Vocals sound great through headphones but fall flat through computer speakers?

So I've encountered this problem many times.
My vocals will sound great through headphones, tone is great, every note is right on pitch. But when I unplug the headphones to listen through what most people will listen to my music through (just regular computer and phone speakers) my vocals completely suck and the tone of my voice changes drastically and I feel as if they fall flat! I listen to other people's demos through computer speakers and they sound similar to the sound in the headphones. It's making me very frustrated and making me feel as though I can't sing! I use a Blue Snowball Ice to record. What do you think the problem is?


please post a clip of your music where you hear the problem so we can listen on our systems.
 
So I've encountered this problem many times.
My vocals will sound great through headphones, tone is great, every note is right on pitch. But when I unplug the headphones to listen through what most people will listen to my music through (just regular computer and phone speakers) my vocals completely suck and the tone of my voice changes drastically and I feel as if they fall flat! I listen to other people's demos through computer speakers and they sound similar to the sound in the headphones. It's making me very frustrated and making me feel as though I can't sing! I use a Blue Snowball Ice to record. What do you think the problem is?

I know exactly what you mean. I've taken my cans off, laid them down with the song playing and suddenly some sung notes sound flat. I check it with my pitch editor and make the adjustment and then it sounds ok.
 
I've never heard of such a thing where the speakers or headphones put something out of tune with the raising or lowering of the volume but I can't say it couldn't happen.

I just did a Google search, and it landed me right back on this site.

Headphones-Speakers...pitch change?

It can't be a coincidence that I found the same thing independently.

The explanation given in the thread tends to be about "perception", i.e pitch rather than frequency.

I don't think it is that simple. The frequency of the electronic signal may be correct, but that doesn't mean that the frequency of the diaphragm of the speaker or headphones will be.

I'm going to research it some more.
 
It doesn't make sense that a headphone (or speaker) diaphragm would change the frequency of one sound and not every sound - it's just an electrical-to-physical transducer.
 
It doesn't make sense that a headphone (or speaker) diaphragm would change the frequency of one sound and not every sound - it's just an electrical-to-physical transducer.

A diaphragm has natural frequencies of vibration. The response of the diaphragm will depend on how close the driving frequency is to one of the natural frequencies. So, you need a good speaker to get a flat (consistent) response across a wide range of audible frequencies. Then you have non-linear effects like aliasing, hysteresis, memory etc. For small perturbations, behaviour tends to be linear. But as the input signal increases, they become non-linear. The larger the diaphragm, the longer it will stay relatively linear.

I am not sure on what basis you think that a transducer cannot alter frequencies.
 
"I am not sure on what basis you think that a transducer cannot alter frequencies."

In general they can't. "perfect" speaker cone acts as a piston and simply produces sound waves of the driving frequency and proportional to the drive current. For small excursions this situation will obtain. As signal amplitude increases the non- linearity of the suspensions will cause ever greater amounts of harmonic distortion, mainly 2nd and 3rd, at no time will the drive frequency be change by a tiny, fractional amount.

What CAN happen is that a really crap speaker system can have a "honk" a totally unrelated resonance that colours the sound but even this does not sound "out of tune". This effect is heard in instruments, violins and cellos can have "wolf notes".

There are certain psychological audio effects that can cause pitch "error". People can lose the ability to sing in tune after an ear infection or stroke. Sadly they often do not recover from this.

Pitch IS defined as "frequency" except in some very rare subjective circumstances. How do I know this? Seen a video of Steinway tuning pianos with a meter!

Dave.
 
I am not sure on what basis you think that a transducer cannot alter frequencies.
Even if it did, it would alter the pitch of the entire sound, not just the vocals in a mix.

What does happen, if you turn the in-ears up too loud, is you build up enough pressure in your ear canal that your perception of pitch will change. You will then sing to the altered pitch that you hear, which doesn't match the actual pitch. Therefore, you are out of tune.
 
Even if it did, it would alter the pitch of the entire sound, not just the vocals in a mix.

Yes, but there was no mention of a mix.

I mentioned the two possibilities: actual and perceived alteration. I am not saying which necessarily applies in the OPs case.

What does happen, if you turn the in-ears up too loud, is you build up enough pressure in your ear canal that your perception of pitch will change. You will then sing to the altered pitch that you hear, which doesn't match the actual pitch. Therefore, you are out of tune.

Another possibility, but again we don't know the OPs set up. It sounded to me as if she said the SAME recording sounds fine through headphones, but "sucks" through computer speakers. She could also be referring to pure vocals.

If there is a big change, a lot of it is likely to be perception. But I have observed more subtle frequency changes that appear to be actual. I would listen to pure vocals through a set of headphones (not while recording), turn the volume up and hear the frequency shift. I would then swap to different headphones that didn't have the problem.

To the earlier poster, you can find a description of the difference between frequency and pitch, here.

Pitch (music) - Wikipedia

Pitch may be quantified as a frequency, but pitch is not a purely objective physical property; it is a subjective psychoacoustical attribute of sound.
 
Yes, but there was no mention of a mix.

Yes, the OP said "most people will listen to my music through (just regular computer and phone speakers) my vocals completely suck and the tone of my voice changes drastically and I feel as if they fall flat! " - I would assume form this that he/she is giving the whole mix-song to listen to, not just a vocal track.
 
Yes, the OP said "most people will listen to my music through (just regular computer and phone speakers) my vocals completely suck and the tone of my voice changes drastically and I feel as if they fall flat! " - I would assume form this that he/she is giving the whole mix-song to listen to, not just a vocal track.

And?

She doesn't mention mix. She could be commenting on what she thinks of the raw vocals, and suggesting that the same problem would/will exist in a mix -- i.e that people listening through speakers will hear sub-par vocals, in her opinion.
 
And?

She doesn't mention mix. She could be commenting on what she thinks of the raw vocals, and suggesting that the same problem would/will exist in a mix -- i.e that people listening through speakers will hear sub-par vocals, in her opinion.

I think you're really reaching, now - how would anyone know the notes are going flat without a reference - the rest of the music?
 
can you post an example ? put a link up here? without hearing what you are talking about it's just a guessing game. I can tell you this. Mix engineer now days you very good monitors but, they continue throughout the mix process to listen to the mix through grotto (computer or cheap speaker/earbuds etc). Some like to do their eq carving in mono, just so they can make sure the vocal< or feature is getting the attention it deserves. If it's after your mix that your talking about, at different parts throughout the mix process, move over to your computer speaker to take a listen, also really try to define what it is that is making the vocals change on you. Lack of top end, lack of mids, clarity, It's really hard to put a finger on what is the problem without hearing it.
 
Gang. "falling flat" as in sounding "blah" is what we are talking about here, right?

Because of the junky speakers they put in computers, naturally it won't sound as good as through cans. SO: we know that there need to be different mixes for different applications. CD uncompressed quality if you are printing physical discs or want that high quality available for radio, FLAC for higher quality downloads, Whatever Soundcloud has, Mp3s for the rest. You may need to do a separate mixing and mastering phase for each one of these, and you might be able to hedge your bets and work everything into one mix, but then, you need to burn a copy and play it in your car stereo, play the same mix through a phone, through your computer, through studio monitors, earbuds, etc. I have also seen mastering tools available for purchase that will do this for you.
 
Since the OP hasn't posted in this thread for a month, the problem is either gone, or she is.
 
I understand what you are saying about the difference between headphones and laptop speakers. I play bass guitar and have started recording my bass using FL Studio on my laptop. I usually save the file to mp3. Sounds great when using headphones, but the laptop speakers just don't give me that "true" sound. I know that the headphones are giving me the better representation over the cheap speakers that are in laptops, tablets or phones. Unfortunately, these are what most people are going to be hearing music files through. I share your concern. At the moment I haven't solved the problem, but I believe you may be having similar difficulties and that is, getting a better sound quality for playback. What are you using for recording and how familiar are you with the editing of the final product? Maybe you just need to upgrade whatever you are using to record so that the file sounds as good as it can using the cheaper speakers used in playback.
 
I understand what you are saying about the difference between headphones and laptop speakers. I play bass guitar and have started recording my bass using FL Studio on my laptop. I usually save the file to mp3. Sounds great when using headphones, but the laptop speakers just don't give me that "true" sound. I know that the headphones are giving me the better representation over the cheap speakers that are in laptops, tablets or phones. Unfortunately, these are what most people are going to be hearing music files through. I share your concern. At the moment I haven't solved the problem, but I believe you may be having similar difficulties and that is, getting a better sound quality for playback. What are you using for recording and how familiar are you with the editing of the final product? Maybe you just need to upgrade whatever you are using to record so that the file sounds as good as it can using the cheaper speakers used in playback.

Since this is not the newb section I can speak freely but I won't be too harsh but WHAAAAT!!??

Bass Player, have you NO conception of the physics of sound reproduction? The speakers in laptops are tiny, TINY things with a cone displacement of less than a mm. The amplifiers that drive them are capable of milliwatts only. I have never tried it but if you strapped a pair on your head they would probably make passing good to crap headphones.

There is NO WAY they can be made to sound good. There are limits and laptop speaker hit those limits very quickly, there is only so far a recording engineer can go to making music of good original quality sound somewhat decent on crap repro gear and why should they? Why should MY listening experience on modest but decent headphones or good speakers be compromised because the Great Unwashed are tight bastards OR want to walk around with buds in lugs, staring at a phone and bumping into people? "Phombies" they have been dubbed.

It USED to be that in a band the lead guitarist was an egomaniacal volume freak, the drummer a muscle bound nutter, the lead singer a prima donna who never bought any kit and the BASS player was the 'technical one' that stood at the back and knew how everything worked. Oh how times change! (well, probably not drummers)

Get some audio-physics smarts chap!

Dave.
 
my laptop speakers are typical tiny crap speakers. The pro-commerical recordings sound better than home spun usually but its the most crappy sounding audio playback approach, mainly works for car mechanic videos or home repair video.

for audio I would imagine they assume people plug in headphones at the least for audio interested fans.

still even then the headphone amps are designed for bottom level products and wont do well with 600ohm headphones for example.

smart phone speakers are even worse, I have people hold up their phone at times and say "listen to this" and its comical in an insane way.
 
Dave, lighten up. If you would understand what I am saying, you would see that is exactly my point about the cheap speakers in laptops and phones. The sound is compromised. It's not going to sound as good as her headphones. My point was that she might not be getting the best quality recording out of what she is using. Also, I have played bass since the early 70s. My audio physics are just fine. I am only new to digital recording with DAW.
 
Hello. Was this ever resolved? I have a similar problem. Not off pitch/not out off key/it is the sound quality that does NOT match what is heard thru phones. I should add that it only sounds "right" when actually recording. When replayed with headphones on it still sounds blah and has lost any of the good slightly amplified sound quality for me. S.O.S. Thanks!
 
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