Levels ducking in my mixes on car stereo

fat_fleet

fat_fleet

Swollen Member
Pretty much everything I record has a couple spots in it where it's almost like the levels peak out too much and cause the volume of the entire mix to drop off for a few seconds, before gradually working it's way back up again.

This only happens in the car, but it happens in more than one car stereo (both > 10 years old) in the same spots, which tells me it's a problem with the mix. Plus music recorded by real people doesn't do it.

Does this have to do with volume spikes on the individual tracks? If not, any idea what causes it?
Bear in mind I know next to nothing about limiting or any of that mastering stuff... Thanks.
 
sounds like a bit too much compression or limiting...assuming, of course you're using comp on your mixes.

If not, my truck stereo has a compressor that I can turn on/off and it would do that at times. You check to see if yours does?
 
Dogbreath said:
sounds like a bit too much compression or limiting...assuming, of course you're using comp on your mixes.
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The most recent thing I'm doing I've got a little on each of two vocal tracks, and on a guit solo (2 tracks) in the middle just to make it pop out a little, then a little on the master bus.

Is that alot?

I usually set it around -8db and 1:1.5 - 1:1.7, but I don't really have a handle on attack/release settings yet...


Dogbreath said:
If not, my truck stereo has a compressor that I can turn on/off and it would do that at times. You check to see if yours does?
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Nah, my car stereos are pretty bare bones..
 
nah...I usually use comp on kick, snare, bass guitar, vocals and then another round on my 2 trk....and those settings don't sound like they'd do the ducking.
:confused:

Maybe mark the times that they duck and then look at your meters in your daw and see if there's somethin funky goin on at those spots.
Maybe an odd comp automation got turned on there?

I dunno, I'm grasping here. :)

Curious to what ya find tho.......
 
Possibly clipping zero full scale? (Was there something about older players not handling 'overs well?
 
No that's not a lot of. Impression, assuming you don't have super high ratios and low thresholds.

Your release could be kinda long on the master buss. That'd be my first guess. Take the comp off the master buss, push the volume up manually so it just barely doesn't peak and see if that works. If so its something in your compression settings.
 
How about: the stereo separation on your car stereo is bad and you're getting a phase cancellation going on due to the partial mono summing?
 
Dogbreath said:
Maybe mark the times that they duck and then look at your meters in your daw and see if there's somethin funky goin on at those spots.
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mixsit said:
Possibly clipping zero full scale? (Was there something about older players not handling 'overs well?
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Maybe. I'm still tweaking the mix so I'll check the next one.

aaronmcoleman said:
Your release could be kinda long on the master buss. That'd be my first guess. Take the comp off the master buss, push the volume up manually so it just barely doesn't peak and see if that works. If so its something in your compression settings.
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I'll give it a shot. It wouldn't surprise me if it was attack or release related. I don't understand those at all.

mjbphotos said:
How about: the stereo separation on your car stereo is bad and you're getting a phase cancellation going on due to the partial mono summing?
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Eh, but it does it in the same place in more than one car (both with crappy stereos/speakers).
 
Learn about compression before you use it. Not to sound like a jerk, but more stuff will get ruined. Attack and release are super important.

Ok, here's my quick compression lesson...to learn how each thing works, and to set the compressor, here's what I do...

start with the ratio really high (15:1 or above), push the threshold down until you get some compression but not everything is being compressed...it'll sound terrible.

put release as long as possible (or maybe somewhere around 300ms or so)...it'll sound worse.

then adjust your attack. longer attacks will let more transients through and kinda get a rhythmic effect...shorter attacks are great for taming transients in vocals...play around with this and you'll start to learn what attack does...with the ratio high and the release long you should hear attack changes.

then adjust release. longer release will smooth things out, shorter release will let things sound more natural and can work really well for taming peaks...play around with this and you'll start to learn what release does.

So now you have attack and release set and it sounds terrible, but at least you'll get some idea of what they do.

then turn your ratio down to whatever you think will work for the sources (usually 6:1-2:1, under 2:1 for a master buss), and adjust your threshold so the compressor is only catching the peaks you want it to catch.

now it should start to sound pretty good, you may want to go back and adjust each parameter again.

I don't know if this has anything to do with your original problem, but not knowing how to use attack and release will be a major problem.
 
aaronmcoleman said:
Learn about compression before you use it. Not to sound like a jerk, but more stuff will get ruined. Attack and release are super important.
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Nah, you're not being a jerk at all. I'm the first person to be suspicious about my own use of compression, which is why I don't use it that much.
I actually just recently saw a post of yours in another thread about playing with heavy settings to get an idea of what the attack and release rates are doing and made a mental note to try some of that stuff, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet..

mixsit said:
..so is it not doing it in your mix or on your mix system?
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Correct, this is only through my car stereos... It doesn't happen in my monitors, iPod, or home listening environment (Pioneer receiver and Ohm speakers).

I also just realized that regardless of which car stereo I use, I'm always using the same close-range transmitter to send the iPod to the car stereo. It's one of those guys from Best Buy that plugs into the cig lighter. Now I'm wondering if it's something about that little gizmo not handling little spikes too well, but again I haven't noticed the problem with professionally produced music.
 
AtoDeficient said:
I don't think it's being caused by your lack of being a real person. . . I suspect the ipod transmitter. What else is left?. . .
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I missed the mention of the iPod transmitter, for sure that's the cause - again, it may be summing partially to mono, causing a phase drop out. Listen to your mix in Mono and see if you hear the problem
 
fat_fleet said:
And so maybe none of my mixes are real mixes? ...
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And maybe none of them RealMixes have any peaks... at all. :D
This sould be interesting.
Totally not related-- But I recall trying to track/mic on a HiFi VHS. Sounded fine clean as can be with tame music. Folded on raw transients.
 
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