Monitoring levels using the Fletcher Munson curves

#AudiotentTip 301. Monitoring Levels.

When mixing for long periods of time we have the tendency to increase the volume of our monitor speakers. The human ear is less sensitive to high and lows in the audio spectrum, this means when listening to higher volumes our ears perceive more of these extreme ranges and our mixes could suffer as a consequence.
Back in 1933, Fletcher & Munson performed an experiment on how the human ear perceives these frequencies and the results were displayed in a graph now know as The Fletcher-Munson Curves. This graph is a great indication of how monitoring volumes can affect our hearing.
One lesson to take from this would be to keeping your monitoring levels at normal levels throughout the production process. This helps to reduce ear fatigue and leads to a more balanced mix.