#Mixing feedback

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

carmine turtle
thorn stump
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could use more bass

carmine turtle
thorn stump
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np

carmine turtle
thorn stump
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yeah that is better

carmine turtle
thorn stump
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nw

agile cave
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I would either put the flute more into the mid and the piano more in stereo or the other way round. The way it is now, both instruments being in the same area, they kinda get in their way so its harder to hear them each playing their part

carmine turtle
agile cave
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sure thing, np

unkempt pilot
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Big scoop / blank space around 1-6kHz, which I assume is on purpose to leave room for a vocalist.

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Piano is already very stereo, about 50/50 in mid and side channels.

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Honestly I think the bass in the second version is overdone. It sounds kinda clipped or otherwise overdriven.

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It's a huge sine or distorted/waveshaped sine wave.

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I'd use some multiband compression or just mixing to even out the levels so that you don't have this quiet piano and a massive low end.

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The other drum elements are kind of lost in the mix, because the bass is enormous.

carmine turtle
unkempt pilot
# carmine turtle I’ll look into all this later today thank you, I’ve been really struggling with ...

What are you using to monitor your mixes? My experience has been that different headphones/monitors, and even a different amp/DAC, can make a big difference in how I perceive the relative loudness of each element, the sense of space, etc.

For your two uploads here, I listened on Audeze Mobius headphones. They have an internal amp/DAC, and they're not my most flat/neutral headphones, but I know them better than anything else.

I can give this a re-listen now that I've got Internet back at the house again...
At home I usually use DCA Aeon X Closed headphones with an iFi xDSD Gryphon, plus a pair of Focal Alpha 7 monitors with a MOTU M4.

I usually test my draft mixes/masters on a few other systems, like my car stereo, TV, phone speakers, some commercial/cheap IEMs and Bluetooth headphones, etc.
I don't always test on everything, but I typically do at least a quick test on the car stereo and a pair of IEMs that are meant for entertainment as opposed to analytical audio engineering work.

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The point of this isn't to list my toys though, lol.

Where I'm going with this is that I have noticed different systems can bring out imbalances or other issues I may not have noticed during my DAW session. And even if I had one great pair of headphones, like the Sennheiser HD600s which are arguably the gold standard for flat/neutral, I could end up getting too used to them and not having any other reference point, so I might not realize people using more "normal" headphones/speakers will hear something that might be horrifying to discover if I only used my "perfect" HD600s in this scenario.

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So you might be hearing things perfectly fine on your end, and then I hear something else, and yet another person gets a third perspective that perhaps doesn't match yours nor mine...

carmine turtle
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Yeah, I’ve experienced this. Being happy with my mix when played on my headphones (just normal Steelseries gaming headset), then when played in the car, it sounds absolutely awful. Which is mainly the piano, the piano is always so quiet, but if I turn it up any more, it’ll be too loud for my headphones

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That’s where I’m guessing compression etc comes in

unkempt pilot
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The biggest issues in my experience are usually:

  • Headphones (and near-field monitors in small rooms) hide phase issues, because each ear gets its own channel directly piped in, without any opportunity for the waveforms to join. Always mix and master in mono, at least for some parts of your process, because you'll hear the summed waveform in both ears. Get a good mono mix, then open up the stereo spread.
  • Most headphones and monitors can't reproduce extremely low frequencies, and compensating for this with a sub can cause the opposite bias. Just make sure you test on multiple systems, and try to get headphones and monitors that can be an accurate reference system even for the sub bass.
  • Sounds good in the studio, sounds wrong on everything else. Just make sure you get a good mono mix first, test your drafts on multiple systems, and get to know your main reference system to the point that you can predict how its response curve will translate to other systems.
carmine turtle
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Yeah I’ve never thought about mixing in mono, I’ll try that next time for sure

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And with the low frequencies, I’ve been meaning to by a couple speakers, just don’t got the money rn

unkempt pilot
# carmine turtle Yeah, I’ve experienced this. Being happy with my mix when played on my headphone...

This might sound almost insultingly simple, but honestly I think literally everyone ends up in this scenario, so it's not as intuitive and obvious as I'm gonna put it:

Turn down the headphone volume (not in the DAW mixer, just on your interface) until you can just barely hear the most important bits, like the kick, bass, lead synth, vocal, etc.

And then mix and master at this "minimum viable volume".

Try this, then take a break for a few minutes, come back and turn the volume of your system back up to "feel like I'm at the concert/club/stadium" levels for just a short check, like as little as 30 seconds. You may be surprised at how good you can make the mix/master sound when you work at a very low monitoring volume.

carmine turtle
unkempt pilot
# carmine turtle And with the low frequencies, I’ve been meaning to by a couple speakers, just do...

No worries, and honestly I think that near-field monitors aren't much different from headphones, especially if you have open headphones that are already high-quality. Near-field monitors are basically just giant headphones, because it's not like they're 20 feet away from you, in a 4000 sq ft room with a 2-3 storey ceiling; they're typically right next to you, maybe 3-5 feet away, in a much smaller room. So you don't really get an accurate reference for what they'll sound like in a space that allows for reverberations, echoes, intermodulation between large waveforms in physical spaces, etc. So they're basically just slightly different headphones.

unkempt pilot
unkempt pilot
carmine turtle
carmine turtle
unkempt pilot
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If you get issues like the "quiet pianos" vs "one person says too much bass, another says not enough", then the first two things I'd suspect are just:

  • Check the mono mix, because you'll probably find that some elements seem to disappear in mono.
  • Double check on a couple of reference systems, and then decide whether you want more of a bias toward "bumps in the car", "sounds balanced on a club system", "sounds pleasant on AirPods", or something else. Sometimes it's OK for your mix to sound like garbage in the car but sound great in all the headphones and IEMs you've tried.
carmine turtle
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Yeah, that’s true. All of my finished songs sound good in IEMs but some not as good in cars and I think that’s just how it has to be unless I hire an audio engineer. I mean sometimes you even hear some professional songs in your car that has really low melodies compared to in IEMs

unkempt pilot
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Which IEMs, out of curiosity?

carmine turtle
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1st gen