3 Screens

It’s easier to make big …small, but to accomplish the opposite is tricky at best. Trying to get Big, small is way easier than the opposite. Let me explain:

Establishing your mixes foundation on large monitors, then moving to smaller monitors for refinement is practical. If you build your mix in the opposite way chances are, you are going to be disappointed. That disappointment will lead to, metaphorically speaking, chasing your tail in an expensive nonproductive circle. By The Way ...Headphones (regardless of cost) are considered "small speakers".

Today’s deliveries need to play well on a wide variety of playback devices. It’s all about delivering a product that will play well on 3 screens …phone, home and theatre. To restate; building a mix for large screens allows you to refine the mix to play well on small screens (smart phones) ...the same mix. To start your mix off mixing for phones expecting to refine the same mix for large screens is going to be a costly time suck.

 
Big monitors operating at loud volume levels bring issues beyond long term hearing loss. It will introduce you to a new lifelong friend called tinnitus. That’s on a personal level.

On a professional level: Loud causes fatigue. Fatigue hampers our ability to choose. Indecisive moments in the recording studio cost non-productive dollars. 

Loud can and will hide distortions. Turn the volume down, put it on small speakers to hear subtle distortions.

Loud can cause you to reference the pitch of the control room over the instrumentation. Yes, acoustic spaces have a sound ...Pitch: the quality of a sound governed by the rate of vibrations producing it; the degree of highness or lowness of a tone. 

Too low of a mixing volume on big monitors does not accurately represent the air needed for a visceral response in a large listening environment.

Low volume, big monitor mixing generally produces soft sounding mixes. Typically, low volume mixes produce muddy sounding bass components where high-volume mixes produce harsh sounding high frequencies.


There is an old saying in the Hot-Rod community …you can tell the quality of a builder buy their wire harness. The same holds true for mix engineers ...You can tell the quality of a mix engineer by how well their mix sounds on 3 screens.











This is how Donny Sciarrotta mixed for 3 screens in 1974 ...back when "phone" was AM radio.


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