Stereo buzz

H

hunterwayne95

New member
I thought I had finally gotten to where I could get a decent mix with no static without having to sacrifice volume. Being very new at this, I recently had problems where I couldn’t get the mix loud enough without having too much gain somewhere which would cause white noise throughout the recording.

Well, after working on my most recent mix I was very excited to try it out in my truck. It sounds decent except that when I max it out my truck speakers buzz awfully when certain guitar chords are hit. The mix isn’t hot at all. No clipping occurs anywhere from start to finish.

I know it isn’t a problem with my truck’s speakers because it only happens with my home recorded mixes.

Granted, I haven’t tried listening to the mix through my Yamaha HS8s and turning the monitors up to see if it occurs there. Just been using headphones, and the mix sounds fine and devoid of distortion with the headphone volume wide open.

I’ve been very careful throughout the mixing process to try to gain stage the best I can.

Is it just an offensive frequency?

I am very new to all of this, and EQ and how to apply it properly is especially throwing me for a loop.

Any advice appreciated. Thank you!
 
Step 1. Listen through monitors. Your headphones may be folling your ears.

Your truck speakers may have a resonant frequency that's being triggered by something in the mix
 
Are you burning the tracks to CD to play in the truck?
If so the burning software might automatically 'normalize' to max and that can upset some CD players.

I have a very old second generation Philips CD player and I have to set Nero for 'no normalization and set the peak on discs to -6dBfs max.

But most likely, as said, a resonance in the truck speakers, you could make a frequency sweep CD at neg 6 and run that.

Dave.
 
ecc83 said:
Are you burning the tracks to CD to play in the truck?
If so the burning software might automatically 'normalize' to max and that can upset some CD players.

I have a very old second generation Philips CD player and I have to set Nero for 'no normalization and set the peak on discs to -6dBfs max.

But most likely, as said, a resonance in the truck speakers, you could make a frequency sweep CD at neg 6 and run that.

Dave.
Click to expand...

I am exporting the mix down as a .wav then emailing it to myself and plugging up to my AUX cord in my truck to listen.
 
I too suspect resonance. The frequency sweep test track will prove it one way or the other. A constant volume tone starting at 20 and going up to 20K will show you mega rattles and noises as it passes each noisy panel's frequency. Worth doing this in every space actually - may studio has an annoying one at 65Hz where the glass rattles/buzzes a tiny bit.

You then have a difficult choice - avoid the problem frequency in your mixes, or not. I suppose you could play the mix on as many systems as you can get to and see how many have issues at the same point? Then if it's just the truck - like with it.I have to own up to always notching just a teeny bit from my mixes to avoid my glass problem. I should really fix it, but just a few dB cut seems to make it go away. Bad practice, of course.
 
" my studio has an annoying one at 65Hz where the glass rattles/buzzes a tiny bit."

Have you considered sticking small pieces of glass to the pane Rob? On of the few things apart from fingers that Superglue works for !

Dave.
 
Hunter , back to your original statement about getting the song loud enough, 99% of the time I've had that problem Its' been sub or low frequencies eating up all the headroom. Every now and then its a single Hot track doing it. You probably need to revisit your mix. Turning some things down sometimes helps to get a loud mix without it sounding harsh at the mastering stage. ms
 
When mastering, be sure to use a meter that has a "true peak" function. Some waveforms that approach 0dBFS in the digital realm will clip in the analog realm.
 
grimtraveller said:
Why is that ?
Click to expand...

Because the filters that reconstruct the waveform don't draw a straight line between samples. It's entirely possible to have two sequential samples at or near 0dBFS that describe a waveform that exceeds 0dBFS, and if the converters aren't designed to accommodate that, which at least some aren't (or weren't), you can get analog clipping at the converter output. A digitally clipped signal with peaks at 0dBFS will almost certainly have true peaks above 0dBFS.

In practice most modern DACs seem to have some headroom built in, but it's still good practice to account for inter sample peaks.
 
bouldersoundguy said:
Because the filters that reconstruct the waveform don't draw a straight line between samples. It's entirely possible to have two sequential samples at or near 0dBFS that describe a waveform that exceeds 0dBFS, and if the converters aren't designed to accommodate that, which at least some aren't (or weren't), you can get analog clipping at the converter output. A digitally clipped signal with peaks at 0dBFS will almost certainly have true peaks above 0dBFS.

In practice most modern DACs seem to have some headroom built in, but it's still good practice to account for inter sample peaks.
Click to expand...

I would guess this is what was happening with my old Philips CD player? I never get close to 0dBfs but when Nero slammed the peaks to 0dB the player could not handle the inter sample peaks.

Dave.
 
ecc83 said:
I would guess this is what was happening with my old Philips CD player? I never get close to 0dBfs but when Nero slammed the peaks to 0dB the player could not handle the inter sample peaks.

Dave.
Click to expand...

It's possible. I think the original specification for CD DACs didn't allow for peaks above 0dBFS because there wouldn't be any if the CD was made by a direct digitization of an analog source. But when digital processing came along it make intersample peaks possible.
 
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