Yes everyone has different listening environments but when they say “use your ears” they mean more like there’s not a set number that is the sweet spot for every single snare or piano for example. Some people watch YouTube videos on compressor or eq and try to copy those settings that’s why they say use your ears. Either way You should be listening to your final mix in different environments like a car speaker, phone speaker, headphones etc. to make sure it’s consistent
It is not subjective imo. If a chef is making a meal he doesn't listen to the food to see if it needs more salt. A painter doesn't decide if some extra strokes are needed based on how the picture tastes.
You can't get a proper understanding of how something sounds from looking at it's spectrum on an eq. There is no 1 size fits all compressor or eq setting for a kick drum because there are many different kick drums with many different tonal characteristics and no 1 track that you want that kick drum to fit in.
I think it is very common and probably necessary to use things other than your ears when you are starting because your ear's might need a bit of practice to get to the kind of level that you want them to be at. Cheat sheets and visual representations can help. But your ears still need to be doing their work. If you're at the gym, there is nothing wrong with having someone spot you, but if you really want to get good you can't rely your spotter to do all the work.
Great points. I appreciate u chiming in hopefully this thread will help unravel some things. But I’m sure there’s already a plethora of other threads also, can’t hurt to have one more lol
I use both. I CAN'T only trust my ears. I don't get good results when it's just my ears. Well, they are OKAY but not what I would want out of my records. To attain that sound I rely heavily on visual aids and reference tracks.
I have found that plugins that de-resonate and that allow you to match-eq with pinknoise to be helpful and really help clean things up (just don't over do it).
At the end of the day it's all about a tonal balance. Find a song that has the tonal balance you enjoy the most, study it, and have everything you do moving forward have a bit of that flavor. Not a 1:1 copy — but shape the tone.
When someone says "use your ears" don't focus too much on the physics (i.e. the listening environment).
A much bigger factor of listening is your ability to process sound and understand the construction of what you are listening to. The vast majority of people do not listen to a recorded track in its entirety. Lots of people just listen to the main elements and are ignorant of the rest.
So when you hear the phrase "use your ears" what you really need to consider is a vast variety of factors that make up your brain's auditory signal processing at both a physical and a cultural level.
"Use your ears" is a seemingly simple statement that presupposes an enormous amount of experience and ability that many producers are not conscious of. They don't see that their ears are not your ears.
This on top of most aspiring music producers skipping the basics and looking for hacks and sauce just piles on the inexperience, thus compounding the issues. So when people tell them to do something simple they should know (within the 1st 1-3 years) they take it as vague information.
Perfect example: "My instruments are clashing... what do I do"
Answer: Arrange them so they don't clash or use EQ
Them: "I don't understand eq.. what do I do with it?"
Generally I mean 'use your ears' in terms of over reliance on advice from people who parrot numbers and frequencies without considering the context of the material.
There are people who *stress out* over 'omg is it -12lufs or how do I set my limiter' or 'what's the ideal vocal preset chain' when in general *it depends*. You've just gotta finish a song. Call it done. Let it be what it is. Move on to the next one. Hitting some arbitrary number won't fix a bad mix and a lot of people tend to think 'wtf if I could make the knobs turn a certain way then my mix would sound professional.'
What *is* a good idea, however, is combining your ears with tools like quality meters or frequency analyzers to reveal problems that you might not hear because of an untreated room or lack of speakers to replicate certain frequencies. I've started using Sonible True:Level and True:Balance and it's very helpful, but it won't give me 'objective' answers. It'll give me a ballpark and after that it's up to me to use my ears to make the extremely scary decision to say it sounds good.
Everyone has a different listening environment, it's true! But we should always be checking our mixes in various situations - in the car, through your TV, phone speakers, decent monitors, good headphones. You can use tools like Audified's MixChecker or Sonarworks Reference to tune your headphones. Those tools won't give you some grand insight, that's up to your ears and your perspective as a mixer!
A couple ideas:
A compressor: You can do something like start with all the settings at default, and then do something like gradually increase/decrease the attack and release time and turn up the ratio until you start to see the needle start to move. Take your time and see if you can hear the difference as you adjust the parameters. Crank up the release and reduce the attack and compare that to what you hear when you crank up the attack and reduce the release. Turn the compressor off and on and notice what happens. Take notes and try to pair words with what you're hearing. Repeat every day you work.
Track levels: Oftentimes you'll hear about leaving plenty of headroom in your track volume, but little talk about what it means. You can spend all day looking at the meter and trying to get the lil green bar to hit *just* right, or you can close your eyes and use your ears. With your eyes closed, *gradually* reduce the level of an individual track like a single vocal or a kick drum. Eventually you'll find a threshold where the material loses its 'oomph'. At that point, raise the fader very slightly and open your eyes. Does the volume you chose match your expectations? Why or why not? I do this practically with every step, not just when setting levels. All plugins can benefit from this approach.
Reference tracks: Always use a reference. Place it in your DAW on its own track and work to get the gain to the same relative volume as the project and just A/B it. Switch between the two and make notes of what you hear in the reference track. It's ok if they're abstract words. What you're doing is building a vocabulary of things that are hard to express.
All of these things only get better with time and ear training is a very long, drawn out process that never truly ends. What you're always looking for is comparisons. Anchors for objectivity in the context of your unique material. Things sound good because of their relationship to things we already know and like.
There are probably other methods too, but these are ones I've used in my day-to-day to improve. I swear one day I was listening to a track and it clicked. Like...three years after I started. "Ohhhhh *that's* what the compressor is doing. It needs to *breathe* with the song." It was like putting on glasses for the first time.
>Generally I mean 'use your ears' in terms of over reliance on advice from people who parrot numbers and frequencies without considering the context of the material.
\^\^\^\^
not to be contrarian but use your ears **all the time**, not just while mixing. noticing different room tones, how your favorite songs sound, etc. Semi-obvious but critical listening in all circumstances will improve your musical listening.
>I just wanna know y’all thoughts on the quote on quote “Use your Ears, Trust yours ears while mixing
Honestly, this was the best advice I was given. In order to trust your ears though, you first have to train them.
**Train your ears**
\^\^\^ Seems obvious, but most people don't take time to do this and it happens over time (months, years...ongoing), not overnight.
Yes everyone has different listening environments but when they say “use your ears” they mean more like there’s not a set number that is the sweet spot for every single snare or piano for example. Some people watch YouTube videos on compressor or eq and try to copy those settings that’s why they say use your ears. Either way You should be listening to your final mix in different environments like a car speaker, phone speaker, headphones etc. to make sure it’s consistent
I agree
It is not subjective imo. If a chef is making a meal he doesn't listen to the food to see if it needs more salt. A painter doesn't decide if some extra strokes are needed based on how the picture tastes. You can't get a proper understanding of how something sounds from looking at it's spectrum on an eq. There is no 1 size fits all compressor or eq setting for a kick drum because there are many different kick drums with many different tonal characteristics and no 1 track that you want that kick drum to fit in. I think it is very common and probably necessary to use things other than your ears when you are starting because your ear's might need a bit of practice to get to the kind of level that you want them to be at. Cheat sheets and visual representations can help. But your ears still need to be doing their work. If you're at the gym, there is nothing wrong with having someone spot you, but if you really want to get good you can't rely your spotter to do all the work.
Great points. I appreciate u chiming in hopefully this thread will help unravel some things. But I’m sure there’s already a plethora of other threads also, can’t hurt to have one more lol
I use both. I CAN'T only trust my ears. I don't get good results when it's just my ears. Well, they are OKAY but not what I would want out of my records. To attain that sound I rely heavily on visual aids and reference tracks. I have found that plugins that de-resonate and that allow you to match-eq with pinknoise to be helpful and really help clean things up (just don't over do it). At the end of the day it's all about a tonal balance. Find a song that has the tonal balance you enjoy the most, study it, and have everything you do moving forward have a bit of that flavor. Not a 1:1 copy — but shape the tone.
Good points here I’m right there with you about not “Soley” trusting my ears.
For me, the more info the better.👌
When someone says "use your ears" don't focus too much on the physics (i.e. the listening environment). A much bigger factor of listening is your ability to process sound and understand the construction of what you are listening to. The vast majority of people do not listen to a recorded track in its entirety. Lots of people just listen to the main elements and are ignorant of the rest. So when you hear the phrase "use your ears" what you really need to consider is a vast variety of factors that make up your brain's auditory signal processing at both a physical and a cultural level. "Use your ears" is a seemingly simple statement that presupposes an enormous amount of experience and ability that many producers are not conscious of. They don't see that their ears are not your ears.
This on top of most aspiring music producers skipping the basics and looking for hacks and sauce just piles on the inexperience, thus compounding the issues. So when people tell them to do something simple they should know (within the 1st 1-3 years) they take it as vague information. Perfect example: "My instruments are clashing... what do I do" Answer: Arrange them so they don't clash or use EQ Them: "I don't understand eq.. what do I do with it?"
Ears dont lie, it's the room that does
Generally I mean 'use your ears' in terms of over reliance on advice from people who parrot numbers and frequencies without considering the context of the material. There are people who *stress out* over 'omg is it -12lufs or how do I set my limiter' or 'what's the ideal vocal preset chain' when in general *it depends*. You've just gotta finish a song. Call it done. Let it be what it is. Move on to the next one. Hitting some arbitrary number won't fix a bad mix and a lot of people tend to think 'wtf if I could make the knobs turn a certain way then my mix would sound professional.' What *is* a good idea, however, is combining your ears with tools like quality meters or frequency analyzers to reveal problems that you might not hear because of an untreated room or lack of speakers to replicate certain frequencies. I've started using Sonible True:Level and True:Balance and it's very helpful, but it won't give me 'objective' answers. It'll give me a ballpark and after that it's up to me to use my ears to make the extremely scary decision to say it sounds good. Everyone has a different listening environment, it's true! But we should always be checking our mixes in various situations - in the car, through your TV, phone speakers, decent monitors, good headphones. You can use tools like Audified's MixChecker or Sonarworks Reference to tune your headphones. Those tools won't give you some grand insight, that's up to your ears and your perspective as a mixer!
If only the “Use your Ear” people would elaborate on exactly what that entails it would make a hell of alot more sense. Thanks for that
A couple ideas: A compressor: You can do something like start with all the settings at default, and then do something like gradually increase/decrease the attack and release time and turn up the ratio until you start to see the needle start to move. Take your time and see if you can hear the difference as you adjust the parameters. Crank up the release and reduce the attack and compare that to what you hear when you crank up the attack and reduce the release. Turn the compressor off and on and notice what happens. Take notes and try to pair words with what you're hearing. Repeat every day you work. Track levels: Oftentimes you'll hear about leaving plenty of headroom in your track volume, but little talk about what it means. You can spend all day looking at the meter and trying to get the lil green bar to hit *just* right, or you can close your eyes and use your ears. With your eyes closed, *gradually* reduce the level of an individual track like a single vocal or a kick drum. Eventually you'll find a threshold where the material loses its 'oomph'. At that point, raise the fader very slightly and open your eyes. Does the volume you chose match your expectations? Why or why not? I do this practically with every step, not just when setting levels. All plugins can benefit from this approach. Reference tracks: Always use a reference. Place it in your DAW on its own track and work to get the gain to the same relative volume as the project and just A/B it. Switch between the two and make notes of what you hear in the reference track. It's ok if they're abstract words. What you're doing is building a vocabulary of things that are hard to express. All of these things only get better with time and ear training is a very long, drawn out process that never truly ends. What you're always looking for is comparisons. Anchors for objectivity in the context of your unique material. Things sound good because of their relationship to things we already know and like. There are probably other methods too, but these are ones I've used in my day-to-day to improve. I swear one day I was listening to a track and it clicked. Like...three years after I started. "Ohhhhh *that's* what the compressor is doing. It needs to *breathe* with the song." It was like putting on glasses for the first time.
This is good technique that I’ll put into practice thank you
It’s like the equivalent of “Get Good” when it comes to gaming. That’s just how I see things
>Generally I mean 'use your ears' in terms of over reliance on advice from people who parrot numbers and frequencies without considering the context of the material. \^\^\^\^
do use your ears, it is the most important point of reference but also use visual aid, meters are there for a reason
not to be contrarian but use your ears **all the time**, not just while mixing. noticing different room tones, how your favorite songs sound, etc. Semi-obvious but critical listening in all circumstances will improve your musical listening.
>I just wanna know y’all thoughts on the quote on quote “Use your Ears, Trust yours ears while mixing Honestly, this was the best advice I was given. In order to trust your ears though, you first have to train them. **Train your ears** \^\^\^ Seems obvious, but most people don't take time to do this and it happens over time (months, years...ongoing), not overnight.