Mixing Brass Instruments??

[bgiurgiu]

Hi! I recently started recording brass instruments in my home studio. I record Tuba, Trombone, Euphonium, and Trumpet. Can anyone help me out with some insight as to why my recording sound great on my headphones or on any decent speaker but off of a phone it’s too loud and distorted?? If I lower the volume in my DAW then it’ll sound too soft. I’ve heard plenty of other brass tunes on YouTube and then sound great even on phone speakers. I just can’t get mine to sound good on a phone. I know that’s where most people listen to my YouTube content so I’d like to learn how to make the audio coming from the phone decent. Any help would be great. I record win Logic and use a Cascade Fatcat Ribbon mic and a Focusrite Clarett 4Pre audio interface. I attached a sample of my recording

 

[rob aylestone]

I just tried it on my macbook and fine, so my intial thoughts about too much low mids was rubbished when I played it on my iphone and sure enough it distorts and sounds kind of rough. I need to investigate a bit more, Im sure others will join in soon. This is very strange!

EDIT
I tried importing into adobe audition and got an error message - which I could clear and it let me play. I'm thinking maybe the mp3 encoder you are using is the problem. It's no consolation that it's actually a really nice recording of decent musicians!
This is the error I get - I have never seen this error message before. I downloaded the file and just loaded into audition. Loading it into other software does not give an error. Cubase is happy, so is audacity, vlc and apple music??

 

[Folkcafe]

You don't mention anything about your mastering workflow but I suspect the issue might be there. Apple recomends for digital masters, -1db True Peak.

Don't know if Spotify has changed but they were recomending -2db True Peak back a few years ago.

There are tons of articles on mastering for streaming services. Here is a pretty good one from SonarWorks Mastering for Apple Digital Masters

Here is one specific to YouTube How to Master Audio for YouTube

 

[rob aylestone]

It even sounds crackly and odd in the quiet bits though? Something I've never heard before - a sort of grainy artefact there all the time, not just on peaks, but ONLY on my phone.

 

[bgiurgiu]

Since originally posting, I tried even rolling off some of the highs from the trumpets and lowed the overall stereo out track volume but it still sounds distorted when played back on a phone! I am satisfied with how it sounds on headphones or speakers. I’m pretty new to recording so I don’t know all the terms, I hope I described it well enough

 

[rob aylestone]

I think it may be something to do with stereo. I tried converting it to mono and sending that to my iPhone and the result is much better - that grainy continuous distortion is not gone but easier to listen to. I suspect your mp3 encoder might be the issue. have you tried exporting the audio in a non mp3 format - .wav or aiff and trying that. What are you using to make the mp3? does it offer any different bit rates you can experiment with?

 

[markmann]

I listened on my Google Pixel 7a and the horns sound great but there is constant background noise throughout the track.

 

[bgiurgiu]

I tried last night bouncing it from Logic as a WAV file (tried multiple different rates) and it seems to not have any discernible effect….still sounds grainy and distorted on my phone