Checking your mix in your car

If you’re at the point where you start to wonder how far along you are with a mix of yours, I do strongly recommend taking it to your car and checking your mix while listening to it through your in-car speakers. Obviously you will not hear it in full resolution as on your studio speakers, but stay with me for a second.

That whole post assumes that you’re listening a lot to music while driving. Now, while this is obviously no studio environment you kind of get to know these speakers quite well and you know or have a feel for how a certain song sounds through these speakers. Like me, there are millions of people listening to songs in their car all the time so this is actually quite an interesting demographic to target while mixing as well – that said, a good mix should sound good on all speakers, but if you can help yourself with a few tricks, why not use them?

Anyways, checking your mix against other songs that you like and that you know very well in your car might show you certain aspects of your mix that might need fixing or changing while re-listening to your song in your studio environment. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about things like “There is a resonance at 380hz that I didn’t hear before” (but props to you if you can really hear that on your in-car speakers) – I’m talking about more broadband things like “Is the voice too loud?” or “Is the bass to flat?”.

Quick thing to do and it helps me quite a bit – as always: ymmv!