Translating your low end?

koalamo

koalamo

Member
Aug 24, 2009
506
0
16
Hicktown New York.
This may be due to my extreme lack of experience mixing or my lack of room treatment but how do you guys make your mix sound good on a majority of systems my mix sounds perfect in my room just how I want it but then when I listen to it in my car it sounds thin and weak compared to commercial mixes. When I listen to the commercial mixes in my room my mix doesn't sound too far off (just slightly quieter) ):

Help???
 
I always use a good set of headphones to check the low end since I'm constantly mixing in an untreated room and have speakers that don't output anything below 110hz. Using ATH-M50's here and works great!
 
I only have hd 280 pros and the vic firth headphone for tracking and both sound like dick to mix through maybe I should invest in a decent pair for referencing??

I dont even get it I just played the thing on my friends stereo and it was fucking bass city.

Fucking krk's
 
This may be due to my extreme lack of experience mixing or my lack of room treatment
Click to expand...

I would say you already know the answer to your question. Low end is the hardest part of a mix to deal with and only years of listening with good monitors in a well thought out room will get you the results you desire.

Learning to listen is the name of the game. I know myself personally when I first started mixing I had to increase a knob, let say eq, at least a db and a half to 2 db before I could really hear a difference. Now I can hear a difference after only .2 or .3 of a db increase. Like wise with compression unless you can hear a change with say switching from a 2-1 ratio to a 4-1 ratio or going from a .10ms attack to a .3ms attack then you still have listening practice to do. This is the ultimate skill for an engineer to aquire, the ability to listen.
 
pikachu69 said:
I would say you already know the answer to your question. Low end is the hardest part of a mix to deal with and only years of listening with good monitors in a well thought out room will get you the results you desire.

Learning to listen is the name of the game. I know myself personally when I first started mixing I had to increase a knob, let say eq, at least a db and a half to 2 db before I could really hear a difference. Now I can hear a difference after only .2 or .3 of a db increase. Like wise with compression unless you can hear a change with say switching from a 2-1 ratio to a 4-1 ratio or going from a .10ms attack to a .3ms attack then you still have listening practice to do. This is the ultimate skill for an engineer to aquire, the ability to listen.
Click to expand...


I agree with you 100 percent on this, I've spent the whole night analyzing commercial stuff with ozone just to see how the mix is balanced and its obvious I have alot of learning to do, the frequency balance is basically flat but my song is like +84928390832 in bass and I cant even hear it. I feel like it is in some part due to these krk's because I've read from many people that they tend to not reproduce low end very well but that is no excuse for my inexperience as well
 
post a clip and I will see if I can help M8
despite many comments you may see on here, I feel that we cannot trust our ears until we have learnt to listen as I stated before. Untill then you have no chose but to trust your eyes so looking at frequency plots of your own mixes against your favorite commercial mixes can really help to see where you may be going wrong.
If you post a song you are having trouble with a will post a screen shot showing you what I mean.
 
Trouble is if you cant hear the bass in your own mixes because of things like monitors or room or what ever then the same influences will also stop you from hearing the bass in comercial mixes and this will mislead you into thinking you have achieved a similar mix but if you can't hear it you will never actually know. Then, when you put it in a system that has a lower or more accurate bass response all of a sudden, bass city.

High and low pass everything, and again in mastering. Use multiband comp like C4 on guitar and bass. Do sergical EQ cuts in the low mid region of the bass and guitar.
 
pikachu69 said:
post a clip and I will see if I can help M8
despite many comments you may see on here, I feel that we cannot trust our ears until we have learnt to listen as I stated before. Untill then you have no chose but to trust your eyes so looking at frequency plots of your own mixes against your favorite commercial mixes can really help to see where you may be going wrong.
If you post a song you are having trouble with a will post a screen shot showing you what I mean.
Click to expand...

Thanks man I appreciate it, I'll have it up in a few minutes its like 6 minutes long though haha :/
 
If it is an un mastered track it will be better for me to be able to give detailed advice but mastered would be fine too.
 
Cool M8 that Will be fine.
I am just putting my kids to bed then I will take a look at it for you M8, give me an hour or so if thats ok.
Cheers.
 
Yeah learning to listen here is the key, but you also need some sort of monitors or headphones that at least let you hear low end clearly enough to learn to make judgments- something where the bass guitar and the kick at least each have their own identity beneath 100Hz and you can hear them separately in a mix that you know and like. A lot of the cheaper monitors just really don't have the clarity and separation in the low end at all, so even a person who has learned to listen will never be able to make the right judgments with them. I know the Sony MDR-7506 headphones get a lot of flack from people for being too hyped or too bright or whatever people want to say, but I really know the low end pretty intimately on those, and I feel very confident in being able to make solid decisions with them. The Opals + the Sony cans and I'm totally set.
 
Ok here is what your mix looks like:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10584477/Before.jpg

Over all the frequency plot is quite flat (a good thing in metal), and you can here that when you listen to the track. I noticed straight away that there was some major sub low end pumping through on your kick sample/s and you can see this in the above graph peaking at round the 45 - 50 hz mark and going down as low as 30hz. This is what you here when you listen on other stereos and it is also what is likely to be responsible for you not 'getting you loudness'. You need to low shelve the kick samples at round 100hz -1db to -1.5db and high pass anywhere between 30 and 50hz to solve this problem. You will then find you can put some lows/mids back into you guitar and bass that you may have removed to try and fix this problem.
Next is a graph with 2 songs overlayed. Your song being the bold colored lines, and a professional mix of a well known band mixed by someone on this very forum in lighter colors in the back.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10584477/Image-overlay.jpg

To begin with they look vastly different but in fact they are not really. The height difference is the difference in loudness. Look at the bottom end. You will see the big hump in your track compared to the commercial track. The only other small differences is the dip in between 80 - 200hz (could be from you removing low end from guitar and bass as mentioned above) and the dip round 500hz.

Lastly, here is an overlay of your track in the background and a re-eq'ed version of your track I did to show you where the possible issues are.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10584477/before-after-overlay.jpg


And here is a sample of your track with the EQ applied.


http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10584477/Rough mix_eq.wav

It may sound a little less 'hyped' than the original but that is ok as it should translate better and alow the playback source to provide the 'hype'. This will also be able to be pushed louder than before.

Now, I re eq'ed an already mastered track so I am not saying it is now mint or sounds better or what ever, it is just a crude example. And, what I would typically do now is to go back to the mix and fix the problem discovered in mastering rather than try to fix it with mastering because adjusting the overall frequency plot effects all the instruments in the mix potentially causing new problems or imbalances, whereas going back to the mix will fix the issue with out adversly effecting the rest of the mix. Because of this the eq I did may not sound as pleasing as creating a mix that has the same plot before mastering eq. (if that makes sence)

Hope this makes sence and helps you out M8.
Cheers,
Nigel.
 
Been having this same problem, except I am not mixing on studio monitors or anything special. I will tweak a mix for hours until I think it sounds great, then pull up a professional mix and realize my mix is VERY thin and harsh sounding. I just don't understand where the low end would come from without having to boost a LOT of lowend into the mix, which I just hate boosting freqs anymore.
 
bryan_kilco said:
Been having this same problem, except I am not mixing on studio monitors or anything special. I will tweak a mix for hours until I think it sounds great, then pull up a professional mix and realize my mix is VERY thin and harsh sounding. I just don't understand where the low end would come from without having to boost a LOT of lowend into the mix, which I just hate boosting freqs anymore.
Click to expand...


I agree with you man I hardly boost anything anymore except maybe alittle in guitars









pikachu69 said:
Ok here is what your mix looks like:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10584477/Before.jpg

Over all the frequency plot is quite flat (a good thing in metal), and you can here that when you listen to the track. I noticed straight away that there was some major sub low end pumping through on your kick sample/s and you can see this in the above graph peaking at round the 45 - 50 hz mark and going down as low as 30hz. This is what you here when you listen on other stereos and it is also what is likely to be responsible for you not 'getting you loudness'. You need to low shelve the kick samples at round 100hz -1db to -1.5db and high pass anywhere between 30 and 50hz to solve this problem. You will then find you can put some lows/mids back into you guitar and bass that you may have removed to try and fix this problem.
Next is a graph with 2 songs overlayed. Your song being the bold colored lines, and a professional mix of a well known band mixed by someone on this very forum in lighter colors in the back.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10584477/Image-overlay.jpg

To begin with they look vastly different but in fact they are not really. The height difference is the difference in loudness. Look at the bottom end. You will see the big hump in your track compared to the commercial track. The only other small differences is the dip in between 80 - 200hz (could be from you removing low end from guitar and bass as mentioned above) and the dip round 500hz.

Lastly, here is an overlay of your track in the background and a re-eq'ed version of your track I did to show you where the possible issues are.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10584477/before-after-overlay.jpg


And here is a sample of your track with the EQ applied.


http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10584477/Rough mix_eq.wav

It may sound a little less 'hyped' than the original but that is ok as it should translate better and alow the playback source to provide the 'hype'. This will also be able to be pushed louder than before.

Now, I re eq'ed an already mastered track so I am not saying it is now mint or sounds better or what ever, it is just a crude example. And, what I would typically do now is to go back to the mix and fix the problem discovered in mastering rather than try to fix it with mastering because adjusting the overall frequency plot effects all the instruments in the mix potentially causing new problems or imbalances, whereas going back to the mix will fix the issue with out adversly effecting the rest of the mix. Because of this the eq I did may not sound as pleasing as creating a mix that has the same plot before mastering eq. (if that makes sence)

Hope this makes sence and helps you out M8.
Cheers,
Nigel.
Click to expand...


Thank you so much dude, I took your advice and tried the low-shelf now my mix has alot more headroom and I could add alittle back to the guitars like you said. My frequency curve is still alittle bias in bass but not nearly as bad as it was I'm gonna try it again in my car and hopefully it sounds better!!!
 
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