Making your mixes translate to other speakers is one of the most important skills you need to have so that you can feel confident in your mixing abilities.

It doesn't really matter if you have the best equipment in the world. If your mixes sound bad on the average stereo, then your high-end monitors mean nothing.

Here are three things you can do to make sure your mix sounds the best it can before you take it to your car or play it on the home stereo. Do them all in succession or go back and forth between them.

1. Listen in Mono

Flip your mix into mono. Everything still sounding good?

Is the stereo spread a little weird and your guitar delays and vocal enhancer and spatializers all gone? Then start tweaking your stereo effects until you get as close as possible to the sound you had before.

2. Lower the Volume

Turn your monitors aaaall the way down until you can barely hear your mix.

Does the mix still sound the same?

Are the instruments that you want to be dominant still dominant? Can you still hear everything clearly? If not it's time to fine-tune your faders to make the mix more balanced. Use EQ to add more presence or pull things back.

3. Switch Your Speakers

Chances are you have computer speakers of some sorts. If you're using a laptop you can easily switch the output to the laptop instead of the monitors. Or maybe check your mix on earbuds.

Doing #1 and #2 with your computer speakers gives you a completely different listening experience and will show you all the little intricacies of the mix you couldn't hear on your monitors.

Fix Your Mixes With EQ

Computer speakers by and large sound pretty bad. If you can make your mix sound convincing on both your monitors and your laptop, then you're 80% of the way to a well translated mix. Once you've learned what you need to tweak to make your mixes translate, your best tool will be your trusty EQ plug-in

If you need to save time and really need to know exactly where all the pesky frequency areas are hiding, my Frequency Breakdown and Vocabulary Video in EQ Strategies - Your Ultimate Guide to EQ will teach you where all those problem areas like muddiness, boominess, boxiness and harshness live so you can EQ them out immediately.

Hit the link to learn more:

www.EQStrategies.net