What you mixin' fo'?

Frankiestylee

Right... so I was messing around with a song and mixed it using my monitors and it sounded pretty decent, at least it was good enough for the mess song I was recording.

Then I listened to it on my laptop and the whole thing was getting distorted with what I can only presume was a load of low-end that the monitors could handle easily and the laptop couldn't.

So... do people generally mix/master using their monitors and then kinda think "****ty speakers be damned" or should I start putting on some sort of frequency filters to cut out all the bass and highs that most normal speakers can't handle?

The song in question is "Road to Terneuzen", the second track at http://www.cpu.ie/frankiewhelan . It's only a piss take song I wrote for a friend and I'm still trying to figure cubase etc out, so if you want to listen and give me advice then that'd be greatly appreciated.

I think most of the negative vibes are coming from the acoustic guitar track, so I guess there's some sort of filters I need there but I dunno what.

TelePaul

Frankiestylee wrote:

Right... so I was messing around with a song and mixed it using my monitors and it sounded pretty decent, at least it was good enough for the mess song I was recording.

Then I listened to it on my laptop and the whole thing was getting distorted with what I can only presume was a load of low-end that the monitors could handle easily and the laptop couldn't.

So... do people generally mix/master using their monitors and then kinda think "****ty speakers be damned" or should I start putting on some sort of frequency filters to cut out all the bass and highs that most normal speakers can't handle?

The song in question is "Road to Terneuzen", the second track at http://www.cpu.ie/frankiewhelan . It's only a piss take song I wrote for a friend and I'm still trying to figure cubase etc out, so if you want to listen and give me advice then that'd be greatly appreciated.

I think most of the negative vibes are coming from the acoustic guitar track, so I guess there's some sort of filters I need there but I dunno what.

I'll listen to the tune in one sec, but as for your question what you're referring to is known as translation....it refers to how your basic mix on your studio monitors 'translates' to other mediums. Laptop speakers suck, because they're tiny. You'll hear pretty much zero low end and because they're so small you can overload them pretty easily. Try out the mix in various other things: home stereo, car stereo etc.

Frankiestylee

Yeah, I wasn't expecting much from the laptop but there seemed an awful lot of distortion for a non-heavy song.

In general are you meant to mix for the quality of your monitors or do you dumb it down a bit?

TelePaul

Frankiestylee wrote:

Yeah, I wasn't expecting much from the laptop but there seemed an awful lot of distortion for a non-heavy song.

In general are you meant to mix for the quality of your monitors or do you dumb it down a bit?

Not sure I get ya. Your monitors are unbiased, unlike most home stereos. They don't accentuate anything. The theory is, I suppose, is that you get it as good as you can in your studio monitors and it'll sound great everywhere else.

Are you sure you havn't just made it too loud? Like is there anything peaking? Your studio monitors will reflect clipping in a 'kinder' (if that's the right word to use) manner than a small speaker.

sei046

you get the flattest monitors you can get. You dont really want monitors to enhance what they are recieving.Really get to know how music you are familiar with sounds on these speakers. Import a song from your favourite sounding cd or a song with the guitar sound your looking for whatever and keep checking its sounds oout of those speakers with your sound. Its their fault for having crappy speakers. You cant begin to compensate for speakers which give out too little bass as this will sound terrible on another set!

Frankiestylee

sei046 wrote:

you get the flattest monitors you can get. You dont really want monitors to enhance what they are recieving.Really get to know how music you are familiar with sounds on these speakers. Import a song from your favourite sounding cd or a song with the guitar sound your looking for whatever and keep checking its sounds oout of those speakers with your sound. Its their fault for having crappy speakers. You cant begin to compensate for speakers which give out too little bass as this will sound terrible on another set!

That's good advice and I've kinda started doing that by accident, just noticing how marvelous various songs sound on them.

Yeah I know the monitors are unbiased,that's why I thought they'd be a perfect representation of the sound, but they do seem to handle everything a lot better. It's not that I'm expecting the laptop speakers to sound good, it's that relative to other songs I'm getting a lot more distortion.

As for being too loud, it might be. I did a hard limiting thing with the ceiling being 0.1 Db ... is that too loud? I was kinda working with the idea that 0db is the very max, maybe I'm wrong and it should be much lower.

sei046

as for the limiting? use your ears. Monitors in my mind should be unbiased but a lot of the time they are certainly biased towards certain frequencies and the power amp you use can have drastic efects. The main thing is to get some decent monitors with a reaslistic frequency response and Get to know them!

Frankiestylee

Oh ok, I had just been limiting everything. Well not everything, I'd mix down the song and then limit the final version just to bring all the levels up to um, maybe cd volume? I'm probably going about the whole thing wrong.

sei046

ah no what your doing is ok. Now you have to be careful because when you get into doing your own mastering try not to overdo it. You usually dont need mad loud tracks once all your tracks are around the same volume. When you start compressing and limiting you will start to loose dynamics unless your using some proper stuff. Dont have it TOO loud anyway

Frankiestylee

Yeah I haven't even tackled the idea of proper mastering with the eq etc, I just hard limit it to -0.1db and hope for the best.
At the moment I use Adobe Audition to do the hardlimiting because I haven't figured out how to do it on cubase le yet. I would be a bit suspect of the adobe's quality, but at the mo it's what I use.

Is there an industry standard for loudness? Like does every cd you buy in the shops have sound at a certain volume?

sei046

nope it all depends on what your going for. Rock and metal is usually pretty loud whereas acoustic stuff doesnt need that pumping. I suppose 0 could be though of as standard.... well not really. just go by your ears. dont know much about audition but doubt it has the power of cubase tbh. not sure though! Try to get out of the "Here is what i do" mentality that a lot of people have. your really limiting your mixes thinking like that.

Take everything from its original signal and look away from the monitor and listen! What does it need? how do you imagine it sounding? Dont be thinking well for vocals i X, Y and Z which is what people tend to advise here on boards. The same for mastering. You might be mastering out of muscle memory at this stage. Think is out loudness you want or is it maybe just a punchier low end or an airier high end?

Try and get into that mentality and you wll sound find your mixes are better off and so are your man hours. Make sure your gettin what you want every step of the way from Original line recording through Verbs and Comps etc. If you stick a comp on keep muting it and listen to what its actually doing. I see a lot of people using this stuff as nearly a placebo. I could turn on a compressor and bypass it and once they think its in the chain they " Hear the difference ".

So try and listen more so than look and dont worry about DB etc so much as if it limit it this severe how does it sound? Does the track actually sound better with this processing? Not just LOUD IS GOOD!

Hope that bit of a rant will help you approach your mastering from a different perspective and let you worry less about Industry Standard and more about what you like

teamdresch

Here's why you shouldn't peak at -0.1dbfs.

http://www.cadenzarecording.com/papers/Digitaldistortion.pdf

Frankiestylee

Yeah Sei man, you've made some good points alright, all of which I take on board. Heh, I haven't done nearly enough recordings to have anything in my muscle memory, I'm like a new born to this lark and as such I'm quite the open book ready to sponge all the knowledge I can.

Good article there Teamdresch, lacking the fancy digital/audio converters I reckon I'm just going to make my mixes quiter.... besides, all my lark is acoustic anyhows.