Blog1 min read
On listening on bad speakers
If a track only sounds good on the studio monitors, it isn't earning its place.
Most of the music people listen to comes out of speakers nobody mixed it on. Laptop speakers. Phone speakers. The little brick on a kitchen counter. A radio in a car older than the song. If a track only sounds good on the studio monitors, it isn't doing its job in the room it's actually going to live in.
I make a point of testing candidates on the worst speakers in the apartment. A phone on a table is the most honest test I have. It strips out the low end, narrows the stereo image, and exposes any track that was leaning on production tricks to do the emotional work.
Tracks that survive this test tend to share a few qualities. A clear midrange. A vocal — if there is one — that's just barely in front of the rest. A rhythm that holds even when the kick drum is gone. Composers writing for film learnt this decades ago; a lot of ambient producers have learnt it more recently; a lot of pop producers still haven't.
Headphone listening is its own thing. It exposes detail that no speaker reveals, and rewards subtleties no speaker can carry. Useful, but not a substitute for the laptop-on-the-counter test. The two say different things.