The 30-Second Mix Test: What Your First Impression Hears Does Matter
Your ears are sharpest the moment you press play. After that, your brain starts filtering out the problems, not fixing them. Read why the 30-second rule changes how you mix, and the resets that actually work. 🎧

Read here: https://www.soundgym.co/blog/item?id=the-30-second-mix-test
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Cody OConnell
May 15, 21:48
Great article! Thanks for these tips. I developed a similar method of taking notes with fresh ears, but I never thought to do it via voice memo, that's a great idea so I can stay more in the moment and don't have to pause to look at the timestamp or anything. And great disctinction on loudness fatigue vs content fatigue / familiarity
Cut Champ Winner, May. 11th - May. 14th:

1st: @Beto Ojeda 71 pts
2nd: @Pedro Guerreiro 68 pts
3rd: @Mike Benza 67 pts

See complete standings:
https://www.soundgym.co/contest/view?id=RD2XS6153D0
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Emanuel E. Guevara
May 15, 00:55
Congrats!! 🙌
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Cindy Preta
May 15, 01:03
4400 sc ?
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Stelios Mavroyiannis
May 15, 19:55
Congrats everyone! Someone played a lot in this round! And it wasn't me :P
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Alex Angelich
May 15, 19:29 in SoundGym Cafe
hey friends, just dropping in to tell you how grateful I am for all the skills I learned here over the last couple of years. today, I completed my main quest and dropped my first solo album, self-produced and mixed. I'm just really stoked and grateful, that's all. 3

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Emanuel E. Guevara
May 15, 19:31
Great job! Thanks for sharing your first self-produced album! ☺️🙌💿
hey, i just recently purchased full version of sound gym, wanted to ask how much of you play with monitors and how much with headphones
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Linda Wagner
May 15, 18:01
I use headphones for everything except the panning games. I find it much easier to detect direction when the sound is coming from speakers than headphones.
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Ioulianos Antoniadis
May 15, 19:06
I use only headphones, don't have monitors.
Currently Struggle with panning.
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Gaspar Acevedo
May 15, 19:13
Lilke @Aike East mentioned, try to use all of your gear. The whole idea is to learn to identify how your space sounds.

That said, I highly recommend that both, your monitors and your headphones are as flat sounding as possible (either with room treatment, good brands, calibration software, etc). In my case, my room is not treated but i have SoundID for speaker calibration and I also bought my headphones from them.

This is a greaaaaaat and fuuuuun place... welcome aboard !!!! You are about to be transformed !
Hey everyone, I just started using Sound Gym and I'm running into something weird with the Pan Girl game.

When I play through my MacBook's built-in speakers, I can pick out the panning position pretty easily. But when I switch to my external speakers, everything sounds like it's sitting dead center.

Has anyone else dealt with this? Is it a speaker placement thing, or am I missing something obvious? Any tips would be appreciated.

My speaker setup:
MacBook -(USB)- Fosi ZD3 DAC -(XLR)- Fosi ZA3 Amp - Speakers
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Emanuel E. Guevara
May 15, 16:59
Hello! It sounds like somewhere in your signal chain, your stereo image is being summed to mono. Since it works fine on your MacBook speakers, we know the source (SoundGym/Browser) is outputting a stereo signal correctly.
​The Fosi ZA3 has a physical toggle switch on the front panel that allows it to operate in Mono (Subwoofer/Monoblock) mode or Stereo mode.
​Ensure the switch on the front of the ZA3 is set to Stereo. If it’s set to Mono, the amp will sum the incoming XLR signals and output the same signal to both speakers, effectively killing your pan positioning. Try this! Good look ! 🙌💿
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Harsha Jagarlamudi (author)
May 15, 19:04
Good point, that is the first thing I checked and my ZA3 is set to stereo. Also, I believe the ZA3 in Mono would send power to one of the speakers only. Anything else I might be missing?
Comeback
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Colin Aiken
May 12
Gotta go practice my scat singing. Inspiring!
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Romano G
May 13
@Cindy Preta brings back many memories of the kids playing DDR, heard that song a lot 😆😂
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Cindy Preta
May 15, 16:39
@Romano G 😂😂😂

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