sound affairs & audio effect design
The McGurk effect is a compelling demonstration of how we all use visual speech information. The effect shows that we can’t help but integrate visual speech into what we ‘hear’.
This (hopefully) makes you rethink about mixing “visually”.
(thanks to Seppes Santens)
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Variety Of Sound 
Humans are flawed.
Our perceptions are all we have. This means our limitations bound us to error inevitably. Trying to make sense out of stimuli has been proven worthy throughout Evolution.
Trouble is people tend to put themselves at the core of the Universe despite those limitations. And this is misleading as things turn into mysticism whenever we can’t explain something.
Technology is just a desguise for our Cavemen state-of-mind.
Make no mistake: Math is also flawed, simply because it’s based on human notions.
This is the main problem of the human society. Often things are different perceived than they really are. It is exactly this what lead to many wars and conflicts in history.
Every human lives in its own world – everyone perceives things differently.
You can look at the animal world, too – every animal is different and is living in its own world. The only difference is that they can’t think about it.
Apparently, it is.
This is might be partly why mixes sound so much different when rendered and played through a media player without any additional processing. Technically, it’s the exact same stream of bits going to your soundcard, but you don’t have any visuals to go along with it.
That being said, I don’t believe that people should mix completely blind. Some of those visuals may help you catch something you won’t hear at the time, but will, once you’ve woken up and listened to it with fresh ears, or once played on another system, etc.
Great post! Thank you π
I have heard “bar” in all of the two examples. I haven’t heard “far”…
Maybe sometimes I’m a bit immune to the McGurk effect?
But it is right that visuals influence the audio perception in a significant way. That said, it is really important to make a good music video (that supports the song) and have an adequate look as musician – as this influences how the song is conceived.