Your MIX SUCKS in the CAR?! WHY??

Fixing one of the biggest hurdles of my mixing career.

IN DEPTH MIX TUTORIALS, Music Business advice, Live Q&A, Awesome Merch
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Auratone 5C

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[ColtCapperrune]

Music by Garrett Biggs “Momma Didn’t Raise No” out everywhere now! Produced, mixed, and mastered by yours truly. I have a new video in the works detailing the production from start to finish of that song.

[jameslewis]

A car stereo is like...the last boss in the mixing game.

[SocialGore]

I interned at a studio that had a car inside it to check mixes on

[malcolmroddy]

Cheat code:

Mix your music inside your car with a laptop and aux cord

[mattriddell]

Been there. Not as bad now that we're digital. True pain was waiting 10 minutes for a CD-RW to burn a $2 disc for the car and realizing the mix sucked about 8 beats in.

[trenthays]

Mixing in mono has helped me focus on the mids more. I feel like stereo can hide some overlap of frequencies but, switching to mono immediately tells me where the problems are.

[gphillimo]

Mixing in mono helps me a lot. When I get it to sound good in mono, it sounds good everywhere

[Nightmoore]

One thing that really helped me when checking car mixes: When I get in the car, I actually listen to part of a reference track FIRST before I play my mix. It's such a drastically different experience compared to monitors. I would have to remind myself that "Hey, this is what these crappy car speakers sound like with a pro mix (reference), so take a sec and listen to this first." It's easy to get depressed about your mix on car speakers, but in reality, nothing sounds super amazing in that environment. If you're going to make major mix decisions based on how it sounds in a car, then you kinda have to "learn that room's sound" just like you would in your home studio.

[pedrosilvaproductions]

My boy colt giving out great tips instead of giving vague information about something in order to sell a course or a book. This is what makes a good content creator

[JossinJax]

I have the opposite problem: sounds better in the car that in my studio lol.

[nightshiftinthehouse]

“It’s just because your mix sucks” love that comment brother, You Rock!

[elbiso]

I'm in the "I don't own a car" side of things.

[whoisdark__]

me: dude they aint ready for this mix
my car: mhm sure

[JVMC_ZR]

A friend of mine mixed songs using apple headphones only. He said if it sounded good using those shit headphones it sounded good on everything.

[bryansodred]

My mix win/loss record against my car stereo sub system looks like this:

Me - 0 wins
Car - Infinity Gauntlet

[rrho]

I've been in studios where one of the monitor pairs was a low end pair of car speakers. its not the same acoustic space but their limited response shined a light on whats missing.

[sbinette]

"the magic is in the midrange" makes perfect sense as most of human hearing is in the midrange.

[davidmarais]

Excellent advice. I also only focused on 'bass" and "treble" for years and my mixes sounded utterly awful - but the real magic lies in crafting the mids.

[andrewnelson]

Reminds me of when my band got our first album back from the studio and we got it at like midnight and we went out to my car and listened to it and it sounded so good we cried.

[orryfishburne]

I forgot who said this but a mix engineer said that u need to trust your monitors. They arent going to be accurate, but no matter what speakers u are using, if know them and know what they sound like then u can make better mixing decisions.