Ocarina Recording - Pure Tones Sound Rough on Small Speakers

AeghtyAteKees

New member
Hi, everyone.

I've recorded an ocarina medley, but I've found that when played back on a cell phone (or a laptop with subpar speakers), certain notes have this buzz to them, like the speakers are vibrating and creating unwanted noise.

In case you don't know, the ocarina is a wind instrument that produces sound similarly to a recorder, kind of like a whistle. It creates a pure tone, with little color or timbre or distortion, etc. I know VERY little about recording, but I know that through headphones or a good sound system (like in my car), the mp3 sounds perfectly fine. It's got to have something to do with the small speakers. Other searches I've done have returned other ocarina players dealing with this issue and confirming that the pure tone of the instrument causes trouble for small speakers, as they're designed primarily for playing back voice and phone calls.

Even if I did something poorly in my recording process, I need to know if there are any post-production tricks I can do to lessen the effect of this "pure tone buzz". It almost sounds like it's clipping (but db-wise it isn't), and it doesn't seem to have much to do with loudness; I can turn the volume down very low and the noise is mostly still there. I'm wondering if some kind of filter, distortion, compression, etc. could be used to minimize this unwanted effect.

As this was recorded for a music video intended to post to YouTube, the fact that it sounds bad on phone speakers is quite an issue. A lot of other ocarina videos I see don't seem to have this problem; many of them sound great!

I'm attaching the first bit of the song so you can hear what I'm talking about. I'd like to also know if your phone speakers DON'T have this issue! Advice is highly appreciated! Thank you all. :)

View attachment First Half for Posting.mp3

EDIT: Here's the ocarina-only track, as suggested, may be helpful to hear! Thank you all for your input!

View attachment Ocarina Only First Half for Posting.mp3
 
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I can't help but I did want to encourage you by saying that little speakers on phones and laptops are generally pretty shitty and are really not any good to be used as a gauge of how good a piece of music sounds. Pretty much whenever I hear stuff on phones, open ipods {ie, not in the phones} and laptops, my inner schlub speaker murderer kicks in but I'm able to resist the violent inclinations because I know I don't have to use such, ever.

the ocarina is a wind instrument that produces sound similarly to a recorder
Not too long before he died, my next door neighbour gave me his strangely tuned 12 string guitar and an ocarina. I swapped the guitar for a bass to give to a friend that used to babysit for us and I can't remember what happened to the ocarina. At the time, I didn't really like its sound. It looked like a china ornament and I didn't want my wife to start getting ideas.....
 
The ocarina sounded fine on my little speakers. The percussion - specially the shaker on the right side was too 'up front' - knock the volume down a bit an add some reverb to instruments that need it. The low drum beating had good reverb, but not the hand drums or shakers
 
I didn't hear any buzzing on my computer speakers. If you have the raw files, have you tried just playing the ocarina portion through the phone?

The low drum beats seem to have a lot of very low frequencies (under 50Hz). I wonder if that is causing the ocarina to be modulated. You might try rolling off some of the low frequencies of the drum beats. The puny transducers in a phone are unable to reproduce those very low frequencies.
 
Do the sweep test on the devices that sound horrible. YouTube have lots. 20 to 20 thousand Hz. It’s a constant level tone starting low ending way above your hearing limit. What you should hear is a rising tone that stays the same volume. What you will hear will be louder and quieter pits probably with some honky notes when the tone goes past. Every device will respond differently and you In some rooms You’ll hear the room join in at some frequencies if the volume is higher!
 
I tried the sweep test. Honestly, it sounded fine on my phone. I'm wondering if this issue has anything to do with the volume after all? I mean, I have limiters in place, it's not clipping...
 
I just played it through my Samsung J3 and it wasn't really distorted that I heard. I didn't have it at full volume, but it was probably at conversation level.

Have you just heard this on your phone? If so, it might be just vibrating something internally, or making the case buzz. Sympathetic vibrations are a pain. IF you turn the volume down, does it go away?

Also, playing the original file through the phone speaker, the drum and shakers are WAY too loud for the ocarina. No buzzing or anything on my phone, but the percussion just overpowers everything.
 
Okay, thanks for the input! I'll rebalance the percussion once I figure out what's up with the ocarina track.

I've played it through my headphones and my laptop, with which it sounds fine. I've played it in my car, and it sounds mostly okay. Over my phone it sounds really rough. Maybe it's just my phone, but if I YouTube other ocarina songs/videos, they sound great, so it's clearly something I've managed to screw up. Haha

If I turn the volume down, it does help some. Maybe I'll play around with the volume of the ocarina some more??
 
Years ago we had a weekly session for the Telemon Society. They would play pre Bach music on recorders live to two track. Those whistle type instruments were tough to capture smoothly. I think we usually used a pair of U87‘S in X/Y to capture them. They wouldn’t let us use dynamics, but the machines had DBX which didn’t seem to compliment the instruments either.
 
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