teal

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teal

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Hi, at the moment I am monitoring my recordings with tanoy speakers, they have a very flat sound . Is it true you have to listen back to your recordings with flat speakers?
I find it dificult to set my levels when mixing down and burning to CD, the finished product sounds completley diferent with the levels all over the place, I reilise the hi fi sound will be more dynamic. would I be better to mix on hi fi speakers?
Thanks Teal.
 
No...HiFi speakers are not the way to go.

What model Tannoy?

Where does it sound completely different after you burn a CD...on the same Tannoys or are you talking about your car or home stereo?
 
What Miro said.

Most, if not all ME's, listen to their mixes on a reference source....for me it's the car.

If you are having trouble with your mixes relating to other sources....most likely it's your inexperience showing through.

Other contributing factors would be acoustic treatment in your mixing room.....lack of treatment is causing your room to lie to you. Meaning, the sonic qualities of your room are effecting the way music sounds in there.....result, your mixes sound good in your mixing room, and on your Tannoys but not good other places. You are not alone in that dept. A lot of members struggle getting the "pro" bass and kick sound, with out it being either too boomy or too thin.

Your options are to treat your room correctly, there is a ton of info to be found about this subject, check out what HR members like Ethan Whiner and some of the other resident "experts" in the Studio Building and Display forum.

You other option, the least recommended, would be to learn how to decipher what your room is telling and adjust your ears accordingly. That will only get you so far.....a properly treated room is the way to go.

Good luck, and welcome to Home Rec!
 
teal . . . you need to distinguish between a 'flat sound' and 'flat speakers'.

it is true that flat speakers (i.e. speakers that have a fairly uniform response across the full frequency range) are desirable for mixing, because that is how you can judge the quality of a mix knowing that the speakers are contributing only minimally to what you hear.

But I'm not sure what you mean by a 'flat sound'. My guess is that you are talking about an uninteresting, lifeless mix, as opposed to producing a 'flat' mix that has all frequencies equally represented. Music is not like that, unless you are mixing white noise. So even on 'flat speakers' you are still trying to create solid lows, detailed mids and crisp highs . . . and you should be able to.

If you are not able to do this, then there are things to examine (such as what showstone mentioned): the quality of source material, your mixing techniques, the influence of the speakers and the impact of the listening environment.

I don't know what the Tannoys are like, so I can't comment. However, I will contradict others by saying that hi-fi speakers are ok . . . so long as they are 'hi-f'. Good quality hi-fi speakers are just as useful (if not better) than many so-called 'monitors'. The difference between 'hi -fi' and 'monitoring' is often more one of marketing than performance.

.
 
You don't want your speakers to flatter your music. You want your speakers to be accurate.

If the music is lifeless, you want to know it.
 
Hi Miroslav, thanks for the reply, the Tannoys are PBM 6.5 11 there probably quite old these days. In my headphones the mix is fine and sounds dynamic etc; but through the tannoys it's just flat + if say i raise the level of an instrument slightly and it sounds a good level on the Tannoys when I burn to ce and take to the car etc; the instrument could be way too loud, so I'm having to mix things almost inaudible to get them right for burn down which is really hard. Thanks Teal.
 
Thanks Gecko, yes your right lifeless mix, problem is I can't seem to get the levels of instruments right in the mix, it all sounds good on the tannoys but after burndown some instruments are way too loud and I have to do it again. what I'm trying to achive is what you hear is what you get, by the way all my recordings are done via D I I'm using cubase5. Thanks Teal.
 
I use to have the 6.5 Tannoys a million years ago...before I moved into my new place and when I only had a small room.
Honsetly...I could never get a decent mix on them that translated well.
Of course, the small room I was in at the time had something to do with it too.

One thing though...it sounds like you may be mixing on the headphones instead of the monitors...that you are using the headphones to make mix decisions and doing a lot of A/B between the headphones and monitors...?

I certainly would consider something else besides the 6.5's. Once I got my Mackie 824HR monitors, I immediately noticed how dark and murky the Tannoy 6.5's really were...which is probably why mixes never translated well.

Maybe you need a monitor upgrade....
 
Thanks Showstone, I'm actually recording at home in a room Iv'e set up, nearly all of my inputs are D I even acousitic guitars plug straight in, I hear what your saying I was a session singer for years having it all done for me with huge set up's ,now I'm trying it on my own on a small budget weirdly I think if I could get it right there wouldn't be so much of a diference, I'm using cubase5 i'm not using any outboard kit at all just what's within cubase, I'm writing songs I'm not trying to win any medals for good recordings I just want them to sound somewhere near. Thanks It's nice to be a part of Home rec.
 
teal said:
In my headphones the mix is fine and sounds dynamic etc; but through the tannoys it's just flat + if say i raise the level of an instrument slightly and it sounds a good level on the Tannoys when I burn to ce and take to the car etc; the instrument could be way too loud, so I'm having to mix things almost inaudible to get them right for burn down which is really hard. Thanks Teal.
Click to expand...

This tells me that your room has significant problems and needs acoustic treatment.
 
Cheers Miroslav, I think youv'e convinced me most of the studios Iv'e worked in over the years use Genlec's I'll have a listen to your recomendation about the Mackie 824R monitors I was never sure about the Genlec's have you experienced them ? Thanks Teal.
 
teal said:
Cheers Miroslav, I think youv'e convinced me most of the studios Iv'e worked in over the years use Genlec's I'll have a listen to your recomendation about the Mackie 824R monitors I was never sure about the Genlec's have you experienced them ? Thanks Teal.
Click to expand...

There's all kinds of Genelecs.

I've never used them, but when I was considering monitors awhile back, I ran across a bunch of people who said the Genlec nearfields (in my price range) at the time were a bit shrill in the tweeter...and so I never bothered to follow up on them, and after auditioning several other brands/models, I settled on the Mackie 824HR
 
I have some flat speakers. 4' magnepan magneplanar speakers. Nice accurate sound, but virtually NO LOW END to them. And not well matched if you have one near an air vent. The heat differential in winter time really makes them weird.

If you want to get semi-scientific, you can do a frequency sweep played on your speakers and record that with your mic. You've got two curves to compensate for there, of the speakers and of the mic (possibly preamp / interface too). But you can actually measure what you are or are NOT hearing. Perhaps making a special playback EQ curve to mimic how it would / should translate to compensate for the speakers. But if the speakers / monitors can't produce certain tones, there's not much you can do about that, outside of getting better ones.
 
I'm guessing there's something kinky with either your mixing area acoustically, or something quirky with your monitors. Might just be monitor placement. Something is "lying" to your ears during production. What is the result if you use your phones to mix? Does it wind up sounding acceptable in the car if you do?

My monitors don't flatter any portion of my raw tracks. The goal is to enhance the tracks with reverbs, eq, etc to the point that the music sounds gorgeous through the flat, lifeless monitors. When it does, I've done my job! :drunk:

The mere process of mixing down, and burning your project shouldn't have any remarkable effect on the quality you were just hearing before mix-down.

I'd try some alternative monitor placement or area treatment before ditching the Tannoys. And one change at a time only please, so you know what is actually having an effect.
 
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