Cursed with a crappy monitoring setup, mixes come out low end heavy!

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ambi

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Im stuck mixing with my computer speakers, headphones, and sometimes the reference of some cheap Paradigm bookshelf speakers behind me. I get it sounding awesome on these speakers, and then i got to my car (where everything usually sounds the best), and the bass is just overpowering! Even more so the muddy and overpowering midrange. I find if i put the bass setting on my cd deck to -2, it sounds alright.

One thing ive done is taken a lot of mixing advice from different sources, on where to cut/boost different instruments to get the best sound out of them, and lets say i do a 100hz cut by -2dba, and a 140hz boost by +2dba, should i just not boost the 140hz, and instead cut the 100 by -4DBA? Sortra reverse my eq settings, don't go any higher than 0 to start, and just do extra cutting to make the frequencies i want to "boost" stand out more, and naturally? and should i just put some eq over my entire track with a bit of a low end cut?

I'll post up the mix in particular im talking about fairly soon.

I'd apriciate any expert/non expert advice. Anyone feel free to put in your two cents i'd apriciate it.
 
Try this:

Do a quick mix of your tracks completely dry: nothing but volume adjustments. Don't try to get a perfect mix, just make it so you can hear everything. Burn a copy of that and check it in your car.

I think you will be surprised at the results.
 
https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19596

First read all my posts in this thread.

Next, start thinking and listening for yourself instead of relying on "recommended eq settings" given by others!!! They cannot hear your audio, and my experience has been that from project to project, depending on the genre, how well it was recorded, etc...that VERY different eq setting's will apply!!!

Use your ears and do what is right for the songs.

Pay particular attention to the posts I have concerning control room acoustics, and the difference in low end between studio monitors and consumer speakers. They DON'T sound the same, and you need to learn how your monitors sound in your room. Play a lot of well recorded music back through the same D/A converters and monitors you use for mixing so that you can learn what a good mix sounds like on your system. You will be surprised at how you have to make some things sound on your mixing system to sound good on consumer systems.

Good luck.

Ed
 
High ambi!

One more thing (that you probably know, but just for the case...): ALWAYS listen to the mix, when EQing, setting up dynamics a.s.o. It might be that you give too much worth on the sound of the single tracks... But its the overal result that counts...

aXel
 
Don't boost anything..........get the sound you want before you record it..... boosting anything...especially low frequencies makes mixes muddy....

cut the problem frequencies...don't boost the "good"
 
use a spectral analyser
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While this can be useful at times, I don't look at paintings with my ears. And I wouldn't suggest trusting your mix to your eyes.
 
pglewis said:

While this can be useful at times, I don't look at paintings with my ears. And I wouldn't suggest trusting your mix to your eyes.
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100% agreed, and a nice analogy to boot pg!!!

Also, there is NO hard and fast rule about eq'ing when it concerns whether it is better to cut or boost. It basically depends on what you need to do with the track. If I need a boost of something, I boost it. But I do agree it is best to track the stuff as close as possible to the way you want it to sound and to do as minimal eq as possible, and I look to cut freq's first, but will boost if needed.

Again, this really doesn't strike me as a "eq problem" really. It just sounds like this guy is learning the ropes about the difference between what you hear where you mix and what you hear in real life. He has the added disadvantage of not getting the whole accurate picture of things from:

1 - Probably a poorly acoustically treated control room.

2 - Computer speakers which don't tend to "reveal" much about the sound when compared to proper near field monitors.

3 - Not knowing his D/A converter setup, but based upon the fact that he is using computer speakers to mix with, I will assume a somewhat poor quality sound card (but I consider D/A to be the least of his problems)

4 - Probably is not digitally ripping good sounding mixes to reference against his mixes through the same speakers and D/A converters so he can hear exactly how good sounding mixes sound on his setup.

If this guy can get on the ball and deal with point 4, he can probably get his mixes a lot closer to what he wants, because then he will have a better idea of what he needs to do to make his mixes translate on other systems. What should tip everybody off about his problem is that he says

"I get it sounding awesome on these speakers, and then i got to my car (where everything usually sounds the best), and the bass is just overpowering! Even more so the muddy and overpowering midrange. I find if i put the bass setting on my cd deck to -2, it sounds alright. "

I can almost assure you that good quality mixes sound NOTHING like his mixes do through these speakers do.

So ambi, start doing a lot of listening on those speakers and compare your mixes critically to good mixes and start making adjustments based on those comparisons and you will start getting closer to what you want in balance.

Ed
 
Good advice from everyone!

How did the dry mix sound? Did it help you to hear what you did wrong?

I always make a dry mix of my stuff when I'm done tracking to use as a reference. I find it helps to keep things in perspective, especially when there's a lot going on in the song.

I judge the quality of my recordings by the amount of tweaking I have to do. The less the better. Too much means back to the drawing (tracking) board.

Like anything in life the more you do it the better you get. Just don't expect to have a "perfect" mix and you'll do fine.
 
pglewis said:

While this can be useful at times, I don't look at paintings with my ears. And I wouldn't suggest trusting your mix to your eyes.
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while i do totaly agree...if you are mixing on computer speakers, or speakers which dont give you good or "true" sound of your mix. a spectral analyser will SHOW you what you CANT hear, because of your drawbacks in your monitors.
 
Yeah, I'm sure we pretty much agree here, shack.

The truth is everything is probably going to just be a guessing game with the current set-up. Saving up the pennies and getting a better monitoring system is the only practical solution, I think.
 
Your headphones are assumingly better than your monitors and more equal to your car's stereo--use them to review after you change stuff in a track as well as on your monitors.
 
ridl said:
Your headphones are assumingly better than your monitors and more equal to your car's stereo--use them to review after you change stuff in a track as well as on your monitors.
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I wouldn't assume that you will get any better picture in overall tonal balance with headphones while mixing. In fact, I find it much harder to get the overall tonal balance via headphones. Usually, I just use phones to listen critically to reverb trails, exact panning positions, and for noise I might be missing. They are also usefull for listening to any type of "muting" on a channel (whether than be via editing on a DAW or mute automation on an analog or digital hardware console).

Ed
 
as a rule of thumb, headphones will ALWAYS sound better.

in fact, many of my mixes on headphones basically always sound perfect.. hell - i noticed that without even doing any mixing, just doing some general compression and volume changes, and the mix sounds polished and mastered on headphones! haha.

then, i take out the headphone plug -- and boom here comes the muddiness.

ha
 
Which Paradigm monitors? These could be the best monitors you could ever have or the worst, depending on the model. The mini-monitors and the studio/20's should mix quite well, so if you own those, then is probably your room and listening station.
 
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