Audio Recording Tips

Your ear is the most precious recording studio instrument. Without your ear, you cannot mix, master or finish your audio production projects. Sometimes when you are unaware, too excited to sit down and mix the track, you have a tendency to overuse your time which in turn stresses your ears too much.

A stressed ear cannot properly listen very well. This means impairing your judgment and hurting your ear. Ear is sensitive to certain frequencies, such as 20Hz to 20000Hz which are the only frequencies, our ears can listen. Again, ear is very nonlinear, it does not evenly hears it all. Instead, it is more sensitive to what is called “voice frequencies” which is around 300 Hz to 3000Hz. This is the bandwidth of the telephone also.

However in the high fidelity mix, you are expected to listen very well 50 Hz to around 15, 000Hz. Of course, the lowest frequencies (~50Hz) are the bass while the uppermost ( 15,000Hz) are treble, tweeter sound. These extremes in the hi-fi frequency range are the most sensitive when our ears are stressed. For example, if the ear is very tired, it cannot listen properly the hi-fi frequencies. Or even if you are always abusing your ear , like listening to a louder volume always, you will lose your high frequency reception earlier than what it is normal. It is why, old people cannot properly listen high frequencies because their ear cells are already old or damage.

So how can you take care of your EAR?

1. Listen to at most 3 to 5 hours. 5 hours can be stressful to others, but I consider this as my personal maximum limit.
2. Listen only at loud volume in mixing when necessary. Most people will listen to produced/commercial music at even low volumes, so you should not be mixing in a very loud volume. It looks unrealistic, at the same time , damaging your ear.
3. After doing mix, rest your ear by taking a nap or avoid loud sounds.
4. Clean your ear always with cotton buds.
5. Avoid ear infection.
6. When you are listening to music, limit or avoid the use of headphones.
7. Wear earplug in a loud environment. This may be either a public or working environment.
8. If you are fun of swimming in sea, avoid doing deep dives. Pressure can hurt your ear. Of course, you are a sound mixer not a scuba diver.
9. When taking a bath, avoid having some water to get inside your ear canal. This can lead to an infection.
10. When taking medicines, ask the doctor if this can have some side effects to your ear. Avoid taking medicines with such side effect to your ear.
11. Avoid someone blowing your ear. This is painful.
12. When you are contacted with cold infection, cure it as early as possible to avoid running nose and other complications to go to your ear parts.
13. If you are mixing daily, I suggest you will not expose your ear more than 3 hours per day. This will increase its life.

Do you know some other tips that can help save your ear? Share it by commenting on this post. Thanks.