why does my mix sound totally different eleswhere?????

Hi There,

1. Your Room is 100% the problem. Creating a "Sweetspot" thus Eliminating all refections in on particular place in the room is a VERY costly process.

You Need:

1) Flush Mounted Speakers in a wall that wont act as a speaker it self - thus you need either chipboard filled with a few tons of sand or a wall of bricks

2) The ceiling needs to be customized so that it will reflect everything coming from your speakers back into the room - at best into a "Bass Trap"

3) Your walls have to do the same as you ceiling

4) A bass trap needs to be built in the back of the room this will eat the bass and all other frequencies preventing them from coming back to you...

Like I said this is pretty costly and time consuming.

There are a few measures that you can take in case you dont wanna build all this now and that would be to move your speakers:

A- As close to the wall infront of as possible - that will eliminate bass reflexions from that wall
B- Get those speakers away from your mixing console - I know that when you see pictures of studios those nearfields are standing on the console - but it is dead wrong and if you send me a picture of a console with nearfields on it I can more of less within a range of +/- 10% give you the exact frequency of total cancellation and multiplication.

This stuff is serious:

A rule of thumb:

The direct way from the speaker to your ear is ALWAYS the shortest way for the sound to travel. Any thing on the way from the speaker to you - like a table etc... will depending on its area and your head's angle to it, serve as a source of reflexion. Thus creating two things

1- in 1 certain freq - 100% Cancellation
2- in 1 certain freq - 100% or 6db multiplication.

now imagine how many possible ways there are in a NON customized room - there are 100's and those are the reason why your mix in the studio sounds different:

Example - Lets say that your mix sounds cool in your studio but anywhere else - it misses the low end.. at say 100HZ

Lets say your speaker are placed 3.30 meters away from a wall in front of you. When you play back your will get a multiplication at 100hz making your turn down the bass so it sounds nice.... In reality your bass is 100% too low or 6 decibels.

Above scenario is easy - but there are millions in each room. There are NO rooms sounding 100 linear but you can get pretty close - my studio is about 98% linear which makes one of the best on the planet... It took me more than three years to make almost perfect and cost me at least €100.000 and a lot of tears and sweat.

if you are not exposed to means of money let me suggest that you get some VERY good and "Expensive" head phone from like sennheiser...

They'll cost you about $400-500 but they are better to judge a mix on than most studios in this world. Dont use the head phones to compose and mix everything - only to check now and then...

Lots of pros are using head phones - cuz of the reasons mentioned above


I wish the best of luck and hope that I did not kill you with this long letter


PS :

Reflection sources:

A source of reflection can reflect any freq. given that the source is as long or longer than the wavelength...

i.e the neck of a guitar would be able to reflect a 4000hz freq 4000hz has a wavelength of about 8 cm. it will also be able to reflect ANY freq above 4000hz but NONE below... this is why studio builders aim for many small objects in a room rather than few large objects.

You may calculate the wavelength like this .

Speed of sound at Zero degree Celcius = 330 Meters/Sec in a normal room the speed will increase with the temperature to about 445 meters/sec...

I always calculate with 330 meters/Sec - It is your choice however..

Anyway - Wavelength = Speed of sound (330 M/S) divided by freq. You result will be in meters so

e.g 330/4000HZ = a wave length of 8.25 centimeters at zero ° Celcius or 11.13 centimeter at 30 degrees celcius

Above way is great for narrowing down where your source of reflections would come from...

Message was edited by: SteveDjokes

A very thorough discussion of room acoustics, which are clearly 100% the source of your problem.

Even if u are listening to a pair of $100/pair Radio Shack speakers, it's the room! 100% the room.
I know people are well meaning, but really.

Take those $100 speakers and spend $3000 to correct your room acoustics.
Let me know how it works out! LOL

I have not a clue what the original poster is listening too. None.
In an ideal world he would be listening to flat speakers (totally neutral) with excellent transient response and great dynamics in a well designed room. With all of the characteristics what what Steve describes. Get a good wheelbarrow for the tons of sand.

It is much easier to start with a good speaker and then make small corrections as required to the room if you have the knowledge and cash. Plus a good sound pressure meter.

A good speaker will automatically be well damped and have good polar radiation properties. If it has good flat bass it won't need a corner (in effect a horn) to accentuate the bass.

In fact most good speakers will sound best away from the walls, especially the corners (which will make them sound bass heavy). This is because many of the best speakers have rear radiators to improve the sense of "air": and even those that don't will sound more "open" if they have space to "breathe". You want a good balance between direct and reflected sound. I have never heard any decent speaker that sounds good directly against a wall or even worse in a corner (unless u have Klipshorns!). the exception would be good speakers designed specifically for in wall mounting. If the speakers are small get good heavy and rigid stands to hold them. You don't need tons of sand.

Listen to good acoustic music, and find the place where the sound has the most detail and sounds the most neutral. Of course room resonance will play a role (which depends on its size, acoustic properties, etc), and if the room is terribly bright or terribly dead u will have issues. But most real rooms are not at these extremes.. The more furniture u have in the room the deader it will sound, in general.

Get a good pair of speakers to start with, and carefully place them correctly in the room and chances are they will sound good. If you then have cash and knowledge you can tweek the room. But don't bother if u are starting with bad speakers. Modifying the room will NEVER make a bad pair of speakers sound good. NEVER!


Actually an investment in a good equalizer might help as well, but u really a sound pressure meter to do it justice. Get a good test disk to calibrate it.


Good luck with whatever u decide to do.

Quote: (since the forum isn't letting me do it w/ the keys at the moment)
Let me just say, the whole thing about mixing on mediocre speakers and having it translate is entirely possible, IF, and this is the KEY thing, IF you know what they truly sound like, and how songs you know intimately translate on them. endquote

That's basically what I said. . . if you know what your speakers sound like, you can get good mixes on them. I reference a lot of my mixes (and have done some of my mixes 80% on these speakers) on these random Sony bookshelf speakers I picked up about 5 years ago at Best Buy for about $25 apiece because I was surprised that they sounded very full for such cheap speakers. They're 4.5 inch woofers with a 1 inch tweeter (the woofers are made of plastic) and they're lacking in low frequency reproduction (surprise surprise) but I know how they sound and they actually work well for a lot of rock mixes. If I'm not mixing on them I'm referencing on them. The mixes I do on those speakers translate surprisingly well to most any system I play them on. Go figure that one. . .

Hearing a mix through headphones is great- but almost too great. It's very accurate binaural hearing, which is not what a listener will hear in a given environment. A person who purchases a song will not hear it right up next to his ear, with no room coloration, like you hear it in headphones.

Headphones are a good reference, but so are $3000 monitors in a great room, and so are crappy speakers in a bad room, etc.

You have to understand your system, whatever it may be, and how it translates to the rest of the world.

In fact most good speakers will sound best away from the walls, especially the corners (which will make them sound bass heavy)

This is true if you want the music to sound good with your room... What you strive to achieve in a studio and critical mixing environment is however a "Flat or Linear" sound. My studio is very linear but it aint sounding as good as my living room at home. I could NEVER mix at home though.

Placing the speaker away from the wall in front WILL cause any freq. below about 400hz to reflect from that wall as those freq. are omni directional meaning the sound waves will travel in ANY direction also behind the speaker.

LogicAnalysis - says something that I find VERY important.

"ALWAYS KNOW HOW YOUR SOURCE IS SOUNDING"

You could in fact measure your room pretty easily:

Put a mic where you sit when you listen to the music slightly pointed to either the left or the right speaker. Then mute the speaker which the mic aint pointing at. Go to logic and open a sinus generator. Use a good spectrum analyzer with 24th octave measurement. Spectrafoo from metric halo does a great job but any will do...

Set your analyzer up so it will read two channels. Channel one be the original Sinus coming from logic - Channel two will be the sinus coming from the speaker getting recorded by your mic - (Use a measure mic).

Now - in an ideal world the two read would be identical but no room like that is existing. The idea is to slowly sweep the sinus tone from bottom to top and see what happens. If at some point i.e. 400 hz. the signal from the mic drops about 24 db. then you know that you have a BAD problem at 400hz - then you can start to look at the problem or search for it... 330/400 =82,5 centimeter - meaning that your reflection source has to at least have a length of that or below etc.

I used to use Event monitors and while they are really fun to work on, when I went to mix though, the top end was almost way too loud and the Bass too quiet, so I bought some Dynaudios... then my mixes sounded really wooly.

I am currently working in a pre production studio where all I have is a pair of Yamaha NS10s and some very expensive Beyerdynamic headphones. Now I am never surprised by the sound of my mixes on other peoples speakers.
I pre mix (quietly) on the headphones so I can get all the details in, then I use the NS10s to get the overall balance.

I always blanched when people said "if you can get it sounding good on NS10 it will sound good anywhere".... but it seems to be true!

So... I will be getting some nice sounding speakers soon to help keep me happy while working and for detail work, I don't think it is good for your ears to mix on headphones.
Then I will check my mixes on the NS10s. Hopefully this will cure my ills

If I were you I would look out for a pair of NS10s on Ebay.

Remember to mix quietly, if you turn things it will make everything sound exciting, but only because it is all bloody loud!

Good luck

Joe

Nothing wrong with NS-10 but the reason they are so popular is that they are present in most studios world wide. I have mixed a whole lot on those but I hated it.

I second DynAudio Boxes - IMO some of the best out there - with my favorite brand GenElec.

I own both.

The Dynaudio is sounding way more beautiful than the genelec almost like a hifi box but my genelec is just too excellent when it comes to balancing the mixes - but both speakers are amazing and fun to mix on...

Event boxes is nothing I would ever buy nor KRK

What I could add that I find important:

A near field speaker that is small should NOT try to emulate the low end too much... You have to contemplate this: How would nature create a 50 hz tone??? and how does a near field speaker with an 5 inch membrane go about this... It cant. Period:-) But many manufacturers are trying to make their small speakers sound big so that the novice will buy it when he hears it in the music store. This is NOT what you want in a studio environment. Get BIG speakers for monitoring anything cleanly below 300HZ - Use smalle speakers for freq. above... My Genelec 1030A I have filtered out a lot of low end cuz they cannot reproduce lower freq. cleanly although they'll try. My 1038 are great for bottom end. My 1038's have been flush mounted into a wall of sand and way a total of 2000KG. The air inputs have been sealed off and the bass response is amazing.

According to a famous acoustic genius the perfect speaker would be Infinite of weight and the low membrane would measure 30 meters in radius... The speaker should be positioned on a huge field with infinite space to all side.

Maybe he'll build a studio on an Island someday... But the theory is correct - The heavier the speaker the cleaner the response...

In addition -- all those holes often referred to as bass reflex is not really good for a studio environment where one has to judge the balance of a mix. So it's a good idea to seal the off - after sealing off - take a small drill and make a tiny hole in the seal (3mm will do) so that the membranes can breathe.

Hi ole powerboook G4 airport help! (great username 😉 )

I'm not going to go off and rant about whatever.

Here's what you need:

1. More than one set of speakers to listen to while mixing. Try to get a cheaper set than your Events. I like your Event 20 / 20 s. There's nothing wrong with them.

2. Listen to albums that you LOVE the sound of. Not just Hits, but albums that you think are sonically pleasing TO YOU. Notice what they sound like in your room. The differences you hear is the ROOM affecting those songs you know very well. Commit this to memory.

3. Practice practice practice. Keep checking your mixes in other rooms - spaces - your car...etc... until you learn how to mix the songs the way YOU want to hear them, and they start to translate well in other spaces.

Cheers

I find Itunes is very sparkly on the top, quick time sounds better to me. You should be able to mix on anything, just take time to get your room sounding good, try and get the area around your speaker as dead as possible (kill bass reflection), cheap foam is good, don't have lots of stuff on your desk area it all adds to disturbing the sound, get a cheap pair of speakers or an old stereo to reference your mix, also maybe mix to a record you like the sound of get your tops and bottoms as close as you can to the sound of that record. Your monitors are ok, for instance lots of freinds loved the old ns10, I hated them but usually there mixes sounded good, thats just taste. One last thing try not to use to much eq it usually will kill the mix, source sound is for me a much better way to go.

Go to the preferences in iTunes and under "Playback", turn the "Sound Exciter" off if you haven't done so. iTunes in this way reveals itself to be strictly consumer quality, not like there's anything wrong with that. But for Pete's sake, why not a "Bass Expander" or something like you see on those hideous all in one Sony jobs they got at the Best Buy.

I use iTunes for listening- "Sound Exciter" off- but I'll monitor in Quick Time only.

Itunes uses quicktime to play. Quicktime is iTunes's "audio engine". The point of quicktime is to provide an audio engine for any app that needs one. If there any differences in sound it will be how you have itunes set up like the previously mentioned "audio enhancer". Try uninstalling quicktime and see what happens to iTunes (actually don't do this!)

Why?


I believe iTunes has some form of artificial Compressor that work in a reverse order in lowering Sound which isn't Mastered,

Because if you take a song from iTune that has already been Mastered and then add vocals, it then comes out wonderful,

probably it was made for enhancement of listening to iPods in giving off a certain Dynamics for songs that have been Mastered already.


while with Q.T. its just more of a natural sound, without the artificially stuff.





Fr.BlayZay.

If you "turn down your mix down to where you can barely hear it" couldn't that be bad? Couldn't you mess up by making it louder, while the speakers are turned down. Then, when you turn the speakers back up, couldn't it be WAY to loud? How do you know what position is the "normal" position for speakers? (I have Logitech speakers that have a dial for volume.) Please forgive me if this is a really weird question. I'm sort of new to all of this.

If you refer to my post, I meant to turn it down slowly until you find out the last instrument or sound that you can hear. You can't master from that point, it's just a reference to find out how prominent something is in the song.

Well, I've just done a quick and un-scientific test and itunes/quicktime sound the same to me.

I presume you notice a very subtle difference?
If so I cannot see why apple would apply a very subtle difference on purpose - after all itunes is hardly aimed at the audiophile.

I don't want to suggest the obvious iShwartz (would I do that!) but could it that that folk have listened to a WAV in QT and then dragged the WAV file into itunes and then noticed a difference? If so could it be that iTunes is playing back an MP3 or AAC version. ie the comparison is between WAV and AAC rather than QT and itunes!