Mixing involves making decisions about elements such as volume levels, panning, and effects in your studio. While you can control many variables in your studio (such as speakers and room acoustics), you cannot control the listening environment in which your final mix will be heard. The following tips will help you make your mix sound as good as possible to as many listeners as possible:
Listen to your mixes on a variety of different speakers to gauge how well the mix will translate to different playback systems.
Make audio CDs and MP3-encoded files of rough mixes and audition them outside the studio in different listening environments.
Check stereo mixes for compatibility with mono playback systems, and multichannel surround mixes for compatibility with stereo playback systems. (see the
Pro Tools Sync & Surround Concepts Guide).