Opinions on mobile recording setup upgrades?

Is your room treated, and tuned with your monitors? $1,500.00 gets you into a pair of new Adams A7X. A used pair of Genelec 8040s. There’s a set of Dyna Audio LYD7 monitors for sale used for $1339.00 on Reverb. DYNAUDIO LYD-7 (Pair) 200w Total 7" Bi-Amp Active | Reverb

Money well spent is getting your mixing room treated the best you can afford, then get the best monitors that you like, usually the more money the more detailed the monitor. After you get your room, and monitors set, you might want to get them “tuned” with something, like sonar works.
 
Is your room treated, and tuned with your monitors? $1,500.00 gets you into a pair of new Adams A7X. A used pair of Genelec 8040s. There’s a set of Dyna Audio LYD7 monitors for sale used for $1339.00 on Reverb. DYNAUDIO LYD-7 (Pair) 200w Total 7" Bi-Amp Active | Reverb

Money well spent is getting your mixing room treated the best you can afford, then get the best monitors that you like, usually the more money the more detailed the monitor. After you get your room, and monitors set, you might want to get them “tuned” with something, like sonar works.




I have treated my room myself. My approach like I suspect many home studio enthusiasts is more deadening of sound waves than reflections. No I cannot spend 6 to 10k to have my room professionally engineered and treated. I know that is not what you are suggesting, but I have heard that on many forums. I guess I am and always have been a tinkerer and a questioner. Thus the high plugin count and going against the grain when literally EVERYONE IN THE BUSINESS says to mix and master separately. BTW I do mix and master in separate stages but just render the file in the same project and then mute all the other tracks. I ask myself things like, if it sounds great to my ears?... If 99% of folks are going to be listening on phones, tablets and in their cars then why do I need $5000 studio monitors? (which I would ABSOLUTELY LOVE TO HAVE BTW). Wouldn't my very limited funds be better spent on a few great mics?
Thus before I finish a mix I listen to it twice on my home stereo, in my car and on my mono phone. I almost always make adjustments and do it again and again. I take criticism as a challenge. Not to prove I'm right about things, but to try new approaches and see what happens.
I did download Room EQ wizard. Is it any good? I have had it for a while, but have yet to MAKE the time to figure it out. Any thought on the Adam TV7's. I know they are the low end Adam's but would they be a significant step up from what I have? Until I could go for some really high end monitors in the future. The more money I spend on something temporary, the more money I will lose.
I have attached a pic of my mixing area. My studio is a big mess right now because I have been buying and selling gear - fixing, repairing, soldering etc. Which is also what I do.
The site is not letting me attach any more pics. I guess the administrator cut me off. Did I break the rules by attaching mp3's or pics to a discussion??
 
It's not just the peak, which you've exceeded quite a bit, but the compression that's overdone here.

I'd start by taking all FX off the master bus (ok, if you must, a little "glue" compression, no more than say 2:1 and maybe a dB makup), so you end up with a more dynamic mix. Then, get that so when you bounce it down to non-lossy stereo you've got at least 6dB left to play with before you crank it up to a finalized/pseudo-mastered version, doing that in a separate project, applying your limiter to raise the average loudness (use a loudness "meter" plugin - probably in every DAW by now) to your target. I set my hard/true peak limit at -0.5. When it's converted to lossy format, it almost always pushes it another .1, or you can normalize to 0 in that step if you must. (I don't think the vast majority can hear the difference in a mix that's limited at -0.5 vs. 0.0, but there probably are a few.) Anyway, the point is to finalize to a consistent loudness, and not a peak. If your loudness is achieved while your peaks are at -2.0dBFS, you've probably overcompressed everything from the gitgo, IMO.



Hey Keith. I do have and use the Klanghelm VUMT. I says the peaks are at -0.2 on its rms meter and about -8 to -10 average. You said I'm over dbfs in many spots? Does the vumt not show those? Do I need a different meter?
I know I'm crushing it and I am going to go back to the beginning and start over when I have time. I have some other things I have to mix this week. I may submit one of those into the mp3 mixing clinic using your approach. Thanks again for your help and honesty.
 
That wasn't remotely what I expected, and I like the recording quality and the recording content. I like the musicianship and I like the singing. It's pretty loud throughout. I've no idea what the plugins are doing - you sure they really are doing something, but apart from being a bit powerful, I thinks it's a great job.

In fact, it sounds a little like those 90s rack processors the Aphex expanders, the big bottom device and the things people slapped on already good mixes to make them loud. Not always a bad thing I guess.

Thanks for that. I know that my approach is fundamentally flawed, but I still do trust my ears.
 
I have treated my room myself. My approach like I suspect many home studio enthusiasts is more deadening of sound waves than reflections. No I cannot spend 6 to 10k to have my room professionally engineered and treated. I know that is not what you are suggesting, but I have heard that on many forums. I guess I am and always have been a tinkerer and a questioner. Thus the high plugin count and going against the grain when literally EVERYONE IN THE BUSINESS says to mix and master separately. BTW I do mix and master in separate stages but just render the file in the same project and then mute all the other tracks. I ask myself things like, if it sounds great to my ears?... If 99% of folks are going to be listening on phones, tablets and in their cars then why do I need $5000 studio monitors? (which I would ABSOLUTELY LOVE TO HAVE BTW). Wouldn't my very limited funds be better spent on a few great mics?
Thus before I finish a mix I listen to it twice on my home stereo, in my car and on my mono phone. I almost always make adjustments and do it again and again. I take criticism as a challenge. Not to prove I'm right about things, but to try new approaches and see what happens.
I did download Room EQ wizard. Is it any good? I have had it for a while, but have yet to MAKE the time to figure it out. Any thought on the Adam TV7's. I know they are the low end Adam's but would they be a significant step up from what I have? Until I could go for some really high end monitors in the future. The more money I spend on something temporary, the more money I will lose.
I have attached a pic of my mixing area. My studio is a big mess right now because I have been buying and selling gear - fixing, repairing, soldering etc. Which is also what I do.
The site is not letting me attach any more pics. I guess the administrator cut me off. Did I break the rules by attaching mp3's or pics to a discussion??

Eq wizard, Sonarworks, something to give you an idea of what your room is doing.
I like the Adams A7X. and the Dyna Audio. That said I gotta say I was impressed with the mid and high detail of the Adams TV5 and the TV7. I wasn’t in a good room when I heard them but, there was a set of HS8 sitting next to them. We ran music through a set of KRKs, HS8s, TV5s, and TV7s. The Adams seem to give the best detail in the mids, and highs. I think good mixes can be done on about any decent monitor, if you run enough reference material, mix enough songs and check against other speakers. The idea though is more detailed monitors can help you hear issues, and help hear when doing minute moves
 
Eq wizard, Sonarworks, something to give you an idea of what your room is doing.
I like the Adams A7X. and the Dyna Audio. That said I gotta say I was impressed with the mid and high detail of the Adams TV5 and the TV7. I wasn’t in a good room when I heard them but, there was a set of HS8 sitting next to them. We ran music through a set of KRKs, HS8s, TV5s, and TV7s. The Adams seem to give the best detail in the mids, and highs. I think good mixes can be done on about any decent monitor, if you run enough reference material, mix enough songs and check against other speakers. The idea though is more detailed monitors can help you hear issues, and help hear when doing minute moves


I meant the TV7's. A pair can be had for $500. Like I said, my ultimate goal is to have a pair of high end monitors but that is a couple of years away. Then maybe I won't spend as many hours referencing. I bet the resale on those TV7's would be pretty good with the brand. Thanks very much.
 
Hey Keith. I do have and use the Klanghelm VUMT. I says the peaks are at -0.2 on its rms meter and about -8 to -10 average. You said I'm over dbfs in many spots? Does the vumt not show those? Do I need a different meter?
I know I'm crushing it and I am going to go back to the beginning and start over when I have time. I have some other things I have to mix this week. I may submit one of those into the mp3 mixing clinic using your approach. Thanks again for your help and honesty.
I use a couple of things to check for peaks in the rendered result. The Orban (free) loudness meter tool is what I use all the time. You can even just drop your final file in Audacity, select the entire audio track, and click on the Amplify effect. Its default is to amplify to 0.0dBFS, so if you've got peaks above 0, you'll see it's already set to de-amplify your track by a [small] negative value.

You'll typically get a different peak value for non-lossy and lossy bounces, too, so I check both, though I never try to limit that close to zero, since most streaming sites apply their own compression, and may even normalize to zero peaks on their own.

I don't use that Klanghelm plugin. I use the Ozone 8 Maximizer most of the time, set to measure the True Peak, which can always be a little different since it's processing at 32-bit float. Once that's truncated, on playback the D/A converter (and they're all different) might decide there's a peak, i.e., waveform top/crest, that occurs between two fixed-point values (i.e., a "reconstructed" peak), even though there are no discrete values in the file above 0dBFS.
 
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I meant the TV7's. A pair can be had for $500. Like I said, my ultimate goal is to have a pair of high end monitors but that is a couple of years away. Then maybe I won't spend as many hours referencing. I bet the resale on those TV7's would be pretty good with the brand. Thanks very much.

I guess I was unclear, out of the budget monitors I heard. The Adams seemed to give the best mid high detail. If I was looking at a set of monitors in that price range, the Adams would be near the top, if not at the top of the list. I thought both the TV5 and TV7 did the best for Mids and Highs in that price range.
 
Okay guys. Just to follow up on my upgrades. I bought a pair of Adam T5v’s. They sound clean and neutral. Nothing spectacular. The reason I bought them instead of the T7v’s was I got a b stock pair with full warranty for 260 total vs 400. Or 500 for the pair of T7v’s. I figured if I take great care of them I can resale them and get my money back. The next thing I did is going to get a lot of disapproval. I use a Midas M32r as my primary studio interface. It has stereo outs you can assign and set up a stereo 3 way system will digital crossovers built in. So because the Adam’s are severely lacking in the low mids I am using my Behringer K-8’s to cover the low mids. From about 85 to 150 hz. It really brought out the mid and upper highs very nicely from the Adam’s. And like it or not at least to my ears the low mid is much more defined than the Adam’s alone. Then I have a 12” home built studio sub that I’ve had for years that is really great sounding. I don’t know why I have not bit the bullet on a 2 or 3 k pair of monitors, but not yet. And this set up will do nicely for now. Another upgrade was to buy a 1 year old Dell Lattitude 5591 laptop with a 512 gb ssd, an 8th gen i7 8850H 6 core processor - 2.60 ghz before turbo boost. Very nice and I got it for 800. Although I must say the improvement over my old laptop is not as much as I thought it would be. What it does improve on pretty significantly is real time processing at lower latency than my old laptop. Then I got a Glyph Blackbox pro 6 Tb USB-c external hard drive to replace my 1 Tb studio mini. It works out nicely and I found a use for the usb-c port on the Dell. Last I got an Alesis (gulp) Recital Pro 88:digital piano. Not for the internal sounds but as a usb midi controller. The selling point was the weighted hammer action and the usb connection. Is is replacing my 25 year old Yamaha P90 which has midi ports. The keys keep breaking now and have to be replaced. And getting the midi connection to work into my computer is a nightmare. I have to use another one of my interfaces to make it work. Unfortunately the midi ports on the Midas will not transfer midi messages to the computer from a controller. Okay thanks to all who had input. The next big thing will be higher end monitors but I am keeping my current set up as a 2nd reference.
 
Okay guys. Just to follow up on my upgrades. I bought a pair of Adam T5v’s. They sound clean and neutral. Nothing spectacular. The reason I bought them instead of the T7v’s was I got a b stock pair with full warranty for 260 total vs 400. Or 500 for the pair of T7v’s. I figured if I take great care of them I can resale them and get my money back. The next thing I did is going to get a lot of disapproval. I use a Midas M32r as my primary studio interface. It has stereo outs you can assign and set up a stereo 3 way system will digital crossovers built in. So because the Adam’s are severely lacking in the low mids I am using my Behringer K-8’s to cover the low mids. From about 85 to 150 hz. It really brought out the mid and upper highs very nicely from the Adam’s. And like it or not at least to my ears the low mid is much more defined than the Adam’s alone. Then I have a 12” home built studio sub that I’ve had for years that is really great sounding. I don’t know why I have not bit the bullet on a 2 or 3 k pair of monitors, but not yet. And this set up will do nicely for now. Another upgrade was to buy a 1 year old Dell Lattitude 5591 laptop with a 512 gb ssd, an 8th gen i7 8850H 6 core processor - 2.60 ghz before turbo boost. Very nice and I got it for 800. Although I must say the improvement over my old laptop is not as much as I thought it would be. What it does improve on pretty significantly is real time processing at lower latency than my old laptop. Then I got a Glyph Blackbox pro 6 Tb USB-c external hard drive to replace my 1 Tb studio mini. It works out nicely and I found a use for the usb-c port on the Dell. Last I got an Alesis (gulp) Recital Pro 88:digital piano. Not for the internal sounds but as a usb midi controller. The selling point was the weighted hammer action and the usb connection. Is is replacing my 25 year old Yamaha P90 which has midi ports. The keys keep breaking now and have to be replaced. And getting the midi connection to work into my computer is a nightmare. I have to use another one of my interfaces to make it work. Unfortunately the midi ports on the Midas will not transfer midi messages to the computer from a controller. Okay thanks to all who had input. The next big thing will be higher end monitors but I am keeping my current set up as a 2nd reference.

I COULD read that. But I ain't gonna try!!

Dave.
 
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