How Your Ears Will Lie To You (And What to Do About It)

[@sorenkongshoj]

This is one of the most useful "mixing tips" videos, I've come across,. Thank's for the video.

[@m.i.stapes]

So glad you mentioned about thinking you're EQing one thing and hearing changes then realize you're EQing something else!! I was literally laughing out loud. I'm new to this and just learning everything on my own and I was worried I was the only goofball that does that!

[@realchristopher4334]

As Richard Philips Feynman said "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool".

[@m.o.tondi96]

Everytime I can't decide whether or not I like what a plugin is doing, I'll close my eyes and click the bypass a few times, and then choose - super quick and gets you trusting your ears itm

[@JamEZmusic86]

Me too, It's the most reliable way.

[@DragonBiscuit]

As a clinical psychologist, the study of cognition/perception was very humbling… We are so extremely fallible indeed and there must be some method of acknowledging this within our workflow - great video

[@moano3271]

I got the ad for your mixing breakthrough course before the video started 😂 brilliant!

[@KarenBasset]

This was great! My boys got on my case about me insisting on drinking bottled water, so they set up a taste test to see if I could really tell which glass of water was tap and which was bottled. They put tap water in BOTH glasses and I knew instantly. That shut them up for a while.

[@ev7570]

Great insight. I really like when Justin implements the psychological component to the craft of mixing, something I think this segment represents stupendously.

[@ramonf.9217]

Very informative 👏 👌 thank you!

[@cucumberforest]

On the album Desintergration by the Cure there is a song where you can hear a high frequency sine tone through the whole track, I forgot which track it was and wanted to check it out, but meanwhile I don't hear it anymore. sigh.

[@deanmasi6684]

It was great! Thank you. Keep em coming!

[@VinceWhitacre]

Baldwins are good, Braeburn is also a good readily available apple. Best I ever had, and I have never seen it again, can't even find it in databases of apple varieties, was called Aurora. Yellow skin, with... well, an aurora, a blush of pink/orange/peach just shining through. This was a deep, complex apple, a good match for other food/drinks, a delight to just eat out of hand... and I had it ONCE, seven years ago. I want an Aurora apple now. 😞

[@m.i.stapes]

Also really loved the mini-rant around 24 minutes. Good to hear.

[@spbmac]

Excellent chat. Thanks for all the info and thoughts. And yes I’ve experienced many of the flubs you discussed.

[@ThisMichaelBrown]

Fun discussion, thanks

[@vanpeethovenstudio]

I did a mono frequency sweep with my headphones on a year ago (I'm 48 now) and was happy to find out that my hearing still went up to around 18Khz. But it was also the moment of realisation that my hearing wasn't symmetrical, because above 3Khz the stereo field shifted at some points quite extremely from one side to the other.

[@SonicScoop]

Common experience! Basically everyone's hearing is asymmetrical. It's just that some people know it and so can account for it, and some don't :-) -Justin

[@joyoffilming9500]

Really great and valuable insights. Totally agree with you!

[@DaveMuller]

The long episode was great, thanks, especially the click story - what a lesson!

[@atsilverine]

Thank you, I enjoyed. Been there, done that heard this and heard not. I'm 52 and watch my spectrum analyzer every now and then.

[@summerfazed]

If you DJ really loud through a sound system, the less compressed files will definitely sound better. But it's mostly about which mastered version of the album when it comes to the different formats Mp3, ACC, WAV, Flac hires, vinyl... you are usually getting different masters. Taking one file and converting to different bitrates they will always sound super similar.

[@Bluelagoonstudios]

Hi Justin, last week I did an ear test, left ear 35% and max freq. 3500Hz, Right ear, 67% and 9800Hz (55 year), left ear is destroyed because using headphone as a DJ and a monitor in the DJ booth that was pretty much always clipping, 350W amp on it. So if I start to mix, my ears has to balance, or my brain has to adapt. Now you should say I don't hear highs on both ears. I hear highs, but different I guess. I think I made the same mistakes in the past, processing the wrong track and thinking, wth, there is nothing changed. That is the moment to take a break. And do some other stuff, to clear your mind and start over doing the right track, been there, done that. We always work @ 24bit 48Khz, just out of convenience, because the recorded tracks are mostly the same sample rate. If you render a master, you down mix it anyway to 16bit, 14400Hz. Also MP3 can sound better, because it is compressed and maybe louder.

[@Naaxbeats]

Yes!!!!!!!! This video was so good for me as a producer! :D Well done :)

[@MortenAndersen-hjemmesider]

Love this kind of episode - thanks. By the way I'm coding WordPress themes while listening :-)

[@SunsetPunk]

I recently noticed my right ear has a severe dip around 3-8khz but switching between mono and flipping L/R helps alot. So balancing rock guitars is a challenge hehe. Great video and thanks a million for your honesty Justin 🥳 Now do an episode where you hipass everything up to 16khz and see how many people say there’s no sound 🤣

[@joejurneke9576]

Well said!

[@moano3271]

I used to get fooled alot when doing A/B because i knew what was what and i convinced myself to what was the best. Now whenever i need to do A/B on a plugin is first levelmatch , then i hover my mouse over the On/Off and i click a few times on off fast with my eyes closed so that i dont know what is what..then i keep my eyes closed and push play..and i click on/off.. if i get it right 3 times, then i’m good and i keep it. And YES!! The thing you said with the guy commenting on Brauer not levelmatching..i totally aggree! Sometimes it was actually that boost that was needed. Such as putting a pultec on something..it boost about 1.3db with everything at 0. Sometimes thats all that i needed 👌

[@jloiben12]

What a great video

[@derekmidgley]

I know for sure I can’t hear beyond 16k or so… so great idea I heard once was to bounce one’s final mix at half speed. Give it a quick listen for any unwanted errors / stuff I would have missed.

[@lar57jsy]

Thanks Justin. You're one of my few go-to pros for useful tutorials. I found the first point on this one kind of belaboured but liked the illustrative stories :-) This topic of self deception fascinates me...I also liked the one you did on "snake oil". I check out your tutorials (laptop & headphones) for relevant info when I'm recording/mixing my songs, and when I'm bored and looking for useful stuff to watch during COVID restricted stretches of days :D I played bass in a live loud music band for a couple of years in the late 60s, then did fairly loud one-man-band bar-work for 6 years, before becoming a hearing aid specialist at 39 years old, testing hearing and fitting hearing aids - which is when I got a chance to see what having a drummer at my right elbow had done to my right ear (a distinct notch of hearing loss at 4KHz) and watch my high frequency hearing steadily decline in both ears until now it drops off rather abruptly after 2 KHz! (I'm 71 yrs old) I still enjoy writing songs and recording/mixing but now with hearing loss, can't think of mixing as more than a fun hobby. ( larryyates.bandcamp.com/ ) Oh! Yes, Stuart's hair is interesting...very "black" and has the Seinfeld "Cramer" hair style :D Ha ha! I've enjoyed quite a few of his presentations as well. :-)

[@SonicScoop]

Yeah, I did stick on that first point a LOT longer than I meant to :-) It just took way longer to tell all three stories than I expected. In hindsight, I could have settled for one! But as long as I told them well enough to keep you engaged I guess it's not a total loss. Hopefully it helps make the general idea stick even more, which is the most important thing I think. Yes, I like Warren as well. Just having a little fun :-) I don't watch his channel much, but what I have seen from him on production has been very good. -Justin

[@nicholaslepp1502]

I've trained for twenty years and my work is on countless radio outlets and while for the most part i agree with you, you rambled about none-since and other lesser-known youtubers have helped us out much more with much less opinion, bro! Lmao

[@kaislivesoundchannel4706]

Old monitor engineer trick..a musician asks for a change you grab any control knob and ask „ is it better now? „ And more often than not, the musician will reply „ that‘s better, thanx“.

[@morbidmanmusic]

Anymore cliches we all know here?

[@kaislivesoundchannel4706]

@@morbidmanmusic If everyone knew, it wouldn’t work.

[@mironjacovbinder484]

Great video, but remember that it’s not your ears that are hearing. It’s our brain. And our brain that interprets or misinterprets what we hear:)

[@VanessaLSmith]

So true...I thought there was some phantom processes going on. I deleted and punched in a new vocal take and swore I could hear the deleted voc. Its crazy. LOGIC PRO X. I now get up, take a silent walk and, inevitably, I could hear more accuratly and the files in my brain have been relegated to my brains trash folder.

[@OrangeMicMusic]

Justin, you're 100% correct :) Regarding M. Brauer example, there's another interview with A. Scheps "defending" why a tiny guitar part on a mix he did for Red Hot Chilli Peppers was already recorded distorted (the wave form for that guitar was just a block, no shape, on the screen). He said...well, do you hear something wrong when you listen to the mix? No. So then it's good, nothing to analize here :)

[@mykal92684]

Justin, you are the one person/internet guy that i absolutely trust. you may not know all of us listening but you are so helpful. I've learned more from you than anywhere else. Question, if my sub and kick are in the same frequency space, lets say 64 hz. i have the sub sidechained to the kick in that range is that still along the lines of "only one instrument can be the lowest on the spectrum. because i find that i do this all of the time. i know i could move the kick higher or lower but it never sounds quite right to me.

[@soundproductionandadvice]

Couldn't agree with you more.

[@barrywilliams8289]

yh thats true your ears is a window to your mind sit's true our ears sometimes but I wouldn't say it is bias though we're human remember

[@hectormann1843]

Hahaha.. let them hear 96k or even more, who cares, really. But I do care about the music, if it’s tasteful or not to my soul. And yes, I’ve also tweaked the eq and ”improved” a clip just to find out that I used the wrong eq! 😂

[@CLdwyer]

However in the occasional instance you’re doing sound design and downsampling several octaves, you will hear more detailed mid range when using higher sample rate files. (One meager case for high res lol 😂)

[@bobedgar6647]

Coloration is ok sometimes, coloring of sideburns not. Embrace the gray, you’ve earned it.

[@delvenhamric1200]

Here is my take on HiRez Audio. Can you hear down to 20Hz? No, but you do feel it. If you turn off the low bass, on a well recorded track, you know when it's gone even when you can't hear it. So, what if you could sense/feel high frequencies, in the same way? Other things to ponder: How do we see color, we are taught to see color! With a frequency response of 20Hz to 20kHz, the 20Hz and 20kHz points are the -3dB point. So, if you record from 10Hz to 24kHz, maybe the 20Hz to 20kHz range would be flatter. And, the last thing to think about, most playback systems can't reproduce 20Hz to 20kHz! But, who knows what the future will bring.

[@SonicScoop]

Thanks for the comment! This is something that has been studied in some detail already, at both ends of the spectrum. It is true that studies indicate that people can feel frequencies below 20 Hz at sufficient amplitude. (It’s usually perceived as being very uncomfortable.) But similar studies also indicate that people cannot feel frequencies above 20kHz. In all the testing done so far, none has indicated any human sensitivity to frequencies above 20kHz. There’s only one exception all that I know of - - a study done in Japan in the 1990s, that barely suggested a very tenuous effect, and only on one piece of music out of many, just bordering on statistical significance, with a very small sample size. In almost 30 years, that study has never been replicated. Hope that helps! -Justin

[@maxuno8524]

Matt Damon to Justin: How do you like dem apples!

[@TheOnlineBusker]

Hey Justin, have just been watching Mastering Demystified and on the acoustic master, there was no reverb or delay or anything added, is that just because those things are for the mix? You wouldn't ever add at mastering stage no?

[@SonicScoop]

It would be pretty uncommon for me to add reverb or delay during mastering, but it does happen occasionally. Maybe on less than 10% or so of masters, I'll add a little bit of reverb. It's generally something that's done during mixing. But very often, the mastering will bring out more of the ambience that is already there, especially if you err on the side of faster release times for any dynamic control you may use. Stereo widening and decluttering things with EQ can bring out some of the ambience that's already there as well. Hope that helps! Justin

[@TheOnlineBusker]

@@SonicScoop Super! Thanks Justin 🙏👍

[@konradhoroszko255]

DEAR JC, Can You help me and give me some insights (or web page) about best audio interfaces for recording in the market, really used by the top recording engineers? Your word will mean a lot! Mixing Breakthroughs 2.0 are mine since two days, I'm diving deep, cheers!

[@SonicScoop]

Chris Swist did a post like this for us very recently. You can find it here: sonicscoop.com/2020/02/19/picking-the-right-all-in-one-studio-centerpiece-whats-the-best-8-preamp-interface/ Hope that helps! Thanks for the support, Justin

[@konradhoroszko255]

Thanks!!

[@dougtalks]

I think the Michael Brauer story also has a component of "things that are good for beginners to do" vs "I'm Michael F'ing Brauer." Michael Brauer knows what that plugin does and makes a purposeful choice about it (even if it gives a volume boost), but beginners frequently just slap on plugins and think things are sounding "better" but instead they're just getting louder and louder. IMO beginners should probably use less "creative flow" while they're figuring stuff out, but should be a goal to grow in to.

[@johnyl4369]

Hi-Res audio is not a goal by itself. It should be a tool in a box which allows us consumers to have more nuanced and dynamic mixes. Modern day fully compressed pop turd does not make sense to convert to hi res. Instead producers and mixers should make use of all the headroom that is available and make mixes more dynamic and less squashed. That is why hires audio matters!

[@SonicScoop]

I hear what you are saying, but super high resolutions aren't necessary for extremely dynamic consumer playback. 16 bit audio and high bitrate mp3s easily handles even the most wildly dynamic material without issue. The dynamic range of commercial releases today is usually between 14 and 5 dB. But even if you were to double or triple the dynamic range of commerical releases, this is still easily handled by the 96+ dB dynamic range of 16 bit. I'd happily agree that something like 5dB of dynamic range is WAAAAAY too squashed for most genres. But 14 dB is pretty darn dynamic for most popular music. That is easily handed by 16 bit audio and good quality mp3s for consumer playback. So is double that dynamic range, which puts you squarely in the extremely dynamic ranges of classical recording. But here's something interesting to note: Once you start to get more dynamic than say, 16 dB, consumers are more likely to hate your guts for the material being *too* dynamic. The actual experience of most music listeners is that they find the volume fluctuations in classical music troublesome and annoying in the contexts that most people listen to music. It will be so quiet that they have to turn it up, and then so loud that it becomes overbearing for them, drowning out whatever else the are doing while listening. This is probably part of why something like 2% of the population listens to classic a music, and 1% listens to jazz. (And I say this as someone who actually really likes jazz and classical music) I mean, "moms" are supposed to like classical music (at least they think they are supposed to) but my experience with my normie mom is that the music will be so quiet that she'll start talking, so it gets turned up.... and then the loud part comes in and she'll say "ack! why is it so loud??".... Well, "it's because it's the loud part mom. It's supposed to be loud." This is just an example. But I find it's indicative of how the majority of the population responds to music that dynamic. But even those extreme levels of dynamic are easily handled by 16 bit audio and good quality mp3s. So again the problem just isn't the playback resolution. Hope that makes sense! -Justin

[@brianstoltz2838]

If you can't hear the difference between a 256k file and a wav file, maybe its time to find another line of work. Or maybe you need to find someone who can help teach you how to listen deeper.

[@SonicScoop]

As mentioned in the episode, it’s at 320kbps that no one has ever heard a difference on record in a proper double blind trial. Not 256. Double blind testing suggests that a very small subset of trained listeners can occasionally hear a difference at 256kbps on a small portion of selections. (At 128kbps, I’d argue that anyone sufficiently young enough with healthy enough high frequency hearing can learn to do it with enough practice. Though the differences are increasingly subtle these days, even there.) My guess is that you’ve never done such a test, or you wouldn’t be saying this with such confidence. But those of us who actually can do this kind of thing blind have to admit that under proper double blind conditions, any differences are extremely subtle as the rates get higher. If you’d done the double blind tests yourself, you’d know this. Based on your comment I’m guessing you haven’t listened properly double blind and are just assuming you can hear a difference. Correct me if I’m wrong-what kind of double blind testing have you done? How was it controlled? Did you use an ABX tester? Any monkey can tell himself he hears a huge difference during a sighted trial. He’ll even feel that difference down to his bones. Put the blindfold on him however, and everything suddenly changes. Try it sometime! Don’t take my word for it. Go download and ABX tester and see if you can do 320kbps for yourself. If you can get it right at a rate better than chance, please let us know. We’d love to prove to the world that it can be done! Hope that helps, Justin

[@morbidmanmusic]

Could you be any snottier?

[@maxuno8524]

Moment of silence to all the times I worked on a compressor or an EQ in bypass and could hear a world of difference Also looking forward to the diss track Warren Huart is gonna release 😂

[@emanuelwhitehead6039]

Your ears don’t lie to you they tick you. That’s why they say if it’s sounds good it’s good 👍

[@donnydarko7624]

Yeah expensive wine is mostly a scam. I really wish it wasn't such a uphill battle to get "audiophiles" to truly do the double blind tests and see how much they are being scammed into buying $18,000 power cables.

[@keithforrester82]

Silver hair is trendy nowadays, some of the young'uns die theirs! Just be thankful it's healthily dense! Ha! :)

[@ag4640]

BUT I *CAN* HEAR THE DIFFERENCE!!! xdxd

[@casscass-andra]

I cannot even begin to tell you the number of times I have heard a change and called it a day only to realize later the plugin was in bypass the entire time. SMH

[@edenhunter9904]

Tip: never take advice from someone who looks like they just stepped off a skateboard.