I was talking to a Swedish producer on Zoom last week and he made a throw away comment, “mixes always sound better when I play them in the Finder.” My jaw dropped, I had also felt this for some time but thought I was being irrational. So I asked some more producers and engineers what they thought, the results surprised me.
Not Science… I Think
I want to be clear from the outset, when I say things sound different I don’t mean in some measurable scientific way. What I mean is that the mix seems to sound more together, in some cases the sound of things seem to change, or mistakes suddenly become apparent.
It’s also the same with video edits and documents. I have to render a video edit to really check it, the same with documents, I have to create a PDF before I can really check it. In many cases be it audio, video, or the written word, I spot mistakes I missed when using the application.
I Asked Some Friends
Now I’d met someone else who felt the same, I decided to ask some of my friends if they thought it was the case, or was I being mad?
Belfast based producer/engineer John Marshall said;
“Bouncing something is like a magic trick for me… suddenly all of the things that I have overlooked become painfully obvious to me!”
Dereck Blackburn at Quiet House Recording in MA;
“I absolutely agree. 8 times out of 10 I have to do bounce to really be able to listen critically.”
Engineer and Mixer, Darrell Thorp said it wasn’t limited to DAWs;
“Yes. This happens. This phenomenon is a mind trick.
I had a client when mixing on a console with multi track machines and or a DAW would ALWAYS print to to Half inch Analog. He would sit just outside the room and or at the door into the control room and I would start printing the master mix. I would say 50% of the time, after letting the mix print, my client would hear one or two things about the mix that bothered him. So we would make those couple of changes and print again until the mix was perfect.”
Producer and songwriter Guy Martin;
“I firmly believe it's all a mind trick. IMO it's the same thing as hearing your finished production released to the masses either on vinyl or digital release, etc. It just feels and sounds more finished, even though it's pretty much the same file before and after export.”
Friend of the blog and Blue Cat Audio founder Guillaume Jeulin;
“For me it's actually a visual issue: if I hide the DAW while playing, I get the exact same results. Watching the tracks and seeing in advance what is coming next completely modifies my perception of the music. Same for video. For good or bad I don't know, but it definitely sounds and feels very different!”
Dan Cooper of Waves also felt the same about this;
“Yep, I don’t think it’s anything to do with visual cues/or not. I find I’m like this when reviewing exports because my hand isn’t on the mouse or keyboard. There’s nothing to do not but give my full focus and attention to the experience.”
Some also suggested the ‘people effect’ when playing back mixes.
Scott Michael Smith mixer on The Revenant, Handmaid’s Tale and other top movies and TV shows;
“Perspective shift! Happens all the time. It’s the same thing when you give a mix a few days before returning to it, the change in headspace suddenly has you hearing it differently. This becomes really obvious in my work when I stop looking at Pro Tools and start looking at picture (it’s mostly scores over here as you know). The simple act of looking at something else while listening has me hearing things differently, dare I say as intended? Interesting stuff for sure, Alan Meyerson has mentioned to me multiple times that the mix always sounds different when the client is in the room and he’s dead on. I think this is the same phenomenon as when you take something out of the DAW and start hearing it differently.”
William Wittman also described it as the ‘people effect’;
“It’s a bit like the phenomenon where as soon as you bring someone else in the room to listen to the mix you hear it differently.”
Is There Any Science Behind This?
We did some digging to see if there were any research papers on this subject, for example the idea that closing one’s eyes improves listening. ‘Does closing the eyes enhance auditory attention? Eye closure increases attentional alpha-power modulation but not listening performance.’ is a paper published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. This is what they concluded;
“Does closing the eyes enhance auditory attention? First, an important neural mechanism of auditory attention, alpha power modulation, has been shown here to be amplified by eye closure. That is, when listeners have their eyes closed, the increased attentional modulation of alpha power indeed implies stronger neural separation of attended and ignored sound sources. Second, however, eye closure per se does not improve auditory attention and tone detection performance. Possibly, the impact of eye closure on neural oscillatory dynamics does not match alpha power modulations associated with listening performance precisely enough. Third, the present findings do have important practical implications for the neuroscience of auditory attention: Researchers should rigorously control whether participants close their eyes during listening. Participants might even be instructed to utilize the endogenous amplification of closing the eyes to increase the power to observe existing attentional effects on neural alpha oscillations.”
However, we didn’t ever think there was any solid science.
What seems to be apparent, albeit based on anecdotal evidence, is that many of us find it easier to review our work when not in the actual application. It may be the case that the information being presented to us in the application GUI may be distracting us, rather than aiding our concentration. Once a file is bounced or rendered, and we play it in something like the macOS Finder, this may help us to focus more on the music or video, rather than the paraphernalia of the application. In other words, we may be experiencing a mild form of sensory overload, with one of the main symptoms being “difficulty focusing due to competing sensory input.”
This does raise questions about studio environments and the impact of lighting, mix volume, and other factors that may be aiding or disrupting concentration. There is some evidence that the volume of audio may affect our creative ability. From Reviewstudio.com;
“According to the Yerkes-Dodson Law, listening to anything at too low or too high a volume may actually inhibit your creative thinking. Choosing a “moderate” volume is just right – setting the sound just loud enough that it interferes with your brain’s processing activity (this happens at around 70 decibels) triggers abstract processing. Finding a level within that specific middle-ground threshold activates a different kind of thinking that enhances creative output. So adjust accordingly to optimize for those unexpected ideas and off-beat solutions that catch you off-guard.
So What?
What can we draw from this straw poll? I think the first thing to say is that we are not entirely attentive to the end result when deep in the task, be that audible or visual. Our mind is elsewhere, rather than being focussed on the review process.
This does make one wonder if screens in studios distract us from our mixes. Some suggest that DAWs should have a review option that blanks the screen while listening. They do, it’s the monitor power switch if you want to see if it makes a difference. Perhaps some kind of review screen in the application might help? Many video editing applications allow for a second monitor screen that displays the picture output in full screen. How this would be possible in the world of the DAW I’m not entirely sure.
If you are a Mac user (Windows users please chip in on the comments) then you can use the Hot Corners feature on your Mac to instantly turn off the screen when listening to a mix. What it does it black out the screen until you hit a key. For some this may be the answer, it takes seconds to set up. Simply open it in preferences choose the corner you want to have trigger it and then choose ‘Put Display to Sleep’ from the dropdown menu.
If you use a laptop then you can also use the brightness setting on the keyboard for the same effect, although this will incrementally dim the screen not turn it off instantly.
This doesn’t explain why the same effect often happens when editing videos or documents. This speaks more to the idea that complicated visuals in the applications we use may be distracting us from paying attention to details. I’m not a detail person at the best of times, some people I know can spot a mistake in a second, whereas I’m sometimes blind, or deaf to what they consider to be blindingly obvious.
One thing is sure in the world of mixing, offline bouncing may have time saving benefits, but checking the mix afterwards outside of the DAW is essential. Your DAW may be playing tricks with you, even if we don’t know why this happens.
Do you find the same applies to you and mixing? Let us know in the comments.