Mix Engineers

[analag]

So you've been in the studio mixing for 30yrs, just how deaf did that make you. How do you pull it off (mixing) when the drums have been beaten up, down and everything in between.

 

[abbey road d enfer]

So you've been in the studio mixing for 30yrs, just how deaf did that make you. How do you pull it off (mixing) when the drums have been beaten up, down and everything in between.

You just keep on, and pretend you know what all these knobs do...
Anyway, the producer and the band are even deafer than you, and the record ends up an mp3 in half-mono with two kids sharing headphones. ;D

 

[pucho812]

didn't  make me deaf much, I keep the volume within reason and only did the real loud stuff to impress clients at the end of the day. Always had earplugs in for that. Never been an issue

 

[Gold]

There is natural high frequency loss with age. Luckily the brain can adapt. I don’t have the high end response I had fifteen years ago and I’m not making masters any brighter than I ever did. I feel my judgment is better, if anything.

 

[pucho812]

There is natural high frequency loss with age. Luckily the brain can adapt. I don’t have the high end response I had fifteen years ago and I’m not making masters any brighter than I ever did. I feel my judgment is better, if anything.

so true. When you start out and are green you can hear the world, by the time you are good and know what you are doing not so much. I have a 10K dip in one ear. it's slightly bigger dip then the other.  it has not made a big difference when it comes to mixing in general.

 

[abbey road d enfer]

didn't  make me deaf much,

that's because you didn't try hard enough 

 

[analag]

I got the idea for this thread when I inserted a certain EQ plugin on a vocal track and noticed I lost some clarity and felt I lost some depth. Now this EQ has a pretty significant white paper about all the areas where it excels and the Gearslutz crowd hail it as being "the go to" EQ. The lowly Waves Renaissance did a better job. Which led me to the thought of just how deaf are we in this industry.

 

[abbey road d enfer]

Which led me to the thought of just how deaf are we in this industry.

More than anyone dares to admit...

 

[Scodiddly]

Which led me to the thought of just how deaf are we in this industry.

My understanding is that people who can really hear MP3 flaws can do so because they're missing chunks of the audio spectrum.  The MP3 codec works by filling in the lossy compression with plausible content but it assumes full range hearing.

 

[user 37518]

I've lost some of my hearing in my left ear due to infection rather than sound level, loss is around 8KHz and above, accompanied with some good old tinnitus.

 

[abbey road d enfer]

My understanding is that people who can really hear MP3 flaws can do so because they're missing chunks of the audio spectrum.  The MP3 codec works by filling in the lossy compression with plausible content but it assumes full range hearing.

mp3 is kind of a moving target; there is a lot of difference between  a 64k mono and a 256k stereo file.
The former is easily identifiable as a downgraded version. The latter can fool a number of trained listeners.
Indeed frequency extension is the dead ringer in the first case, but in the second case the clues are more in the spatial and temporal... clues, to which hearing loss has very little to do.

 

[Winston OBoogie]

There is natural high frequency loss with age.

In old age, as hearing losses increase in magnitude and extend to lower frequencies, it allows one to read the paper in peace and be blissfully unaware your spouse is talking to you. 

 

[Gold]

it allows one to read the paper in peace and be blissfully unaware your spouse is talking to you.

That's where being an AE comes in handy. I am quite practiced in the art of ignoring extraneous audio stimuli.

 

[Whoops]

So you've been in the studio mixing for 30yrs, just how deaf did that make you.

Easy to prevent that, keep volume low, and when you need to blast it a bit more you do it for short periods of time.

I don't know any Deaf studio Engineers or any with earring problems, but otherwise musicians have a lot of problems specially drummers.
But musicians in general are subjected to high sound pressure levels on practice rooms, stages, floor and side-fill monitors, and exaggerated volume on in-ear monitoring.

 

[Whoops]

There is natural high frequency loss with age. Luckily the brain can adapt. I don’t have the high end response I had fifteen years ago and I’m not making masters any brighter than I ever did. I feel my judgment is better, if anything.

+1