The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Every song I've ever recorded has disappointed me the first time I listen to it in the car. Every single time. I have actually told my family to wait until we get home before you hear daddy's song for the first time, though I never say why. And what good is a song that sounds crappy on the best and most-used sound system we own?

So this week I find myself with some time to kill waiting for the kids to finish up an after-school activity and I have my laptop and the 1/8" aux jack and hmmm I wonder if...?

Yes indeed.

Mix it in the car.

Problem solved. Miraculously, the mix sounds good everywhere else. Headphones, living room stereo, kitchen mp3 player.

Has anyone else discovered this? It's the first chapter of Mixing For Dummies, isn't it?

That is a great idea.

I am going to have to go and buy a car that has a 1/8" aux jack now - but it is an idea that makes perfect sense.

A car is indeed a very good sound room because it's very dead from all the foam and cushion stuff, yet reflective at the same time from all the glass. The only problem is defining left and right stereo fields. You can obviously pan things hard until you get good separation until they sound good. But I think that when you listen on headphones, it will be panned too hard and sound odd.

I've been studying and practicing mixing, production and on the tip of the iceberg with mastering, so I'm no pro by any means. The simplest and least expensive tip I've picked up is that no matter how expensive/good your studio monitors and studio headphones are, you should do a final tweak to the mix with cheap, but not too cheap over ear open air headphones. There is a list of reasons a mile long ranging from "how the majority listens to your music", to "the ears hear ambient sounds while listening".
I'm always reading tips from pros that are personal opinions, but this one came up a lot and one guy recommended the UR-40 by KOSS, which is a cheap yet good headphone. So I bought them for around $20 and gave them a try. At first I hated how they sounded compared to my $250 studio phones and $450 monitors. But that's the point. It's not that they sound bad, it's that they sound SO different. But the open air part is important. Ambient sounds, whether you hear them or not, are there. When you listen on any system there are ambient sounds there, even in the car.

Not to veer away from your OP, Mostess. I like the car mixing idea because it is a good method to get a good mix in the ball park to start testing a mix down. Just like I personally like doing the majority of my mixing on my closed ear studio cans and now, as of the past 6 months, do my final tweak mix on my cheap ass UR-40 full range phones.
But I always listen to my mix down in my car, monitors, cheap phones and stereo. I take notes, go back to my DAW and studio cans to tweak.

BLT! Thanks!

I always mix on $20 decent open-air headphones for all those reasons you cite (plus it doesn't bother the family if I'm mixing at night). But for some reason (and it could be my ears) the low end always sounds muddy in the car. Maybe I just got lucky this time around, but I found that getting a thumpy but clean low-end in the car gave me a thumpy but clean low-end in the cans. It has never worked out the other way around.

And yes, I was starting from a headphones mix already 90% done with all the panning and most of the levels set. When I worked in the car I was worrying mostly about the levels and compression on the vocals and the drums/bass bus. Moreover, afterwards I still wanted to tweak it over headphones but again that's just me never leaving well-enough alone.

I wasn't thinking so much about the car as an ideal listening environment. I was really just chuckling at myself for not thinking about it as my most frequent listening environment. I'm not a pro and I'm my own biggest fan. So who cares if it sounds lousy on my mixing headphones; I don't ever walk around listening to my own songs on my mixing headphones.

What I'm trying to say is: you make me want to be a better man. Now show me the money!

I like to check my mix on a crappy mono speaker (I flip REAPER to mono for this) ... I find it really easy to set levels and do good EQing when in mono... then when I flip back to my stereo monitors it always sounds way better than it did before. The key to why this works so well I think is that if you can get your mix to sound good on a crappy mono speaker than it'll sound really great on most hi-fi playback systems.

crappy mono speaker = avantone mixcube.

The mono thing is a way to get honest levels set. As in, you have to be honest with yourself. No flair, nor fancy. Just good levels and EQ.
I have had songs giving me trouble and I'll center everything, turn off all fx and start over. I don't sample, so all of my recorded tracks are mono. Once I get good levels and good EQing, I'll start my fancy pants stuff again. It's a great method to keep in your bag of tricks for those songs that go in horribly wrong directions.

I remember reading at least one interview with a rock musician in the 90s where he was giving the interviewer a sneak preview of the new album and started playing it in the home studio and then said, "screw it, we have to listen to this in the car."

I test out the mix of all my tunes in the car before sending anything out. Wondering when someone will call the cops thinking I'm breaking into the car when I'm sitting out there at odd hours.

Billymojo wrote:I test out the mix of all my tunes in the car before sending anything out. Wondering when someone will call the cops thinking I'm breaking into the car when I'm sitting out there at odd hours.

Sounds all too familiar, lol.

I don't have a car, so I guess I'm doomed.

jast wrote:I don't have a car, so I guess I'm doomed.

You could buy one and stop the doom proceedings. Just buy one for 100 franks and leave it in the barn. Then tell the 100 franks to run home when the seller falls asleep. sieg/sieg.

Thanks for the idea, but I've already come up with something better. I'll just mix in the bus.

that is actually "fahren" (drive)...
-bill