If you've been following along, I dropped a healthy dose of theory on which acoustic problems your room is likely to have and how to cost-effectively solve them. Then I began to do the very same for myself.

Treating my sidewall first reflection points was very valuable, and the sound I was hearing was much improved. But still, that's only the beginning. If one aims to significantly clean up the bass, there's more work to be done.

In this post, I'll describe the second stage in my room treatment project…

So you've just finished your final mix, and it sounds amazing on your monitors or headphones. Excitedly, you play it for your friend on his stereo, and the mix just falls apart. Maybe the frequency balance is all wrong. Maybe the balance of instruments is completely off. Maybe it sounds weak and hollow instead of full and powerful. Maybe it's enough to make your ears cringe.

What happened??

The short of it is that your mix sounds good on your speakers or headphones, but doesn't translate to other…

Last week, I wrote about acoustics for the first time in this blog. Everything I wrote about was theory, based on the books I've read, my first-hand impressions of various rooms and arrangements, as many podcast episodes on acoustics as I could find, and an unhealthy number of forum threads digested. However, this week, the rubber meets the road. I finally made substantial headway on the room treatment project I've been putting off for longer than I care to admit. Let me tell you about what I built, where I…

We all want to make mixes that sound cleaner, clearer, have more slam, more power, and more color. We all want interesting, professional sounding mixes, right? What can we do to close that gap between our mixes and the songs we hear from the pros?

I shared in a previous post on how to use reference checks to better help your mix sound pro and powerful. It's a tool I rely on with every mix I make. And I shared in a different post that mastering is more about fixing problems the mix contains than it is a…