I'm really addicted to sound. When I'm listening the song, everything must be perfect. It doesn't have to be very clear, sometimes it is very nice to hear the song with an old, vinyl sample in it. I like those tape effects if they were used on the right way. But all elements must be completely balanced. And I don't think that having sensitive ears and good hearing is my advantage. No, that makes me dissatisfied wherever I go. I hate to drink coffee in the bar with some bad sound. And I listen music in my car very rarely because I have bad sound system in it. I always complain on other people's sound systems because I hear all they don't. I hear everything in low frequencies, high frequencies, compression, loudness, distortion, reverb... The thing that I hate the most is when I hear that correlation between bass line and kick drum is not adjusted well. And all that makes my life complicated and I can't relax anywhere because my mind is preoccupied with the sound. Many people cannot tell you the difference between MP3 and WAVE sound, but you can't trick me with that.

When I was young kid, I told to my parents that I want to be a music producer.

They didn't get me seriously, so I had to struggle with cheap equipment and I didn't know what the sound really is. I was full of inspiration and had so many ideas that my mind couldn't work for anything else. And I made very good friendship with real people with same interests as me. But we didn't have any money and the lives of each of us were in mess.

We had to become grown ups and make money doing other things to invest in our own studio.

While I was growing up, my understanding of sound and hearing was changing. Today we have some good, not the best, but very usable equipment. We have two pairs of studio monitors (2xKRK RP8 G3 + Alesis M1Active 320 USB (Pair)) and RME Fireface UCX audio interface, that's enough for me. We planned to make a studio in one space that was pretty available but the evil owner kicked us out. All that equipment is now in my friend's garage. I decided to make a legal business from this, so the city provided us with a basement room in one project building. These are actually big news, but first we must renew that basement.

But this is not about things and situations that I've been trough.

Those situations made a sound freak of me. So I must have a pair of studio monitors in my home, too.

At my home I have very beautiful pair of Yamaha HS7. First, I can't listen music from some random speakers at my home. Second, I never know when will I wake up in the middle of night with some melody or idea in my mind. Then I have a need to put it in Cubase immediately.

And I use a lot of digital instruments, I have a large base of libraries of sounds and samples. In most cases, I control these libraries using software Native Instruments Kontakt. Actually, I have more choice than I need. And I can hear all clearly on this studio monitors. You can have the best home speakers or some large system and consider that quality, but there are no speakers like studio monitors. Those speakers have flat, original sound. Most of quality of the sound depends on the room and it's acoustic properties. That's the best way to hear the best from that speakers. And many songs sound bad on studio monitors. It is not because of bad speakers, they are not playing fake good sound, they play real sound.

So, if you can make your music sound good on studio monitors, your music will sound good everywhere else.

And there is a problem!

When you crave for a sound, you hate everything what you make. When you have good speakers, you hear too good and you notice all mistakes and everything sounds too dirty. I am really killing myself equalizing channel by channel, taking care of my analyzer's curve, transients, RMS... then I export an info and run everywhere where I can listen to it. In people's cars, homes, in my friends cafe. And I get different picture everywhere which confuses me. And that's why it goes slowly. And that all technology and possibilities can drain your inspiration and when you sit on your computer, you don't know what you want to do.

I think that I had more ideas when I had nothing.

And that's the biggest truth, not only in music but in all types of art:

With more possibilities and more equipment, you have less ideas and less inspiration!

Many times, I wish to get back where it all started. We didn't have good sound, we didn't know what that is! But we have really great, rough ideas, energy, inspiration. All of this had much more magic when we didn't have nothing but the street, bad microphone, bad speakers. But we had innocent, brave and creative songs. All those details that I have learned drained whole magic from the music.

You can't enjoy making the art if you see every detail and if that bothers you!

But I guess that's happening all the time. Every day you can hear songs that are produced very proffesional and they sound perfect, but the whole idea, the lyrics, the soul of these songs doesn't exist at all.

The point of all this post, which is not understandable for many of you, is this:

You can practice and exercise your hearing and you can learn the perfection of the sound. But you can't learn to have a talent, you must be born with that!

Thank you, sisters and brothers Steemers, for reading this post! Thanks to Steinberg, RME and Native Instruments for selling me software of which I made screenshots to make images for this post. The "New Year" song is gratis!