Let’s be honest, no matter how great your mixes sound in your studio most people are going to be listening to your final tracks on computer speakers, car stereos, or more likely their iPod’s earbud headphones. It’s just a fact. More and more people are experiencing all the music they own through the small, mid rangy, white headphones from Apple, rather than on expensive home stereo equipment. Does this change the way you approach mixing? It should.
Via Mark Giles Flickr
The Medium Matters
In the studio, you want professional equipment that will allow you to not only capture quality audio, but to playback detail so you can accurately record, edit, and mix complex music. But in the end, you are creating music for people outside the studio and those people statistically will be listening on earbuds.
It would seem prudent to know what your final mixes sound like on the same medium and speakers that your end user will be listening on. Because if it sounds great in your studio monitors but not in the “real world”, then your mix isn’t actually a good one.
How To Do This Practically
Here’s what I do with a typical mix. I start mixing with a combination of my studio monitors and studio headphones. I begin making mix decisions based on experience and having “learned” my studio. Basic levels, EQ, compression, and reverb decisions are made like normal. But midway through the mix I grab a pair of Apple iPod earbuds, plug them into my 1/4 inch to 1/8 inch headphone adapters and then into my audio interface. I continue to mix for a bit with only the earbuds. This does a few things for me:
- It gives me a fresh perspective on my mix balance with different “speakers”
- It allows me to assess my bass response and high frequencies to make sure they translate
- It helps me focus in on the midrange (since the earbuds are midrange focused) and see if the vocals, snare, and guitars are playing nice together.
I then will likely go back to my monitors and/or studio headphones to finish out the mix. When mix 1 of a song is complete I make sure to bounce down a version to reference in iTunes next to some of my favorite professional mixes, all with the earbuds. I compare my kick, snare, vocals, bass guitar, etc from song to song to see if I’m even in the ball park. Whether I’m satisfied with the result or not, at least I’ve learned some helpful things about my mixes compared to pro mixes on the popular medium of the day.
Don’t Isolate Your Music
No matter your intended purpose for these mixes (commercial release, or just a fun indie project), you would be wise to not isolate your music. Compare it to the best of the best out there. Reference it on popular formats like MP3s playing through iPod earbuds. I can honestly say it will only help your music. If however you think this concept is rubbish and you don’t want outside influences, then I can guarantee your mixing ability will only plateau and your music will suffer for it. Don’t isolate yourself, and don’t fight the medium of the day. Embrace it and improve your craft.
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My name is Graham Cochrane and I'm the founder of The Recording Revolution, one of the world's most loved audio recording and mixing blogs with over 200,000 readers each month. 
Good points! I’ll work for hours on mixes trying to get them just right on decent speakers or headphones or car speakers, but I know most people end up hearing my stuff on their crappy work computer speakers, laptop speakers, or if I’m lucky on earbuds. I’ll start using earbuds as well now during mixing.
On a related point, do you happen to know if there may be some audio voodoo in the iTunes encoding process, other than mp3 compression? Several times when I have put my stuff out on iTunes (using the Tunecore service) and the first time I hear their 30 second sample I am amazed how good it sounds. If anything I would expect it to sound worse going from my wav to their mp3. I wonder if they are doing some additional compression, harmonization, or something, either when then encode it or when it plays it back through the iTunes store preview? Or maybe I’m imagining it.
Keep up the great work, this blog is awesome, as are the bootcamps!
Amen!!! : ) I’ve been doing this for years with a pair of really cheap .99 cent store headphones. Good stuff. God Bless!
Last night I had a meeting with a client to discuss mix notes for an album. I tend to mix things LCR and the client felt uneasy with the wide panning, specifically mentioning how it sounded on an iPod. Well, that was the first time anyone had ever even raised such a concern. I had to laugh. Well, I suppose I’ll have to pay some attention to that issue. It’s funny—people have been listening to music on headphones for decades to mixes that also employed LCR techniques and never complained. Well, maybe some complained. Oh well, it’s all about making the client happy.
Off to tweak the pan knobs…
Great great thoughts. I couldn’t agree more. Often times my computer speakers get the final say in a mix especially since most if not all of my “distribution” is online and people will be listening to a new song for the first time with computer speakers or earbuds.
I’m going to test this out.
I think it would be great to have many different types of headphones and speakers, so you can judge more precisely where is getting your mix. Maybe isn’t worth spending a lot of money in a very expensive studio monitor, since you’re gonna be listening with many other devices, just the way your listeners may do. So get a couple of decent speakers like Graham’s Alesis, whose are very inexpensive, and start mixing today!
Nice perspective. If I read correctly, you’re NOT saying to ditch the good monitors, but be sure to check on earbuds. They are popular right now, but they have not always been and may not continue to dominate. If mixes sound great on earbuds but crappy on good speakers that is just as bad as the opposite. The goal is to sound good everywhere. Good speakers will let you hear problems like nothing else and like you suggest they are important.
I have been doing this over the past year. Started when I read that 75% of all music will be listened through a pair of Ear Buds. Now with the push toward Smart Phones and Tablets, we will need to adjust our Mixes for all of these devices. The use of High End stereos for Music is fast becoming obsolete; yet as Sound Engineers we are spending a fortune to Mix our songs through speakers/systems that only the elite would experience. Goes back to Less is More – Think of your audience and prepare to tweak for the majority. However (and I always have a however) advances in technology are applicable to the portable devices. As such, high end sound is quickly becoming part of Tablets and smart phones.
As usual, enjoyed the blog….
Randy – Definitely not saying to only mix on earbuds. If you take your music seriously then you obviously should consider using professional monitoring (speakers and headphones). The point is like you say, many people listen to our mixes on earbuds these days so they are a common “standard” to mix to. Make sure your mixes work in the “real” world.
One question. In your post you talk about how you should listen to other songs that you like and listen to how they sound and are mixed and then compare them to your own recordings. I understand the concept and I see that you are right on this, but… how does a newbie like myself listen to my tracks, then listen to a professional’s track and not become discouraged when the results are so obviously different.
Maybe a howto on attitude towards mixes, or, a howto on what to do when you get to where you are mixing and you realize its all wrong. Do you start over? Do you go back to your scratch track? Do you realize its just a bad song and you should scrap it?
Anyway, thanks for the blog. I enjoy it immensely.
@Slau,
What I find is that if something is panned hard to the left or right, so that I only hear it in one ear, it gives me a super-uncomfortable feeling. The ear that can’t hear the instrument starts itching all the way down to my throat. That’s always been true when I listen to music through headphones, though; not just since I got an iPod. That’s because hard left/hard right through headphones is unnatural. Even if something is to your right or left, the sound reflections usually get to the other ear somewhat. I don’t need to tell you that, though – you’ve probably learned and forgotten more than I’ll ever know, and I don’t mean that to sound patronizing if it does.
If you’re doubling instruments hard left/right, that’s oddly enough not a problem. Probably because the double is “close enough” in each side, even if it’s two different takes with subtly different rhythms or chord voicings.
Hi Graham,
Nice article! I searched out your topic of discussion after listening to The Beastie Boys’ recently released album, The Hot Sauce Committee Part II. Other listeners had commented that the album clipped and the overall range sounded muddled (a result of clipping). Someone confirmed this when looking at the actual wave compression in a program. I could hear EXACTLY what they were talking about and it made it difficult to enjoy the music when it sounded overly distorted and muddled. After a few listened I decided to switch the EQ on my iPod to Flat rather than Rock (I normally find most music sounds better to me on the Rock setting). When in the Flat setting, the album sounded perfect or near perfect without hardly any distortion. My question’s are:
1 – Do you think the album was clipped and mastered to compensate for the fact that the majority of people would be listening on iPods/computers/mid-range speakers?
2 – When mixing my newest tracks should I listen to play backs on Flat since most people don’t even mess with EQ themselves and/or their devices don’t have EQ? (Which may be what the engineers of the Hot Sauce Committee did?)
All signs are pointing to yes, but I haven’t seen anything specifically bring up the EQ settings iTunes, iPods, and iPhones have when talking about mixing with results being heard through these devices. Thanks for your time!
You bring up some interesting points for sure! I would say mix from your studio monitors as the primary reference. They can give you a more complete view of your music. But as I mention in the post, you most CERTAINLY want to check your mixes on iPod earbuds. If you listen through iTunes specifically then, yes, turn the EQ to flat, since most people don’t seem to mess with that.
These types of listening “tests” are helpful only in so far as they reveal balance issues in your mix and give you a “real world” picture of how your music is translating. Cheers!
I’ve been doing this for months now! This approach replaces the ol’ “car stereo test” for me ever since relocating to NYC and not having a car. I swear, if the mix passes the Ipod earbud test, its good to go!
Graham, I have mixed feelings based on a recent experience about ear buds in general for mixing. But my experience isn’t to refute or dispute your main point, that referencing on different “speakers” is important. That’s the bottom line I get from your advice.
With that said, I spent 4 hours a week ago working on the beautiful DM mix for August “Six Feet of Dirt” on my laptop. I used ear buds for the entire session. On the ear buds, I had the violin and B3 playing so nicely together it almost brought tears to my eyes. So I exported the mix to dropbox and pulled it up on my RCF monitors. The frequency curve was like a Camel’s Hump 10 feet tall! All Mids 8 to 15 db higher in SPAN than the nearest High or Low.
Now that finally did bring tears to my eyes that my mix sucked so incredibly on the good speakers. So, lesson learned. You didn’t suggest doing what I did, though. And now I know why. The hard way. But now I know how to mix the song, it should only take an hour or two to get it right. HAHAHA. Lesson learned. Check it on the cheap stuff, but don’t forget to check it on the good stuff, too!
Lesson learned 🙂
I have been mixing with my mobile eatbuds, it sounds fine on everything except the earbuds. It sounds like the low mid is sounding boxy, any suggestions to help my mix sound better on earbuds
What I find is that if you keep alternating between pro headphones/speakers and, say, Apple earbuds, you’ll eventually reach a point where it sounds great on both. It is that point where your music has reached a point of translating well just about everywhere.
Sort of like using the proficiencies of one to identify the deficiencies of the other, and vice versa – which is transported from my approach to multiculturalism incidentally.
Yep, been doing this on my last few projects and it seems to be the key… If I get it good on the earbuds it usually sounds great in my car. But it’s still a struggle, the first pass on earbuds usually sounds supper muddy in the low and low mid range. It would be a cool feature in some mastering software or daws to simulate different listening environments; for example I do web development and a lot of the latest tools these days have simulations for different platforms such as iPhones androids different browsers etc…
This is great advice but what about RECORDING with earbuds?; since it’s been suggested on RR.com to “mix on the way in” (recording with your EQ/compression already set to save mixing time later) shouldn’t you be doing that with earbuds as well?
I’m guessing one should use the same switching-process between live room monitors and earbuds when recording. I definitely want to take the time in fine-tuning my process with this but I’m curious of others’ opinions…