How to calibrate mixing level

The ES1 will generate noise but it might be white and not pink, I've not bothered trying to work that out. Geneate a sine wave with the tone generator.

Logic has a "Test Oscillator" audio instrument plugin which can generate sine waves with variable frequencies, white and pink noise, amongst other things.

i dont know this for sure, but i think that would be entirely dependent on your speakers and your room. when i bought my monitors i had to buy a sound level meter from radioshack to calibrate my speakers to 85 db. your individual room size will affect it because of 'room gain' or some nonesense. at http://abluesky.com/asp/catalogue/catalogue.asp?linkid=144 they give you the theory behind speaker calibration, and test files including the pink and white noise and such that you asked for earlier.

Helmel, you've got it slightly wrong - 83db is the spl for one speaker, 86db spl is right for a pair. these are acoustic measurments for a physical space.
you need an spl meter (radio shack) to do the above.

a noise generater is great for calibration internally in your DAW.

it can also be used with an app like MH Spectra Foo to calibrate room eq.(this requires a calibrated mic to capture the pink noise).

all you need to set your listening level correctly is an spl meter and your favorite mix. play it, and set the meter range to 80-90db and point it at your speakers from your regular listening position. (slow, c weighted), then adjust with your monitering knob.

the level outputted by your sound card is relative - your out meter in logic can show 0dbfs, but your monitoring knob on your mixer,i/o box is the final step.

whatever you are monitoring, you should be listening at ~ 86db spl for stereo, whether it's a full mix or a single trk/sound.

warning: don't put pink noise thru your monitors loud for too long, as it's pretty intense up loud. fade your monitors up manually with you monitor knob, to prevent speaker damage.

all newbies should read and heed this. setting up your monitoring correctly is critical.

PMFJI, but in 20+ years of making recordings I've never known an engineer to calibrate speakers to 86 or whatever dB. This is all news to me. Mixing was always done a a variety of random levels, and towards the end we'd listen "loud" and also listen "soft" through at least two pairs of speakers. Done deal.

I understand the use of pink noise and an RTA to analyze a room's frequency response using a given pair of speakers, but for the purpose of setting some kind of standard listening level? So I'm now trying to understand if there is some actual benefit to doing this kind of calibration or if this is some new kind of mumbo-jumbo, particularly if a room isn't acoustically treated.

SIDEBAR: to add to what David Robinson said (hi David!), if you listen to pink noise at any decently loud level for even a few minutes, you'll fatigue your ears to the point where they'll be sort of useless for doing any kind of critical mixing for at least several hours afterwards. If you're going to use pink noise -- or static sine waves -- to calibrate levels, WEAR HEARING PROTECTION. There's absolutely zero reason to listen to these kinds of calibration sounds at "musical" levels.

So... mumbo jumbo or actual benefit?

I have to agree with the Schwartzter, who, despite having a far too high letter-to-syllable ratio in his name, talks much sense.

I can understand the need to have a reference monitor level when doing cinema work, and I've read the Bob Katz stuff many times - I totally agree with his views on mix levels, and mix to K-14 myself, but I've not really grasped why I'd need to calibrate my monitor levels. As long as I'm averaging the K-14 nominal 0dB point (as opposed to 0dBFS), I can monitor at whatever level I need to.

I think maybe the monitor level is more to calibrate various studios so that you can move between them and have some kind of valid constant reference point for level.

Either that, or a big piece to the puzzle hasn't clicked with me yet, regarding the importance of calibrating monitor levels - certainly ol' Bob seems to think it's vitally important - but then he makes more more on one job than I've made in my entire musical career, I suspect, so we're hardly at the same, er, "level" (pun intentional).

Can anyone convince me otherwise?

Er, because your amp or active speakers probably have a volume control!

I can mix to 0dbFS but have the monitoring volume turned down, in the same way I could mix to K-20 and crank the volume right up.

I have to agree with the Schwartzter, who, despite
having a far too high letter-to-syllable ratio in his
name...

Made me laugh out loud!! Perhaps it's not clicking with me because I'm also rather vowel-deprived... I gave myself that leading "I" but it don't help much LOL!!

Anyway, looking forward to further commentary.

Here's how it ties:
Much of this is backed by different sources and tests. The magic number you see is the avg foreground listening level where it is not too loud, not too quiet - one study I remember involved ( memory may fail ) a movie in a theater calibrated to this ( was it a Lucasfilm? ). This was attended by many people of different ages from different relevant industries. Afterwards, attendants were asked how the levels were, too soft, right, too loud - the result was a resounding right.

Now, transfer this into the sound creation process. If you know the level most people agree is the proper foreground listening level... you should probably spend a good time monitoring at that level ( you may do so already ), since ( Fletcher Munson ) our ears respond differently to frequencies at different avg levels. Your mixes will probably transfer better. Also, this allows you to set your levels appropriately when creating with a DAW since many of our digital devices have ceilings ( 0dB ). Then, you convince yourself to focus on your avg level instead of squashing the p*ss out of your mix - you just remove that component and focus on a good mix with proper dynamics and ample headroom instead of trying to get an insanely "loud" CD.

That's that for starters,

J

Hi Justin,

Thanks for your reply to my query.

You wrote, "The magic number you see is the avg foreground listening level where it is not too loud, not too quiet..."

But what kind of music is "it"? Needless to say, "it" can vary so vastly... And the amount of compression used on a final mix can also vary greatly depending on the inherent dynamics of the music itself.

And regarding a movie soundtrack, how loud music is mixed against dialog and sound effects varies greatly from one production to the next. I'm sure you've seen action movies where the SFX are loud and jarring while the underscoring, which may be very intense and dynamic itself, is mixed so low against the SFX that it's almost inaudible.

Not closing my mind to the logic of this procedure, but basically I still don't get it, because I don't understand how there can be a generic "it" when there are so many musically stylistic and mix aesthetics as variables.