Making Your Mixes Translate Without Monitors?

Got this question from a reader,

“If you got in situation where there are no monitor speaker how will you use normal speakers to get your track sound like they have been mixed in monitor speakers…”

This is one of those situations where I do advocate actually buying gear.

A Little Goes a Long Way

Spending a few hundred dollars on monitor speakers will go a long way to making your mixing easier.

Saving up around $300 will get you much further and save you so much more time than trying to hack it on your computer speakers or hi-fi stereo.

However, if you absolutely can’t afford monitor speakers at all it poses an interesting exercise.

Headphones Can Help

I’d recommend some quality headphones that can give you a good frequency response so you can start doing some rough mixes.

Then, once you think your mix sounds decent it’s time to spend a lot of time on as many stereo systems as you can.

Because it’s about translation.

If you find that you like the mix you make with your headphones, and it translates pretty well across your sound systems then I’d say that’s pretty good.

It’s not ideal, and it’ll take a lot more time than mixing quietly in an un-treated room with some decent monitors, but hey, all the power to ya!

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