lets say you rent the most expensive mixing studio to finalize a mix

now you are pleased with the results on the excellent monitors and acoustics there and go home

now lets say you listen on airpods or headphones etc.......and not pleased with a specific sound how it sounds on airpods or headphones

My question is, what would you do in this case provided you don't want to go back to the expensive studio back and forth? keep the sound same as you were pleased in the expensive mixing studio? or proceed to make adjustments to make it better on airpods and laptop etc

any changes would of course make the mix in the expensive studio worthless as you can't predict how it will sound again there (provided you will not go back to check)

 

1.) Airpods belong in the trash can.
2.) Almost all LP'S and hits before 2000 come from reputable recording studios, they all meet a high standard.
3) It also depends on your ears, go to the ear doctor and have a hearing test, with older people the very high frequencies are lost.
4) Buy good monitors and good speakers for monitoring.
5) Remember, you can not edit frequencies that are not present.
6) A junk device cannot reproduce certain frequencies.

 

More precisely :

Who does the mix ?
Δ The studio engineer ?
Δ Or yourself ?

This is normally checked " on site " or you can take intermediary prints at home to listen to them on your airpods / headphones / HiFi etc. It's part of the process and happens many times in studio work.
If fact, by very principle, there are enough listening systems in the mixing room to check all this. The engineer working there knows them and how they sound.
If you " visit ", you let him do. He has the expertise of his gear.
And, of course, you won't have that mixing room acoustics, specifically tuned, at home.

If you go to a particular studio that you know thanks to its reputation and the albums that have been mixed there by your favorite engineer(s), you certainly won't make adjustments at home.

You're asking here a famous extraordinary guitar luthier to build you a guitar and you go home and file down the frets with tools you've bought at the supermarket... Good luck.

If I understand that correctly : in that case, why go in that studio in the first place ?

People travelled around the planet to check which room was the best for tracking, and then took the tapes / drives in another one to be mixed, if they prefered the console and outboard gear.

You won't sound as Ocean Way or Mix This! at home, never. Starting with Clearmountain's knowledge, years of experience.

BTW, " brand new ", and his studio redone for Atmos :

 

Last edited: Aug 10, 2022

This used to happen a lot. Big (but local) pro studio monitors were all hype and wouldn't translate to the real world.

But the places left today are generally tuned and dialed in so if they have a good rep yet you're getting bad results you should probably leave the mixing to their house engineer.

 

You should check your mix with something like this while in the Studio, because most of your listeners will use low quality Speakers and the perfect mix sounds good on all devices. As recommended before use older Tracks before 2K as an reference but it also depends on the Grene you are producing.

 

Last edited: Aug 10, 2022

I'd throw the best karaoke party ever!
And if I find some mixing engineer in the process I'd put him all into the highs

 

Yes.
If it's mixed well on (objectively) good monitors it sounds good on every monitor because the people who listen on their monitors are used to this sound anyways.
It only sounds bad the other way around because then you fix problems your monitor has, that would not occur on (objectively) good monitors.

What do you want to do anyways?
Produce in the studio and fix sound problems in the car?
Then your monitoring system would not be relevant.

 

Even if it's well mixed, it needs to be mastered, so it sounds good on any environment. But other than that like others said, pods are toys, not for critical listening

 

This doesn't happen. If you rent a studio and everything sounds spot on in ther near, mid and mains, that's it, it sounds good. Of course a $50 pair of earbuds will not sound like a $100K PMC setup in a treated room. In all honesty, given the questions you ask, this is an issue you will never have as you need to actually make music (and also have some serious budget to book a high end studio)

 

just because you don't like how it sounds doesn't mean anyone else will care,
I mean, not to ruin your dreams, but "big studios" sell their sound as it is, long term,
as a matter of fact, every ear is different, so even if you'd hear shit on airpods, someone else could love the sound on the very same airpods of yours,

if you look at all the big names in the industry, they feed the hype of them being the best, period.
don't like it? don't go there next time, don't hire same mixing or mastering guy, simple as that.

if you want your own mix, do it. but don't mess with someone else' work just because you hear things different than them,
beauty of music is, there are no 100% rules, so it's always a result of subjective decisions, and it's a constant learning experience even for a one person over the course of years



perhaps this video explains meaning of big studios?