Speaker Warble @ High Volume

[K9SaVeLLi]

I have a little problem. I have been mixing a number of tracks for an upcoming project, and most of the tracks sound great at low and normal volumes. As soon as I start turning the volume up louder, the bass starts to warble the speaks. Everything still sounds good at high volumes, but the bass starts to peak out. I have been using waves L2 to get some extra punch and volume, but like I said before...bass starts to peak the speaks. What should I be doing? I know your probably going to say not to use the L2. But my computer crashed on me recently and I lost a lot of projects and am left only with stereo wav. files. Can I just eq these files? And for the new projects, should I be eq'ing some of the bass out before I apply the L2? Only at high volume, does the bass start sound crappy...normal volume sounds great. Thanks.

 

[mixsit]

If the extreme low end level is too high, or extends excessively below the useful range for most speakers, filter trimming would help.
Wayne

 

[mattamatta]

That's what it sounds like to me... too much sub-low end.

Try some hi-passing under 50hz or so.... or maybe just turn the low end down.

The low end stuff takes a tremendous amount of power to reproduce properly, and when you push it too loud, it just sorta craps out and gets really funky because it eats through the headroom like so many ants devouring a caterpiller, as it looks up at the sky for one last glimpse of the earth it lived and loved since birth.

 

[LRosario]

It might be a number of things,


1) You might have tracked the bass too loud, with no head room left to spare.
2) You might be adding too much bass in your mix without realizing it.
3) You might have a lot of low to mid low end in other instruments that are adding up to a lot of bass.
4) It might be your monitoring environment.


Number 2 is a really common one. For some reason, inexperienced engineers tend to over compensate on speakers that offer little or no low end.

One thing I try is comparing two 20 second clips of a final bounce (mixdown).

One with untweaked bass and another with the bass level brought down a notch.