Photo by yimmy149
A while back I had the pleasure of attending a seminar given by Gavin Haverstick
of Haverstick Designs. The topic of the seminar was how to measure the acoustic issues of your room. He talked about various measurement techniques and devices.
All of this was very interesting, but the most fascinating part for me was during the question-and-answer section at the end. Someone in the audience asked Gavin to give his opinion on digital room correction.
Let me take a step back and explain what I mean by “digital room correction.” There are several products on the market now that can tune studio monitors to the room they are in. For example, if the room is causing a boost at 200 Hz, these products will use a digital EQ to attenuate 200 Hz. The end result is (ideally) a flat frequency response.
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Home studios aren’t perfect.
In a perfect world, your home studio would be designed by a professional. You’d have a great-sounding control room, a couple of tracking rooms, and a nice, quiet vocal booth.
Raise your hand if your control room, tracking room, and vocal booth are all the same room. (Joe quickly…and sheepishly…raises his hand.)
That’s the reality we face. We’re weekend warriors, home studio recordists. Hobbyists. We’ve got to make the best of what we’ve got.
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Welcome to Day 8 of 31 Days to Better Recordings.
Once you get all these amazing tracks recorded, you’ve got to mix ‘em right?
Right.
Recently I was hosting a live Q&A session. One of the attendees asked, “What’s the point of mixing? Once you have everything recorded, you just blend them together and you’re done, right?”
While mixing IS a fairly simple concept (combining multiple tracks down to a single stereo track), it takes a lifetime to master. Mixes I’m doing today sound a lot better than mixes I did a few years ago. Three years from now my mixes will sound even better (I hope). 
So, we can agree that mixing is important. If that’s true, then your studio monitors are equally as important, since you’re listening to everything through them.
You need to make sure you’re using decent studio monitors. Obviously. If you’re using $20 computer speakers from Walmart, you’re probably not hearing things very accurately.
That said, even if you only have “okay” studio monitors, there are things you can do to make them sound as good as possible.
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Two days ago I asked you, “Do You Mix With Headphones?”
You posted some really interesting stuff. Here are a few of my favorites:
David S.:
i cater to the most popular form of listening. so far, i’ve found that mixing to headphones and then listening on speakers has worked. i’m not rick rubin, but neither is anyone else who is not rick rubin.
Dave:
I do the main mix with Sony MDR-CD180 headphones, while checking with iPod buds, little Logitech laptop speakers and finally in my car. Between those, I can pretty much get it in the ballpark. I must be doing something right – on my last CD, even my most pickiest of listeners actually commented on how good it sounded. (excuse while I break my arm trying to pat myself on the back 
)
Those both made me laugh out loud.
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Over the last few weeks I’ve been asking you, my cute little readers, a couple of questions, such as:
You guys give some really great answers, so let’s do it again, shall we?
How do you mix your songs? Do you use headphones? Do you use studio monitors? Are you a 90% monitors, 10% headphones kinda guy? Are you 100% one way or the other?
I talked about this briefly in the latest podcast. I’m particularly interested, since I’m working on mixing my album right now. I can definitely see the pros and cons of both methods of mixing. I’ll post my thoughts in a day or so, but FIRST, I want to hear from you.
Leave a comment. Tell us if you prefer headphones, monitors, or both. Also, be sure to tell us why.
[Photo by skippyjon]
Right now I’m sitting in my studio. Later this afternoon I need to do a final mix-down on a song. Everything is pretty close to where it needs to be. Now it just comes down to the final tweaks, automation moves, etc.
However, before I can smile and say, “Done!” I need to check my mix on as many systems as I can. You can never check your mixes enough.
Before I go any further, check out this picture. I’ve got a few different monitoring options. How many do you see? We’ll see if you’re right at the end of this article.
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Photo by takomabibelot
I had a nice handful of questions this week. Three to be exact. Let’s dive on in.
Question #1
Shawn wrote:
Hi Joe,
I am recording a instrumental jazz/bossa nova piece with classical guitar. I have a mbox2, AT 4033, MXLV69, AKG C1000S, and a Universal Audio 2610. Should I rent a mic or a to d conv and go digital in on the mbox. I have no space and like the acoustics of my bathroom. What would be the best option for the limited budget. A U87 is $30 a day. The rosetta I think 800 is $100 per day.
Thank you so much for your time.
Website: shawnfleming.com
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This week I’ve just got one question. If you have any questions for me, please ask via the Ask Joe form.
Mike wrote:
Was thinking of getting an Apogee Rosetta 200 converter. Do my monitor speakers get connected to the outs on the converter?
Photo by Y0si
Thanks Mike. This is a great question. First of all, kudos on picking the Rosetta 200. I’m a big fan of Apogee, and I think you’ll love the sound of the Rosetta.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, the Apogee Rosetta 200 is a two-channel converter from Apogee. It has two channels of analog-to-digital converters and two channels of digital-to-analog converters.
The Rosetta is a standalone converter, meaning that it doesn’t have any sort of direct connection to your computer (although they do offer an additional firewire option). In most cases, the Rosetta connects to your audio interface via either a S/PDIF, ADAT, or AES connections.
For example, if I was going to buy a Rosetta 200 for my Pro Tools system, I would connect it to the S/PDIF inputs and outputs on the back of my 003.
Why buy an external converter?
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