ABSTRACT
Monitoring is usually the biggest stumbling block in the path of most small-studio operators, but even the most laser-guided listening system can’t mix your tracks for you. It’ll tell you where you are, but it’s still your job to navigate to where you want to be. The basic difficulty is that listening is an inherently subjective activity. The same “mix in progress” will usually elicit a different reaction from every different listener (even from the same listener after a heavy lunch!), and different engineers will all suggest different processing tweaks. Unless small-studio engineers can make their mixing decisions more objective, they will always lack the confidence to direct mixing resources efficiently and successfully.
