The View from 2005: I’ve done a lot of study on this in the intervening years, and found I had to revise the values for levels and bandwidth a bit. I’ve also now included the home theater, which is becoming a staple. Of more importance is the car, which has become the predominant listening venue for music. At the same time, auto manufacturers (and audio manufacturers) have noticed that good sound systems are a compelling sales argument (not to mention a profitable one!). As a result, the best auto sound systems have gotten quite good, if fairly expensive and available only in luxury cars and SUVs. Be that as it may, ALL mixes now need to be evaluated in cars, at some length. I’ve gotten into mastering a fair amount, and find that I need to check ALL my work in a high quality boombox and in a good car before I sign off on it. Keep it in mind.

In our last episode . . .

Last month, when I was writing about monitoring issues in regard to my own studio, I mentioned that there were an array of end-user listening setups out there that we, as music producers, have to be prepared to anticipate. One of the fundamental verities of our craft is that we have no control over how the end-user listens. This means that we need to be mentally prepared to anticipate all of the possible ways our fans may use and abuse our recordings.

A common, lazy way out of this is to simply trash our fans, as in: “Jeez, those jerks really don’t know anything - they got the left speaker in the kitchen and the right speaker in the garage - they’ve got the bass and treble turned up all the way, and the kids have probably punched holes in one of the woofers. You can’t mix for ‘em. It’s useless. Jerks!”

Trash-talk like this is certainly fun, particularly in bars and control rooms, and naturally it has some basis in reality. However, it is also a copout.

Whatever your fans (or your clients’ fans) foibles are, they are your fans, and you dis them at your own peril. It is worth considering that maybe you should try to give them as much listening pleasure as possible. And that means coming to terms with the way(s) they listen to your music.

Whadda we mean, end-user systems? Who cares?

Over the years, I’ve come up with a list of six basic listening setups that consumers typically use for getting their musical jollies. These are distinct system types and they each present specific problems for the mix engineer and/or producer. Happily, it is also possible to reasonably describe the listening levels consumers use with each system, the strengths and weaknesses of those systems, and the differences and similarities between different configurations.

To keep from going entirely mad, we have to make a couple of assumptions here: first, that the listening systems are working reasonably well (it would be lunatic to mix for a system, say, with the left woofer blown), and, second, that our listeners are of reasonably sound mind and behaving within the social envelope (it would be equally lunatic to mix for the consumer that only listens in surround-sound through his/her 50 kiloWatt home theater system while gulping alternating beer steins of Piña Coladas and Stolichnaya, in addition to the occasional amphetamines and LSD).

Based on typical amplifier power ratings (ca. 100 Watts per channel), assuming reasonable headroom (10 dB) and reasonable speaker sensitivity (1 Watt electrical input yielding 90 dB SPL output @ 4 feet), the maximum level anybody is going to be listening at is around 100 dB SPL, except over headphones. If we assume an acoustic noise floor of 50 dBA SPL, the softest anybody will listen will probably be around 70 dB SPL, for an approximate maximum music dynamic range of 30 dB and a system range of 50 dB. Such levels are reasonably compatible with life in apartments, duplexes, etc.

The frequency response of our listeners systems is going to be widely variable, with the biggest variance in the frequency range below 100 Hertz. There will also, between configuration types, be big variances above 5 KHz., due to a variety of factors. In the range from 100 Hz. to 5 KHz., we can assume reasonable, if not flat, frequency response (oh, say, plus or minus 5 dB).

So, a basic generalization we can make about our listeners is that they are going to be listening on systems that definitely reproduce frequencies between 100 Hz. and 5 KHz. and they will be listening at levels between 70 and 95 dB SPL with a noise floor usually 30 or more dB below the playback level, except in cars and headphones.

Once you have this range of possibilities in mind, it is possible to approach the mixing task with a little more confidence that you can mix music that is going to work for your listeners, over their systems, in their environments, and in their mental conditions and moods. It is useful to keep in mind that music is powerful medicine, and that it means a lot to your listeners, whatever their deficiencies. Your success as a mixer is related to how effectively you can make recordings that turn them on, move them and illuminate their lives. Don’t forget it.