monitoring epiphany

[timislegend]

i currently monitor on adam a7's and i have been for about 3 years or so.

one of the studios i have access to has mounted field of adam s7a's and a pair of dynaudio bm15a's.

i do not own a sub in my personal workstation (at home) and i have minimal diffusion and room treatment (just the bare essentials). so you can imagine my difficulties with lower frequency response with regards to A/B translating. =\

so... as an early birthday present to myself, i purchased a pair of meyer hd-1's (which i have used in the past, and loved). they have a lower frequency response than the adam a7's but not as high as the a7's

the epiphany:

i usually monitor around 80dbspl +/- ...but ever since i bought the hd-1's i have been monitoring around 50dbspl +/- (sometimes even a lot lower) on both monitor sets (adam's and meyer's).

i know the obvious statement is ..."sure, lower monitoring will force you to listen for more detail." but for the last 6 years (or so) i have always monitored at a relatively higher level.

i cannot say enough about quieter monitoring and i feel like a new person. (cheesy, i know).

my mixes sound clearer and my perceived dynamic range seems higher and most importantly, my mixes are translating better than they did with the far field adam's at the studio! !!!(I KNOW)???

quiet near field monitoring ftw!

 

[Scott Horner]

I'll have to give this a shot. I, too, usually monitor at higher levels but this sounds like it may help with some of my issues as well.

 

[timislegend]

yea... my gain staging is fairly 'loud' too, only because i prefer a colorful source (on most occasions)... but i may change that method around too!

damn! it's like a light switch turned on! *binggg ...super clear, very precise!

 

[Cryo114]

I tend to have my setup kinda loud while tracking just because it tends to spur me on with recording and writing, which I tend to do at the same time. But when it really comes to mixing I tend to alternate between my usual volume and and very low volume. Simply because I know it sounds radically different so I need to get it to sound as good on both as possible, i find elements in the mix meld together better at higher volumes so mixing lower levels helps me to bare that in mind. The middle road if you like.

Then again, I almost never have serious mixes to do.

 

[nwright]

I've found I get better mixes with conservative volume levels as well as better results tracking with conservative preamp levels.