Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio (Sound On Sound Presents...)

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Although manufacturers typically do their best to keep crossover regions pretty narrow to minimize the effect of comb filtering, most affordable nearfield monitors have only two drivers, which means that any comb filtering between the woofer and the tweeter happens in the worst possible place from a mixing standpoint: right in the center of the frequency spectrum, where our hearing is most sensitive. If you want to get a handle on the extent of the damage here, try this experiment. Play Most the PinkNoise file (www.cambridge-mt.com/ms-ch1 affordable nearfield .htm) through a single nearfield speaker with vermonitors have only two tically spaced drivers, and listen to it first of all drivers, which means any comb directly on axis. Now drift alternately about six filtering between the woofer and inches to each side while keeping your vertical the tweeter happens in the worst position constant. You’ll hear a small change possible place from a mixing in tone on most speakers because of the highstandpoint: right in the center of frequency directionality I mentioned earlier. Once the frequency spectrum, where you’re used to that change, drift up and down by our hearing is most about six inches instead, and the tonal change will sensitive. likely be much more noticeable. Although the effects of comb filtering between your speaker drivers won’t monitors (top to bottom): the ADAM A7X has dual circular ports either side of the woofer, the KRK Rokit 8 has a port slot under the woofer, the Behringer 2030A has two narrow port slots on either side of the tweeter, and the M-Audio DSM2 features a single circular port on the rear panel. Using A Subwoofer There are certain styles of music for which the very lowest frequencies are extremely important, so if that’s the market you’re working in then you’ll need a speaker system that can actually reproduce them. According to Trina Shoemaker, “Forty Hertz exists now…. We have real low end in today’s recordings, so you have to work with it.”5 One common way of extending the low-frequency reach of budget nearfield systems is to supplement a smaller pair of stereo “satellite” speakers with a single additional subwoofer to create a so-called 2.1 system. Although this would seem to compromise the stereo presentation of the mix, we actually hear stereo primarily from higher frequencies, so that’s not a problem in practice. In fact, you can usually position subwoofers well off-center without unbalancing the stereo picture. An advantage of the 2.1 approach is that you don’t get phase-cancellation issues between drivers at the low end, and you also get a certain amount of flexibility to position the subwoofer independently of the nearfield satellites to reduce room-mode problems (a serious acoustics issue we’ll discuss in detail in Section 1.4). However, although many manufacturers of 2.1 systems suggest that you can place the subwoofer pretty much wherever you like, I’d personally advise restricting yourself to placements where the subwoofer and satellites are all an equal distance from your ears; otherwise you’ll compromise the relative timing of low-frequency transients. Also, as with any speaker, beware of porting side effects on cheaper products.

Your mix project is neatly laid out. Timing and tuning gremlins have been banished. The arrangement has been honed. All your faders are pulled down, and you’re ready to mix. Now what? That unassuming little question is essentially the crux of what mixing technique is all about, and answering it with conviction at every stage of the process is what foxes a lot of small-studio operators struggling to get commercial-level results. The reason so many low-budget producers can’t confidently answer the persistent “now what?” is that they don’t have an overarchObserving ing game plan to provide solid rationale for seasoned mix engineers their processing decisions. at work is very deceptive, Observing seasoned mix engineers at work because they’ll often seemingly skip is very deceptive in this regard, because at random between different tasks. they’ll often seemingly skip at random In reality they have developed such an between different mixing tasks. In realintuitive grasp of mixing workflow that ity they have developed such an intuithey can respond freely to mix issues tive grasp of their own mixing workflow as they arise without losing the that they are able to respond freely to mix underlying plot. issues as they arise without the risk of losing the underlying plot. As such, I don’t think it’s very Cut to the Chase A nearfield monitoring system is a good choice for small-studio mixing. Spend as much as you can afford on the speakers, because quality costs, and if your budget is tight then be wary of ported designs. When choosing a system, favor studio monitors over hi-fi speakers, active models over passive, and accuracy over volume. n Whatever speakers you use, mount them securely on solid, nonresonant surfaces, preferably away from room boundaries. If the speakers have more than one driver, then the cabinets should be oriented so that the drivers are equal distances from the listener and angled toward the listening position. In nearly all cases it’s better for multidriver speakers to be vertically rather than horizontally aligned. For stereo listening, there should be the nMineral-Fiber Bass Traps The best all-purpose tactic is to damp down the room modes as much as you can using low-frequency absorbers, often called bass traps. The downside here, though, is that bass traps need to be dense and bulky to do their job properly. As Eric Schilling notes, foam simply isn’t up to the task: “Most people think that treating a room simply means going to a music store and buying foam. But if it’s essentially a square room, it doesn’t matter if you have some foam in the corner and a few pieces on the wall—you still won’t be able to hear bass to save your life!”8 The most commonly used alternative is large slabs of highdensity mineral fiber, which offer much better low-frequency absorption. Placing the panels close to a given room boundary provides broadband absorption of all the associated dimension’s room modes, and (much as with This section also includes a handy chapter on “Supplementary Monitoring”, something which is of considerable importance to the home studio enthusiast. This chapter provides invaluable insight into the problems home studio owners have that concern stereo imaging and phantom stereo. Overcoming the majority of these issues is swiftly dealt with the introduction of mono monitoring without any loudspeaker crossover circuitry. The conclusion, of course, resulting in consideration of such speaker units as the Aurotone 5C Super Sound Cube. Figure 7.2 A static arrangement can undermine the structure of your song, so try to prune your parts to emphasize each section with some kind of arrangement change. An example of this would be to mute the lighter-shaded parts in the hypothetical arrangement shown here. My take from the book, and this will not sit well with some newbies, is that mixing is still a very hands-on, labor intensive art in its' own right. We live in a world where programmers offer us a bewildering array of affordable equipment past engineers would have sold their house for and could only dream of. Many new to mixing assume the software is the solution in and of itself and blame the programmers when things don't go as dreamed. Some keep buying plugins and add-ons looking for the golden sound solution and when those don't work they believe that if they only could afford what the pros work on their mixes could compete with commercial studios, but the fact is, again, human skill still has the edge. It's painful to know you can't just turn on auto tune and let it run unminded to correct a pitch. It's painful to know your expensive monitors leave you with nothing exciting if you don't know what you're listening for. It might also be painful to realize some songs, no matter who the mixer, can't be fixed because the arrangement is boring, confusing, not musical or too busy. But that's where this book is a Godsend. Rather than tinker at a problem until you lose your hair you can read this book which clearly spells out what you can do, what you probably can't and what you'd be a fool to undertake. Even better, the advice can be applied to a wide variety of set-ups and budgets. Low-End Damage Limitation Chapter 3 the woofer’s limited size becomes less efficient at transferring lower-frequency vibrations to the air. As with all monitors and monitoring techniques, you have to take from your woofer movements only the information that’s of practical use and be merciless in disregarding anything that might mislead you.

Another simple rule of thumb is to be wary of hi-fi speakers, because the purpose of most hi-fi equipment is to make everything sound delicious, regardless of whether it actually is. This kind of unearned flattery is the last thing you need when you’re trying to isolate and troubleshoot sneaky sonic problems. I’m not trying to say that all such designs are inevitably problematic in the studio, but most modern hi-fi models I’ve heard are just too tonally hyped to be of much use, and maintenance issues are often a concern with more suitable pre-1990s systems. Speakers with built-in amplification (usually referred to as “active” or “powered’) are also a sensible bet for the home studio: they’re more convenient and compact; they take the guesswork out of matching the amplifier to your model of speaker; they’re normally heavier, which increases the inertia of the cabinet in response to woofer excursions; and many such designs achieve performance improvements by virtue of having separate matched amplifiers for each of the speaker’s individual driver units. Beyond those issues, a lot of monitor choice is about personal preference, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Some people prefer bright aggressive-sounding monitors, others restrained and understated ones, and neither choice is wrong as such. The main thing to remember is that no monitors are truly “neutral,” and every professional engineer you ask will have his or her own personal taste in this department. Part of the job of learning to mix is getting accustomed to the way your particular speakers sound, so don’t get too uptight about minute differences No monitors are in tone between speakers. Go for something that truly “neutral,” and every appeals to you, and then concentrate on tuning professional engineer you ask your ears to how your chosen model responds will have his or her own personal in your own control room. “You’ve got to be taste in this department. Part of careful about getting new monitors,” advises the job of learning to mix is getting Dave Way. “You’ve got to break them in and accustomed to the way your get to know them before you start to rely on own particular speakers them.”3 Part of doing this involves referring to a sound. set of reference recordings with which you’re familiar (discussed more in Chapter 4). Professional recording engineer and regular Mix Rescue author Mike Senior has just written his first book, Mixing Secrets For The Small Studio. The book is published by Focal Press — the same publisher that brought us Bob Katz’s highly regarded Mastering Audio and Eddy Brixen’s Audio Metering, which we reviewed last month — and was written with the aim of helping small‑studio owners achieve professional‑sounding results using affordable equipment. Figure 2.8 Top-of-the-range headphones, such as the Beyerdynamic DT880 Pro (left ) and Sony MDR7509HD (right ) shown here, are a good investment for most small-studio operators, especially when budget is limited.

Figure 4.2 The top graph here shows four equal-loudness contours. One of the things they show is that our sensitivity to frequency extremes increases with listening level—for instance, moving from the bottom to the top contour (in other words turning the volume up by 60dB) has roughly the same effect on the perceived tonality as the EQ plot shown at the bottom. So, I decided to review the book based primarily on his “mission statement” if you will, in the introduction. He says this book will teach you to create “release quality mixes” on a budget. In that respect, the book definitely falls short. So, here we go: Firstly, in the niggle list - the speech bubble call outs are not useful (to me, anyway) as they are no more than verbatim lifts from the text. Fine if the text consists of sprawling passages with no breaks, but this book is usefully broken down into short, titled sections, so the need for those additional highlight bubbles is minimal and they become a distraction. More useful might have been something like another short comment from a respected producer/engineer/artist on the subject being discussed. Find out where you don't need to spend money, as well as how to make a limited budget really count.