Levels massively different outside the mix room?

B

businessnotplea

New member
Hi, I'm currently mixing one of my own tracks, when I sit in front of the monitors the bass and guitars over power the vocal, yet when I stand outside in another room all I can hear it drums and vocal, no bass at all and straining to hear any guitar at all. Does anyone know why this is? Need to compress maybe? Thanks for any help...
 
Hi,
Turn on the mix and walk around the room slowly. The same thing will happen.
You'll find that in untreated square rooms all you'll hear is bass if you stand against the back wall, for example.

You need to treat the environment in such a ways that it sounds natural and no particular group of frequencies is reflected more than others.

There's a studio building forum in here somewhere. Have a look. :)
 
Thanks for the advice Steenamaroo, I've just tried it and you are correct. I have some acoustic treatment in my room, 24 x 1' x 1' acoustic tiles, nothing professional but I thought it'd be ok for a home studio... I'll just have to persevere
 
I'm pretty sure you'll always get that to some extent, no matter how well treated the room is.
Focus on how it sounds where you mix.
Are those tiles the thin foam kind? They'll not do anything for low end.
You'll want to get 4" rock wool or something like that. ;)

Deal with your first reflection points first (anywhere you could put a mirror to see your speakers) and take it from there. :)

Seriously....You'll shit!
 
They are 1" thick, I know I have no treatment for bass but that wasn't my perticular problem. Still can't figure out how the guitars drown the vocal in the mix position, yet in the next room hardly no guitar and vocals are maybe a little too much. I can't understand as they basically cover the same frequency range. Yeah I'm aware of the first points of reflection, thanks :)
 
Sounds like room modes to me...
Room modes are the collection of resonances that exist in a room when the room is excited by an acoustic source such as a loudspeaker. Most rooms have their fundamental resonances in the 20 Hz to 200 Hz region, each frequency being related to one or more of the room's dimension's or a divisor thereof.
Click to expand...
 
businessnotplea said:
They are 1" thick, I know I have no treatment for bass but that wasn't my perticular problem. Still can't figure out how the guitars drown the vocal in the mix position, yet in the next room hardly no guitar and vocals are maybe a little too much. I can't understand as they basically cover the same frequency range. Yeah I'm aware of the first points of reflection, thanks :)
Click to expand...

Things at different frequencies and different pan positions just diffuse differently in a room.
Vocals are completely different from guitars too. We are tuned in to the frequency range and our ears are so used to picking out words and sounds.

Anyway...I don't think you'll ever treat a room to sound good no matter where you sit, but with the proper materials you can certainly improve the room from where you sit to mix. :)
 
If the room acoustics are not right you are never going to get the mix right.

That said, in my control room where the acoustics are right I find that the final check that I do on vocal level is to use my near field monitors, turn the volume down to a low listening level, and to check that the vocal can be heard through the whole song clearly, every word. This is how most people hear music around the house, in the background from the radio.

Alan.
 
Thanks Witzendoz, I've been taking care to check my level balances (no eq, compession or anything, just levels) through mix position, headphones then out of room. Basically the monitor and head phone mix stays consistant, but when I leave the the room the over powering guitars disappear and the buried vocal is now too loud.
 
No bouldersoundguy, just simple fader work, no processing. The guitars were DIed then through guitar rig, I panned them hard left and right. Could that be an issue? The panning I mean
 
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