Best NEW Ways To Use Small Speakers for Mix Translation

If you’ve ever nailed a mix in the studio, only for it to fall apart in the car or on your phone, you’re not alone. Most translation problems don’t come from bad plug-ins or gear, they come from being misled by what your main monitors are letting you hear.

Small speakers have been around forever for a reason. Their limited bandwidth strips away the comfort blanket of big lows and shiny highs and forces you to confront what actually carries a mix. Vocals, midrange balance, harmonic content, and arrangement decisions become very hard to ignore.

But beyond the usual mono checks and quick balances, there are some far more powerful and less talked-about ways to use a small speaker. Ways that can help you hear masking issues faster, shape bass so it survives phones and laptops, and even test whether your arrangement works outside the sweet spot of your room.

In this video, I’ll walk you through several practical, real-world techniques I’ve used in professional sessions, including at the BBC, to make mixes translate with more confidence and fewer surprises.

If mix translation has been a constant frustration, this one will change how you think about small speakers.