Mixing in quiet places? Aka at home, late at night?
I know its kind of a strange question.
Do any of you actually practice/mix in quiet places such as your house/apartment late at night as others are sleeping? I’m curious if anyone has issues with limited time to play out loud in their own spaces. I know that trying to mix on a lower volume doesn’t allow for great transitions as you can’t hear certain sounds.
I hardly take my cans off when playing, so it’s hardly a problem for me since I don’t need external monitoring.
Are you basically just flicking the headphones from cue to 50/50 cue/monitor then to full monitor/out?
When it’s nice and late, I used to try to mix, but it just isn’t as productive and as you said, the transitions generally suck. Late at night I like to work on potential sets, or run songs through Mixed in key and get some good harmonic mixing sets. If I want to hear how a mix will sound, I just use my headphones, hit sync and quantize to emulate a good beatmatch and use my keyboard and the software’s crossfader. If I really have the need to mix, I have a neighbor when I’m back home in SF with a full on studio who is an insomniac. Chat him on facebook, ask to come over and mix in his studio.
Depending on your mixer, you can pan your cueing to one side. Keep the main out in both sides of your headphones, and cue at a lower volume level in one side…
luckily next year I will be able to mix at whatever time of the day I please since my friends and I are getting a 6 bedroom apartment. It is a duplex and my friend and I who play/produce music are up there in the two bedrooms which means I can pretty much blast music all day without anyone getting annoyed. Worst comes to worst I can head it down to the basement and mix since we’re building a DJ booth and doing a whole set up.
Right now I usually have to stop playing by 12:00 AM, sometimes 11.
I usually only mix at night with my family asleep. I keep the monitors on low and generally just use headphones to hear how things are really sounding. mind you this is all just messing around with songs and nothing serious.
if no one complains, fuck it
Thats what I need.. basically the GF isn’t into my music.. so even playing at a decent time of night is hard. I generally wait till shes out or whatever. Other times my upstairs neighbor is an issue as well. Daytime and weekends are my best bets to play loud.
I guess its all dependent on the layout of your home. With mine, my walls seem to be a bit thin even if my bedroom and living space (where my setup is) are on opposite ends of the apartment. Sound travels well 
Right now I have the S4 which basically just allows me to have full cue and rotate all the way to full master on the same headphones.
Kinda, not as drastic.
I had crappy or dying monitors during my early years and I feel comfortable this way, they always sound the same, no matter where I go.
This. I play here with mates until at least 2am most weekends before we go out. Gets pretty fucking loud but no one complains, so we keep going.
If someone did complain, we’d probably keep going too to be fair…
if you can hear them knock on door/ring bell, it’s not too loud
Yeah I just mix in my headphones if I have to. But honestly you should practice mixing in your headphones anyways. its better that way. Some places have terrible monitors, or non at all. So mixing in headphones is a crucial skill to have imo.
Sometimes I mix with just my headphones on, generally when the girlfriend is being whiny. 
I cue both channels and beatmatch like that and then switch to the master as I bring in the track.
No music for anyone else, just clack clack click clack click clack clack clack click click and dooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Thanks for the feedback. Didn’t want to believe I was the only one who was doing this.
haha your not man. Im moving into a dorm finally in a few months and im hoping my room mate will be okay with the mixing thing or at least be on the same page musically.
Headphones are pretty much always on for me.
just moved into a new apartment and as of now they aren’t complaining… so this is a great thread to stumble upon… just in case.