Mixing

This could be a pretty simple answer, but I'm not sure.

Lets say your mixing your tracks on the top of the line monitors with the best setup and best sound quality possible. If you spend all of your time mixing it in this setup, and it sounds absolutely perfect. If you then take that track and listen to it on let say computer speakers or a low end stereo system. Could the sound quality of the mixing be thrown off?

Lets say in a song that my bassist is mixing, he is listening to it on his monitors and I am listening on my computer speakers. I keep telling him that the snare is way too loud and the rhythm guitar is was too low. But he says that it all sounds fine on his monitors.

Not that i think he is lying to me, I am just concerned that when we release the songs, everyone will get a different quality depending on their speaker setups.

Any input is greatly appreciated, thank you very much.

That is a perfect example of how room acoustics can affect a mix. If you're mixing in a room with inadequate sound treatment, or hyped up monitors, you will end up over compensating for certain frequencies, which will give you that result. Everything will sound awesome in the room you're mixing in, with the monitors you're mixing with, but the mix will probably not translate well to other stereo systems. This is why having flat sounding, good quality, nearfield monitors and good sound treatment are so important, so that frequencies aren't enhanced. So that being said, that's not to say it can't be overcome by experience and learning the monitors. My studio room is not perfect, and I run into the same issues from time to time, especially if I haven't mixed a project for awhile. The way I have overcome that obstacle is to "learn" the monitors. And by that I mean, understand how your mixes will translate. You could start by listening carefully to your favorite CD through your mixing monitors, and hear the balance and volume of individual instruments. Then try duplicating that by mixing your own tunes, burn a CD and listen to it on different systems/speakers. This will give you a good idea if your over compensating. I like to listen to the CD in my truck while I'm driving, because I very familiar with how I like things to sound through that system. Doing this back and forth a few times, should really help balance things out. Of course there are a million+1 ways to do things, but this way works for me.

Hope that helps.

Awesome reply thank you very much. If anyone would like to check out a rough mix of one of our songs, we put it up on our myspace so we have something new up. It is a rough mix, so any input on that respect would also be much appreciated along with my first question.
We recorded in out towns rec center quiet room. Guitars were done with a single sm57, bass was DI, and our drummer has a mic kit (I forget which one at the moment). All of this went into our M-Box Mini 2 with pro-tools LE.
http://www.myspace.com/theninthday

in my opinion, you gotta round off those drums. the snare pops ok.. a little too much for my opinion, but those rack toms need softening. on top of that, the snare and rack toms are all way too loud in the mix. bass was non-exsistant. guitars were fine, as long as those drum issues get worked out. kick drum seemed a little quite, but thats probably just in relation to the overly loud snare and toms