How essential is a Sub-Woofer for Mixdowns?

[binakversailles]

Hi there guys,
I'm currently looking to buy some studio monitors as all my previous mixes have been done on headphones only. I'm thinking of getting the Yamaha HS50 monitors but I'm worried that i will be losing out a lot if i don't have a sub-woofer (especially when mixing sub bass with kick drums). Is this the case? or is the low end of the monitors going to be enough?

Hope you can help me out.

Thanks,

Binak.

[Genevieve]

What's essential is a flat frequency response in a well treated room. For the money, and assuming you're in a small, untreated room, you're best off mixing on your Yamaha monitors and A/Bing (and mixing down the sub) on your headphones

[binakversailles]

Thanks for the response Genevieve!

I have two more questions though:

1) I've heard that room treatment is important but i dont know what it exactly means...could you give a brief explanation?

2) What is 'A/Bing'

Thanks for your help!

[virks]

If your own voice is scaring you,then the room is well treated

[Hex047]

funny^^^, There's no eazy way of testing it...essentially if you clap your hands and you can't hear any reverb then chances are it's okay....
note: this not really accurate but should give you a starting point. personally I would start with Bass traps then take it from there.

[Genevieve]

Thanks for the response Genevieve!

I have two more questions though:

1) I've heard that room treatment is important but i dont know what it exactly means...could you give a brief explanation?

Getting acoustic material for your room and organizing your room as such that it minimizes frequencies bounching around in your room too much. Like I said my previous post, having a flat frequency response is important. Meaning that there are no weird peaks or canyons in the frequency spectrum that give you an inaccurate image of what is going on in your mix/tune. The shape and size of your room, plus everything in it and even the material that your walls are made out of, all impact the sound you end up hearing when you're producing. And with no room being the same, what sounds good in yours may not sound good in the next. Therefore, you want an as neutral as possible sounding listening environment to mixdown your tunes in. Your speaks and room(treatment) are crucial for that.

So when I said that a flat room is more important than a sub it's that... depending on how deep your monitos go, you may or may not need a sub. But in most small, untreated rooms, sub content can create more problems than it solves. And with room treatment being expensive, having no subwoofer and only minimal treatment can get you far enough to get a good mix, especially when you then only monitor your sub with your headphones.

2) What is 'A/Bing'

Comparing. Say, comparing the mix you hear from your headphones to the one you hear from the monitor. Listening to your mix from various sources is a great tool to get a good idea of how your mix will translate to different systems and may uncover issues you didn't hear before.

[binakversailles]

Thank you so much for the help! Appreciate it a lot. Cheers!

[bennyfroobs]

i find a/b-ing ultimately the most useful tool when mixing down, listning to tunes on a selection of speakers, headphones etc

ive got a sub but tbh i rarely use it cos its shit and barely hits 35 hz

[benjam]

Knowing your gear and room is the one. Most of us are mixing in shitty enviroments anyway

[ChadDub]

I just turn the overall volume of the track down and boost everything from 20-80hz up like 6db on the master eq so I can easily hear the low end.

[bennyfroobs]

I just turn the overall volume of the track down and boost everything from 20-80hz up like 6db on the master eq so I can easily hear the low end.

stick an EQ on ur master bus, set it to band pass and just move the variables around to isolate different sections of ur mix?

[ChadDub]

I just turn the overall volume of the track down and boost everything from 20-80hz up like 6db on the master eq so I can easily hear the low end.

stick an EQ on ur master bus, set it to band pass and just move the variables around to isolate different sections of ur mix?

Yeah I do that too. In the case of the low end I have a low pass on the master at 80hz maybe 100hz

[Samuel_L_Damnson]

its not at all essential mate

[Hashkey]

Many people prefer to mix the low end on headphones and the rest of the mix on speakers.
Do you wanna know where I feel the real need of a sub?
Not when mixing absolutely but when I'm sound designing deep basses.
Headphones even expensive one don't give you the feel and pressure of a sub or 8" cones.
It's just my Idea of course.
Sometimes you have to be clinical and sometimes it's emotion, it's hard to sound design a heavy bass sound without the emotion of bass shaking your chest.

[gen_]

To be frank, you actually mix better on smaller speakers for a bunch of reasons. Without bass traps a sub will pretty much make most rooms a lot worse, so you will literally be better off without the sub most of the time, or with the thing turned off. Your 5" speaker cones are lighter if they are smaller. This means they are technically tighter and follow your waveform more accurately because it takes less time for them to come to a sudden stop. The end result is that they are actually no different from the bigger speakers as far as balance but they are more accurate because transient response... provided you keep them from distorting of course.

Not telling you whether not to or not, just sort of pointing out that you will probably be better off not using them a lot of the time after the creative process.