Turning off your computer monitor during mixing/tracking, anyone?

[Bambison]

Curious if anyone else is doing this...

I routinely turn off my computer monitor when mixing and turn it on only when necessary. I seem to hear much better when my eyes aren't distracted by looking at the screen. It's also a much more pleasant experience when the light of the monitor (even at lowest brightness settings) isn't staring you in the face. I've even begun tracking with the screen off. Again, it feels much better and I simply hear things better.

[Vedat]

I tried doing it once. It was a cool 5 minutes before I got frustrated.
I think it's a cool concept one needs to learn to adapt.
I would try doing it more often but I usually do post, lot of edit as you mix sort of stuff.

[mtung]

YES!!

Very important for me to not see the music and just listen. I even made a screen saver that was just a black graphic and made it come on when I put the mouse in the upperleft corner of the monitors. Works like a charm. I love it!!

I come from the console generation and I feel that my mixes are balanced much better when I don't look and just listen.

At least that works for me. I even wish it was built into PT as a quickkey.

Mike

[Bambison]

Originally Posted by mtung

YES!!

I even made a screen saver that was just a black graphic and made it come on when I put the mouse in the upperleft corner of the monitors.

Nice idea. Gonna have to try it myself.

Yeah, I come from the PT generation and it still bothers me to look at a screen all day. All that brain-power wasted on the eyes when it could go to the ears. Seriously.

Once I got comfortable on my D-Command, I started experimenting with turning off the monitor every now and then. Now, it's become the norm. I turn it off as much as possible, tracking or mixing. In fact, I'd estimate it's off over half the time now.

[Markk]

Massey has a free plug-in called Listen that blacks out the screen