Not only does it save your ears, but it is also great for leveling purposes because you can hear transients better. It turns out everyone that said monitoring at lower volumes is better was right. I couldn’t risk further damaging my ears. I’ve always heard people say it is better to monitor at low volumes, but every time I tried, I’d still find myself slowly raising the volume until it was back to 100db. It wasn’t until I was told that if I continued, I could further damage my ears that I was forced to monitor at lower volumes. I was habitually monitoring at loud volumes, I wanted to “feel” the music. My hearing issue was a blessing in disguise. Your ears are fragile, and you should take care of them. I woke up one day with an ear infection which turned into tinnitus which turned into asymmetrical hearing loss.
About a year ago, I had my first real scare when it comes to my ear health. Get an SPL meter and start checking at what level you’re monitoring. Pretend you have an assistant and ask yourself what you’d ask your assistant to do before you needed to mix, then do that.
Make a list of everything you need to have done to adequately prepare for a mixing session. By preparing beforehand, you don’t have to worry about which vocal take you want to use but instead can just focus on the more important aspect of how that vocal is sitting in the mix. Every time you make a decision while mixing, it taxes your brain, and it becomes harder to focus on the more important things. Edits should have crossfades, vocals should all be comped, backup vocals and multi mic’d instruments should be grouped or bussed appropriately, etc. Having your sessions prepared for mixing will not only allow you to mix faster and more efficiently, but you’ll also free up your mind to make more important decisions.
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