semi newbie, recordings too bassy. help.

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benisaloser

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hello everyone. I'm kind of a newbie. I saved up my money from a summer job to get a aardvark q10. It came with a condenser mic (from bayview pro audio), which is of a brand that I'm assuming "sucks", or is among the lower echilon of the microphone spectrum. but anyway. I have the q10 going out to "ev 7100" power amp that my dad doesn't use anymore, then to two "klh" monitors. I think they may be for home stereo, and I'm not sure what my dad used to use them for. here's my problem. any "commericially/well recorded" song that I play in winamp and look at the eq all the values across the board light up, but if I play anything I have made (recording an acoustic guitar, vocals, an electric guitar though i might also use a sm57 depending on how loud it is, synth stuff) when I go to put it into winamp after using cakewalk pro audio 9 (came with the q10, I "had" logic, but I had to get rid of....."free" software, because my dad got on my case), only the bass/lower values go up a lot, the first division goes up really high, and then they seem to go down exponentially. Is this happening a)because I don't have a compressor (for example if I record hand claps or hitting a table or something...all I really hear is the loud contact sound), i'm not sure if i'm thinking of a compressor in the corrects, or b) because I don't have a subwoofer+crossover (the monitor I have says its only for 60hz-20khz, and also when i play a song in winamp it sounds a little boomy) or c)because I don't have a mic preamp, eventhough the q10 has "discrete" preamps which sounds marketing ployesque to me. I usually record 24/96....I don't think that matters since I'm not compressing anything to mp3. The recordings sound pretty alright to me except for the increased "boomy/bassyness", I'm just confused why the equalizer looks so drastically like that. If anyone wants to hear something I guess I could try to find an mp3 converter and put them on my website...i'm basically not sure where to spend my money first, since I don't have a job quite yet.
 
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Regardless of how speakers are rated they all fall off in the bass range. In fact, what you are experiencing is very typical and you need a sub woofer to go after the problems on the low end.

There are several ways to attack the problem:

- Parametric EQ to roll off the low frequencies.
- Use a multiband compressor to heavily compress the offending frequencies and let the tone of the bass come through at higher up frequencies
-Use a standard compressor, however you may end up squashing higher tonal characteristics of the bass frequencies too.
-EQ things as you record by rolling off instruments and vocals as you record so there is not as much bass build up.

The list goes on but it's hard to EQ something you cannot hear. I opted for a sub to get things under control. Otherwise you can try and EQ things without hearing but it's a major compromise.
 
thanks. that's what made the most sense to me. another question would be that if I use a subwoofer with a crossover, where does the subwoofer get plugged into? this is just a novice question...but does it go out of the crossover or into a power amp (meaning that I would need one for the sub, since my poweramp only has 2 channels), or does that depend on what kind of subwoofer you go into (are there active/passive ones?). and is there a need to get an expensive crossover? it does a pretty straight forward job, so I wouldn't imagine spending more than 150usd for one (I saw a samson one for about that)...unless I was doing a live thing with a lot speakers..which I'm obviously not...anyway thank you very much.
 
Most lo end sub woofers come with the cross over built in. I have the M-Audio version and it allows me to set the cross over point. The crossover point will vary from room to room and from satellite monitor to satellite monitor.

In my room with the M-Audio SP5Bs (BX5s are the current version) and the SP8 sub, I have the sub handling 100Hz and under. The satellite SP5Bs are taking 100 and above but I am thinking about raising this to 140 for both because the 5 inch speakers in the satellites are not really pushing 100-200 all that great. If you have larger speakers say 6-8 inch nearfields then 100Hz should be fine.

The goal is tranferable tracks so that things sound good on a variety of speakers.

Regarding connections, this may vary. My sub lines-out to my monitors. The satellites line-out to the sub in. The crossover, once again, is internal to my sub but on higher end systems could be completely external. So yes, there are passive and active subs.

The Samson looked good to me too and from the guy who sold me the SP8 came highly reccomended. I wanted to keep a matched set however so went with the slightly smaller powered sub.
 
Have you thought about the fact.......

that maybe you are mixing down your songs with TOO much bass?

How do your mixes sound on different systems? In the car? At the local club? at the local bar?

If they ALL sound bass heavy then you will need to learn your monitors AND your mixing room. :cool:

If your mixdowns sound good to you, but still have too much bassiness. Cut back the bass a bit, even when you think it sounds okay.

Let us know if this works.....

You can also try putting a 40 - 60hz shelf on your MASTER OUT or AUX OUT. ;)

Peace...

spin
 
none of your a,b, or c choices, I don't think. You monitoring environment is irrelevent when considering the spectrum analysis in winamp. Compression will help even out the volume of your notes, but unless it's multi-band compression used in the correct manner, it won't held reduce the mud. The lack of mic preamp might cause some slight removal of high frequencies (I would guess) if your setup really sucks, but I doubt it would be the root of your problem

It's somewhat standard practice (especially among commercial pop producers) to reduce low frequencies significantly on every track as they are recording them, whether by equilization, microphone choice or mic placement. If they are using eq as the method, they will generally cut with the range containing the fundamental frequencies of the notes for whatever instrument they are recording (200-500 Hz for male vocals for instance) as well as the frequencies below that (which are usually not very musical and just add unwanted artifacts to the mix).

The basic idea is to do whatever you have to to make the overtones unnaturally loud in comparison to the fundamental pitch, especially much higher overtones and those containing the formants for any given instrument (the frequencies that give the instrument its particular character). It has been shown that average listeners prefer to hear things skewed in this manner, even though it is obviously not natural. Pop music takes this idea and pushes it so far that every new recording engineer is left to wonder why their stuff always sounds so "dull" or "far away" in comparison.
 
i think i may be mixing down with too much bass based on the fact that my monitors may be thinning out in bassish areas, hence wanting to get a subwoofer. But I'm not doing rap or something....not that I don't like rap, or certain kinds of rap, but I don't know some people seem to like having a friggin oil drum in their trunk. but that's the besides the point, and a little un pc...I have vacation now, so I'll be nerdily reading everything in the articles. based on the pop thing about taking out the bass...didn't prince do that with purple rain...i remember hearing that...but anyway thank y'all.
 
i was just thinking that a lot of the stuff i have recorded has been solo guitar stuff...usually acoustic, because I just get ideas when i'm f'ing around. and I guess I'm kind of not paying attention where I place the mic...etc...but could this be to a certain extent just the proximity effect....but it has happened with all synth stuff, or stuff that I recorded direct...maybe i'm just retarded and plugging things in wrong, which I doubt...but I offer human error to any equation..I'll try the rolloff idea tonight or tomorrow...anyway. bye
 
could be proximity effect. Try micing from at least 6" away, that should help (or roll off the bass more and more as you get closer). About the synth stuff... I don't think you're plugging stuff in wrong. Don't be afraid to turn the eq knobs as far you need to to get the sound you want. Tell me how it turns out.
 
hmmm...

alright here was my theory...I recorded my acoustic guitar with a condenser mic a while ago (before writing this thread), and seeing the same pattern in winamp...and thinking that I've played guitar for about six years, been in a band for about 2 years (recorded one "ep" type thing at a studio with a mac g5..Genelec speakers, mesa boogie Marshall amps, Focusrite red preamps, protools...the list goes on) and figured...my taste can't be that bad that i'm mixing this crap down and only the first little thingie was popping up on winamp...(maybe I was unclear...you can blame me about using the word bassy)...so I was reading an article about db's because I was wondering about logarithmic scales..because I knew that about db's but i didn't know why, and i'm in ap calculus, so I figured it would be a worthwhile nerdy thing to know. so I find out that 24 bit files have extra dynamic range. so i think that this could just be a weird artifact of the 24 bit file ( I was recording 24/96) or something like that...and it turns out that was the problem... The other bands showed up with a 16 bit 44.1 wav file and then even more as an mp3. I guess i'm sorry if I used the word bassy in an ambiguous way.
Thank you spinster for the articles cuz that and not having an mp3 encoder is what made me think of going doing that. also just as a side note right click mp3 is a really good mp3 encoder that lets you encode/decode mp3's/wav's from the right click menu.as of now it's free (he asks for donations...freeware)

http://my.execpc.com/~sfritz/rc-mp3/

does anyone know a free spectrum analysis program because I feel really stupid mentioning winamp as what I'm looking to see the frequency bands
 
Re: hmmm...

benisaloser said:
....Thank you spinster for the articles cuz that and not having an mp3 encoder is what made me think of going doing that.....
Click to expand...

No problem. :cool:
 
Spinsterwun- I was referring to his a,b, and c choces in the original post.

benisaloser- I'm a little confused on your theory... can you be more specific with what the difference is between winamp's response to your recordings at 24 and 16 bits. I think it's hard to tell much from that little window in Winamp (though I think I have an old version of it). Without any x or y-axis labels it would be hard to conclude much from that, even if you are comparing it to another track being analyzed the same way.
 
If you are looking for a decent priced sub woofer, go with the samson. Middle man and few others recommended it to me a month ago and I just got it and I've been using for a month now. It is great, built in cross over, goes well with my Roland and Truth monitors. My cross over is around 90 and it is a great product for the price. I first thought....well I will get it now and later upgrade it to mackie or something but now I feel that I dont need to upgrade at all.
 
Jeyan, I had the same experience. Once I got the sub, my nearfields were more than adequate and I decided not to upgrade....






At least this year.
 
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