HOME STUDIO HACK 🔥 INSTANT SOUND IMPROVEMENT!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION
Welcome back. I'm Streaky. Welcome back to the channel. Today, this YouTube video is going to be the most important video I've ever done for you. So in this video at the end, I'm going to show you a hack, but you do need to watch the whole middle part of it. Otherwise, the hacks not going to make any sense. So what am I talking about? Well, what I'm talking about is you hitting the light button now, because that helps other guys like you see the videos from me and it helps me out a lot. So please like that. Now I'm telling you this because I want to help you as much as possible. And this technique is going to put all of the techniques and tricks that you're watching on YouTube and everywhere else together to make your mixes and mastering sound so, so much better.
So bear with me here with this analogy. But we all drink wine. I drink probably too much wine, but if you're drinking wine all the time, that is £5, £10, £20, £30 bottles of wine. You've never then tasted a £500 or £5,000 bottle of wine. So you have no idea how different that tastes to the £20 bottles of wine. The reason I'm telling you this is because I was talking to my assistant about how his mixes have improved so night and day since he started working with me. And the reason is when we're in the studio, we're on nice speakers, we're in an acoustically treated room and we listened to one song all the time. Every time I’m testing speakers, every time I’m doing stuff, there's one song by Sohn called Veto. I can't play it because of YouTube copyright nonsense. But get that song, listen to it. We play. That's our test song for speakers.
Love the sound of it. Really clear, and lovely. Sounds great on the speakers in the room. And we know how that should sound. Now, when he was then taking that home and playing it in his home studio, it didn't sound like anything like you knew it should sound like. So he’d tasted, he’d listened to that sound in a good room, in a good environment. He knew how it should sound. Then he needed to try and get that sound in his house. And that is the secret to why his mixes suddenly became tons better. And the reason why your mixes and mastering can become tons better. So what are the steps that he took in his home studio to try and get that song to sound the same way that he knew it should sound? So how did he get that £5,00 bottle of wine taste from that song at home?
Step number one was he built some sound panels, basically cheap ones, rock wall, a bit of cloth, a bit of word round. Now, these need to go on your reflection points. I've done plenty of videos or link one above last week. I spoke to you about speaker placement. Super important. Next thing he did. So the second thing that he did was he set his room up correctly. Now what I mean by that is you need to have your speaker position right so you need to be sitting in the triangle. I did a whole video on this last week so check that out, make sure that your speakers are set up correctly. So you've basically got all your reflection points covered. You've got your speakers sounded right. That's going to make a massive improvement on the sound of your room straight away. So apart from those things in my room, I also have a system called Trinnov.
Trinnov is a high-end system used in studios to measure the EQ curve of your room. Now, what I mean by that is you get a microphone, you play a signal through it. And then what it does, it says you've got too much bass or too much treble in the room. So for example, you might have +6dB at 100 Hz. The rooms making that EQ curve. So what it does, it will then cancel out -6dB so that it makes it so that it's flat. So what it's doing, it's correcting on a very minute scale, all of the problems of your room when it comes to the EQ. Now that system is around £5,000, probably $7,000. So I don't expect you to be having that in a home studio, but this is where the hack comes in. There is some software called Sonarworks. I'll link it below. Now, I'm sending you there because there is a student discount there. If you are a student or you have a way of getting the student discount, get that. You can definitely also try this for a 14-day free trial. You're going to love it.
Sonarworks is a few hundred pounds, a few hundred dollars. Would be a better investment than any plugin you've ever bought. What you would need is a little mic that you can basically just make the measurements in your room. It will then flatten your room in the same way. My Trinnov system does for £5,000 pounds. It does it for £200. Obviously, mine's a bit more bells and whistles. But these are the things that my assistant used and it was night and day the difference between his mixes.
With Sonarworks, after my assistant took the measurements of his room. This is how the curve looked. So that is the EQ curve that his room was producing. So what Sonarworks then does, is mirror that EQ. So it cancels it out effectively. So let me now just jump into the computer and I'll show you my assistant’s room before and after. So what I'll do is I'll copy the EQ curve that it's producing in my assistant’s room. And then I'll just turn that off and on. So you can hear how it sounds when the room's playing up and that's even without reflections and all the other things that I said. The speaker distances and having making sure that you've covered all your reflection points off. So all of this stuff is added on top of this EQ curve. So as you can imagine, it gets very muddly and that's why it sounds nothing like how it should sound and how you're going to get it sounding better.
But before we dive in, make sure you like this video. On Monday, I'm going to be doing a live Q and A on YouTube 6:00 PM UK time. So if you want any questions, please ask them in the comments below, but also come on there live. You can chat to me, I'll answer any questions on mixing and mastering. So I'll see you on Monday at 6:00 PM. Let's jump in the computer now so I can show you how that EQ curve sounds. So this the example of Sonarworks, where it's measured the room and it's worked out that. This is the EQ curve of the room. So you can see the room is adding 9dB of gain in the low end there. It's also got a big dip in it here. You find this a lot in smaller rooms where it has depths around the sort of 100Hz, 160.
So you can see, there's quite a lot going on. Usually, the top ends a little bit flatter than the bottom, but there's still 3dB of gain difference in the top, which is quite a lot. But it's this area here that really Sonarworks makes a massive difference. And this is where you're going to get a much better sound. I've replicated this in Sonarworks so it's the same as before. But what I'm going to do is I can then play you the track and you'll hear how the room sounded. So this is basically how the room sounds. And when I put it in bypass, that's essentially like it being flat. So what you need to listen for is around the low end. You'll see, there's a massive difference. You're trying to EQ against the room.
You'll be trying to do things. You'll be adding stuff that doesn't need to be added. You'll be taking stuff away. You're basically making errors on the sound. So as soon as you've got your room flat and you've done all the things that I said earlier on about sorting your room out, it's just some basics. Then you're really going to be able to start hearing how it should sound when it's flat. And then that way it translates to loads of different rooms. And you can actually for once hear a track, how it should sound. So I'll play this track now I'll just put it in and out of bypass so that you can hear how the track would sound, if your room was flat, basically. (Music playing).
