One thing I've always noticed wrong with my mixes is how they sound in the car environment. Right away, the guitars get high end gainy and muddy, and the drums get thin. The answer? Two things: (and if anyone's planning on listening to my samples, do'nt, cuz I have yet to upload any of my new mixes. but trust me, this DOES improve your mix)
1. everybody knows you need to have decent monitors. But to an ametuer, like me, that was interpreted the wrong way. At first, I was listening through a large pa system, blasting the mixes towards me. But those monitors were MADE to sound GOOD no matter what. Furthermore, because of a mix of different crappy wires connecting the montiros, pa, and outputs, certain frequencies were getting CANCELLED OUT. that's right, cancelled. I didn't know that was possible, but it obviously is, cuz I've heard the mistakes now. So lesson learned, don't get monitors that are made to sound the best. Get the monitors that are most accurate. Now I have a pair of Dynaudios that cost me over a grand. WELL WORTH IT.
2. Next was my main problem with guitars. The tone would turn to crap in some stereo systems even tho the guitars sounded great from my (distant) pa monitors or my headphones. Reason being, you guessed it, frequencies were canceling out. ( or at least they were combining in a disgusting way) See I never knew you SHOULD mix in mono to find these things. So I would find a decent tone for 1 guitarist, record, then find a decent tone for the seceond guitaris, record, and later on in mix down I'd pan their tracks left and right. Well sure when you can hear then individually they sounded fine. (like in headphones for example) But the second I listened to my mixes in "MONO", BAM, they sounded almost exactly as horrible as they did in my car. Who knows, I don't even know for sure. I'm just saying from personal experience, now that I've remixed some of my old stuff in mono, to make sure that the COMBINATION of both guitar tracks still sounded decent, my mixes are improving a lot. And for some reason, mixing in mono actually made the music sound like I was listening from my car.
Sorry about the rant - i don't know much, but i figured this much out for sure. MIX IN MONO ON ACCURATE MONITORS.