Monitors & reference tracks ..............

[slayercannibalsuffohead]

I have no stereo at home, so I listen to all my music (including my own shit) through iTUNES>MBOX2pro>YAMMY HS80s. I have been doing this for 6 odd months now and have really got to know the sound of the Yammies. I have no treatment in my room at all, and its very small. My chair nearly touches the wall and the monitors are around 5 feet from it. I am finding that my mixes are clear and most instruments well defined, apart from the bass guitar, which is straight through the mbox and and into the sans amp plug-in that comes with PT.

The hassle I am having is that my reference songs sound somewhat honkey and a tad wooly compared to my mixes. I jump to and fro, and I am always thinking that my mixes sound clearer and more defined, but my mind says that this cant be the case as all the songs that I reference are (well, to my liking anyway), are absolutely brilliant.

There is one acception, and thats CARCASS, HEARTWORK. I'm not saying that my mixes sound as good as that album, but its much closer to that reference CD than any of the other CDs that I reference.

My favourite CDs to reference too are,
CANNIBAL CORPSE - KILL & EVISCERATION PLAGUE (mostly for guitars and vocals)
HATE ETERNAL - I MONARCH (mostly for guitars, drums and vocals)
CARCASS - HEARTWORK (mostly drums and guitars)
MACHINEHEAD - THE BLACKENING (mostly for guitars, bass and drums)
SUFFOCATION - SUFFOCATION (mostly for vocals and drums)
EXODUS - EXHIBIT A&B (for everything, theres nothing like those 2 albums going around)

I find the faster stuff (cannibal, eternal and suffo) tend to be very wooly and a tad honkey through the hs-80s and (exodus) seems a little stuffy, but totally glued together as is the (machinehead) album, but heartwork just seems to jump out and bite all the right parts of your ears.

So, I tend to mix more like the Carcass album, but then when mastering, I go for the Rutan sounding stuff. If I leave the mastering somewhat transparent, it translates to other systems as a bit anemic and somewhat scooped. I am by no means an excellent AE or ME, but to me, it sounds better as a mix than when I master it. But the master sounds more of what I am after, but lacks some of the sheen that remains in the original mixes. Is there a way of winning hear?

Do I treat the room, get that sounding better and hope that most of the reference CDs dont translate as wooly, honkey, or stay with what Ive got and sharpen up on my sheen skills during mastering?

The reason I ask is that with others that I know, its usually the opposite (reference CDs sound pristine and their mixes sound honky and wooly). Is my room that bad sounding or do I need a few more years under my belt as far as mixing and mastering is concerned?

 

[waltz mastering]

If I leave the mastering somewhat transparent, it translates to other systems as a bit anemic and somewhat scooped. I am by no means an excellent AE or ME, but to me, it sounds better as a mix than when I master it. But the master sounds more of what I am after, but lacks some of the sheen that remains in the original mixes. Is there a way of winning hear?

Do I treat the room, get that sounding better and hope that most of the reference CDs dont translate as wooly, honkey, or stay with what Ive got and sharpen up on my sheen skills during mastering?

What are you doing in the mastering stage that would cause your mixes to loose sheen and your masters to sound scooped? What is your mastering processing chain? Maybe you can post some before and after clips.

Chances are you have some comb filtering going on in your room that's messin with you a bit?

 

[beyond dead]

try comparing your mixes with references somewhere else on another system. you mentioned that your mixes sound scooped on other systems, and that your reference material sounds muddy in your room. that tells me that you are scooping out the frq.s that your room is enhancing to compensate for your rooms imperfections.

the observation you made about the master chain killing sheen sounds to me like too much unaudible low end (unaudible in your room at least) is pumping the master comp/limiter to the max of its dynamic range and eating up the high ends headroom.

I vote for treating the room, but you should probably try to get a bigger room for mixing. something long and rectangular. set your self up a few feet from one of the smaller walls.

 

[pikachu69]

If a CD sounds good everywhere but in your room... chance are its your room. I have had this same problem for a long time until recently. My monitors are what I listen to all the time. (At that point I had Truth monitors which didn't help lol) and I was set up in a bedroom so I was stuck in a corner.

I recently got lucky and was able to dedicate the same room to just mixing, no bed so I was able to optimize the space. My first and most important task was to position the monitors in the best sounding spot in my room, then setup my workspace around that. By keeping the monitors away from corners and the rear wall the sound quality jumped up 1000%.

In my case I upgraded my monitors to Dynaudio BM5a's (your monitoring sounds fine though, not your issue)

But the last thing I did was I took a spare DBX DriveRack PA and RTA mic and used to it "pink" my room. This eq's out all the rouge frequencies in the room. Its like taking a blanket off your speakers. It took me over an hour to find the exact sweet spot for my two monitors and best seated position (all measured with a tape measure). I also ran the test several times as I was constantly moving the RTA mic in very small steps to avoid modes in the room that make the Pinking less accurate.
Between very careful placement and EQing the room out of the equation I found that EVERYTHING sounds good, but my mixes sounded AWFUL. But I knew that was the truth. Now my mixes are starting to translate better and I am able to hear into the mix so much better. it went from 2D to 3D. If you don't have a DriveRack or equivalent rack unit IK Multimedia make a product called the ARC System which is essentially a plugin version that goes on your master buss output in your DAW.
http://www.ikmultimedia.com/arc/features/
This is not intended to replace treating your room, but I found the amount of treating I had to do was so small it was scary, and lets face it, sometimes its just not possible to treat a room the way we all get growled at to do round here.
Hope this helps,
Cheers.

 

[nwright]

IMO if you are using Heartwork as your main reference, you will kinda always end up with a scooped mix...IMO that mix is EXTREMELY scooped. Combine that with you compensating for your room to get a good mix within IT, and I see how your mixes wouldn't translate.

I have the exact same problem...I mix in a 10x10 foot box. No matter where I put my chair, unless I'm right up to a wall, I'm in a null. Everyplace else has a ton of bass buildup (standing up pretty much anywhere in the room other than center). I've got bass traps (not enough) and I know my system pretty well. Mixes that sound KILLER to me anywhere else, sound small and brittle in my seating position. So rather than try to make a "good" sounding mix in my room, I try to match what I hear in the reference mixes. I usually end up walking around the room when I reference, so I can hear the low end change and how that affects everything else, and then I reference on other systems.

Also, I'll isolate frequency bands and just listen to those across my reference mixes as well my own. Using a sidechain comp or a multiband comp, you can usually so a user specified band, and I do that to hear how each area sounds in my room from both the reference as well as my own mix. I also confirm what my ears here by using a few visual analyzers so I can pinpoint wierd frequency areas.

IMO if your mastering is truly as transparent as can be, it's the mixing process that is doing the damage, not so much the mastering...So, I'd start with the room and what you can do to fix it. THat's where I'm heading...