Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
Download on the App StoreAudiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.
So THAT'S where all the high frequencies went
A couple of months ago, I accidentally put my headphones on backwards. I was working on a song an immediately noticed the lack of high frequencies in my right ear that I knew were there. I switched my headphones back and I could hear them clearly in my left ear. Crap. Not only am I getting old but I'm starting to lose a bit of my hearing too. Some time goes by and I notice that my right ear clogs up every time I take a shower. It got worse, little bit by little bit, until it took an hour for my ear to clear. I bought one of those ear wax removal ear drop kits, applied it over a couple of days and now my right ear works as well as my left ear. So... Keep your ears clean!
Comments
There's an app for that!
Clean ears are soooo important, I do mine every couple of weeks thanks to allegies. Neti pots can help too.
Never put anything smaller than your elbow in your ears.
Your Granny was right.
My granny was deaf...
I have never been able to blow a Neti pot out of my ears. @Tarekith what is your technique? (This is turning into another one of THOSE threads...) :~)
Just meant that since your ears and sinus cavities are all interconnected, keeping your sinuses clear can have an impact on how clogged your ears feel too. A neti pot in the ear is an interesting idea though
I messed up my ears quite a bit in my teens. Always blasted my ears with way too high volumes and freqs, resulting in permanent damages (tinnitus I guess). I never thought about that stuff when I was younger. Now I have this constant, quite loud, sort of "white-noise" sound, fortunately no high freq beeping noise some people get (that comes and goes some times here). I'm used to it, and while it does add a kind of "hidden" stress factor resulting in strains or headaches sometimes, it doesn't bother me since you do learn to just tune it out. Anyway, lesson being, take care of your ears when you're sitting there with your headphones blasting your ears day out and day in, especially if you are young like I was, and starting out with producing music.
Cleaning the ears is definitely recommended for getting better sounding mixes.
I've done mixes knowing my ears needed cleaning, and it definitely results in overcompensating the frequencies all over (and it all sounds crap once you've cleaned your ears obviously:). Don't just shove some qtips in your ear canal, that'll make things worse after a while (it'll push crap further into the ear, and there's also a natural wax layer you probably wanna keep). If your ears are clogging use a ear drop kit to fix that. Or go to some local place that can take care of it.
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Use a 3% Hydrogen Peroxide Solution and wait for ~5 min.
This has the side advantage of giving you nice white ear hairs.
But you have to keep going back to touch up the roots
Usually I put a couple drops of pure olive oil (it's what's in the ear wax removal kits you buy at the pharmacy) in my ears, let them sit for a few minutes, then flush with water. That gets followed with a half cap of peroxide solution for a couple minutes on each side, then another flush with warm water.
Finally a few drops of isopropyl alcohol, which is what is in those kits for swimmers ear. Just helps dry out any water before it gets deeper in the ear. I do this step every morning after a shower actually.
Might seem like overkill, but I'm super sensitive to my ears being clogged, so it's worth the time every so often to prevent that.
1/2 white vinegar & 1/2 isopropyl alcohol (75%): swish it around and try to yawn at the same time (to try to get down the Eustachian tube), especially when your ears got water in them. And then you're dizzy!
I know everyone says it's bad, but I use qtips. I tried seeing what would happen if I stopped for a couple days and the results were pretty disgusting.
I use them too sometimes, I just make sure to fluff them up a bit first to make them softer.
I send my tracks to a mastering engineer, just kidding. My ears block up every now and then and its dreadful. Super important to keep em clean, I tend to clean them now on regular basis.