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Old 12-30-2008, 09:40 AM   #111
shemp
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Join Date: Oct 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by yep View Post
....
But if you have ever mixed a record on headphones or on a home hifi system, I bet you have experienced the effect of popping the test CD into a friend's car or your girlfriend's home stereo and hearing something that sounds totally different from what you mixed at home. The bass is way off, the balance of instruments is all screwed up, you can't hear the vocal (or it's way too loud), the cymbals either sound pingy or like white-noisy trash-- in short, nothing sounds right. It sounds like a totally different mix from what you had at home.

The reason for this is that most home systems these days are designed to alter and flatter the sound in frequency-, dynamics-, and phase-dependent ways. An obvious analogy is the kinds of "SRS WOW" effects and sonic maximizers/aural enhancers that are built into a lot of mp3 players and consumer electronics to hype the sound in various ways. Speakers are very often built the same way, and frankly this is actually worse for reference monitoring than simple "bad speakers." If you luck out on a set of inexpensive consumer bookshelf speakers, it will very likely be something pre-1990, from before CDs ushered in the new wave of inexpensive hi-fi, or else something specialized at the low-end of the dedicated "audiophile" market.
Wow, Great explanation of something I struggle with, because yes, I mix in headphones and a hifi system (It's all I got.)

Quote:
My experience is that Sonys and the like (even in the $300+ range) are going to be chock full of one-note-bass, big directional distortions that interfere with nearfield listening, crossover-frequency-related distortions, inconsistent frequency response at low volume, and smiley-curve "hype."
And yes, I have Sony's :|

Keep it coming yep. This is great stuff. thanks again.
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