Like most sound recording amateurs I have my own mix master methods that are based mostly on gut feeling and test after test after test. At least I thought they were my own methods, until a week or so ago.

I was visiting with my friend Paul Peterson about home recording. I was telling him how pleased I was with Apple Logic Studio. He asked if it was that much different from GarageBand, which is a fair question. I said that it has a lot more bells and whistles, but it does feel somewhat similar, which is fine with me as I like Garageband. Paul indicated that he was disappoint with the low volume bounces that GarageBand generates. Of course, I said I had experience the same thing. In fact, that is the universal criticism of Apple's Garageband. Recently, I found success using Waveburner, the CD burning software from the Logic Studio collection. Waveburner's normalizing really works miracles. In my limited experiments, the levels on the resulting CD out of WaveBurner were right where they should be... loud and clean. I shared with my friend that after I mixed down a song I'd burn it to CD then drive around listening to it in my car's stock stereo, switch the present EQ as needed. He indicated he does the same thing, that he's practically worn out the EQ Settings button on his car's stereo.

It's got me wondering how many other people do the exact same thing. It make sense when you think about it. I certainly do my best basic brain storming in my car. Most studios do have a small speaker meant to act as a lo-fi preview. This isn't the same thing. I'm not really interested in knowing how my music will sound on a radio alarm-clock or a child's CD player.

The excuse is that while I'm driving around, I'm not actually fixing anything and the trick is to remember what needed to be done when I get back onto the computer.