Who do I listen to?

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Christoffah

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Working on a solo CD for almost a year now and one week to the release date. It's not suddenly become apparent, but it has suddenly become very irritating, that...

Basically, my CD sounds best through my headphones, the pair I recorded/mixed it on. Through laptop speakers, my vocals sound very "cold/flu", hi hats are annoying loud, and the music crackles. Through my car stereo / PC subwoofer speakers - nice drum sound, pretty good overall. Through PC screen monitor speakers - a big mess.

The problem I'm faced with is that every person that listens to my music will find it sounding completely different to the next, whereas I'm sure professional music sounds the same regardless of the system (eg - both my music and professional music sound great through headphones, but mine sounds bad through computer screen speakers whereas pro music doesn't). Is there anything I can do? To be honest I just want to release it and am not going to wait (e.g if I need to buy new equipment), it's been too long and I need to start getting ready to leave for abroad university.

Any suggestions very much welcome. :)
 
Who are you releasing it to? If it's for friends and family, don't worry about it. If you're trying to break into the industry, don't release it at all.

You only have one shot at a first impression. If it's a bad impression, it'll be hard to recover from.
 
Somewhere in the middle I guess, haha. Just like your signature really; pretty much just for Myspace and people over the Internet. I've been working so hard at it so it's kinda important to me that the quality of sound is versatile across sound mediums...

As a result of this CD I pretty much hate audio and am going to leave it alone for a few years. 7 tracks has taken way too much time from my life :(
 
Well, you just became the poster child for:

What happens when you try to mix a CD entirely on headphones?

And

Why do we need mastering engineers?

With a week left to finish the project, you're in a tough spot. What you really need to do is buy, rent, or borrow some monitors and remix the project on them, and then send it out for mastering. Alternatives are;

Just get ahold of some monitors and do your best.

Just send it out for mastering and hope for the best.

OR, if you can do neither, you can try the insanity of tweaking the mix repeatedly based on what you find with the different playback systems to hopefully arrive at a compromise you can live with, making a whole bunch of coasters along the way.

Good luck with everything.
 
Ya know, Chirs, when the dust all settles and all of us have gone our life ways, the only thing anybody will care about in those recordings is the content. The songs and how they are performed. Nobody will give a rat's ass about the production quality.

If you are proud of the work you did in front of the microphone, what happened behind it doesn't matter.

You have it down on disc or tape, you have seen some very hard work through to it's conclusion. You should be very proud of yourself for that alone. And you have something for your friends and family while you are away.

You are a bit burnt out, and that's understandable; it's a major project you went through. Take a break. Go back to school and bring a copy of your disc with you. It's a great conversation starter, and the EuroTrash chicks will dig it no matter what the production quality :D.

G.
 
Robert D said:
Well, you just became the poster child for:

What happens when you try to mix a CD entirely on headphones?

And

Why do we need mastering engineers?

With a week left to finish the project, you're in a tough spot. What you really need to do is buy, rent, or borrow some monitors and remix the project on them, and then send it out for mastering. Alternatives are;

Just get ahold of some monitors and do your best.

Just send it out for mastering and hope for the best.

OR, if you can do neither, you can try the insanity of tweaking the mix repeatedly based on what you find with the different playback systems to hopefully arrive at a compromise you can live with, making a whole bunch of coasters along the way.

Good luck with everything.
Click to expand...

You're totally right, and I agree... ever since I started this it has been "home recording on the cheap". I'm no audio engineer, just a guy who likes to play music and had some songs I wanted do something with.

The sound I've got I'm actually quite happy with, especially considering I have very cheap equipment (no mixing desk even! and a Shure Sm58 for all vocals) - if only the sound from my headphones was how the world would hear it. As much effort as I put in to it, I can't really rent any expensive equipment right now and your final paragraph is the outline of my next week, God help me...

Still for an 18 year old's first solo CD I think it's not actually that bad. :)
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Ya know, Chirs, when the dust all settles and all of us have gone our life ways, the only thing anybody will care about in those recordings is the content. The songs and how they are performed. Nobody will give a rat's ass about the production quality.

If you are proud of the work you did in front of the microphone, what happened behind it doesn't matter.

You have it down on disc or tape, you have seen some very hard work through to it's conclusion. You should be very proud of yourself for that alone. And you have something for your friends and family while you are away.

You are a bit burnt out, and that's understandable; it's a major project you went through. Take a break. Go back to school and bring a copy of your disc with you. It's a great conversation starter, and the EuroTrash chicks will dig it no matter what the production quality :D.

G.
Click to expand...
That was a nice post actually. Thanks, you're right, at least I have something to show for it and I will be proud when it's out there :D
 
Christoffah said:
I'm no audio engineer, just a guy who likes to play music and had some songs I wanted do something with.
Click to expand...


I'm telling you as a fellow musician who went the route of recording engineer ... getting in to the recording thing is not likely to help you develop as a musician. It can, however, help you develop as a recording engineer. If your goal is to make music ... then make music, and let someone else do the recording and mixing. Preferably someone who is just as passionate about tracking and mixing as you are about music.

The time you spend worrying about mics and pres and converters and DAWS and why your mix sounds better on headphones ... is time that would be much better spent working on catchy melodies and thoughtful lyrics and all that stuff. :D There's still time to turn away. Don't take the blue pill.

I would recommend calling local engineers and telling them your situation, and that you just need something that will sound presentable on your myspace site ... but you don't have a bunch of cash to spend on studio time. Ask them: "Do you have a project or home studio we can work out of?" Someone's bound to need work and will bite on it. Listen to samples of their work, because that's what's important. If there's a particular group they've worked with who's recordings you like, then tell him: "I like the work you did with such-and-such. Do you remember how you tracked them?"

.
 
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It must be released in a week because in September I have a lot of university preperation to begin, plus I need to spend more time learning how to cook!! If the CD were to drag into the month of September, in which I have just a couple of weeks to get ready.. I just wouldn't cope. I set myself the deadline (next Friday) to work hard and have it done. I know it's not gonna sound as good as I thought it would across various sound mediums - but it does sound nice through headphones!..

As for your post Chessrock, I live on a 9x5 mile island and we don't really have a library of sound engineers; I also need to be saving money to pay for my new laptop & uni fees. "getting in to the recording thing is not likely to help you develop as a musician." I'm merely a musician in my free time, infact the only times I've played guitar at all this year was to record. I very rarely play anymore because I got RSI -... etc etc. Music isn't something I want to pursue forever. Just a hobby, nothing more. I'm an all-around creative perfectionist, I like music, art, making stuff etc. I don't prefer one subject over the next.

I agree with your statement on studio time - there's probably a ratio of about 1:10 of the time it took to write catchy songs against the time to record / mix! That's the reason I probably won't do something like this again.

Thanks for your recommendation, but your last line - "If there's a particular group they've worked with who's recordings you like, then tell him: "I like the work you did with such-and-such. Do you remember how you tracked them?"" to be honest I had never even thought of tracing down an engineer of a band I liked the sound of - I guess it was all an experiment for me and helped boost my experience in recording etc.

:)
 
You could always start a mixing/mastering contest in the mp3 clinic and see if anyone bites. :)
 
It is possible to mix and master on headphones, but you need reference monitors.
I use 3 or 4 different speakers/headphones to check my mixes and masters.
I get a balance between them, and they sound good on all systems.

Its all about getting to know your monitoring devices.

Eck
 
ecktronic said:
It is possible to mix and master on headphones, but you need reference monitors.
I use 3 or 4 different speakers/headphones to check my mixes and masters.
I get a balance between them, and they sound good on all systems.

Its all about getting to know your monitoring devices.

Eck
Click to expand...

That's what I should have done really, oh well... listening to your band now, catchy vocal harmonies and awesome material overall. :)
 
Christoffah said:
It must be released in a week because in September I have a lot of university preperation to begin, plus I need to spend more time learning how to cook!!
Click to expand...

May I suggest scratching the cd release and selling any gear you might have accumulated?
 
Christoffah said:
That's what I should have done really, oh well... listening to your band now, catchy vocal harmonies and awesome material overall. :)
Click to expand...
Thanks alot. Those mixes are old mixes, so Ive learnt a hel of alot since then.
Im going into the studio with the band next week so ill probably post snippets of new mixes once they are ready.

Cheers,
Eck
 
ez_willis said:
May I suggest scratching the cd release and selling any gear you might have accumulated?
Click to expand...

Sure you can suggest that but... why?... of course, I'm going to leave my music equipment over here at home whilst I go away...
 
Since you recorded and mixed the album on one set of headphones, you should include those headphones with every purchase of the CD. That's only way anyone listening to your CD will be able to hear it as you imagined it.

You've just discovered the pitfalls of using headphones to record and mix. Headphones are great for checking details, but lousy as the main reference when mixing (or recording). You need sound moving through air, which means speakers. Even cheap but decent speakers are better than using headphones only.

If you want your listeners to hear the music more as you intended it, you need to remix on speakers. That will most likely translate better to other playback systems.
 
Christoffah said:
Somewhere in the middle I guess, haha. Just like your signature really; pretty much just for Myspace and people over the Internet. I've been working so hard at it so it's kinda important to me that the quality of sound is versatile across sound mediums...

As a result of this CD I pretty much hate audio and am going to leave it alone for a few years. 7 tracks has taken way too much time from my life :(
Click to expand...
Just like my signature?

I don't get it... My album was released to the masses, yes as an indie project, but not as an internet release. I've soundscanned a couple thousand units...

If you expect retailers to carry your product, it better sound good enough. If that's not your intention, then don't stress over it. No need to make it more than what it is... a release for friends and family. Which, most of the time, they don't care how it sounds.
 
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