Discuss the various methods you use in music production, from compressor settings to equipment type.
By BGBEATS Sun Jul 11, 2010 10:41 pm
I just bought a new car on Friday and the factory stereo has one of the mini aux stereo jacks for ipods etc.

I always burn cd's and test beats and song mixes/masters in whatever factory car system I have around as part of real world listening environments tests of tracks with a/b tests with commercially released cd's. The car acts as a "tuned" environment of sorts simply because so much music listening happens in the car that you know what sounds "right" what hits "hard" or weak based on repetitiive listening in the various genres.


1. plugged radio shack power inverter in cigarette lighter jack to power the mpc 1000

2. plugged stereo mini plug into car stereo aux jack and plugged other end with stereo 1/4 inch adapter into the mpc 1000 headphone out

3. made sure the car stereo eq was set neutral on low mids highs ( car stereo boosts lows a bit anyway though)



4. calibrated the volume level for a/b tests with mastered industry tracks by adjusting the mpc 1000 volume knob and car stereo knob so that the general volume levels were about even.

5. tested various new drum sounds found out which kicks really knock HARD & whick snares & claps really smack. bass, hats shakers . beats already saved were loaded up and mix tested while still in the box. I learned a long time ago that if a track does not KNOCK in a car factory system, it prob won't anywhere. This gives the best real world non studio listening environment next to the club, and ipod earbuds
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By happyhour Mon Jul 12, 2010 6:20 am
Funny, just the other day I was thinking it would be dope to make beats in my car. It's just a factory system, but there's something about it that sounds more "right" than studio monitors. I'd made a beat a few weeks back and put it in my ipod. Hadn't really mixed it and when I heard in my car I was surprised at all that should be fixed in the mix.
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By AWW_NAWW Mon Jul 12, 2010 7:03 am
Its not the system but speaker placement, acoustics, and enclosure. You think they just pick spots at random to install in cars. No! trust me a lot of money and time went into that R&D.
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By NearTao Mon Jul 12, 2010 3:40 pm
AWW_NAWW wrote:Its not the system but speaker placement, acoustics, and enclosure. You think they just pick spots at random to install in cars. No! trust me a lot of money and time went into that R&D.


Maybe most cars... but there are some that make you wonder why they bothered to slap a stereo system in at all. Course most of the crowd here probably isn't picking up crapmobiles. :P
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By happyhour Mon Jul 12, 2010 5:12 pm
AWW_NAWW wrote:Its not the system but speaker placement, acoustics, and enclosure. You think they just pick spots at random to install in cars. No! trust me a lot of money and time went into that R&D.


It might be the overall enclosure cause I don't think it took much thought for the engineers to say, "let's put speaker on the bottom of the doors."