The Curious Case of Mix Translation

Björgvin Benediktsson 4 Comments

Translating your mixes from your studio monitors to every other system is an important aspect of mixing.

Your mix can’t just sound good on super awesome speakers.

It also needs to sound great on earbuds, laptop speakers and (hopefully) big massive concert sound systems.

What I usually do is check my mixes on my laptop speakers, earbuds and on my nice headphones.

I’ve recently tried checking my mixes on the speakers on my external computer monitor.

And it just sounds awful.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re playing rough mixes or Grammy winning records through them.

It’s like these speakers were made by the most incompetent sound engineers in the world.

Usually, when I put my mix through a set of speakers and it doesn’t sound right is that I’ll go back into my DAW and make some changes.

In the case of this shitty @$$ speaker I’ve just given up.

If award-winning records sound awful then there’s nothing I can do.

I’ll stick to my earbuds and laptop speakers for translation instead.

I bet you have certain speakers that just sound terrible right?

My advice is to just forget about them. Don’t let these terrible system drag you and your mixing skills down. If it’s decent on most other systems I would say you’re doing a great mixing job.

One way of getting translation in your mixes is to use reference mixes. If you can get your mix to sound similar to a famous record then your mix will likely translate to other systems.

I tell you all about using reference mixes inside the Recording & Mixing Strategies Bundle:

Grab it here:

www.audio-issues.com/strategies

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