#172: How Pink Noise Can Transform Your Sound Setup and Speaker Calibration with Mike Dow

Ever wondered how to calibrate your speakers or if speaker calibration is even worth it? Curious about pink noise, how to use it, or whether a subwoofer can truly improve sound quality? Then this episode of Inside The Mix is for you!

Join me as I sit down with audio expert Mike Dow, whose nearly 40 years of experience in the industry shine through in our conversation about speaker calibration, room acoustics, and achieving studio-level sound quality at home. Together, we delve into the importance of every link in the audio chain and uncover how the right setup can elevate your listening and mixing experience.

Discover practical techniques for optimizing your audio setup, from using pink noise to verifying calibration sources like Dolby’s tools. Learn how room dimensions, symmetry, and monitor placement can significantly impact your sound. Plus, we dive into the fascinating benefits of using multiple subwoofers to achieve a perfectly balanced frequency response, a game-changing technique inspired by live sound engineering.

Finally, Mike shares his passion for vintage synthesizers with insights from his popular YouTube series, Mike’s on Mics. It’s a mix of nostalgia, tech, and practical wisdom you won’t want to miss!

What You'll Learn in This Episode:

• How to calibrate your speakers for optimal sound accuracy.
• The role of pink noise and how to use it in calibration.
• Why room dimensions and symmetry are crucial for frequency balance.
• The benefits of using multiple subwoofers for better sound quality.
• Tips on verifying calibration sources for reliable results.
• Insights into vintage synthesizers and the magic of Mike's YouTube series, Mike’s on Mics.

Listen to the Mikes on Mics podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gs0sDCKjTy4&t=135s

Got feedback? I’d love to hear from you! Click the SpeakPipe link to leave a review, share your social media handles or website, and get featured in a future episode:

https://www.speakpipe.com/InsideTheMixPodcast

Plus, one lucky reviewer will win a Starbucks voucher each month!

All About M.E. PODCAST

Welcome to the "All About M.E. Podcast ," the podcast where music meets the...

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Chapters

• 0:00 Speaker Calibration and Sound Accuracy
• 12:00 Optimising System With Pink Noise
• 27:00 Optimising Home Studio Speaker Placement
• 33:30 [Ad] All About M.E. PODCAST
• 34:14 (Cont.) Optimising Home Studio Speaker Placement
• 35:58 Optimising Low-End With Multiple Subs
• 41:08 The Power of Multiple Subs
• 45:32 Interactive Review and Shout Out

Transcript

Mike Dow: 0:00

Well, and so one little piece of information to kind of make me feel like I do know what I'm talking about. The next time you're at a concert, look up at their line arrays, right, and so they'll have a big tall line array and it kind of curves at the bottom of PA speakers and if you look just behind the line array there's a bunch of other boxes, kind of fatter, and they're about five feet behind the, uh, the main line array. Those are all the subs, uh, and they're exactly five feet behind, kind of like what I was saying. Um, and they're using multiple subs to even out the um, even out the. So it's not just one sub, it's just a bunch of them that uh, uh, even out the um, even out the. So it's not just one sub, it's just a bunch of them that uh, even out that frequency response. Way down low you're listening to the inside the mix podcast with your host, mark matthews hello and welcome to the inside the next podcast.

Marc Matthews: 0:59

I'm mark matthews, your host, musician, producer and mix and mastering engineer. You've come to the right place if you want to know more about your favourite synth music artists, music engineering and production, songwriting and the music industry. I've been writing, producing, mixing and mastering music for over 15 years and I want to share what I've learnt with you. Hey folks, welcome to the Inside the Mix podcast and a welcome back if you are a returning listener or viewer, if you're watching this on YouTube Today I say today, or rather in this episode it is today I guess I'm thrilled to introduce my guest, mike Dow, one half of the podcast, mike's on Mike's. Mike, how are you? Thank you for joining me today.

Mike Dow: 1:43

Doing well. Thanks for asking. How are you? Thank you for joining me today. Doing well. Thanks for asking. How are you?

Marc Matthews: 1:46

I'm okay. I'm okay. I was just saying off air that I'm at the tail end of a cold which seems to be sweeping its way through the UK at the moment, and I'm better now. I'm better now. There might be a few episodes this is coming out in December a few episodes in November where it sounds like I've got. My voice is deeper than it usually is. Purely because of that, maybe I should go. What's that? What's that you can move into headspace. There's the headspace app where you provide and you talk to people and they fall asleep. Hopefully they don't do that with the podcast, but like a soothing voice when it gets deeper. Yeah, put myself out of a job there If I'm saying that when I'm talking, people are falling asleep.

Marc Matthews: 2:22

Anyway, so a bit about Mike. He's a seasoned audio expert who's been in love with amps, speakers and the magic of sound since he started lugging gear around at the age of 12. Man, I've been there. After nearly four decades. He's still just as hooked. So today, or rather in this episode, we're diving into speaker calibration and why the idea of a flat speaker may not be as ideal as it seems. Now. This is a topic that I've not covered on the podcast before. So this is new territory. Again, we're doing this a lot in the podcast in this latter part of 2024, what with Dolby Atmos and now with speaker calibration. So it's exciting stuff. So I thought if we could kick off with the basics. So it's exciting stuff. So I thought if we could kick off with the basics. For those who might be new to the concept, could you tell our audience what speaker calibration is and why it's so critical for achieving accurate sound in a mix?

Mike Dow: 3:17

Oh gosh, it's so hard. It's going to be hard to do without visuals. But let's go on a little journey together. Let's do it so you're sitting the first time you listen, to, say, a record or a CD or whatever. You're sitting in front of your parents' stereo and you're listening and at some point, if you're like me, you wonder hey is this what it sounded like when they were actually mixing this?

Mike Dow: 3:45

Is this what it sounded like when the guys mastered it at the recording studio? What did it? How? How is my experience here in my living room different from that? And like, how far off is it? I can certainly hear all the instruments but like, uh, how clear are they? And what is right? What's correct? Um, so, uh, you start with well, you have to have a signal. You have to have a signal that's known to everybody, um, that that is sort of agreed upon, as this is, this is your baseline, um, and so a lot of people use what they call pink noise.

Mike Dow: 4:26

And if you have pink noise, that is correctly made, pink noise playing through a system and this system can be anything, it can be from start to finish soup to nuts from your CD player. I'm dating myself there all the way out to your speakers, but also including your room, because your room is part of the system ahead of myself here. But a lot of people don't really understand is, when you make a sound with a speaker in a room, it's a lot like plucking a string on a guitar and that the string is the speaker and the guitar, uh, the resonating body of that guitar I'm talking about an acoustic guitar, but also electric, but mainly acoustic is the room, so the idea that you're activating all of the fundamentals of that room and the reverberation and everything that happens within that. So where am I going with all this? If you look at pink noise in an electric system and you're just electronically coming in through a mixer or whatever and you come out and everything's perfect, then it looks flat. So what does flat? What does that mean? Well, that means that you're looking at one end of a picture, one end of a two-dimensional space. You know xy graph, and along the x-axis is your frequencies, and you're starting on the left side with 20 hertz and on the right side all the way at the end at 20,000 hertz. That's because the us as humans, that's kind of where we can hear things and then the up and down, the y-axis is obviously the magnitude, sometimes measured in decibels, and that is a flat line.

Mike Dow: 6:38

If you're looking at it electronically, if your pink noise is actually how it's supposed to be, so you would think, well, golly, this is an easy one. Mike, this will be a very short conversation. You want your speaker to look like that when you're playing it in your room. And I will tell you, I've done it and it sounds horrible. The highs are way too much, the lows are not enough. And, um, one thing that really made me realize that this is, that I wasn't just going crazy, is uh, there is a standard, and it's a standard in the motion picture industry, or the Society of Motion Picture Television Engineers.

Mike Dow: 7:29

Some people call that SMPTE pink noise from one of their channels the left main or the center or the right main or the surround and you put a measurement microphone within the room, the theater. In this case it is not flat. In fact, they don't want it to be flat. Now, throughout the mid-range and I say mid-range, from about 160 Hz all the way up to about 2,000 Hz, it is flat, but at about 2,000 Hz it tends to drop off, and then it drops off even more at the I want to say 10k, 12k I'd have to look at it and then even down below it drops off a little bit. Um, now, whenever you add in your lfe, your low frequency effects, or some people in the music world would call that their sub um, it's about 10 decibels higher and it's from 160 hertz on down to 20 Hertz. So you have kind of this roller coaster looking curve. That is the standard curve for every theater in the world and it was kind of crazy for me to see that it's called the X curve.

Mike Dow: 8:57

So, um, you take that and you're like, okay, well then, oh, mike, what is the standard for left and right stereo for studios? And I'm going to say there's not one. In fact there's a whole class, or I guess not even just a class, but really a whole industry, of what they call system optimization. So, say, you go to I'm going to choose Dave Matthews because he's one of my favorites Go to one of his concerts. You're going to have a guy that all he does is set up the system, the PA, the PA, uh, with his favorite little curve for the concert. So it's not. When you go to a Dave Matthews concert, I guarantee you it is not flat. Now, what does it look like? It depends, um, but usually it's a rough guesstimation of that X curve and that's what I've seen. You're rolling off your highs a little bit and you have a lot in the lows, depending on what kind of music it is. But I hope that's not too much information and that it came across. Okay, you have any questions?

Marc Matthews: 10:20

Yeah, that's a fantastic and very, very comprehensive description, very, very good, and I really liked the use of the guitar and the string to sort of um depict or describe how the sound works in a in in a in a studio, because it's going to color the sound, isn't it how you're treated, how your studio is treated? It's going to have color on that and you see that a lot in discussion online.

Marc Matthews: 10:45

With regards to one of the first things you should really think about when it comes to production and mixing in particular is, before you go out and buy xyz plugins and whatever, you should probably think about your room itself, because that's going to have a color and it's going to color your sound. So what you mentioned there about the guitar and the guitar string and the resonating body is a really, really good way of sort of imagining what the sound from the speakers is doing in what is essentially your studio setup, which I think is great. One question I do have you mentioned pink noise?

Marc Matthews: 11:18

being created correctly. What is the counter to that? What experience have you got of incorrect pink noise?

Mike Dow: 11:28

So I haven't tested it lately, but probably about five years ago. I'm in Pro Tools and they have the built-in signal generator so you can go to their little audio suite drop-down and within there you can make tone and pink noise and all sorts of other things. So you think, oh, this is great, I'll just grab some of this pink noise, and it's got to be flat because you know this is Pro Tools. They just I'll just grab some of this pink noise and it's gotta be flat because you know this is pro tools.

Marc Matthews: 11:58

They know what they're doing.

Mike Dow: 12:00

Um, so I did that, uh, when I was going to, uh, tune a room, that's when we were optimize a system for a room for for our sound mixing. That that's kind of what I did at the time I was working there, so I did it, and then we went and measured it again afterwards and it was weird.

Mike Dow: 12:23

And so, long story short, I dug through. Hey well, how come this doesn't match what I did in Pro Tools? Anyway, uh, I ended up measuring the pink noise straight out of Pro Tools and it is supposed to be a flat line, but it is not. It looks like uh, I don't even know how to describe it it's just a bumpy, a caterpillar with maybe about three backs. A Caterpillar with maybe about three backs. Um, it just kind of Ooh all the way. I don't even know how to it, but it was not correct, and so I thought oh well, then I can't trust anybody.

Mike Dow: 13:07

Um, so one of the ways that you correct for, uh, a room, if you're going to optimize a room or a system or PA or whatever, is you usually stick a DSP, digital signal processor on the output of, uh, whatever you're mixing out of. Now can you do it in in your board? Uh, on your master outs? Uh, yeah, you can. And then you got to remember that you don't want those to go to your final record and you have to keep track of all this stuff, whereas if you keep these two things separate, it costs a little more money, but then you never really have to think about it. Once it's corrected for your room, you don't have to worry. Oh wait, I mixed it, but I forgot to bypass the EQ that was on my final output, because some people will do it in the DAW. There's some plugins that will let you do that, but you know, it's always a tradeoff.

Mike Dow: 14:06

So, anyways, these digital signal processors as well. They have pink noise generators in them, and London Blue 100s are a pretty well-known digital signal processor and their pink noise is great. It, uh, it is, I would say, near perfect, um, and even the pink noise that comes straight from Dolby, their main pink noise wave file that you can download. If you look hard enough, I don't think it's perfect, but it's real close. And so then the question is well, hey, mike, how do you know what's perfect and what are you measuring? Maybe your measuring device is wrong. Well, it may be, but the measuring device that I use is uh is a combination of hardware and software, but it's. The software is driven by a company, uh, called rational acoustics makes smart software S, m, a, a, r, t, and it lets you measure not only the spectrum but the magnitude. That one's a harder, it lets you measure a lot of things.

Marc Matthews: 15:22

Yeah, yeah.

Mike Dow: 15:24

Mainly the spectrum is what we care about, especially when we're system optimizing for theaters. So back to the DSPs. So Blue 100's good Pro Tools is bad, and then Biamp makes an. The DSPs so Blue 100's good Pro Tools is bad, and then Biamp makes an amazing DSP. But their pink noise is not correct. They have the same kind of caterpillar-y caterpillar-y humps in their pink noise as well.

Mike Dow: 15:53

And so the lesson here isn't like oh, are these guys? Do they not know what they're doing or do? No, it's none of that, it has everything to do with just check. Check what you're doing first. Um, make sure that the pink noise that you're using whether it's a wave file somebody gave you measure it with your, your measuring device first. Then you know, just confirm that's.

Marc Matthews: 16:18

That's the advice that I have about big noise yeah, so you, you really want to check the source is reputable, ideally, and if you get it from somewhere, like you mentioned there about dolby, for example, yeah you'd like to think that is a reputable saying that avid would you would like to think would be a reputable saying that avid you would like to think would be a reputable source.

Mike Dow: 16:37

But have you got any reason?

Marc Matthews: 16:38

why you think it might be that it's not quite. I'll put you on the spot here a bit why it's not quite. Is it an afterthought? Is it something that they just you think they haven't put much care and attention into?

Mike Dow: 16:49

So, yeah, sure, I'll shoot from the gut on this with zero research, on this with zero, zero research. But yeah, I, if, if I had to guess, uh, I would say that maybe, um, the software that they wrote to create the pink noise was written a long time ago when, um, maybe they didn't have as powerful processors and they, they said rough guesstimation, who's going to check this? And it just kind of lived with them forever through all the versions up to now. That's what I would guess.

Marc Matthews: 17:57

Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? I say I use it. I use Logic Pro as a staple DAW and I do use the pink, the the I say I use it there.

Marc Matthews: 18:04

I use logic pro as a staple, uh daw, and I do use the pink noise there from time to time, but I've got a separate pink noise file that I use. I cannot remember where I got it from, um, but I'm fairly confident it was a reputable source. But so when I've done the calibration in my studio here, um, I've used that and um, I've got good results out of it. But I know exactly what you mean. I have heard and I've seen different things online. That's the thing with, I think, with the amount of resources available online. I remember when I was doing my degree and when you're getting references, you're always told make sure it's from a reputable source.

Marc Matthews: 18:39

So I think, it's across the board. Isn't it about what you do? You kind of want to make sure it's that phrase again. Isn't it about what you do? You kind of want to make sure it's that phrase again, isn't it Reputable source.

Mike Dow: 18:45

The great thing here is, if you're using smart or some software to measure it, then you can check it immediately. You can just pull the file straight in and go ah well, that's weird, that's not straight and flat like it's supposed to be. Or oh great, okay, that's good. Weird, that's not straight and flat like it's supposed to be. Or oh great, okay, that's good. And you, I mean, it doesn't matter if you know some, some kid off the street made it, or if you got it from dolby themselves or simpty themselves. Uh, as long as it's straight. When you're going in that you know that that's the signal you need to be using coming out and for our audience listening.

Marc Matthews: 19:23

Are you checking that in sort of a frequency analyzer?

Mike Dow: 19:26

you chuck in right, yes, the spectrum the spectrum analyzer in smart uh, lets you see that uh x, y plot that we imagined earlier, with the uh 20 hertz on the on the left of the screen and the 20 kilohertz on the right of the screen, and then the magnitude of the up and down y part of the axis, axis, yeah fantastic audience listening.

Marc Matthews: 19:49

I, uh, I've been using a frequency analyzer I found for free of late, so this is a bit of a plug here and it's by tdr and it's called the tdr prism, which I highly encourage. If you want to get one, uh, for free and try it out. Uh, their tdr nova is great. Tdr katalnikov compressor is great as well, but prism is a fantastic frequency spectrum analyzer how, which way you want to call it. And, um, do go check that one out. There's just a little shout out for for that one there. Uh, this is great stuff. But, as I say, this is totally new for the podcast. So, um, I've done calibration and bits and pieces, but I've never gone into the sort of detail which is great. So I've got another question for you here.

Mike Dow: 20:27

Let me jump on the back thing that you just said, though. If you're looking for a free frequency analyzer, another good one is REW, which I think stands for Room EQ Wizard, and it's been open source for a long time, and hobbyists and home recording studios and hi-fi people people who really get into their hi-fi they use this a lot and it has a lot of the same things that Smart has in it, but it runs a little slower and it doesn't have all the bells and whistles, but that is definitely one that people have looked to use as well. Sorry to interrupt.

Marc Matthews: 21:06

No, no, go ahead, because that's what I use myself. Rew when I take room measurements, and it is a fantastic piece of kit. If you do do it. There is a tutorial, a set of tutorial videos which I highly encourage you to watch, because it can be it can be a bit of a steep learning curve to get it set up if I remember rightly when I was doing it. So audience listening rew, but make sure you watch the tutorial videos for it don't go in there blind because, um, I think you'll lose faith quite quickly, uh.

Marc Matthews: 21:35

But yeah, I, I think it's fantastic. You will need a measurement mic to go with it as well.

Mike Dow: 21:39

I think I've got a.

Marc Matthews: 21:41

Beyerdynamic one. Let's round it somewhere.

Mike Dow: 21:44

So let's go on a little tangent on measurement mics.

Marc Matthews: 21:47

Oh yes.

Mike Dow: 21:49

Because it's all about the signal coming back into your computer. So it really doesn't matter. Because when I had the training on this, we actually hired the smart guys to come out and and, uh, show us how to use their software. And so it really they. He said you can buy a hundred dollar versions, you can buy five thousand dollar microphones.

Mike Dow: 22:13

Earth I have a couple of earthworks in 23s which are pretty nice, uh, and they come with little calibration files because they're not perfectly flat. So there's these files that you add to them that says, ah, this is what the corrections are, so that it will read perfectly flat. Um, if, if you are going through your entire system I know, I, I it sounds like I'm contradicting myself. You don't want it. You just said you don't want a perfectly flat. But let's just say you start with your perfectly flat pink, what you do comes out of your speakers and for some reason you have EQ'd them perfectly flat, then this microphone in that room would probably read perfectly flat. So that's what I mean.

Mike Dow: 22:56

But those are earthworks. But then you can get your hands on some Behringers or personas or whatever they're like a hundred, a little over a hundred dollars, and the thing is they're not that much different. And, that being said, uh, I bought a couple of very cheap personas uh reference mics and I, um, because I had the uh earthworks microphones, I used those to create correction files for the. Basically, I said all right, this one's supposed to be perfectly flat. All right, let's take this one that's unknown and they're, I'm never going to get a correction file for it, and what should it be? And in software smart, you can invert, uh, what you're getting from it and then you use that as the correction file for that particular microphone.

Marc Matthews: 23:49

So you, you can use one expensive microphone sorry, to make it look like you have lots of really expensive microphones, if that makes sense very good uh, stuff there with it, with the measurement microphones and, whilst you were, whilst you were talking there, I love the fact that you created your own what is essentially a calibration file, uh, which is so cool. Um, the the microphone I always mention, it's not bad. I make it's beringer or beringer ecm 8000 yeah, that's the one I've got and it's just a cheap it does the job.

Marc Matthews: 24:20

And I managed. It took me a while to find the calibration file on the internet. I had to do some digging for that and make sure I didn't download it from some dodgy website.

Mike Dow: 24:27

Yeah.

Marc Matthews: 24:28

But I managed to get it.

Mike Dow: 24:30

Well, and I started a story and I didn't really finish it. So I bought these little Presonus microphones and I made a correction files for them. But I want to say I bought. I bought four of them. That's what. I did and I put them all in and I I turned on the pink noise and everything and four of them. They looked pretty close, they were pretty similar and they were pretty similar to the earthworks and one of them was way off.

Mike Dow: 24:58

And so I posted to my little group on the facebook and I was like one of these things doesn't look like the other. And immediately I got a guy from personas. He's like hey, please send that back and we'll just send you a new one. So every once in a while, the cheap guys uh yeah, that's quite scary, isn't it?

Marc Matthews: 25:18

because you think to yourself you get this microphone, I think you can get it with any hardware. Ultimately, you are at the mercy of the engineering that's gone into it and for the most part, you like to think it's done correctly, or they're. The idea is that they perceive they've done it correctly, but we're only human, like if that's being manually put together we get exactly.

Mike Dow: 25:37

I just imagine somebody do you right, somebody's on the assembly line, you know, while that microphone's being made, they sneezed and that microphone didn't get the resistor that it needed or something you know, and it just snuck on by yeah I still have that microphone because I know what it looks like and I'm like gosh whenever I need a drum recording and I want a little more low end than I should have, I'm going to use that microphone, you know.

Marc Matthews: 26:01

Yeah, I was just going to say there that it could result in you getting this incredible sounding microphone that sounds like it's so unique there's no other one out there like it, purely on the basis that someone's made an error, which is the wonders of music production in itself. You know, mike, I've got a question here that I'd like to move on to, sure, and it's with regards to calibration in a new space. So we've mentioned about pink noise and how we're using that to calibrate our speakers and whatnot. So what are some of the key factors you consider when calibrating, uh, your setup? You're in a new space. How does room size, layouts or even the type of monitors you're using impact your calibration approach?

Mike Dow: 26:41

okay. So, um, there, there are people out there who are much better than this, than me, but the I'm gonna go back to the doldy guys and they say, um, that pointing your speakers and speaker placement, I think, is the most important thing. And then there's three other things after that which I've I've kind of forgotten, but I can tell you what I go through is I look at the space and are the walls hard? Um, is there any treatment on the walls and the ceiling and the floor? Uh, and how, um, symmetrical is the space? So, let's say you had a room that's 10 feet tall by 10 feet long by 10 feet wide. Well then, whatever frequency happens at 10 feet is going to just build up like a mother in that room.

Mike Dow: 27:38

And there's no amount of EQ you can do that's going to get rid of it. So, looking at the space as, again, a chamber that reverberates, like going back to that guitar body, just kind of think about, okay, the more something that is less that's not sympathetic to a certain frequency, so they're used to and you can go down rabbit holes with this. So there's people who say, ah, here's the golden ratio for rooms. You know, and just Google it. And and if you can start from scratch by building a room, uh, that has different dimensions for the length, width and height, um, then you know, go, go look it all up on on the Googles. They'll tell you all the things you need to know about, uh, avoiding, um, avoiding building up certain frequencies.

Mike Dow: 28:41

But the main deal there is just, even if it's 10 by 10 by 10, that's the worst case scenario. Or 12 by 12 by 12, if they're all the same, but you also don't want to do a double or a half. So if it's 10 by 10 by 20, that's just as bad. 10 by 10 by 30, you know, just make sure that they're all kind of different yeah, you kind of want an asymmetrical room there, don't you?

Marc Matthews: 29:04

you want the different measurements on the on the length, width and height to to help with that right and yeah, I've been every.

Marc Matthews: 29:12

anytime I've gone to have a look at a studio premises, it's the first thing I look at is the the length, height and width of the room, and I don't want them to be equal. So a few questions with regards to placement in a room, with regards to the monitor position say, you're in a rectangular room, is it wise to put the monitors facing the widest length of the room, if that makes sense?

Mike Dow: 29:38

Typically, that's what I've seen. Now it's all different, right, there may be a reason for you to do it the other way Because, let's face it, so I work at a university and studios are not really made to teach people. You know it's not a classroom, but you kind of want it to be that way. So there may be a reason that you want to build a room that, uh, can house a bunch of kids, uh, students, sorry, uh and in kind of a wide sort of format and not in the studio sort of format. It's because you know what are you doing at the end of the day. But let's just say, for argument's sake, we really did, we were, we didn't care about students, and we're, uh, we just want the best studio ever made. It would probably be, uh, along the length, what you're talking about. You want your speakers shooting down the longest way of the room, and that's the way I've seen it done.

Marc Matthews: 30:46

I don't know that I've really put a ton of thought into why, but just about all over the world, that's kind of how it is yeah, and it's what I've researched whenever I've uh, look gone, done the rabbit hole of sort of room setups and whatnot and with regards to the speaker position, and then have them, the you're the um, the listener at a third of the length of the room and I mean, I was on the floor with tape measures working out to the nth degree in terms of doing that.

Marc Matthews: 31:15

One question I do have for you, and I see, uh, a lot I say I say a lot. I see pictures online of people who have home studios and obviously, with regards to home studios, you are at the mercy, the limits of what space you have but monitors positioned with the backs directly against the wall and you, I see that happen a lot and my understanding is that you don't want that. You need to have space between the rear of the speak, the monitor and the wall. What is your, what are your thoughts on that?

Mike Dow: 31:44

so what? What's happening there is your, when you put the monitor closer to the wall, you're, you're adding, uh, you're adding a bunch of low end. That's that's kind of the deal, that that's happening there.

Mike Dow: 32:00

And and you know, experiment, experiment with this.

Mike Dow: 32:03

Take your monitors and put them out in the middle of the room and kind of listen and see what they sound like.

Mike Dow: 32:10

And if you, if you had them on wheels just to wheel them around, just to see what happens, even better, you know, play with it.

Mike Dow: 32:16

See what happens when you move that speaker monitor closer to the wall or closer to the corner, uh, and so the basically, the more flat surface, big flat surfaces that you put behind a speaker, the more the low end is going to build up. And so let's say you bought a real cheap speaker and you're like man, the low end, it really it, it's, it's just not there, like, uh, you know, 60 Hertz and below it's just uh, it really needs a lot of help. In that case, maybe it's a good idea to move closer to the wall or closer to a corner or closer to the floor corner, where you actually have, because when you go to a corner that's two walls, but then if you go to the down in the floor corner, well that's three walls and you're really boosting bass at that point, right? So it's sort of the poor man's way to EQ your room by pushing your speakers forward and back and you're sort of tuning your speaker to your room in a very analog way.

Marc Matthews: 34:09

Yeah, it's almost quite. I hate to use the term, but it's quite a crude way of EQing your room, isn't it? Oh yeah, way of echoing your room, isn't it? Oh yeah, but I think for the audience listening you also need to be wary of. Again, this goes back to what I said earlier about coloring your mix with regards to your. So I think a key thing would be to run really high red, high quality recordings through it, so you have an idea of what it should sound like, right, and before you start start working on your own mixes through that.

Marc Matthews: 34:38

But we're approaching the end here and I've got you know these do go very fast I find these chats. So I've got a question and I think this is particularly useful for our audience listening and it kind of develops what I asked just then. Really, for our listeners working in home studios or smaller spaces we've mentioned this do you have any practical tips on how they can start calibrating their speakers effectively without breaking the bank? So we've already mentioned about the sort of crude method of EQing. Maybe we could rephrase this question with this what would be?

Marc Matthews: 35:10

you've just set up your studio what would be the single most important thing you would do in terms of treatment or positioning to kick-start your calibration treatment treatment's going to be.

Mike Dow: 35:24

You're going to throw some things on the wall. You're going to throw it up there and and hope it sticks right, and like people are going to do what they're going to do and you kind of have what you have. If you can treat them, great, yeah, and same with speaker placement. At some point it's sort of like you're kind of stuck with what you got. Now you can move them around and try different things, but at some point it's like well, this was the extra room in my house and that's what I have. But if I had anything to say uh to to start with, I'd say get yourself a good set of near fields. Um, if, if that's what you're going to mainly be mixing through, get a sub.

Mike Dow: 36:07

Get a sub, because your near fields are not going to be able to handle that low end. And when you do get a sub, you're going to need to time align it with that low end. Now, and what this means? I'm going to say something that the guys usually say uh, who, who tune these? Is you push the sub back about four or five feet because at about 160 Hertz, that sort of puts in phase uh, where, where your crossover would be, which is about, you know, about 160 hertz, 125 hertz. You can go a little lower than that if you want, but that's that's again where, where movie theaters do it, and so it's not a bad idea.

Mike Dow: 36:54

So I say, push it back. Well, you're like, hey, I have this tiny room that I'm mixing in. I don't have room, I don't have five feet to push a sub back. What are you talking about, mike? Well, that's where your DSP comes into play. If you delay something, five milliseconds, that is the equivalent of moving it back in space about five feet, because sound moves at about one foot per uh. One millisecond is about uh, how, how far uh sound would? Golly, I just messed that all up. Think about one foot and that's one millisecond. Think about one foot, and that's one millisecond. That's the best way to think of it. So when you move it back five feet, then you've just delayed it five milliseconds. There we go.

Marc Matthews: 37:47

Getting a sub. I highly recommend that and I appreciate the audience. You might not be in a position where your neighbors would appreciate you having a sub, but it does make a big difference. I find Years ago, when I first got a sub, I was just like why haven't I done this before? In terms of everything that I've done thereafter, I remember when I was setting it up and I was crawling around on the floor moving it about, doing various tests at 80 to 85 dB, timelining everything.

Marc Matthews: 38:18

It took a bit of while to dial it in and get it right, but it's really worth doing.

Mike Dow: 38:22

Yeah, yeah, I agree, and that's a whole other rabbit hole. When you start trying to make a tighter low end with your sub, you're going to end up with bass traps and that kind of thing. But again, the Googles, they have all the answers, so going to end up with base traps and that kind of thing.

Marc Matthews: 38:38

But again the googles, they have all the answers, so good luck. Yeah, um, there is a youtube channel and I cannot remember the name of it, but the chap's name is jesco and I'm really trying to get him on the podcast because, uh, I love his work. But that audience listening, if you want to get some information on how to treat, set up your room, just google jesco room treatment or something along those lines.

Mike Dow: 38:59

J-e-s-c-o, wow okay, that's good, really really good, yeah, there's.

Marc Matthews: 39:04

He's got freebies as well. So with regards to um walkthroughs and other bits and pieces, but yeah, as I said, I'm trying to get him on the podcast and hopefully in 2025 it'd be good follow-up to this one. But, yeah, a really good resource for the audience if they want to go down this road.

Mike Dow: 39:19

One more fun thing about subs this is a story that I have. It's actually happened to me is I've heard that more subs are better. So if you can get a couple of subs, or three or four and they're working together and not against each other, then that will flatten out your frequency response of a room.

Mike Dow: 39:42

So I'm over at somebody's house and I'm tuning their room and they have two subs. Well, it's weird because they have a place for one sub in the corner over here and then the opposite corner like uh, completely diagonal is where they want the other sub. And I'm like, what are you? Even no, there's. And so I'm trying to figure it out and I'm listening to it and it's just weird. And then I get to the point where I'm thinking, wait a second, what happens if I take this other sub in this other corner and I flip its polarity 180 degrees?

Mike Dow: 40:18

So it's, it's pulling, when the other one's pushing and the person in the middle is just getting all of the pull, push together. It's kind of like having a having a train engine on the front and the back of of a bunch of cars right and where the cars are the air in the room. So I did that and it flattened out and it sounded amazing. So, kind of by accident and kind of by trial and error, we made a real. We turned that room into a really nice sounding room by using two subs, one to push and one to pull, and putting the listener right in the middle.

Marc Matthews: 41:02

Wow, I would have never have thought to have more than one sub, because in my head and you go with the thought process of it's a sub, it's one, you know it's it it's always referred to as an lfe or a sub. So as soon as you add another one in my head I'm like god, this is, this is crazy two subs like uh, madness, like what I left him right, um, but now you've explained it.

Marc Matthews: 41:18

It does, and I think that's the beauty of music, isn't it? You can, you can stumble across these um not fixes. Well, I guess it would be a fix in a way, because it's it's flattening out the room. But you stumble across these things and you're like, oh, this is amazing, I never would have thought of doing it, which is the the beauty of of production in itself, you know.

Mike Dow: 41:35

Well, and so one little piece of information to kind of make me feel like I do know what I'm talking about. The next time you're at a concert, look up at their line arrays, right, and so they'll have a big tall line array and it's kind of curves at the bottom of PA speakers, and if you look just behind the line array there's a bunch of other boxes, kind of fatter, and they're about five feet behind the, uh, the main line array. Those are all the subs, uh, and they're exactly five, five feet behind, kind of like what I was saying. Um, and they're using multiple subs to even out the um, even out the. So it's not just one sub, it's just a bunch of them that uh, even out that frequency response way down low I never thought about that.

Marc Matthews: 42:28

I never thought that. I think live music oftentimes is a really good place. If you're ever unsure what you should be doing in a studio, just think of a live setting and I've used this analogy before with regards to, like, mixing and and pan positions of instruments you're thinking okay. If you're unsure where to put an instrument, just visualize the last gig you went to and think about where they're positioned on the stage that's right and in terms of how back and far back they are, in particular as well and also mixing is yeah, yeah, and mixing as well.

Marc Matthews: 42:54

I remember I had mike exeter on the show a couple years ago and he said like one of the best ways to learn really get to teeth your teeth into mixing is to mix a live performance.

Mike Dow: 43:02

It's a really good place to start. Yeah, that's always a good time.

Marc Matthews: 43:05

Yeah, yeah, I remember doing that. I did it a few times. I was like, yeah, I prefer being in the studio, um, but it's, it's good. I mean there are many. I think what you mentioned there about the subs just highlights that you can learn a lot from live sound and then take that into the studio, which I think yeah it's a really really good advice and the next gig I go to, I'm going to keep out.

Marc Matthews: 43:24

I never look for the subs. I always look at the line arrays and I'm like, oh, that's great. But I never think about what, what the uh, what the subs are doing behind. But, mike, this has been brilliant, absolutely great stuff. As I say, we never had this conversation, topic conversation on the podcast before, so it's been great. I think this is an opportunity now. Uh, we're doing you a disservice if I didn't give you the opportunity just to explain to our listeners a bit about Mike's on Mike's. I always trip myself up on that and your show, what you're doing there yeah, so, uh, it's just uh.

Mike Dow: 43:55

We started it on youtube and I think we're going to put it on x? Uh. So mike nimix and I uh basically sit around and talk about old synthesizers and music production and we, we talk to people like you you were on it and uh, and people you know, it's just uh. It's a good time to kind of uh, hit the nostalgia, but also, hey, what are you doing these days with those synthesizers? And it's not much different from yours, although yours is kind of more. This is how you do it and ours is kind of like back in the day we did it.

Marc Matthews: 44:32

Yeah, yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Yeah, it's great though, audience, do go check it out. I will put a link in the episode show notes. So do go check out mike's, on mike's, and and uh, give them a follow as well on on youtube or subscribe whatever it's called. And uh, yeah, go check that out. And the episode that I'm on I believe promotion for myself here uh would have dropped because this episode is going to drop in december, so that one would have been around already. Maybe I'll put a link to that one in there as well yeah, I think it comes out november.

Mike Dow: 45:02

Your episode is gonna release november 15th ah, cool.

Marc Matthews: 45:06

So yeah, it would have been out for almost a month wonderful uh, mike, as I say it's. Yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show and a big thank you.

Mike Dow: 45:17

Well, thanks for having me. This was great.

Marc Matthews: 45:20

Indeed, I know audience are going to get a lot out of this one. So, mike, I'll leave you to carry on the rest of your day and I'll catch up with you soon. Folks, before you go, I want to hear from you, I want to know your favorite episode of the Inside the Mix podcast. Alternatively, you could just review this episode, click the SpeakPipe link in the episode description and you can record an audio message detailing your favorite episode and why, and also give yourself a shout out. All you need is your mobile phone. You don't need a SpeakPipe account. You don't need to download an app. It's just like sending me an audio message via WhatsApp or whatever messaging platform you use. As soon as I get your audio, you will be entered in that month's draw to win a Starbucks coffee voucher, and if you don't like coffee, just give it to someone else and pretend that you bought it for them. All you need to do is click that speak pipe link and send me an audio message reviewing this episode or a previous episode and give yourself a shout out.