Better Hearing

[blackaxe]

Hey i got a question for all you mixing engineers out there. What are some ways to go about improving your hearing. At the moment i'm training my ears for interval and pitch recognition using a music program called aralias, but how would I go about improving recognition of frequency and processing eg. amplitude, reverb, compression, gating, EQ'ing etc.??
I've heard Golden Ears is quite a good package??

[PhiDelta308]

Golden Ears is great. Just doing the filtered white noise exercises at the begining will help you a lot. Aside from golden ears though, I feel that the best way to improve your ear is to not do things to a mix while it is playing. In other words, don't hit play, and then sweep the eq to find what you need to eq. Don't just turn knobs on the compressor until it starts to sound good. Listen to the mix, stop it, then set your eq or your compressor. It takes a while to get a feel for it, but once you do, you'll find you work much faster.

-Chris