Consistency of Sound

tim0ney

This may be an elementary question, I don't know, but having recorded a good chunk of music using Reason&Ableton, I find that the tracks can sound drastically different depending on what I play them through. I get that this can be expected to a certain degree, but for example, in a song where I can hear the bass guitar very clearly through my monitors [and monitor headphones], that same bass cannot be heard as well through laptop speakers.

Are there any techniques I could use to help minimise these differences, and improve the overall consistency of the sound, so it sounds more or less the same no matter what you play it through? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

PaulBrewer

Ah Tim ! Fer fecks sake ?

How on Gawd's green and pleasant earth can you expect bass to come out of a half inch laptop speaker compared to a monitor speaker with an 6 inch cone or whatever?

Techniques like compression and limiting will help with the 'evenness' of notes.

Laptop speakers and similar barely function as speakers at all - if you hear the notes of a bass on a laptop it's not it's fundamental (or 'original' ) note you hear (because your wee speaker can't reproduce it) but it's related upper harmonics, that it can.

So on something with a brighter distorted bass, something like 'The Killers' might have, you can hear it clearly because of the high level of harmonics ( combined with compression/limiting), but if you play something like a reggae bass which is very 'boomy' and with little upper harmonic content, you'll hear very little of it through your laptop.

tim0ney

Ah Paul now I know not to expect heaven and earth from laptop speakers, and I can minimise the bass problem by fiddling on it's EQ - but that's not the only problem! It's that the levels of the 15-20 or so tracks in a typical song I would do seem to change depending on which set of speakers etc I would play them through [like some parts would stand out more on my speakers, and then not be as loud through someone else's monitors]. Is this just something I would have to live with or is there anything practical I can do? If this is something that doesn't happen to other people it must be something wrong I myself am doing. That's why people use recording studios I suppose:o

PaulBrewer

We're into Acoustics and Speaker design with that one I'm afraid.

Unless your monitors and room are A1 then it's that battle you face with every mix.

The only way I know to bypass that is with monitoring and the room giving you the exact info to make your mixing decisions.

If your mix is 'perfect' on a 'perfect' system (by system I mean Room + Monitors) then whatever faults you might find other speakers have will have less of an impact on your mix than the combination of allowances you've made for a less than ideal system in the first place, plus the anomalies of other systems you might listen on ...

tim0ney

That's good enough for me. Thanks a million - must start building that perfect system now...

LaVidaLoca

is that you're mixes are not translating well on to other systems right. Thats pretty much the holy grail of mixing, so its not surprising you're having problems, everybody does.

Only thing I can say to you is:

(1) Get some decent monitors to mix on , and learn how to use them. As flat and uncoloured as possible, and preferably not too impressive sounding that they make everything sound great.

(2) Check mixes in mono often.

(3) Get a 29 quid boombox to have around the place.

(4) Listen on your iPod.

If you can get it to sound good on those - relative to everything else - i.e. if your mixing something in the vein of Queens of the Stone Age - check what QOTSA sounds like on it too.

Secondly, try to listen to those items like a consumer of music, not like an engineer: i.e. go for a walk one day with a mix on your iPod and listen to it like it was somebody elses album - not with your "mixing" cap on. If you listen as a mixer, you'll start thinking - 'ooh those cymbals are too loud' - when actually its just that iPod earbuds are inherently tinny .

Just stick your music on in any context (Sometimes helps to have a non-engineer around too) and see if anything jumps out at you. Ive had friends who know bugger-all about mixing and engineering just pop their heads round the door while Im checking something and say "Vocals are too loud" or "Cant hear the lyrics" , while I was thinking, "Hmm, wonder if I should turn down the 10 K on the overheads and compress the bass a bit more."

Remember that mixing is about being able to focus on broad strokes, while remaining conscious of, but not getting lost in , the details. And by all means check mixes on other systems, but dont drive yourself crazy, cause eventually you'll start thinking your music sounds **** a hundred different ways on a hundred different systems.

Ronan Murphy

This is always the big challenge when mixing and mastering. The more you mix the better you will get at it.

For bass in particular, the trick to getting it to translate to both big and small speakers is to pay attention to the high end on the bass. Pushing things forward around 4k can help the bass come though on small speakers.