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>>>...and I know that my Radio Shack speakers plugged into the Macbook speaker jack isn't going to cut it...>>>

I do my monitoring on Radio Shack speakers and they work great. They are Optimus 7 model, no longer made. They are flat as a pancake.

My criterion for a good mix in not based on how it sounds on my speakers, but rather on other people's speakers. I am making the recording for them, and I have no control over what they are going to use. So I mix on my rather modest monitors and then test on every configuration I can find - ipod, car stereo, boombox, distributed system, youtube. Each gives a different result. If my mix survives all of those tests I can be confident that whoever my listener may be will get a something reasonably close to what I intended.

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Flatfoot sez: Call me when 'Talent-in-a-Box' is ready to ship! -- [8{>

Got some tunes on You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/flatfoot50
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My BiaB lesson site:
http://jdwolfe0.wixsite.com/learnbiab