#510521 - 03/16/04 02:56 PM
mix translation
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wolffy
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Registered: 03/16/04
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Hello all,
I've been lurking around here for a while, and I finally have a topic to post. I'm doing my first five real mixes ever for my old band (I became a daddy and needed to quit a year ago). I've been getting into recording for a couple years now, and I've learned a ton about this stuff mostly through reading books, tutorials, forums, etc. The songs were mostly recorded in a professional studio, and I am now mixing them "in the box" in PT LE. They generally fall into the power pop / pop-punk type category, sounding roughly similar to The Ataris, Finch, Weezer, etc. The band is very good and the songs are top notch. Two of them are done except that they are not translating very well to all types of systems. I know that they are never going to sound as good as a TLA mix done on an SSL with 43 different outboard compressors etc. etc. I have gotten them to sound pretty good on my Mackie HR824's and a couple different car stereos, when comparing to the CD's of the bands mentioned above. The problem is this: the cheaper the stereo or pair of headphones, the worse they sound in comparison those reference CD's. In other words, those pro mixes sound good or at least decent on everything, whereas my mixes are only sounding good on higher end stereos. Actually, I'd say that the sound of the pro cd's is more consistent as well. So, those mixes sound pretty much the same on any system, simply with general losses of quality on cheaper stereos. My mixes tend to sound very different on different quality systems, with the presence/clarity of the vocals being the biggest difference. The cheaper stereos seem to really bring out the fact that the recordings I'm working on aren't as clear and crisp as the pro recordings, and that I am not yet an experienced mixing engineer. I have taken my rig to three diffent places to mix and tweak, with my father in law's basement the most spacious and my apartment, unfortunately, the worst. When I run test tones through the 824's at my place from 30 Hz to 400 Hz, I notice major peaks and valleys. It's not nearly as bad at my father in law's, but it's still not an acoustically treated / ideal space. Anyway, I don't have the time or money for acoustic treatment right now, and I need to finish the five songs in the next few weeks. My question is simply whether this is a common problem with some possible solutions that I'm overlooking, or if maybe I'm making an obvious mistake or two in my mixing technique, regardless of my equipment or acoustic space shortcomings. My guess is that it's probably a problem with my eq technique and/or the effects I'm using on the vocals. I know you don't know unless you can hear the songs, but I have no way of posting them online (unless there's some site I don't know of where you can just acquire free space--any suggestions?). So, I'm mostly just asking if there are any common culprits to this problem that you experienced engineers might know of. I understand if I'm asking a stupid or unanswerable question, but I thought I'd give it a shot. Thank you very much!
Chris
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#510522 - 03/16/04 03:42 PM
Re: mix translation
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Philip O'Keefe
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Registered: 12/17/00
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Loc: Riverside,CA,UNITED STATES
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Translation can be a PITA Chris. Especially in a out of control room. There's not a lot I can suggest to you except a few little tricks:
Try monitoring extremely low - turn it down until you can just barely hear things. That's going to reduce the effect of the room's acoustics on what you're hearing. And a lot of times, if it's working well at very low volumes, you're going to have something that sounds better when played back louder.
Secondly, "do the dance" - burn a copy to CD and play it on various different speaker and playback systems - boom boxes, home stereos, cars, etc. Take notes and see if there's a common trend - it's obviously going to sound different from one system to another, but if you notice a dip in response in the low mids on all systems, then you can go back and tweak the mix a bit to compensate. You may think there's a bit much when listening on the Mackies, but you're learning to compensate for what you're hearing vs what's actually "there", if you know what I mean.
And finally, try the hallway trick. Get the mix up to where you think it sounds good, and then step out of the room and listen to it from the hallway or the next room. That can oftentimes give you a different perspective on what's happening and can be helpful.
Anything else I would suggest is going to cost you some $$$, which you say you don't have. But if I was in your shoes, I'd definitely consider trying to get some cash together to have a proper mastering job done on it once you're finished with mixing.
Best of luck with your project, and welcome to the forums.
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#510523 - 03/16/04 04:58 PM
Re: mix translation
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wolffy
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Thanks for the suggestions Phil! And thanks for the warm welcome too. I'm excited to be getting into this stuff and to become a part of the recording community. I just wish I had the experience to answer the questions instead of ask. No worries though, I'm really enjoying learning and experimenting. Don't worry, the band is getting the EP mastered--this makes me feel better about it too. The repro company they're using offers a mastering service to make them an all-in-one type place. So, maybe not the best, but I know it'll prove very beneficial nonetheless. I'm thinking about trying to hook up my wife's home stereo as a second set of reference monitors. The songs sound the strangest on those desktop stereo units (the ones with the cd player, radio, and tape player all in one piece and those speakers with the "mega woofers" or whatever). The worst is when I check it on my brother's stereo and it sounded super weird until I realized it was set to "Heavy", which puts a huge smiley face eq on the whole thing. I wish people would just listen to CD's flat! I've seen people have their car stereos set with the balance all the way left and not even realize it...
Anyway, back to those "super woofer" type consumer speakers...I think those are the ones that really make the vocals start to disappear or at the very least lose a lot of clarity. Are these speakers not putting out a lot of upper mids or highs or something? My theory that I'm placing the vocals in different frequency ranges than the vocals on my reference cd's are. Then these consumer speakers are not outputting such and such frequency ranges as well as higher end speakers, and these frequency ranges happen to be where I'm putting a lot of focus on the vocals. I am constantly comparing my working mixes to these pro cds, but I do not have the know how or experience to listen to a reference and say, "Oh, that vocal really has a lot of 6k to it" or something. Does this make sense?
One more thing I forgot to mention: The vocals and bass on these two songs in particular were not recorded with professional gear. Basically, the band ran out of money and recorded these at home with the help of a couple friends, myself included. The vox were recorded with a Rode NTK straight into an MBox, except for the backing vox on one of the two recorded with a Studio Projects C1. So, again, I do not expect a super pro sounding mix. I do however think that I can improve the translatability of my mixes. By the way, I gave the band my first version of one of the songs and they seemed to like it, so I know that I'm not the only one who thinks they sound okay! Thanks again everyone.
Chris
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#510524 - 03/16/04 05:54 PM
Re: mix translation
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Jason Poff
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Registered: 05/11/01
Posts: 330
Loc: Lexington, Ky.UNITED STATES
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The cheapest boost in quality to your final product would be to get some sheets of rigid fiberglass or rockwool and place them stradling all the corners in your mix room. This will help tame those nasty peaks and valleys you are hearing in the bass region with the test tones.It's really not that expensive either. Look under insulation in the phone book. All the time it takes is 15 - 20 seconds to place one (or two or three depending on the density you buy) in each corner. Clue the band in on how this will help their recording sound better and they might help with or cover the cost. Especially if you are mixing for little or no money. That plus referencing recordings with similar characteristics to the stuff you're working on (free by the way) should go a long way towards better translation. There are lots of other ways to improve the sound of your room. Most involve more work than money if you are handy with your hands. Check out Ethan's acoustics forum below to learn a whole lot more.
Jason
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#510525 - 03/17/04 02:32 AM
Re: mix translation
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doug_hti
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Registered: 05/20/02
Posts: 96
Loc: Calabasas Hills, CA, UNITED ST...
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a lot of this is experience, a lot of this is natural talent/ears, a lot of this is gear/recording, and an incredible amount of this is monitoring IN MY OPINION.
You will never know your potential until you have great monitoring. I don't think A LOT of todays monitors are revealing in the mids, which is where I think the money is IMO...this is why you have translation issues in a lot of systems, but every system has mids...if you aren't hearing a lot of what is going on there, your mixes will not come through everywhere.
If you had previous experience, you would know things to look out for even on your 824s, but there is a chance you aren't hearing everything.
And I think room acoustics are important, but I think great monitors are much more important...unless your in a cube with the floor, ceiling, and walls tiled or something.
Until you have great monitoring...try getting some things mastered, so the mastering engineer can tell you some of your problems. Try listening everywhere, and try the tricks listed above in a previous post, they do work.
But please please please, don't spend thousands on acoustics until you at least have another good pair of monitors...I'm sure the 824s will still be useful for things..
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#510526 - 03/17/04 04:10 AM
Re: mix translation
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adebar
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Registered: 07/17/01
Posts: 709
Loc: Wiesbaden, GERMANY
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And I think room acoustics are important, but I think great monitors are much more important...unless your in a cube with the floor, ceiling, and walls tiled or something.
Room and Monitors have to be regarded as a unit in my view.
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#510527 - 03/17/04 04:12 AM
Re: mix translation
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adebar
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Registered: 07/17/01
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Loc: Wiesbaden, GERMANY
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Sorry, forgot to mention that the translation improved a lot too (after room treatment).
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#510528 - 03/17/04 11:05 AM
Re: mix translation
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Jason Poff
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Registered: 05/11/01
Posts: 330
Loc: Lexington, Ky.UNITED STATES
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doug_hti said,
"Until you have great monitoring...try getting some things mastered, so the mastering engineer can tell you some of your problems. Try listening everywhere, and try the tricks listed above in a previous post, they do work.
But please please please, don't spend thousands on acoustics until you at least have another good pair of monitors...I'm sure the 824s will still be useful for things.. "
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Absolutely. Get the best monitors you can afford. That's a duh. But you can put $50,000 monitors in a screwed up room and still have translation problems. The mackies are not my cup of tea, but many people put out mixes on them that translate beautifully. I'd say fix your room first (it's cheaper) then decide if you need new monitors. By the way, no one said to spend thousands of dollars. I'm talking $200 - $300.
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#510529 - 03/17/04 12:09 PM
Re: mix translation
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wolffy
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Registered: 03/16/04
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Thanks again for all the replies everyone. We are moving in with my father in law in a few months to save money, and I'll be able to kinda take over the basement and do some inexpensive acoustic treatment. I read that article by Ethan Winer--very helpful. In the meantime, I'm just going to keep burning CD's and testing the mixes everywhere I can. Now I also need to learn when to stop and move onto the next song!
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#510530 - 03/17/04 02:30 PM
Re: mix translation
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wolffy
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Okay, another thing: Since it is seeming that I'm having more of a problem getting my mixes to sound good on cheaper stereos, I'd like to pose the question, "How do you know your mix is done and will likely translate well when mixing on super high end speakers like Adams or Genelecs or in my case 824's or whatever?"
Besides pure experience that is. My 824's are so clear compared to most consumer stereos that my mixes sound good to me seemingly with any tweak I make. Granted the source material is pretty killer, but I expected to be able to be more...what's the word...attentive? to small tweaks in say the eq of the bass guitar. It's not like I don't notice a sonic difference--I guess it's more of a matter of often not being able to tell if the song as a whole benefits or not from a small eq cut in one track. I think this is my biggest hump to get over right now. For example, I can turn the vocals as a whole down a whole db and still hear them loud and clear on my Mackies and in my MDR 7506 phones. But, there will be a more obvious difference in volume/clarity on cheaper speakers. What's the point of mixing on these super clear speakers if I have no idea what's going to happen on Joe Schmoe's boom box? I think a more direct question would be, when you're finalizing a mix, let's say that you have groups of instuments controlled by single faders such as all guitars or whatever. Does turning that group up by 0.1 db make an audible difference to you? What I'm getting at is, how precise do you get with balancing levels? I seem to be able to put the bass anywhere within a two decibel range and it sounds okay on the song I'm working on right now. I'm sure that doesn't sound right to you guys. There's also the matter of having the levels where I think I want them and then going in and adjusting things for the heck of it to see what happens. All of a sudden the guitar sub-mix is turned up 1.5 db and the song is rocking that much harder and I can still hear everything. Why didn't I realize that the guitars were too low in the first place? Nevermind, that's gotta be the pure experience.
Anyway, is the whole idea behind the super high end monitors that you can best hear that instruments are frequency fighting and you can therefore make better eq decisions? Perhaps I'm just not hearing that. Is that something I should be noticing even without much experience? I hope that this doesn't mean I'm forever doomed and don't have that natural talent needed for the job! I know I have the ability to grasp any technical concept thrown at me, but actually getting in there and mixing a song with 32 tracks is proving harder than I expected. Or, maybe I'm just too much of a perfectionist (I know I am), and after the songs are mastered I will regret having worried so much about all this. I do think I'm getting them to sound very good, especially for them being my first mixes, but I find this so interesting and exciting that I have to ask these questions. Again, any feedback is very very much appreciated. Thanks.
P.S. I'm a 24 year old civil engineer from Chicago who secretly wants to become a recording engineer and spends his son's college fund on gear.
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#510531 - 03/17/04 03:15 PM
Re: mix translation
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wolffy
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Sorry...another question. How can you tell / hear if you've compressed the lead vocal too much? We recorded the vocal at home without the use of an outboard compressor going into PT. Therefore, the levels between the lighter sung verses and the heavier sung choruses are very different and lots of compression is needed regardless. However, I feel like my ears prefer to hear his vocal sitting at the exact same volume the whole time. Would that be incorrect? I know that for this style of music (aggressive, big guitars, sorta pop-punkish--more rock than bubblegummy though) compressing the vocal quite a bit is the norm. I know that I'm using a ton of compression on him, but I could even use more if I wanted. I feel like I have a good idea of when to stop or when to lay off with all the other instruments, but I'm not as sure with the vocal. Plus, from what I've read it seems like I should be extra careful not to over-compress the vocal. Is this a matter of the compression being audible in the form of pumping or breaths jumping up in volume in strange ways? To my ears, even though the vocals are heavily compressed it seems to be transparent. Thoughts?
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#510532 - 03/18/04 06:13 PM
Re: mix translation
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GT40sc
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Registered: 04/03/01
Posts: 146
Loc: Seattle,WA,UNITED STATES
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a couple of cheap ideas for you...
1. Go down to the local DRUGSTORE and buy a pair of Walkman speakers...around $20 or so is good. Don't get the super-cheap ones for $6.99, but don't spend more than $30, either. We are NOT talking Hi-Fi here...
Plug them into your headphone jack and play your TLA or CLA mix or whatever your best reference tune is...at about 70dB spl.
Notice that you can hear everything clearly...rhythm, melody,vocals, and all the sweetening...WITH EASE...in spite of the fact that you are listening to shitty little plastic boxes with one-inch drivers in them. Get over it, and RESPECT WHAT THEY ARE TELLING YOU.
Now do the same with one of your mixes. Which parts work, and which don't? It will be very obvious.
So what do you do about it?
In general, use the big monitors to work on TONE, and use the little ones to work on LEVEL. But if a sound is not working on the Walkmans, then YOU ARE NOT DONE WITH IT.
For example, if the kick is not "punching through," it may be lacking the necessary "point" or "click" in the tone. Could be anywhere between 1 and 4k, depending on the style of the music. Neil Young? Closer to 1k. Metallica? 4k and up...
If you cannot hear the bass guitar on the little speakers, it may be missing the correct "harmonic color" that it needs to be heard. Depending on the instrument, and the part itself, you may need to go looking in the range between 400 Hz up to 1.6k.
Notice that we are not speaking of BASS RESPONSE here, but rather the MIDRANGE HARMONICS that will allow the bass to "speak" on the Walkmans...
VOCALS are a tough call on the tiny speakers...because you are essentially dealing with midrange only, they will seem MUCH LOUDER on the small speakers than they do on the big ones...
Try to monitor in MONO as much as possible for vocal balances, and go back and forth between the big and small speakers until you hit the compromise...
Well, getting kinda long here, got plenty to getcha started. Hope this helps.
peace,
_________________________
SC
"If the machine produces tranquillity, it's right."
---Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
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#510533 - 03/18/04 06:40 PM
Re: mix translation
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where02190
MP Hall of Fame Member
Registered: 11/06/01
Posts: 5402
Loc: Weymouth, Ma. USA
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My 2 cents worth, you have a combination of montiro and room acoustic problems. My experience (and some others) with the 824's is the passive woofer (or passive radiator as it is called, as it is just a cone, with no magent or coil, that generates energy from the physical movement of the active woofer) is always by nature behind the active woofer, and thus creating indecrepancies in the low end...that 30-300hz rage you show so many issues in. Given that you sem to be working in relatively untreated rooms, this exaggerates this to an extreme that your mixes become inconsistant. Problems in the low register cause issues at higher frequencies, and the lower frequencies mask the clarity of the harmonics.
I suggest a couple of things. First, get your rig into a tuned room. If that doesn't solve the majority of your issues to the point of beign abe to adapt shortly, look into a second set of monitors. Find yoruself a Pro audio dealer that will allow you to audition monitors in your room, to see if they will work for you. this is IMHO the ONLY way to shop for control room monitors.
While many are doing wonderful work on the 824's, they are not for everyone. You may need to find something that suits you better once you get a properly tuned room. Or you may find that by properly tuning the room, the 824's now work exactly to your liking.
Without a properly tuned room, no monitor will give you accuracy.
_________________________
Hope this is helpful. NP Recording Studios Analog approach to digital recording.
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#510534 - 03/19/04 03:01 AM
Re: mix translation
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disco2k3
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Registered: 03/19/04
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Aside from thinking about treating your room you should spend a good time acclimating your ears to recordings you like on the setup you're mixing in. I don't have a natural ear for what's right yet, so I constantly a/b my stuff with recordings I like. If you really know what your monitors in your mix environment sound like the anamolies of it won't be so much of an issue. Not that you shouldn't try acoustic treatment, but even if you had the "perfect" mixing environment you still might not produce great mixes, so I suggest really getting a solid idea of what you like sounds good with what you already have and making the best of it.
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#510535 - 03/19/04 11:38 AM
Re: mix translation
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wolffy
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Hey everyone, thanks so much for your replies. I'm pretty convinced now that my biggest problem by far is the room I'm in. I started in my apartment, and I've now set up camp in a large basement. The basement is better but still has problems, and I know that if I could magically make them go away I'd be having a much easier time with translation. Unfortunately the basement isn't mine, nor do I have a bunch of fiberglass lying around for treatment. For now I have to deal with it and look forward to treating a room or basement at my next place. I knew that the Mackie's woofer ordeal was controversial, but I got them recently anyway because I got a great deal on them and because I really had no pre-existing preference to a type of sound from a pair of monitors. I think that I need a lot more time with them in a much better acoustic environment to decide that I need different ones (and as the last poster mentioned to get used to them). I wish it wasn't 40 degrees outside here, or I might just set up my rig outside! I know that eliminating all walls and reflected sound isn't recommended either, but at least then I could hear what's happening in the low end! Thanks.
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#510536 - 03/19/04 01:03 PM
Re: mix translation
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Ethan Winer
MP Hall of Fame Member
Registered: 06/12/00
Posts: 5539
Loc: New Milford, CT, USA
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Chris,
> small tweaks in say the eq of the bass guitar <
This is a classic problem and the solution is acoustic treatment, especially bass traps. Until you get the room's response flat and absorb the low frequency modal ringing, you'll never be able to hear small changes in EQ and other effects. Based on your other comments, it sounds like you could use some mid/high frequency absorption too. Once the room is treated properly you'll be able hear what you're doing 1,000 percent better.
--Ethan
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