My Superhuman Hearing

hi and welcome back I rubbed a viewer up the wrong way in a recent video stating that even I missed a subtle difference suggested it arrogance and a sense of superiority of course I meant that even I the guy that edited the video missed the visual clue I've never claimed to have superhuman hearing but it got me thinking about what we mean by the term good ears in a non-musical context having good ears would probably mean you heard something too quiet for others to notice you have a better dynamic range in other words or perhaps you'd say that to an adult that was still irritated by those mosquito high frequency oscillators designed to deter teenagers which I consider to be pure evil for the record but in that case you'd be able to hear a broader spectrum of frequencies in that regard and judging by my viewer stats most of you probably do better than me my hearing is I think pretty normal for someone well on the wrong side of 40. it's only remarkably good when you consider I spent a couple of decades mixing live sound and probably most of my viewers can hear higher frequencies than I can now if I could snap my fingers or take a pill or something that would restore my hearing back to how it used to be when I was a teenager I probably wouldn't hesitate if I could combine the hearing of a teenager with the knowledge and experience of a seasoned Pro that would surely be unbeatable right who knows maybe I would suddenly be able to hear that plastic sound of pro Q3 that people keep telling me about but what if there was another pill that would extend your hearing bandwidth by another couple of octaves and maybe also give you enough dynamic range to hear the difference when you turn on 117 bit mode in the kirchhoff EQ I wouldn't go near that pill how am I supposed to mix music for other human beings if I don't hear music like other human beings but let's consider that first pill again that just restored me back to my youthful Glory assuming that worked instantly it would initially have a profoundly negative effect on my mixes because presumably everything would seem incredibly bright and trebbly at first I've spent well over two decades getting used to not having teenage ears anymore it would take me some time to readjust and until I did all my mixes would be horribly dull and muddy sounding because I'd be far too sensitive to high frequencies this reminds me of a conversation I once had with a drum Tech on the same tour Paige discovered a new ear cleaning product that stripped all the wax out of his ears and was amazed at the clarity of his hearing as a result surely I as a front of house engineer would benefit from such ear cleaning so I could hear more clearly right I gave him the same advice I'm going to give you never clean the wax out of your ears with anything not earbuds not candles not chemicals it's there for a reason it protects you from infections and irritations and so on and bonus advice don't take medical advice from audio engineering YouTubers if you have a buildup of wax or any other concerns about your hearing go into your health professional but anyway even if it wasn't a really bad idea on medical grounds probably still a bad idea that super Clarity he referred to what was that exactly did he suddenly have extra dynamic range probably not extended bandwidth also unlikely more likely he was just hearing a lot more high frequencies like he turned up the treble on his hearing if I went out and mixed front of house for a band with freshly de-waxed ears and hypersensitivity to high frequencies I'd just create a dull sounding mix that no one wanted to listen to especially not for drunk people did you know that alcohol suppresses high frequencies in your hearing so I suppose I could have cleaned out my ears then compensated by getting rattassed before the show okay now what does it mean for a musician to say you have a good ear that's entirely different nothing to do with dynamic range or bandwidth and everything to do with musical training a good ear means you can identify intervals or chords by ear or pick up melodies by ear or transcribe a full mix by ear a good ear is something you develop through training and practice and it doesn't deteriorate with age in the same way that good ears do I had my ears trained musically from a young age and for three years I earned my living transcribing pop music into midi by ear so I think I can reasonably claim to have a good ear in musical terms okay then what about Golden Ears that's different again it suggests that you have a wall full of gold and platinum discs and a signature range of waves plugins but you've made a lot of money mixing popular music but you have an instinct for what will appeal to a mass Market I can't tick any of those boxes so I can't tell you whether Golden Ears are an instinct you're born with or a skill that can be developed it's interesting that most of the people in that category are older even than me suggesting that Golden Ears are not at all related to good ears but I think it's possible to not have Golden Ears but to nevertheless have a good ear as an engineer in a similar sense to a musician but rather than training your ears to recognize specific harmonies or cadences you train your ears to hear in terms of frequencies to consciously be aware of Dynamics to recognize the sound of too much compression or just as importantly too little compression this is definitely a skill that can be honed and developed and you guys have a big Advantage compared to me when I started out I trained my ears largely on the job mixing live sound in those days the gear was all analog and even the crappy affordable stuff was mostly prohibitively expensive I didn't have anything to practice with at home and I'd like to formally apologize now to all the bands whose live sound I probably butchered as a novice that was quite a difficult and stressful way to learn however I don't really recommend it a new lot have a much better option active ear training in your studio you've got way better tools than I had access to even your stock EQ is probably much better than the cheap live console eqs I learned on so pick a daily frequency then spend a little time eq'ing your favorite reference tracks boost your frequency of the day and listen to what happens which parts get louder how does that frequency change the feel of the mix toggle the EQ on and off and focus on how the mix changes now try cutting instead what does it feel like when there's too little of that frequency keep toggling the EQ on and off and keep switching between cutting and boosting so your ears don't adjust themselves and you keep hearing the change from the EQ then the next day pick a different frequency even just five or ten minutes a day of this will be super beneficial in my opinion and will help you to progress much faster than I did with only passive ear training on the job if you want to be really hardcore also spend a few minutes doing the same thing but with pink noise I spent quite a lot of time eq'ing pink noise as a live engineer trying to flatten out the frequency response of PA boxes or monitor wedges I wasn't doing it to drain my hearing but that was probably the result nevertheless but probably more important to use good reference mixes turn them down first of course so you've got Headroom for your boosts quite a few people asked me why I didn't mention Pro q3's Collision detection feature When comparing it to the kierhof EQ in case you don't know it can make the interface glow red at frequencies that are also prominent in other instances of the plugin to warn you of potential clashes I didn't mention it because honestly I forgot all about it I don't use it myself when I've had it active it's often glowed at me when I wasn't hearing a problem I don't trust it I trust my ears maybe this is a helpful feature while you're still learning I don't know though perhaps it's equally likely that you'll rely on it as a crutch whatever train your ears until you forget that feature exists because you have no need for it that's my advice and it's the single best thing you can do to improve as a mix engineer then of course you also need to train your ears to hear compression that one's a bit trickier reference mixes aren't so helpful as they're usually already compressed and limited plus it's not enough to just use full mixes compression reacts very differently on individual channels and you need to tune your ears into that as well so I suggest pulling up one of your own projects an old mix or a work in progress either way is fine and maybe do a save as so you don't mess up your current mix now pick a daily compressor or if you're using something like Pro C2 pick a compressor Style and stick it on the mix bus for starters smash that mix bus way too hard with a ton of gain reduction until the change in sound is super obvious and easy to hear and play around with the attack and release controls and whatever other parameters may be available and listen to how the mix changes as a result then turn that compressor off load one on your drum bus instead and repeat the process then your guitar bus your base your vocal make yourself intimately familiar with how that compressor responds with extreme settings on a variety of different material the next day pick a different compressor rinse and repeat when you've worked through all the compressor options you have go back to the first one and you'll probably find you don't have to squash things as hard to hear the effects the more familiar you become with the sound of extreme over compression the better you'll get at hearing much more subtle versions of that you'll find it becomes easier to recognize when you've pushed a compressor a little too far and also easier to recognize when a part would benefit from some of that sound for more punchiness and grooviness and so on it's fair to say that most of my own ear training in that regard didn't happen until I made the switch from live sound to the studio compression is much less important in live sound when everything is actually really loud you don't have to work to create the illusion of loudness in the same way when compressors are mostly just used to even out the Dynamics of vocals and bass guitar the front of house engineer for a stadium level band that you've definitely heard of once confessed to me that he didn't know how to set the release time for a compressor so don't feel too bad if you're still struggling with that yourself the point is my progress as an engineer was exactly as slow and imperceptible as my progress when learning to play the guitar but just like learning to play an instrument you can speed up the process hugely with a good practice routine okay I think that's all thanks for watching

Channel: Dan Worrall

Views: 44,776

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Id: PntNKSweREI

Length: 11min 12sec (672 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 16 2023