The Car Test

In the movie Once, the music producer at the studio where Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova's characters record their album takes the band for car ride once the recording is over to listen to the demo CD on the car's speakers. He calls that the "car test". I don't know much about the process of recording and producing an album, but I figure the "car test" or something similar is an important element in ensuring that the production is of good quality. And recently I got to experience the impact that even a decent pair of a car speakers can have on the overall sound quality of a track. I was listening to a song called My House by the Mumbai based Alternative band Split. The vocalist on the track (I think) is Garreth D’Mello, who's been called the "Indian Chris Cornell" [1]. Garreth does have an amazing voice and his skills are on full display in the song My House. I'd been listening to the track (in a loop :-) on a pair of computer speakers and then on the iPod with head phones, and both places the track sounded great. But then I played the song on my car speakers, with the song playing on an iPod connected via an FM transmitter. And now I couldn't hear the vocalist at all, his voice was drowned by the sound of the instrumental tracks. I thought it must have been bass settings on the car music system, which I usually keep at a high level, but then the next song on the playlist - Pig Society, also by Split - sounded just fine, vocals included. If I reduced the bass levels to a minimum and increased the treble to the maximum, the vocals could be heard better, but only barely - no where close to the levels it could be heard at on a pair of headphones. I'm not sure if this is a problem with the mixing of the song, or my car speakers or both. If you get a chance to try this experiment out, please let me know. The track can be download from the bands media page.


References:

1. http://split-magazine.com/2006/05/24/split-of-imaginary-donuts-and-real-tantriks/