Setting Up Your Home Studio
Let me paint you a picture. You spent hours in the studio slaving over a new track and, finally, you’re happy with it. The next day you, bring the demo to band practice, excited to show it off, only to discover it now sounds like absolute garbage.
This is called translation, and it’s something that we all struggle with. Even though your track sounds good in the studio, it doesn’t translate well to other speakers. This is most likely because the speakers you’re using aren’t accurately recreating the sound.
An essential part of the recording process is listening to what you just recorded, or monitoring. While you can technically use the stock speakers than came with your computer to do this job, it isn’t recommended. Professional–grade studio monitors, on the other hand, are designed to accurately and reliably recreate a full range of frequencies.
Sure, you can use headphones when tracking. But during the mixing phase, you need to be able to accurately judge what’s happening to the sound, which is hard to do with headphones. Likewise, using consumer–grade speakers to mix audio is like doing surgery while wearing tinted glasses: it’s going to negatively alter your perception of what’s actually going on.
This is an excerpt from Setting Up Your Home Studio, originally published by Reverb. Read the full version here.
Comments