SOS! Mix not "translating" well on some systems!

[Mea_Culpa89]

Hello guys!

I will soon complete the mix of my band's new demo! 7/8 songs and everything sounds really fine on my Rokit KRK 5' monitors, i even posted a sample at this forum and some of you replied that the mix is pretty balanced! (and i have improved some things to make it even better!)

Listening the mix at the studio, the kick is nice and punchy, the bass is pretty solid, the guitars are well defined, the vox and solos have room and "breathe"! All elements pretty much "sloted" at a specific frequency!

The problem is:

I "burned" 3 songs in a CD, in order to listen to them, while driving at the local pub for a couple of beers with my bandmates! Exported and threw an L1 Maximizer at the master to give some volume (nothing much, really!)

I listened to the CD at my car and the result was the exact opposite! Thin sounding guitars, very loud kick, no bass AT ALL, no width, vox and gtr solos sounding way too much upfront. I listen to many CDs of famous bands at my car, and they obviously don't have this problem!

Brought the CD at my home, listened through my PC speakers, sounded really good!

And my question is:

How do you manage to get your mix to translate well in all systems!? I mean, how can it be?!? Great mix at studio, terrible in my car? Does this have to do with the lack of mastering? Or is it something more serious, like bad acoustic treatment at studio or bad monitors?

Most important of all, WHAT CAN I DO? Continue with my current session, change things based on what i listened to, or try more sound systems and overlook my car's speakers? (Or include a note :"avoid listening this Demo CD on Peugeot 206 models )

Please, any help, i spent 2 months for this demo, i am desperate guys!

 

[aortizjr]

Oh this ailment I think still haunts even the most seasoned engineers

What really helped me was treating my room, getting better monitors, learning my monitors, and then lots of running around, having friends listen, and forums like this one.

But before, I wished I could mix in my car! Still do sometimes. My car stereo is crap too, but I know it really well. I almost always at least reference in my car, my office (another system I know well) and my tv system.

Umm... what also helps is taking notes. Listen in your car, note down what you would do or needs to be done. Then make the adjustments without totally ruining the sound on your monitors and check again. And again, and again.

Post your mix and have us take a listen as well.

 

[waltz mastering]

Great mix at studio, terrible in my car? Does this have to do with the lack of mastering? Or is it something more serious, like bad acoustic treatment at studio or bad monitors?

Could be both. It's good to get everything straight in the mix process, but sometimes a nip and tuck in mastering can sort everything out. Course if your mix room or monitors are skewed, it'd be good to do the mastering in a room that's balanced.

 

[Fox Mulder]

Bad acoustic treatment = bad mixing. And it surely doesn't sound like you have the instruments well separated.

Things to consider:
1. Mix at a moderate to fairly loud volume, and occasionally monitor at a low levels.
2. Use an analyzer if you are not.
3. Use references. "Multi-tracks of certain games" (Arrite, i'll shut up. I don't wanna get accused of supporting piracy or whatever)
4. Room treatment.
5. Headphones.
6. Start by fixing up the guitars, move on to the bass, the kick, the overheads, the snare, etc.


Play around with an Equalizer, making narrow boosts and sweep in the master fader. See if doing that makes any particular instrument pop out too much. The mix should be as stable as possible regardless of what you're doing with that EQ. Even if it sounds like shit the instruments should all sound balanced. Partially balanced, if that makes sense

 

[Masticore]

I am having this problem too. I am going to address sound treating my room very soon. I hope that this will at least help some. I am using mackie mr5 monitors.

"2. Use an analyzer if you are not." I have slapped one on before. I have no clue what to be looking for. Any links I can refer to for more reading?

 

[guitarguru777]

For me using an analyzer was a new thing as well. Not sure this is good advice but it seemed to work for me.

I loaded up WAV files of my fave songs in my DAW and put the analyzer on it and took notes.

Where the low end peaks
Where the mids peak and scoop
Where the high end tailed off

From there i would make minor adjustments in my DAW till the analyzer looks about the same in my master bus.

I learned a lot by doing that as far as EQ

Worked for me I think, if anyone feels this is a bad idea please feel free to call me a noob ....lol

 

[everybody's x]

Mastering will certainly help, but my best guess is you need room treatment.

 

[AntonioPetrole]

Mastering will certainly help, but my best guess is you need room treatment.

not too sure about this, i know one motto i have always heard is "Make the mix sound as good as possible, dont ever rely on mastering to clean up a mess" Same go's for dont rely on mixing for better guitar tone when you are tracking, its always better to get the best performance you can out of every stage there is when recording

 

[Pedro Teixeira]

For me using an analyzer was a new thing as well. Not sure this is good advice but it seemed to work for me.

I loaded up WAV files of my fave songs in my DAW and put the analyzer on it and took notes.

Where the low end peaks
Where the mids peak and scoop
Where the high end tailed off

From there i would make minor adjustments in my DAW till the analyzer looks about the same in my master bus.

I learned a lot by doing that as far as EQ

Worked for me I think, if anyone feels this is a bad idea please feel free to call me a noob ....lol

That helped me a lot in terms of sculping my mixes... It is indeed a good idea to see what your favourite productions look like in an analyzer and then just by looking you immediatly realize whats going on, I did this 3 years ago with a LOT of my fav albums and it helped me a lot to gain perspective.

 

[everybody's x]

not too sure about this, i know one motto i have always heard is "Make the mix sound as good as possible, dont ever rely on mastering to clean up a mess" Same go's for dont rely on mixing for better guitar tone when you are tracking, its always better to get the best performance you can out of every stage there is when recording

well I said it would "help" as in they might be able to isolate and filter weird room nodes and whatnot. Of course it needs to be recorded well.
I think he needs room treatment. If the mix is done mastering MIGHT HELP undo some clusterfuckery. Just like asking us about it might help.

 

[crillemannen]

I just think you need to improve your skills. Listen to a "real" cd, one mixed by sneap for example to use as a reference. A/B those 2 mixes should revile what your mix lacks in terms of bass/treble / punch etc

 

[Mea_Culpa89]

Thanx for your replies! Really helped me, cheers!

Managed to fix my mix, based on what i listened to the car's speakers (and also the home system @ my house).

High passed little lower the rhythm guitars, lowered the volume of the kick by high passing higher at the overheads, fixed couple of other things and managed to make my bandmates headbang while driving!

The problem still remains though:

Comparing those 2 mixes at my home studio monitors, i don't realize many differences, not those that i realize on other systems! So, it's either bad monitors (but KRK are not so bad, WTF?!) or bad acoustic treatment. (Or maybe a n0ob producer!?! )

Maybe i will try to move the speakers at another room, to see the differences, sometime.!

Cheers!

 

[Joematthews]

If your room isn't treated then it would probably pay to throw up some cheap rockwool absorbers and relearn your monitors, you should have a better idea of what is actually going on then. You might find you have problems with the lack of extended low end on the krk's as well which might explain difficulty getting the kick level right. To compensate you could learn to dial the low end in on headphones as they aren't slaves to the acoustical defincies in the room. Hope you come up with a solution

 

[HatchetDrummer]

Thanx for your replies! Really helped me, cheers!

Managed to fix my mix, based on what i listened to the car's speakers (and also the home system @ my house).

High passed little lower the rhythm guitars, lowered the volume of the kick by high passing higher at the overheads, fixed couple of other things and managed to make my bandmates headbang while driving!

The problem still remains though:

Comparing those 2 mixes at my home studio monitors, i don't realize many differences, not those that i realize on other systems! So, it's either bad monitors (but KRK are not so bad, WTF?!) or bad acoustic treatment. (Or maybe a n0ob producer!?! )

Maybe i will try to move the speakers at another room, to see the differences, sometime.!

Cheers!

Just a little FYI Rockit 5's aren't exactly hi-end monitors, so to get good mixes off of them your going to need to do a lot of acoustical treatment.

I've been using KRK's for a good 8 years now, (rokits v8's, epose's) they almost for their lower end modles have some info missing in the 1-2k area and almost always are tough to get the low-mid correct, thats where the treatment will come it.

Position is the second most important role in getting accurate mixes from your studio. But your not really going to hear the sweet spot until you get the room treated to clear up the mess. Mine sit 64" apart and are about 15 inches off of my back wall which gives enough room so I get a little bass loading on the wall but the bass traps help keep it tame enough to make mixing low mids a lot easier.



DIY bass traps, some basic HF absorbtion will make a a huge difference for those monitors, as will spending time doing this shit. Its not a science, its a craft, it takes time to get good at it, and it takes knowing your monitors.

 

[ElektricEyez]

Part of mastering means to listen to your mix on various speakers. Also, like others have pointed out, mix translation has a lot to do with your monitors and acoustic environments. Spend as much time as you can listening to full production mixes and your mix, put em side by side in your studio and A/B them. Try to focus in on specific parts, vocal volume, guitar volume etc. Then listen to your mix and compare. It takes a lot of work and patience to learn how to mix so everything fits as it should. Most of us here are still learning.

 

[TheWinterSnow]

I am going to take a stab and say that the car stereo is lacking in terms of quality. In my case the vehicle that I drive around in came stock with an after market Bose system that for the longest time was flatter and more accurate than my recording setup and was a huge part of how i listened to mixes, noticing more shit than on my own monitors in terms of eq, compression an whatnot, but you cannot hope that any car stereo will be of a quality that you could compare mixes to. In a bind you could throw a sine wave sweep through your monitors and record it from a 57 or 58 at the location where your head is during normal mixing and check out the response on an analyzer. Given the coloration of the mic just make sure you don't have real nasty things going on. Test other systems like home theaters, PA systems and use quality car stereo systems. I would say that if your acoustics are good to trust your monitors above everything else.

As was said earlier this still haunts some engineers, and the smart ones pick up a pair of NS-10's for that reason.

 

[waltz mastering]

the smart ones pick up a pair of NS-10's for that reason.

The NS 10's take a lot of getting used to...almost as much as a bad room. They have a 5dB bump at 2K and fall off almost straight away at 60Hz...ouch

 

[TheWinterSnow]

But form my understanding, the NS-10 weren't reference monitors but a tuned system for other consumer applications, and that they were discovered to be a great reference tool how mixes will sound on most consumer audio products. There was an old saying around here that goes like "if you can make a mix sounds killer on a pair of NS-10's, it will sound killer on every system you listen to it on" or something of the sort. There was a debate awhile back that mentioned the use of NS-10 and I believed Andy even chirped in, but the overall agreement was it was good to have a pair of NS-10 alongside your main reference monitors so that you could compare how the actual mix sounded and how the mix would sound on consumer level audio.

Of course, bad rooms, bad monitors all take getting used to and still in the end, you still can't completely compensate in extreme situations.

 

[waltz mastering]

But form my understanding, the NS-10 weren't reference monitors but a tuned system for other consumer applications, and that they were discovered to be a great reference tool how mixes will sound on most consumer audio products. There was an old saying around here that goes like "if you can make a mix sounds killer on a pair of NS-10's, it will sound killer on every system you listen to it on" or something of the sort.

For the money they aren't bad. New, I think they used to go for $350. A used pair go for around $650 now. They probably get a little more credit than their worth. I think there were a couple pictures of Bob Clearmountain using them in the 80's and then it seemed like every studio had a pair.

 

[TheWinterSnow]

I should add since i was researching the topic a bit more. its not about the frequency response of the NS10's that are desired, its the fact that they are extremely accurate on a time domain (more how human hearing works), meaning they are very unforgiving if the mix is poorly done, and rudely and abrasively lets you know. That is where having a frequency accurate and a time accurate dual monitor setup helps greatly, that is only if your acoustics are accounted for.

I was about to say that this tangent was off topic or irrelevant however i think this is really not the case. The monitoring setup has nothing to do with the frequency response or how flat it is, but really how clearly you are hearing fault in the mix. it just may be that the setup that the OP has is not giving him an accurate representation of the faults of the mix but it still giving him a relatively flat response. If thats the case even IF he has acoustic treatment and a flat room, he would still be in the same situation. In the end it might be true that his monitors are horribly inaccurate on a time domain perspective, maybe more so than even the other systems that he is listening to, which means that those other systems are showing the faults that he is not hearing on his system. I haven't used the rokits so I wouldn't know how good they are, but considering the price, I couldn't see how a car stereo could show the faults the a pair of the rokit 5's couldn't show.