Studio Monitors & The Circle of Confusion- What We Know/Don’t Know

[Sokel]

@sigbergaudio, well, that was interesting.
Below it's Master's peaks only at R channel (which strangely, watching them at real time on RTA do not differ much from average)

1/1, 1/3 and 1/12 smoothing for easy view:

1/12

1/3

1/1

( Nordström is definitely my kind of guy)

 

[Palmer]

Worked in a different time and funny enough, a fellow that I studied with - you could never tell from his being well dressed, tie and all, became a big name in the burgeoning metal world. These guys in the video smell, as we used to say back in the day, in LA. Sorry. Maybe I'm getting too old, who knows. But if I were in your shoes, I'd refrain from these sort of presentations, I feel it creates bias in the consideration of your offerings. My two cents. Off topic this goes, as well... Always happy to respond to if messaged privately.

 

[sigbergaudio]

@Sokel Nice. Yes, that was interesting indeed. I think it's interesting how much space some are able to create in the mix, as opposed to others having a more wall of sound style. I also think it's interesting that both the tonality and what they decide to bring up front in the mix is so different.

This is probably in large part some kind of preference / style, but it would be interesting to know to what extent the monitors affected it. The differences are so large it's hard to think the monitors are to blame.

 

[Sokel]

Worked in a different time and funny enough, a fellow that I studied with - you could never tell from his being well dressed, tie and all, became a big name in the burgeoning metal world. These guys in the video smell, as we used to say back in the day, in LA. Sorry. Maybe I'm getting too old, who knows. But if I were in your shoes, I'd refrain from these sort of presentations, I feel it creates bias in the consideration of your offerings. My two cents. Off topic this goes, as well... Always happy to respond to if messaged privately.

Now you're unfair.
The guys in the video are irrelevant, what's interesting is that they have included everything in the links below the video, Masters, etc., the whole deal.

 

[sigbergaudio]

Worked in a different time and funny enough, a fellow that I studied with - you could never tell from his being well dressed, tie and all, became a big name in the burgeoning metal world. These guys in the video smell, as we used to say back in the day, in LA. Sorry. Maybe I'm getting too old, who knows. But if I were in your shoes, I'd refrain from these sort of presentations, I feel it creates bias in the consideration of your offerings. My two cents. Off topic this goes, as well... Always happy to respond to if messaged privately.

I don't understand. Sharing this type of video, and/or this specific video shines a negative light on me / the brand / my offerings? I'm genuinely curious what you reacted to in the video and how that creates a bias to my offerings. From my perspective we don't have to move it to private messages - but if you feel more comfortable doing so, we certainly can.

 

[sigbergaudio]

Now you're unfair.
The guys in the video are irrelevant, what's interesting is that they have included everything in the links below the video, Masters, etc., the whole deal.

I agree that is really cool. Here is apparently the original youtube channel with interview of all the guys doing those mixes too - talking about how they approach it: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0Vm0LZk7UOWUVqK7pVuctw

 

[Sokel]

Whooping 13dB difference at 10kHz between the lowest and the highest mix, can't imagine 2 different (any) monitors having such a difference.
These are definitely choices.

 

[Oboreal]

Choices and hearing loss yes...

 

[lowkeyoperations]

A lot of aesthetic choices go into mixing. They discuss this quite a bit. You can hear some mixers basing the track around the kick. Others more the snare, others highlighting orchestration while others really downplaying it. I dont think it sheds any light on the COC except to point out that there really isnt any "standard baseline" from a conceptual point of view as to how a song should sound. Interesting video!

 

[CtheArgie]

This is crazy. So these guys are deciding on the song alone? The musicians aren’t part of this? To me this is irrelevant! If they show the work to the actual musicians and they choose what they want and prefer, this is what matters to me.

 

[Mart68]

This is crazy. So these guys are deciding on the song alone? The musicians aren’t part of this? To me this is irrelevant! If they show the work to the actual musicians and they choose what they want and prefer, this is what matters to me.

IME the musicians are often not at all interested in the nuts and bolts of production and post production.

 

[sigbergaudio]

If they show the work to the actual musicians and they choose what they want and prefer, this is what matters to me.

I think this is an interesting perspective, and I don't think it's necessarily wrong. But at the same time, if the musicians for some reason wants a mix that sounds like ass, I would prefer that a professional mixing and mastering engineer made those choices.

 

[CtheArgie]

When I visited Shangri-la, (Nick Rubin’s) studio in Malibu, they told me that most musicians are part of the recording process. Mastering was done at a different site, but at the recording, the musicians were part of it. They told me that some musicians insisted in bringing their own monitor speakers besides what was at the studio, to hear their music.

Obviously, they want that studio for the opinion of their staff, but still, the musicians had the call.

 

[sigbergaudio]

When I visited Shangri-la, (Nick Rubin’s) studio in Malibu, they told me that most musicians are part of the recording process. Mastering was done at a different site, but at the recording, the musicians were part of it. They told me that some musicians insisted in bringing their own monitor speakers besides what was at the studio, to hear their music.

Obviously, they want that studio for the opinion of their staff, but still, the musicians had the call.

Absolutely, it's my experience / understanding too that the band will listen to and discuss the mix. Sometimes the same engineer does the mastering as well, but sometimes that's a completely disconnected process later.

I'm just saying out of those 8 tracks, some are clearly worse than others, and also listening to other actual recorded tracks some are recorded/mixed really bad. So apparently sometimes neither engineers or musicians can't be trusted with this.

 

[Ktacos]

Not directly connected to the monitors as such, but here's a pretty interesting video where we hear how 8 different engineers mixed and mastered the same track (independently of each other).

Pretty interesting video there. Makes me feel a bit more confident in my own work as some of these mixes are just pretty poor IMO. I think a lot of the differences come down to effort rather than monitoring, aside from the mix that is just way too bright. The best mixes tend to show that the engineer spent more time on the mix, for example automating drum levels to keep things punching through. It's clear some of the engineers didn't bother to go that in depth. I feel some of the engineers didn't quite understand the genre, or just didn't care for it. Generally when I get those I just pass them onto someone else because I know I won't care enough to do the song justice. When you do a mix you really have to understand the genre to do it well, need to know what the focal points are for a given section, etc..

The differences in guitars were kind of surprising, some of the guys seemed afraid to let the guitars have body, so they just sounded nasally and thin.

Idk what happened with the snare drum on the Scheps mix but it is really bad as the two guys pointed out. It really doesn't even sound like the same drum so there very well could be a sample trigger there, or just a totally whacked out EQ curve hitting some hard compression.

 

[lowkeyoperations]

This is crazy. So these guys are deciding on the song alone? The musicians aren’t part of this? To me this is irrelevant! If they show the work to the actual musicians and they choose what they want and prefer, this is what matters to me.

There were what, 8 or 10 different mixes? I doubt the musicians would be going to each studio to sit in on the mixing. That would be like 2 weeks of travelling around city to city. Unless you had a super high budget that would never be affordable. For this exercise I’m sure that each mixer was sent stems and (maybe) a quick reference mix.

If the artists chose one mix as their favourite, but you preferred another what then? Are you wrong for preferring another??

More likely there would be 4 people in the band and they each had different preferred mixes. The one they went with might just be a compromise selection.

 

[dagfinn]

This is crazy. So these guys are deciding on the song alone? The musicians aren’t part of this? To me this is irrelevant! If they show the work to the actual musicians and they choose what they want and prefer, this is what matters to me.

Why don't you guys read the desription of the project?

" they wrote and recorded a single song, then had Andrew Scheps, Nolly Getgood, Jens Bogren, Fredrick Nordström, Mike Exeter, Josh Middleton, Buster Odeholm, and Dave Otero mix the song however the heck they wanted."

A problem here sometimes - lots of noise, little signal. Of course the bands are usually involved in tracking and mix, and when recording/mixing there's always a dialog about how e.g. guitars should sound.

There were what, 8 or 10 different mixes? I doubt the musicians would be going to each studio to sit in on the mixing. That would be like 2 weeks of travelling around city to city. Unless you had a super high budget that would never be affordable. For this exercise I’m sure that each mixer was sent stems and (maybe) a quick reference mix.

If the artists chose one mix as their favourite, but you preferred another what then? Are you wrong for preferring another??

More likely there would be 4 people in the band and they each had different preferred mixes. The one they went with might just be a compromise selection.

That goes for you too. You can't read the title even? "8 Famous Mix Engineers Mixed the Same Song - The Difference Is Shocking".

Otherwise great video, thanks to @sigbergaudio - and for those interested it's possible to see some different monitors in their different rooms, but for that you'll have to go to the original site , which @sigbergaudio already also posted. As far as monitoring there's Genelec, ATC, Focal, Adam, JBL and Amphion to be seen... So big variety, and I don't think it mattered much in these huge differences. This is mostly due to different choices, philosophy and technique. You don't compress the shit out of stuff due to monitoring - that's just bad everything. They had free hands to model guitar sound, and this shows very well how individual a guitar sound is, and how much it will change by small amounts of EQ. However, I'm not sure the result would have been the same if they had mixed on different monitors, but that's the premise of this post.

As for breaking the circle, audio industry needs standardized methods/tools/targets, similar to what the graphics industry has. A calibrated monitor/display in a cololur controlled controlled environment is the only thing worth working on if you want your colours to translate to other monitors and print. It goes very paralellt to audio, both speakers and room should to be within a specified spec/tolerance of modes and decay and whatnot. It's a job for the industry. I think Genelec is on a good path there.

The interview with the mixers will be interesting to watch in relation what they did - no time yet. Providing the multitracks is just amazing, so I look forward to listening in more detail to what they had available.

Great project, thanks @sigbergaudio!

 

[Chr1]

Haven't had time to watch the video unfortunately but... Seems lots of people here on ASR blame the mix engineer/producer, and claim he/she's incompetent, when they don't like the style of the mix.
Modern music production and mixing is creative and consequently therefore subjective. Producers/mixers often have different styles. I'd bet most artists these days often have several mixes of their tracks to choose from. Usually by the same producer/engineer. In some genres, frequently by several different ones...often precisely because of their individual style or sound.
Seems to me that there's a lot of folks who are stuck in the past, when it was just a case of getting a good recording and a satisfactory balanced mix. I guess with several genres this is still the case.
However, it is pretty much a part of the creative process in many genres now.
My 2c.

 

[Frank Dernie]

If you do not know Floyd Toole's book, it is your problem. Not ours. All the proof is there.

I have 2 editions of Toole's book and whilst it is excellent and thorough it asseses levels of preference of different aspects of people's preferences of speaker strengths and weaknesses, so statistically excellent correlation but no "proof", that I have found anyway.

 

[sigbergaudio]

I've got my comment deleted here as 'inappropriate' and 'not open for debate', but I'll try again:
There's no 'engineering' in mixing in academic sense. It's just a part of creative process

Funny how some people here still don't get it

What's your point here? That it shouldn't be called mixing engineer or sound engineer? In that case, I think that's an uphill battle. That's the name of the profession, what's the point of debating that?