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Comment by 52-6F-62 | Hacker News Reader

I like the Tom Petty method—I'm interpreting here, and paraphrasing in my own format based on a longer discussion and probably mixing up some of this with other knowledge.

Mix— headphones

Master— monitors

Test— Toyota Corolla (Petty, said something like "just about everybody's gonna be listening in a Toyota"—they'd literally print a tape and run it out to someone's car)

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I laughed at the Toyota test, because there's a ton of truth in there. Got to test the mix on bad speakers to see if it translates...humbling, but necessary for a good mix. I do test in my car (coincidentally, it is a Corolla) as well :)

Isn't that the reason NS10's became popular as monitors, too? "If you can make it sound good on a pair of NS10's it'll sound good everywhere" being the mode†.

It's definitely sage advice!

† edit: Looks like I fell victim to hearsay. It's just something I'd heard so many times for so many years I assumed it was true, and it may be partly, but here's a great write up on the subject—tangential to the main thread: https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/yamaha-ns10-story

Yet another reason to want 24V or 48V systems to displace 12V systems. The base-model car amp is going to always use the battery voltage, due to the noise, the max volume is going to be high, and that means 2Ohm (or lower) speakers built for maximum dB/W (so often no crossover) with a single +12V rail.

I have a few rock CDs from the 90s (Dizzy up the Girl is one) that ar completely unlistenable in many cars; too bad Petty wasn't involved in mastering those.

It’s not that your car system is good or bad, the point is that you are very familiar with how other productions sound on it, making it a good reference system.

Yes and no. Your mix is never going to sound as crisp as it does in the studio (ideal listening conditions). Road noise + reverb off the glass + cheap speakers = not as good a listening environment. It's best to build familiarity of other commercial productions on your ideal setup (monitors/headphones/etc.) for referencing purposes earlier in the process, in my opinion. Good to reference on more 'everyday' listening systems, too (personal favorite, the iPhone speaker).

Aprocyphally, this goes back to The Rolling Stones who used to keep a single car speaker on the mixing desk to approximate how it would sound on a transistor radio of the time.

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