1.4 Are You Sitting Comfortably?
Another issue often overlooked by the home recording enthusiast is a lack of attention to the immediate environment in which they are going to be mixing.
Kind: concept (reamix-section) Chapter: 1 Before We Begin …. Source: ReaMix (October 2009)
Another issue often overlooked by the home recording enthusiast is a lack of attention to the immediate environment in which they are going to be mixing. Choose a part of the house where the acoustics are good, and where you can set up your equipment, including those vital speakers to be … well, just so! Choose a comfortable chair.
Follow some basic common sense rules. Don’t mix for hours and hours at a time, especially at first. Your ears will become fatigued, your judgement will become impaired and your mixes will get worse and worse. How many of us have turned in at night with a feeling of smug satisfaction, only to be overwhelmed by a sensation of utter horror the next day on hearing again what we did the night before?
Don’t start mixing when you’re tired. Mixing in the morning when you (and your ears) are fresh will yield better results than will mixing at night after a hard day’s work.
OK, I know what you’re saying right now. “It’s OK for him to say that. But I don’t have any choice. Because of my other commitments, I can only mix after 10:00pm. I have to use headphones all the time or I get complaints from the neighbours. Anyway, I don’t have the money to afford good speakers. And the only place in my home where I can fit my equipment is the broom cupboard.”
Fine. If you have to make compromises then you have to make compromises. That’s life. But understand that the more such compromises you make, the more the quality of your mix will suffer. At the end of the day, you need to ask yourself what means more to you, success or excuses for failure.