Since I haven't blogged in a long time, I will write a post for every major topic that I have been exploring the past few weeks, which is not necessarily in order of when I learned the topic.
First topic:
Unsurprisingly, both the speakers one uses and the room in which one listens back to recorded audio will have an effect on the sound of the end-product.
But even music studios thought to be perfectly calibrated are not able to play back the music as it was played and recorded in a sonically pleasing way; sometimes speakers can compound the problem by brightening, or increasing the low end of audio.
Problems with playback can be illuminated by using this trick: play the Steely Dan album, Aja, back in the room you are listening to your recordings, then play back your recordings. Then compare the two.
Aja, among other albums that are considered to be "audiophile" albums (those albums which excel in produced dynamics and recording clarity because of superior recording and engineering) are said to be excellent calibrators with which to judge how your room will respond to a variety of different sounds. Thus, if you want to know if your room and speakers are fit for reproducing a sort of sound, play a record back which you consider to be excellently produced and compare it to what you are producing.
Don't stop there though. The trick can be taken a step further. If you want to know if your project is capturing the right sound, you can take the file of a song that captures a sound you want and drop it in your virtual work space and play it, and then play your song afterwards. Repeat until you have achieved the sound you are looking for.
Calibrating your musical world is important, because you may think something sounds awesome in your studio, but if the studio and your project file are not capable of playing back the records which you draw your influence from, your finished product could sound too bass heavy or too like there are too many high frequencies.
