All of my hopes thrashed to pieces by my car stereo

[neverpurify]

I finally thought I had a decent mix going. Sounded pretty good until I popped the cd into my car stereo and what I heard would make the fiercest of barbarians fall to their knees in tears. 100% pure fizzyness extruding from my speakers. The guitars were actually so fizzy and trebly that I couldn't make out the notes. Back to the fuckin drawing board.

 

[broken81]

been there bro! Shit i still am about 90% of the time

 

[JBroll]

Yeah, that tends to happen...

I'll mix and track on some borrowed gear, but once I think I have things straight I'll listen to them through a few pairs of good Sennheisers (to see if anything really bugged me after I spent a few hours away from the stuff) and a pair of Logitech computer speakers (the woofer/speaker balance is fucked beyond fucked on those, so if something is woofy I'll find it with those) - it's not done until it sounds good on all of them. You'll get used to it...

Jeff

 

[ashgallows]

well one way to keep that from happening is to set up the following at your mixing desk.
1. nearfeilds with a sub (any sub will do as long as it is calibrated and has a crossover control) calibrate this with a calibration cd and an graphic e.q on the master out
2.the crappiest computer speakers you can buy, think radio shack, set those off to the side so both speakers are pointes at one side of your head or another so you can hear it crappy and in mono
3. have a boombox around with an input function, play it through there as well.

if your stuff sounds pretty good on all of these by the time you take it to the car you should be pretty on track. also make sure your guitar busses and masters aren't clipping. i used to record on this stupid korg, which was extremely misleading as to what were the master outs...needless to say everything was clipped all the time...i was so mad when i figured out where they were and what was going on lol.

 

[fatalforce]

Auditioning your mix on several setups (car, cd player, and what others have mentioned) is going to help you discover what is wrong. Also, having an awesome set of accurate monitors will help you hear the problems in the mix.

 

[Benny H]

I used to always be pretty happy with what I did on my old Panasonic hi-fi speakers, actually it would often sound even better in the car and I would be very pleased with myself.

It's only now that I've got me some KRK R8s and I start having this sort of experience.. I don't know if I have the patience to get used to them.

 

[BLOODROOT]

Ok, I have a really dumbass question. I have read so many times to make a copy and play it in your car stereo. So why instead of dropping tons of cash on monitors , why not just go buy some shitty car speakers from Walmart power them with your boombox or home stereo and mix with those instead and save tons of money. if your goal is for it to sound good in your car then it will sound good anywhere, why not just use car speakers to do the job? I'm just saying. and asking. I know there is a good explanation, do tell

 

[broken81]

Its more the inside of the car itself being rounded and not like a square room i think! If you had car speakers in your room it would sound different than in your car cause of the different environments!

Just my thoughts I could be totally wrong here....

 

[JBroll]

Ok, I have a really dumbass question. I have read so many times to make a copy and play it in your car stereo. So why instead of dropping tons of cash on monitors , why not just go buy some shitty car speakers from Walmart power them with your boombox or home stereo and mix with those instead and save tons of money. if your goal is for it to sound good in your car then it will sound good anywhere, why not just use car speakers to do the job? I'm just saying. and asking. I know there is a good explanation, do tell

No... you're not only trying to make things sound good through car speakers, you're trying to make them sound good through *any* speakers. Same reason we have PC speakers, headphones, and the like. The car speakers will accentuate some things and mask some other things, you can't mix solely on them if you want to know exactly what's going on with the whole mix. Just because something sounds good in the car doesn't mean it'll sound good everywhere else - far from it. If some good money can be dropped on monitors, then it's safer to assume that sounding good on the monitors implies sounding good everywhere, but for those of us who can't afford Martian super-vintage handmade NS-69s and a subwoofer made entirely from the scales of mermaids a wide variety of listening areas will bring out a lot of different aspects of the mix.

What's more, in the car you're not focusing solely on the audio - it's more of a background thing, and you'll notice things differently when you're not looking directly at them.


Jeff

 

[kass]

Ok, I have a really dumbass question. I have read so many times to make a copy and play it in your car stereo. So why instead of dropping tons of cash on monitors , why not just go buy some shitty car speakers from Walmart power them with your boombox or home stereo and mix with those instead and save tons of money. if your goal is for it to sound good in your car then it will sound good anywhere, why not just use car speakers to do the job? I'm just saying. and asking. I know there is a good explanation, do tell

i mix in my car

haul the computer and monitor out to the driveway

with an extension cord of course

 

[BLOODROOT]

ok. kewl thanks dood

 

[ashgallows]

honestly man, best thing i ever did was get a cheap sub and calibrated my monitoring setup. this is the easiest and cheapest way to get the best possible perspective without doing all this other stuff. for instance when choosing drumsand bass, i had no clue how much bass was going on, so i get out to the car and the bass was all distorting and destroying everything else....which kicks ass...but in small controlled amounts

 

[reneisgod]

Just start writting true blackmetal and the mix will fit perfectly haha

 

[-J-]

as long as the instruments and then the master mix are falling into the EQ spectrum of whatever you want to try and sound like (whatever band that is) you're usually set. analyze and copy the frequency response of guitars, bass, etc. you like during the premaster mixdown, then do it for the master mix using a song you dig the EQ of. apply it to your dealio and you should be close. I don't know why everyone hones in on "fizz" so much. I think people listen to their guitars too hard and second guess themselves too much. as long as the EQ isn't super outta wack, normal people aren't going to notice. of course there's dudes on here with Super Ears and they will, but not most.

of course, all this comes from a guy that can't produce his way out of a wet paper bag.

I usually end up mixing down, converting it to mp3, loading it into my player and listening to it in my car. simply because I've listened to more metal than your mama's kettle in my car, and I know how things should "really" sound in there.

 

[Jevil]

The problem is the car itself, buy another one with better acoustic.

 

[deanbailey]

Same problem here...and it's always the cars stereo that makes it worse. Everything that's softer on the KRK 6' are undesirably audible in the car. That in turn makes me lower the individual track so low that it's almost inaudible on the monitors but 'better' in the car. And this is after I've tuned the speakers (adjusted the EQ) in the car so that there not that abundance of low end.

And it beats the shit out of me because Despised icon's and JFAC's (listen to this one purely for the production) latest sounds PRETTY damn good in the car. So i end up burning around 10 blank CD with different versions of the track, (each tracks changes are noted) and see which works

My solution (besides 'get better at mixing') is get rid of the pleasant sounding KRK's and get some HS80's or something flat and try again. :/

 

[ffaudio]

I see a lot of replies but haven't read them.

Step 1: Room treatment.
Step 2: Better monitors.


My mixes translated 500x better after I got my focals. What I hear in my room is what I hear in my car, in my headphones at work, and off of the mono piece of shit thing that is in my laptop.

 

[deanbailey]

Step 2: Better monitors.

+1 that's what i need.