Has anyone tried this? I know it's not meant to give you an instant perfect mix but it seems to give a pretty good starting point leaving just a few final tweaks.

Plenty of videos on Youtube praising this but is it just a gimmick or really useful?

 

Yes, that's how I set up my monitors and loudness targets with pink noise.

It is actually very useful and many large auditoriums and certified theater spaces are calibrated this way.

If your room is has a lot of resonances and no treatment, you results could vary but at least you'll know that for your room a X level everything is somewhere near equally loud, so if you can not hear something focus on EQ and Harmonics over volume.

 

Calibrating a room I knew about but never heard about using it for mixing levels.
Could be very useful after a long tracking session for that quick rough mix?

 

According to the info in the various videos pink noise gives an eq curve that almost matches professionally mixed records. I did try it out on one of my tracks and it came pretty close to a good mix with just a few small tweaks needed. Obviously you need to get your individual tracks sounding the best you can but when it comes to the final mix it seems a good and quick starting point.

 

this trick really works after all the tracks were sent to busses first. also, the kick and the snare has to be on a separate buss (in daw) for it to work best. but yeah, its an awesome trick, and will give you pro result always

 

For those in need of a noise generator plug-in, MDA TestTone (http://mda.smartelectronix.com/effects.htm) is free.
It allows you to pass the incoming audio signal through unaffected — and this means it can live in an insert slot on your master stereo bus, avoiding the need to set up more complex routing, or to insert noise generators on multiple tracks.

 

I have to say this is interesting and very convincing. It must definitely be tested!

 

Fascinating
Just amazing
Really need to try this
Thanks for the tip

 

Here´s the Wavfile (pink noise) he´s using:

http://bitly.com/Pink_Noiz

 

It's a very nice mixing trick, and very useful. The matching eq from iZotope has a reference for pink noise, so "it must definitely be tested"

 

TDR SlickEQ M, TDR VOS SlickEQ GE & TDR Nova GE has a match PINK action after learn curve..

 

As a professional sound engineer since 20 years now, i have to say this is the biggest amount of bullshit I've heard in a while.
Let's start saying the envelope of a "professional sounding mix" doesn't equal to a pink noise curve, and is different for every music genre.
Then we can talk about eq fundamentals: what about if your bass has too much low frequencies? what if your guitar has a resonance at 250 Hz? Not to mention all the phase issues (usually one of the main reasons why a mix sounds like shit!) not even considered in this "tutorial".
Please guys use your fucking years and not your eyes, you don't see music: you listen to it.

BTW: pink noise is used to understand phase movements and frequency response problems in an environment. If you want to start leveling a mix properly, search for true mono mixing technique tutorials.

 

Last edited: Aug 1, 2017

Someone as professional as you @A3C might not need any help but most of use are students of mixing here.

I would love to hear one of your professional mixes.

 

Learning is a good thing, I'm only saying this tutorial is nothing about mixing properly.
wanna listen to my mixes? there are a few samples on my website

 

Your stuff sounds decent. It's early here in the US, I couldn't listen at proper levels.
Maybe the snippets are random but the level from first to second was enough to make me reach for the volume knob.

I think you missed the point that this could be a good starting point for someone not as professional as you.

 

My view is that any 'problems' with individual sounds should be dealt with during the recording and pre-mix stage. Only when you have everything sounding good do you apply this technique to at least give you a starting point with a reasonable balance. Obviously it's not a magic bullet to give you a perfect mix straight off, you still need to do some tweaking using your ears and judgement and of course using mono while mixing is invaluable.

 

I think we all assumed that @peterA. the first 7 seconds of the video he mentions it's for a 'premix in any genre'.

 

A3C may be right I saw this "mixing technique" about 3 years back and decided to try, guess what! my track sounds worse than ever before. however is ok to use this with a reference track

 

Last edited: Aug 1, 2017

Once again: it is not. Try true mono mixing and compare with other professional mixes if you're not sure if you mix is good or not.

 

I use this a lot, but I think it's importandto mention it is more of a measuring trick.
I would not leave it on my master bus.

It does tell me if the frequency spectrum of my groups has to be tilted
in most cases Vocals, instruments with a throat & electric guitars vs. the rest of the mix.

u ask why it's not good as an effect? I guess because the measurement relies on 3 factors:

1. Volume (measured in DB)
2. Frequency (measured in frequency)
3. Time (measured in what?)

And that is the culprit, how does a developer measure time development in an accurate useful way