I agree that it's a good idea to check mixes on multiple playback systems but like others, I don't have time to go out to my car every time I bounce a new draft. So I have ways to mimic those less than ideal listening environments, in the studio.
It's interesting to hear people still saying "if it sounds good in my car, it'll sound good everywhere". That was something I heard a lot in the early '00s but I've always found it easiest to make a mix translate well to car stereo. I've always felt like a car is almost an ideal space for playback, as there are no parallel walls, there isn't enough room for long standing waves to build up and aside from the windows, most surfaces don't reflect sound well. But then you are always listening from a position which is offset from the center of the stereo field and the speakers/amps may not be ideal (usually tuned way too bass heavy, IMO), so very wide/dynamic mixes can sound weird. All IME, of course!
For me I feel more confident once I have a mix sounding decent on a boombox, clock radio or bluetooth speaker in a tiled room, like a kitchen. Laptop speakers also frequently help me pinpoint problems in the mid range.
But if you have bass problems, the things that you can't really just correct with software, it often shows up in a car. Yes, car systems are bass heavy, and for people that make bass heavy music, that system will reveal the too much or too little bass that you didn't hear in your studio.
Also, I think that you might be over-interpreting a casual statement. In the 90s, 00s, it was one of the systems that we could listen on and one of the few systems that had sufficient bass to hear bass. So it was a cross check. For me, it was the first cross check. If it didn't sound good in the car then it needed more work, full stop. That said, I was guilty of discussing whether or not it passed the car check.Statistics: Posted by ghettosynth — Tue Mar 19, 2024 6:09 am
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