to $300. You quickly get to the point of diminishing returns and more money may not buy you "better sound".


And, even with the "best" headphones the pros will tell you not to use headphones as your primary monitors.


Once you have decent headphones (or monitors) it's a matter of learning what a good mix sounds like on the headphones that you have.


They do need to be comfortable for you, since you'll be wearing them for hours.

[read]

for number one, renting a mixing room

what would be the first thing to check with them to be sure its a good mixing room? do i need to ask them for the EQ room curve or what...apart from very good monitors

thanks!

[SoundGuyDave]

Multi-reply....

READ-- A "good" room is going to be one that is neutral in tonal response, and not particularly "lively" in character. Getting that combination (particularly the tonal aspect) is not something that you're going to find very often with home-brew solutions. Look for a professionally-designed and -built studio rather than a converted room if you're paying for the rental. Two main things to look for first, before you audition the room would be proper design and treatment. For the design, you should notice that there are NO two surfaces (walls, ceiling, floor) that are parallel to each other, but the room should maintain symmetry around the mix position laterally. For treatment, look for bass trapping (4" or greater panels or quarter-round tubes) in all the vertical corners, and possibly at the wall/ceiling joints as well. For wall treatment, look for a blend of absorption and diffusion. If you find a place you think you might like, audition the room. When you walk in, clap your hands once, hard. You should hear NO audible slap-echo, nor should it be billowy and echo-y. Then have a conversation with the owner, while you're asking him/her who designed the room and who built it, listen to how the room reacts to his voice. Wander around the room while they're talking. You want as large a "sweet spot" as you can get, but nowhere in the room should sound "odd." You want a room that both sounds spacious, but also sounds tight. Listen specifically for certain tones sticking out louder than others. If it passes all that, throw on a recording or two that you know INTIMATELY, and see if you can pick out details you don't hear in your own room. If the room is "right," you'll hear depth and space that you don't at home, and it will be a LOT easier to judge the left-right positioning of the mix elements. If you find that room, write the check and get mixing! A few tips to save money: 1) Do as MUCH of the work at home as you can, and just go into the studio to check or refine. No sense paying for the time if you're programming automation lanes, or importing and arranging tracks. 2) Ask about discounts for off-hours (2:00AM on a Wednesday will be cheaper than 3:00PM on a Friday), and also ask about discounts for pre-paying for a certain number of hours. If the studio rate is $50/hr, ask what they can do for you if you want 2hrs a day, Wednesdays and Thursdays at 2:00AM, if you pre-pay for the month in advance...You'd be surprised at how low they may be willing to go to get a "simple" client. After all, once you get your laptop and sound card wired in, you're all self-service. The studio intern can handle that. Also, if you're mixing "in the box," it really doesn't matter what cool outboard is on-hand, you can do as good a job, or better, in a smaller, cheaper room. A mastering room is actually ideal. Cheaper to rent than the "Studio A" control room with a 72-input SSL G-series desk and 80U of vintage tube outboard, too!

NOOJOYSEY: Respectfully, I have to disagree with you here. It's really all about translation from one playback situation to another. If you mix on earbuds or headphones, you're going to have a VERY different approach to panning and ambience than you would if you mix "in a room." If your untreated room (or earbuds for that matter) have a massive deficiency in the low-end reproduction (for example), you don't hear ANYTHING wrong when mixing, but when you listen to it anywhere else, the bottom end will be mush. If, however, you mix in a "perfect" environment, that WILL translate beautifully to a mono cellphone speaker or cheap earbuds. The reverse is certainly and demonstrably not true.

DVDDOUG: Good tip on the "reference" material, but I still maintain that if you can't hear the note, you've got no hope of mixing it properly in context with the rest... Mixing is a series of critical decisions, and you can only make decisions on the information you have. In this case, the information is what you hear. Monitors with a "bump" in the response will trick you into mixing light in that frequency area. Monitors with a "hole" in the response will trick you into mixing heavy in that frequency area. Headphones with artificial bass and HF boosts will push you into a midrange-heavy mix. The same thing applies to a room. A small bedroom mix room, untreated, will have a series of cancellation and reinforcement nodes scattered throughout the room. That's just pure physics. Your mix will reflect those nodes, since that is what you hear to base your decisions on. That same small, untreated room will also have significant reflections in the mid and high frequencies from the walls, ceiling and floor, not to mention all the "stuff" in the room. Those reflections can alter how you perceive the "proper" amount of reverb within the mix, and can blur the positioning of a signal in the stereo field. RE: Headphones. I agree with you to a point, you don't need to break the bank, BUT the more coloration you have in the cans, the more "effect" they have on the mix. Seems like the "reference standards" these days are the AKG K701/K702 (~$600 list), Sennheiser HD800 ($1800!!!), or Shure SRH-1840 (~$650 list). And yes, don't mix single-source with headphones! You can, however, get quite a bit done on cans, then check your results on proper monitors in a room. There is a difference in how the stereo field interacts in the room that you just can't get on headphones. That said, I understand Andrew Scheps is now mixing exclusively on headphones, so...

GEROGEMICKEL: The Sonarworks stuff does look interesting, but even if you have a PERFECTLY calibrated speaker set, but put them in a boomy echo chamber, how much have you really gained? In a basic treated room, though, that can be the icing on the cake.

AKADEMIE: Agreed 100%. Metering is NEVER a bad thing, but the primary go/no-go decision still needs to be done with your ears. I've seen wayyyyy too many guys get focused on the pretty lines on the screen, obsessing about 0.2dB EQ filters with a Q of 7, while the whole mix is falling apart around them.

[noojoysey]

Originally Posted by read

has anyone found a mixing solution to mixing in an untreated room? i'm still waiting

Given that most people will be listening to music using ear buds or small speakers in an 'untreated' room, I think there's probably an advantage in mixing in an 'untreated' room; mix it to sound OK and you're done. Or use headphones. Either way, use your ears, they're free to download and much easier to use than any app, processing or room treatment.

And what sort of music are you mixing?