Within music, we tend to link audio with vision, which may have stemmed from the association of seeing a band or orchestra perform in all their glory while enjoying listening to their musical talents at the same time.

In recent years, the music video generation has helped to continue the visual association with audio. However, I do feel that this focus, transferred into the world of audio engineering, has actually become rather detrimental to the way that we work, especially over the last decade as we work more in the advancing digital domain.

There are many sessions I have both witnessed and participated in where we are all guilty of obsessively watching (staring at!) the cursor glide across the screen of the Pro Tools or Logic Arrange page whilst listening back to a mix.

It is as if we feel that the colourful bars and pretty patterns of blocks from different instruments, takes and edits, are essential viewing to fully hear what is happening, as if to say, “how will I know when the second chorus starts or the string section comes in unless I’m staring at my beautiful Apple cinema screen representation?”

I personally feel that the focus on the screen whilst mixing really takes away from the way that you listen to the mix in several different ways. Firstly, when looking at the screen, especially when there is so much crammed onto the arrange page, it distances the mind from other thought processes like and distracts it from hearing the nuances of the audio. Also, like reading a book, the brain actually scans ahead of what you are looking at, so subconsciously you have already read/ looked ahead of where you are focusing. This means that your brain is already preparing for the blocks of instruments it’s seen are coming in within the next four bars. Will you really notice if the second verse starts at the right level and balance, if you are already pre-empting and expecting the rather ‘triumphant sounding’ brass section that you added yesterday? Possibly not.

The focus on the screen can also force us to become far too precise. I remember smiling to myself watching an engineer turning a channel fader up by 0.5dB.  I do not think  you are going to audibly notice that. If you were using a real console I doubt you would really turn something up by 0.5dB, if you were just listening to it rather than watching it.

Another big problem that comes with sitting and staring at the arrange page whilst listening to a mix is the position of the computer screen within your setup. Is your screen located in a place where you can see it clearly whilst staying in the ‘sweet spot’? Are you in the ideal listening position when at your screen?  Or are you, like in many set ups I see, located quite severely off centre and quite possibly at risk of encountering some phasing issues or sitting in a bass peak or trough? 

Listening to your mix in different parts of your room, or even outside the room, can be useful for detecting problem frequencies, but doing any major percentage of your listening off-axis cannot be helpful at all, and will make well balanced mixes a lot harder to achieve.
I want to start a mono sensory revolution. Let’s get back to focusing just on the sound and boycott the screens as much as possible when mixing. Just focus on the music and listen.

So I urge any guilty readers to come to your audio senses and try listening and mixing without staring at that beautiful arrange page with your carefully constructed edits, to come back into the sweet spot and mix in an easier positioned environment and not let the visual data override what your ears are actually hearing.