Does EZMix help translation to other environments & speakers?

[Neb]

New user of EZMix here (although I’ve had EZD2 and EZKeys for a few months).

1)
So, you’re in your untreated room at home, with your cheap reference speakers (not expensive flat-response monitors). You know you have first reflection problems and standing waves, and your bass is all over the place and wildly out of control.

Nether-the-less, you stick EZMix on a few tracks, and browse through a few presets finding something that sounds good in your room, on your speakers. You even put it on the master bus and choose a preset that compresses and widens your mix. You’ve got your mix sounding great – in your room, on your speakers.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that your mix is going to translate well to other listening environments and devices, does it? You still need to try your mix in your car, in earbuds, and on your phone speaker, and will still have to note down problems, and make adjustments ‘blindly’ when you’re back at your DAW?

In fact, how can you even make these adjustments when you can’t access the parameters of the presets? EZMix may help to get a mix sounding good on your own speakers, but isn’t it actually going to hinder the process of trying to get your mix to translate?

2)
Most of the presets use compression/limiting and raise the perceived volume of the track/mix. This jump in volume makes it very difficult to A/B your preset against how the track or master bus sounds without EZMix on it – an EZMix preset will alsways sound ‘better’ if it’s louder. But it isn’t necessarily better in terms of frequency shaping and translation to other listening environments.

I think a lot of VST plugins have an auto-gain feature, so that when you A/B, there is no large jump in volume, so you can compare only tonal differences. Will something like that ever make it into EZMix?

Thanks.

EZmix version: 2.1.5
Operating system: Windows 10

Beginner-level Guitarist/Drummer/Mixer. EZD2|3 / EZKeys1|2 / EZMix3.
Desktop - Ryzen 5 4650G @ 3.7GHz | 16Gb DDR4 | 1TB SSD | Win10 Pro.
Reaper | Roland Rubix 4x4 interface | Arturia Minilab II controller.

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[Henrik Ekblom]

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Neb wrote:

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that your mix is going to translate well to other listening environments and devices, does it? You still need to try your mix in your car, in earbuds, and on your phone speaker, and will still have to note down problems, and make adjustments ‘blindly’ when you’re back at your DAW?

This is a “drawback” that all software (and hardware) has. When you change some parameters to adjust the sound, you can potentially make it worse in other listening environments. But it’s more of “this is how physics works” rather than a drawback, and it is really up to the one who’s mixing to make sure that what’s being heard is a representation of many different rooms and speaker setups.

EZmix 2 can be used with all its presets, and if problems (such as muddiness, harshness, etc) occur, they can be fixed either by adjusting the values/presets of EZmix 2, or by using other plugins for more detailed controls, such as an EQ or multiband compressor.

There are software that makes the listening environment a bit more transparent, software that uses a microphone to listen to the room and make EQ adjustments, which helps with some (but not all) of the problems, such as standing waves.

Neb wrote:

I think a lot of VST plugins have an auto-gain feature, so that when you A/B, there is no large jump in volume, so you can compare only tonal differences. Will something like that ever make it into EZMix?

I agree that this would be useful, and I’ll write it up as a feature request! Thanks for the feedback.

Henrik Ekblom - User Experience Designer
Toontrack

[Neb]

I guess there’s no way around treating your room and buying good monitors! My next investment will have to be some good open-back headphones!

Thanks for submitting the feature request.

Beginner-level Guitarist/Drummer/Mixer. EZD2|3 / EZKeys1|2 / EZMix3.
Desktop - Ryzen 5 4650G @ 3.7GHz | 16Gb DDR4 | 1TB SSD | Win10 Pro.
Reaper | Roland Rubix 4x4 interface | Arturia Minilab II controller.

[Henrik Ekblom]

Neb wrote:

I guess there’s no way around treating your room and buying good monitors! My next investment will have to be some good open-back headphones!

This sounds like a really good plan. If you can’t hear what you mix, you´re in trouble 🙂

Henrik Ekblom - User Experience Designer
Toontrack

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