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So Does Anyone Mix Outside?


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I mean you can spend $10K easily treating a room, right. If there's no room, then no treatment needed, right?

 

From all I read about the headaches and expense of sound treatments for rooms, it's all about the bouncing around of the sound waves in and out of phase, creating nulls, comb filtering, peaks, ringing, all manner of hard to fix sonic behaviors.

 

Outside - no walls, no bouncing around. Just straight from the monitors to the flappy rubbery things on the sides of your head.

 

Anyone heard of anyone who just mixes in the open air? Done it yourself?

 

Obviously there are innate issues with the outdoors - but on a good day, in a quiet place - why not?

 

nat

 

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I don't think it's ever quiet anywhere outside. There's always wind, trees, birds, etc.

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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Go to a well treated room and close your eyes, and listen. Now find what you think is the quietest outdoor location and do the same. I think you'll be surprised as to how "loud" it actually is in comparison.

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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The reply about the ubiquity of ambient noise is a good point - clearly you'd want as quiet as possible. But with mixing (it's different with tracking!) some ambient noise here and there I'm not sure would be fatal to the session. Just crank up the volume a bit and if the place is basically quiet, the monitors would be able to seriously drown out odds and ends of ambient noise. You could have anything behind the monitors - so if you set up in front of the wall of a building, you'd only have 180 degrees of possible noise sources. Planes and wind would I'm guessing be the biggest problems. At least these things come and go...

 

Surely somebody has done this - and I'm thinking of home studio types here as perhaps being most able to benefit. At the very least as a way to get the most honest listening environment for checking things. Skip trying to treat your 10' by 12' bedroom studio - mix inside on phones, then take it outside for a reality check.

 

nat

 

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And there is another point.

 

People do listen to some music outside but almost never with high fidelity speakers. Smaller high fidelity speakers will lack bass outside with no walls behind them.

You might want to crank up the bass because you can't hear it very well. That mix will not translate.

 

Mostly, people listen in a variety of untreated spaces - automobile interiors, living rooms, office spaces, etc.

 

Point number two, you would have a very short an select listening season in Whatcom County. Even in the summer if you leave things outside at night they will be damp in the morning.

Room treatment may cost money but at least a room keeps your equipment dry. That could be costly, buying new gear when moisture ruins it.

 

You need a secure space too or everything will be stolen, that's point three.

 

Or you could spend way more time moving and setting up gear than you do listening to your mix - point four.

 

Sorry, I am not for this idea at all for any reason. Cheers, Kuru

 

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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You need a secure space too or everything will be stolen, that's point three.

 

Where I live, I'd worry just as much or more about being shot.

 

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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I don't like to mix on headphones, but I think I'd rather mix on headphones than haul enough gear outdoors to work with, and then haul it all back at the end of the mix session. Even if you lived on a farm with no neighbors or road within a mile, you'd still need to deal with weather and other natural things.

 

If your goal is to escape the agony of treating a room, consider building a control room in a van. It doesn't even have to be running. You'll need to do a lot of room treatment, but you've be working with a smaller and more "destructible" room. I used to have a remote truck that I built in a parcel delivery ("cube") van that sounded really good. When not taking it out for a remote recording, I'd use the house for the studio and the truck was the control room. I had heat and air conditioning, though I had to turn off the air conditioner when mixing because it made too much distracting noise. Shoveling a path through the snow between the studio and control room put "hire an intern" higher up on my list. ;)

 

I'll add, though, that it might be inspiring. And if the material you're mixing involves a lot of cranking and wanking in the control room to create sounds that didn't come into the microphones, you might indeed get an idea for a rhythm or patch from a bird or a fox. Or it would make a good story for Mix or Tape Op magazine. Someone mixed his record in the back of his car and got at least two magazine stories about it. Probably sold a lot of records just because of the story.

 

 

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A laptop, a small interface, and two powered speakers. I don't think it would be such a big deal if it's kept simple.

 

Since no one seems to go for this - I'll just do a session myself and report back.

 

I like experimenting, so at the least I'll learn something...

 

nat

 

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Or take it even further, do your recording outside, and integrate the outside world sounds. I bet that could work really well for electronic-based instrumental music, where the incidental sounds would be the "lead" instruments.
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Or take it even further, do your recording outside, and integrate the outside world sounds. I bet that could work really well for electronic-based instrumental music, where the incidental sounds would be the "lead" instruments.

 

I see CDs like that all the time in thrift stores, which proves that people do buy them.

 

I've been in some magical sounding places. Tinkling creeks, rustling leaves, amazing multi-tap echoes, roaring winds somehow whistling as they surge across structures. Wildlife can represent as well, coyotes, geese and my personal favorite although the city noise made it impossible to get a good recording (I tried!!!) - at around 3am in Fresno on a summer's eve the mockingbirds were everywhere, trading riffs. If you whistled something a few times, nearby birds would pick it up and begin spreading it, like ripples in a pond. I had some great jams with them!!!!

 

For capture, all you would need is a gorilla pod and a small recorder. My Tascam DR40 does a great job and fits in a coat pocket with room for spare batteries. I've got 4th of July fireworks echoing up and down Lake Whatcom in stereo, could be the basis for an ambient track...

 

I'd still mix it where I have my stuff set up. :- D

 

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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I"ve listened to music outdoors using nice speakers and something is different. Perhaps because the mix was intended for indoor listening. Even in the best studios there is some room affect and engineers base their mix on that room as part of the overall equation. In fact isn"t the room 'tuned' to the speakers in high end studios ? It"s not an anechoic chamber after all. But whether outdoors is better than the lesser rooms that most of us have? No idea.

 

Interesting question.

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You need a secure space too or everything will be stolen, that's point three.

 

Where I live, I'd worry just as much or more about being shot.

 

 

you are a single guy, correct? Maybe time to move? :idk:

 

 

Divorced with kids. Not going to desert my kids. And doubt I can convince my ex-wife to relocate, besides the fact that we'd both have to get new jobs and move the kids to new schools.

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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Or take it even further, do your recording outside, and integrate the outside world sounds. I bet that could work really well for electronic-based instrumental music, where the incidental sounds would be the "lead" instruments.

 

I'm seeing this more and more as I get into the Eurorack "scene". But none of those guys and girls record traditionally as far as I've experienced.

"For instance" is not proof.

 

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