Getting frustrated with how mixes translate

[Fishybob]

I hope I'm not alone in this...

I spend Hours/days/weeks/months adjusting mixes until they sound good over my monitors and headphones. But I can't get them to lose the boomey sound that's making the mixes sound muddy and losing the clarity when playing back on 'normal' home audio systems.

The only way that I have managed to keep the high end clear and present is by rolling off so much lower mid that the warmth factor dissapears. The only thing now using the 120-500 area is the bass guitar.


... before someone points the finger at 'mic placement', it's been tracking for pretty great songs for years... it's just getting them to work together that's the problem.


Anyone else have similar problems... anyone know any good tips to combat this???

[busyboy]

Sounds like you've discovered the magic of room acoustics. If it sounds great in the room where you mix, but sounds bad in other rooms or on other systems, then your mixing room needs help. From what you describe, you might want to look into some form of bass traps. Check the forum, there are lots of posts about acoustic treatments for rooms.

[Fishybob]

Yeah, I know my room acoustics suck - many members have given great advice (just waiting for the funds now). Still I can't work out why this is still the case with headphones.

From what I understand they tend to have a hyped high and low (on the majority of headphones) but even taking this into account the mids still rule the sound.

[RAMI]

Don't mix with headphones. It will only make your problems worse.

[Fishybob]

No, I check my mixes on headphones.

[FALKEN]

you know I am in the same boat. I get a good sound at the source, mic it well through decent gear (not great gear), and I expect the mix to be amazing, but all I get is honking mids. no balanced highs or lows. I did try to correct this on my last project with some eq on the whole mix to cut out some honking mids. It got much better. but I am still on the search for the answer to this one too, my friend, and I am still experimenting with room acoustics. it might be the answer. There are a few other answers I am toying with at the moment still. It could be cheap cables that dampen the high end slightly (and builds up over tracks). It could be that the mics could be better matched to the sources and positioned better, but like yourself I have been doing this a long time and think my mic placement is ok. it could also be cheep preamps, or just the need for mastering. PM me again in like six months to a year and I might know the answer to this common problem.

[Fishybob]

lol. Thanks man. Glad to know I'm not alone!

Not too sure if I can wait a year though!!



I find it strange. when the mids are too strong the highs sound almost muffled. Yet when I take off LOADS of mids the high end is glorious!

I went for a warmish mic (Rode NT1000 through Focusrite Penta) thinking it would make the process easier too! The individual tracks are great, really clear. I think I'm just gonna eq the hell out of it in different ways and try and come up with a method that works.

If I have an epiphany I'll PM ya with "The answer".

[Blue Bear Sound]

Two articles that may help:
- Mixing 101
- Whad'ya Mean I Can't Mix With Headphones????

[Farview]

The arraignment might be muddy, too many similar sounding instruments playing in the same octave.

It really is a balance that you have to get. Remember, all the individual instruments don't have to sound good by themselves, they just have to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

[metalhead28]

Do you regularly listen to material that you know sounds good through your monitors in your room? That is the way that I try to overcome questioning the sound I get when mixing, etc. I try to keep the sounds of some really good CD's in my head and really know what they sound like on my monitors so I can use that for working on my own stuff. If not I would always end up mixing it wrong, adding too much low end, etc. Just a thought!

[Fishybob]

This one particular mix has:

1 male lead vox
1 male bvox - different singer
2 acoustic guitars panned 50% L&R
Bass
Full Kit
I jangly electric guitar - pretty clean just accenting chords on chorus.

... Taking off everything below about 350 for everything except Bdrum and Bass.

Reverb is slight and bright IR-1. Vocals are treated with short ambience plate and touch of delay (in time with song).



It's an awesome tune too!

[Fishybob]

I try to do that. But Alot of the albums I've got of a similar genre are Limited to hell. Very difficult to hear a good balance. Would be nice to hear some comparable tracks at mix stage... but that's another thread!

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by Farview

The arraingment might be muddy, too many similar sounding instruments playing in the same octave.

It really is a balance that you have to get. Remember, all the individual instruments don't have to sound good by themselves, they just have to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

I agree that you (Fishybob) could probably have a problem with room acoustics as what you describe are classic symptoms. One thing to maybe check for that would be to play back your mix at a decent volume and get up out of your chair and walk around a bit ad bee if the low-end balance changes and you hear the unwanted boominess start to come through at other locations in the same room. This would be a dead giveaway that you have some deadly bass modes and nulls happening that need to be addressed.

But the reason I quoted Jason is that I think he hit a very important factor in your situation as well. The "fitting like jigsaw pieces" analogy is great. Doing things like rolling off the high end on your bass tracks to make more room for other instruments, rolling off the low end of snare mics and guitars for the same reason, applying slight EQ dips and bumps individually and inversely to your two rhythm guitar tracks to give them unique curves in the mids, stuff like that. Also if you're using a lot of reverb on several tracks, that can build up your mids and muddy your highs real quick.

One of my favorite tricks is to use my parametric EQ as a test device to find "offending" frequencies in my instruments. This goes a long way to stop offensive buildup. It's a lot easier to do this trick if you have a physical EQ with no dynamic latency like you havee in most plugs, but it can be done with plugs equally as well if you just take it a litle slower. Here's what you do:

Turn the volume in your monitors down farily quiet. Playback each mid-section track (guitars, piano, organ, etc.) soloed, one at a time. For each track, throw in a parametric EQ band with a narrow width, boosting it by 10dB or so. Then slowly sweep through the spectrum, looking for the frequency that "honks" or presents itself badly the loudest. When you have found the most offensive frequency this way, drop the boost to instead make it a cut of 3 or 4 dB (more or less, to taste). Repeat this process of boost/sweep/find/cut for each track. You'll find often that not only will each track individually sound "sweeter", but that they'll "fit together" much easier with less midrange buildup.

G.

[Massive Master]

This is mostly aimed at the "unintiated" but a lot of confusion can roll around the meaning of "good sounding" when tracking is involved...

If I had a nickel for every time someone set up their amp and said "It's got a killer tone - It sounds just like (insert bad-ass axemaster's name here) on the (insert album name here) CD!

No - It sounds like (BAA's) tone after it was mic'd, tracked, mixed, mastered, and coming through a set of stereo speakers. Now you want to throw a mic in front of your amp and expect to get the same sound. It really doesn't work that way.

When trying to get a handle on your sound, start with it as "plain" as possible - Boring, white bread, without any extreme EQ settings on the amp. THEN put a mic in front of it and listen to what the MIC is hearing. THEN start moving (or changing) the mic and tweaking the sound.

When you finally get your "killer tone" take a close listen to the amp... It may sound surprisingly small and boring, it may not. Either way, it probably won't be like trying to mic up a stereo speaker.

[ds21]

Originally Posted by Fishybob

I try to do that. But Alot of the albums I've got of a similar genre are Limited to hell. Very difficult to hear a good balance. Would be nice to hear some comparable tracks at mix stage... but that's another thread!

So how do other cd of a different genre sound? try all kinds of good recorded cds and see if there's a lack of bass, also watch your playback volume if it's to low your mix may end up with to much bass if too loud it could end up with too little, if you really listen you can even hear the difference in response just by moving your shoulders up and down and forward and back while still keeping your head still, so moving you speakers or/and your listening position will have a big effect.

[SonicAlbert]

Fishybob, what are the measurements of your room, how do you have your monitors set up in the space, and what monitors are you using? Translation is one of the arts of mixing. It is a part of the craft that really takes experience, experimentation, and also the proper tools for the job.

I find one of the most useful tests of a mix is the "walk in the hallway" test (or the "go into the next room" test). I'll put the mix up and then go out of the room and stand in the hallway. Things sound a lot different there, and I certainly hear problems with bass buildup and some balance issues.

I personally really hate printing mixes, burning CD's and then taking them around to different playback settings, although I do that of course. It's just that it's so time-consuming when you do it multiple times. So I've been working on getting translations better without having to do so much of that.

I've mentioned this in another post recently, but my basic tools are these:

1. a big and a small set of monitors with a switch box
2. listening at extremely low levels to check for relative balances between parts
3. checking very loud from time to time
4. headphone checks
5. checking/mixing in MONO
6. listening further back in the room
7. listening in the hallway outside the room or in the next room

The reason for these techniques is to avoid the surprises of having the mix sound good in the room but translate poorly. Basically, if you can average out the mix so it sounds good in all the above scenarios it will probably translate a lot better when you take the CD of the mix to consumer systems for playback.

The honkiness in the mid-range might be revealed by switching between two sets of monitors, for example. My two sets are the Mackie HR824's and the KRK V4's. One set of big nearfields and one set of small nearfields. It's important that the small set have cones no bigger than 4" in my opinion, because that is the same size as boom boxes.

The other issue is that probably you have a lot of musical information going on in the mid frequency ranges. It's very easy to eq each instrument separately so that they sound good and then put it all together. However, it is often the case that if everything is eq'ed properly to fit together in the mix it will NOT sound good by itself. So I'd say spend more time eq'ing with all the instruments playing at once, or in groupings, rather than eq them in isolation.

The real issue though is why wasn't the honkiness revealed while you were working on it? That can also be an element of ear fatigue, or something similar to fatigue that you don't hear about too much. I guess you'd call it "ear getting used to it" syndrome.

After working with sounds for a while your ear gets accustomed to it and accepts the tone. This is part of the reason why I find it *much* harder to mix my own music than the music of others. The loss of objectivity leads to surprises later when playing back on other systems.

This is why I like multiple speaker sets, mixing at different levels, going out of the room, etc.: you keep presenting your ear with fresh sounds to hear, or at least fresh ways to hear the same thing. If you sit in the same position all the time, listening in stereo at the same levels with little variation, your ear will absolutely become accustomed to whatever you are presenting it with. Then when taken to other envirnoments you hear it differently for the first time and there are surprises.

I know that a lot of this is general advice not directly related to how to eq honkiness, but I think there may be some root causes here as to why your mixes aren't translating. Hope some of this is helpful.

[Fenderville]

Excellent post(s) SonicAlbert!

[Samantha C.]

Albert, I think I love you!

[mixsit]

Originally Posted by Fenderville

Excellent post(s) SonicAlbert!

Damn right!
Wayne

[Fishybob]

The room is tiny, a true box room... (9' x 7' x 8').
Speakers Behringer Truth B2031 Active (originals, not the re-release). These are approx 12" from the corners of the room with 2x 1meter square 3" thick acoustic panels on the mirror points to the sides. Rear wall is hollow.

The high frequency switch on the back is set at -4db - likewise with bass.

If I turn it up a little and walk anywhere in the house it sounds ok. There is no lack of high end clarity. As soon as it goes on CD and is chucked in any CD player the high end goes completely. It actually sounds like there is a pillow infront of the speakers.

I know these speakers are far too large for a room of this size - but they are left over from my old house.

I can work for weeks (and have been!) on tracks that sound great just for them to turn into cr&p on all other systems. I end up guessing what needs to come out.

Thanks for the advice SonicAlbert, great tips... I already do most of them. (can't go further back in the room cause there is no more room!)

[SonicAlbert]

Originally Posted by Fishybob

The room is tiny, a true box room... (9' x 7' x 8').
Speakers Behringer Truth B2031 Active (originals, not the re-release). These are approx 12" from the corners of the room with 2x 1meter square 3" thick acoustic panels on the mirror points to the sides. Rear wall is hollow.

The high frequency switch on the back is set at -4db - likewise with bass.

If I turn it up a little and walk anywhere in the house it sounds ok. There is no lack of high end clarity. As soon as it goes on CD and is chucked in any CD player the high end goes completely. It actually sounds like there is a pillow infront of the speakers.

I'm going to think about this more, but my first impression would be to pull the speakers more toward each other and away from the corners. The inside front edges of my Mackies are only 32 inches from each other and I get a very good idea of the stereo image. My KRK's are between the Mackie's, and my room is bigger than yours.

Also, if the high end disappears that much when you take your mix to other systems, that means your monitors are pumping out some seriously exaggerated high end. You might think about picking up a pair of the Mackie 624's or KRK V6's. I'm pretty sure you'd get better mixes in that room with those smaller and better monitors.

I can totally relate to the frustration of working on something for weeks and then it doesn't sound the way you want it on other systems. For me personally, the money spent on more appropriate monitoring would be well worth it in time and aggravation saved. If music is that important to you that you spend this kind of time on it, you might really want to give some serious thought to saving up for a smaller pair of monitors.

[AlexW]

Yep, I had/have a pair of Roland DS90 monitors that have a very exagerrated high end. Mixes always came out sounding dull (as if the dolby switch was turned on). I've switched over to a pair of Wharfdale 8.2 actives which seem to translate much more easily. I occasionally check things back on the Rolands and it's amazing how much of difference there is.

[dwillis45]

Originally Posted by SonicAlbert

I personally really hate printing mixes, burning CD's and then taking them around to different playback settings, although I do that of course. It's just that it's so time-consuming when you do it multiple times.

I hear that! I've always relied on the old conventional wisdom of playing back mixes on a car stereo. Unfortunately, at $2.69 a gallon, mixing is getting a little on the expensive side!

[Fishybob]

Thanks guys.

It does sound like a Dolby type HF reduction... very dissapointing!

I can't really get my speakers closer together as the desk is pretty large (again left over from the 'proper' studio.

I have just got a new job (yay! ) so will be able to pump some more cash into the studio each month (probably £200- £250).


Do you reckon the first priority should be new smaller nearfield speakers or Room Acoustic absorption???

[SonicAlbert]

Originally Posted by Fishybob

Do you reckon the first priority should be new smaller nearfield speakers or Room Acoustic absorption???

I suspect this will be hotly debated, but I'd say get the monitors first and then tune the room. However, I think that part of the plan with getting new monitors should be a way to figure out how place them optimally.