Believe

[Mandubien]

The new version is much better, but still a bit undefined in the low ends. It's quite hard to explain actually.

Do you have good headphones ? I use AKG K240 Studio (best 99€ I ever spent !) and it's known to be flat et very reliable. As my room is not acoustically treated (just a basic bedroom under the roof of my house), I mix at quite low volume with my monitors to avoid wall reflections. For the low and hi ends, I always check with my headphones if what I do is fine. It really helps to hear what's going on in these frequencies.

[loweche6]

I do. I'm using Sennheiser HD-650's. I hear there is a decent amount of low end, but I feelike the energy is needed for excitement. Maybe I just need to change my reamp of the bass. I was not a fan of the midrangey tone of the bass, so I reamped to a bass amp and cab with a lot of sub bass and rolled down the mids. I was being stubborn about not changing the bass, but it seems I may need to.

Thanks guys

[HbGuitar]

Hey Draper. Listened Boz Mix contest 3.

There is still an imbalance between low end and the rest. Its like a song of two halves level wise. The low end sub 200Hz is at a commercial mastered level.... and the rest is significantly quieter. Its really obvious if you look at a FFT spectrum.

I think you've mixed your mid range instruments nicely around your vocal....so all you need really is a technique to marry the two halves together

I made a point in a previous thread regarding low end balance....its a generic thing really....and not a golden rule.....but try and match your kick and bass energy, using a FFT analyser, to be around the same as your vocal .....so in this case your kick/bass is at -24db on the spectrograph....but your vocal during the intro is down at -36db!!!

Dig out your 10 favourite songs of all-time..or any decent reference songs for that matter...put them into your DAW and study the FFT spectrum and how the different sections of the frequency spectrum line up......typically sub 200, 200-2K, 2K-5K, 5-10K and 10K and above......if they sound good on your headphones and speakers......then you know there's a good chance that if you can replicate for your own mixes....it may sound good too......then you can start getting crazy with your re-amping, tones and plug-ins

I'm sensitive to the fact that you have hearing impairment ....I'm just trying to help mate...don't take any of this the wrong way.

Cheers, Simon

[Olli H]

HbGuitar said just gave a great advice. I'm doing that with every mix, but only after I have made my first version. In my first version I want to test how far my poor and old ears can take me. Then I'll start studying with suitable references, meters and ears what could have been done better, or what were my biggest mistakes this time...

[Mandubien]

In my first version I want to test how far my poor and old ears can take me. Then I'll start studying with suitable references, meters and ears what could have been done better, or what were my biggest mistakes this time...

Really ? Wow, isn't that a bit risky ? If you're far from the reference track, well you lost quite some time to mix for nothing didn't you ? I mean the point of using reference tracks is to imitate them in terms of tone, balance, stereo placement... To me it definitively helps to do the right choices from start.

[Olli H]

To me it’s a possibility to learn from one’s own mistakes. I want to test all the time strengths and weakness of my own vision. Just to know area where I must focus and what I must practice more.

As I don’t know personnally any good professional mixer, it’s quite difficult to get reliable feedback. But with this method I get easily feedback from CDs: ”bass-kick relationship bad”, ”too much reverb”, ”dull top end”, ”too bright top end” etc. If I do the same mistakes all the time mix after mix, then I can pinpoint to myself at least some of the weaknesses of my vision or my ears or my system. When I notice that my skills and results are quite far from top level mixers, it makes me try harder. Of course I must be able to choose my references well to fit the song that I’m mixing and idea I’m after.

[loweche6]

Simon, that is awesome advice. I wonder how I have never picked up that trick. And I do hear that the bass is loud. . . It just doesn't kill me. I dunno. I have heard there is a distinct difference in American bass handling versus European. . . But the amount of people complaining about the bass level is a clue, eh? Without a healthy dose of sub, to me, this song really sounds flat. I'm sure I've gone overboard, so I'll go in again and give it another tweak. (Btw, I've had hearing damage my entire life. I was almost deaf until I was 6 years old, had one eardrum completely rebuilt and one just kind of "tightened." Thanks for your concern Simon. I just have to trust analyzers more, I'm sure [edit: I realize now that you said you were ready aware of my hearing damage. I thought that we had that conversation, but I misread your statement about actually being sensitive to my hearing damage, and thought you were saying that you thought I had hearing damage, rather than reminding me that you know that I have hearing damage).

Thanks everyone for your input.

[The_Metallurgist]

Draper, i'd personally block up the resonant port (so long as it doesn't interfere with the amp's cooling, if the box is active....but speaker coils too can overheat so be alive to that too) and irrespective of whether it's front or rear facing. then place the box right up against the front wall. the proximity effect will add about 6dB to your perception of bass. so, when applied to this current mix (and future ones), it should encourage you to bring the bass down by roughly 6dB. one of the reasons the NS10's are welcomed by many to supplement their monitoring systems, is the fact that they exaggerate part of the spectrum that is darn ugly to the ear, encouraging the engineer to reduce the errant frequency.

we need to be able to hear what is happening to the mix while dialling in parameter changes and not have to try and teach the brain to compensate via guesswork between what it is hearing and what is actually happening in the DAW. unfortunately, visual tools are useless at determining how the mix shapes up in overall spectral balance - we can't judge tone with them for example....and tone/timbre can come from loudness (the essence resides in early work by Fletcher and Munson, or more recently, ISO 221).

i don't know anyone in the forum who uses calibrated monitoring, but different monitoring SPL's will severely affect perception of bass and treble both during mixing and while auditioning your own material and others in the forum. if i listen to one of your mixes at a different SPL from what you were using while mixing, my subjective view of bass and treble relative to the mid range will be quite different to yours, and rightly so. it's an important consideration missed by quite a few forum participants. so often i read things like "the treble sounds bright over my monitors", or "the kick isn't loud enough", but who knows what they were using for monitoring (and whether or not they were sitting in a 37dB null at 65Hz!). perhaps more importantly, who knows what their monitoring SPL was? it's all relative.....

headphones aren't linear, no matter how much we pay for them. crucially, we can't calibrate their loudness in accordance with the principles of ISO 221 so this renders them useless in that regard, just as useless as a room without acoustic treatment and a pair of crocks perhaps.....and i will ignore their issues with causing resonance in the ear canal which is yet another variable. but they have their uses, it's just not in fixing the bass and trebles, for reasons briefly mentioned herewith.

anyway, give the placement a shot and see how you get on.

catch ya laters

[loweche6]

Okay. . . so. . . I think I have it. Managed to keep the energy with the bass without all the subby blanket covering the track.

So, on my sub, i turned on the exciter, whatever jbl calls it, and dialed back to a point where it felt right to me, so hopefully that will help feed my bass addiction, while not loading my actual mix with unlistenable junk. I also brought up the low end on my mains to the +2 dB positions.

Dave, at the moment, I am going to forgo you suggestion to place them on a wall because, frankly, that would require me moving my desk to a completely different section of my basement (unfinished large main room which I am in the center of). Hopefully the adjustments to my sub and low end response of my lsr305's will help curtail future low end issues.

Thank you everyone for your input and time!

Decent improvement?

[HbGuitar]

Yay! So much better man A really big improvement in your balance! I mean there is still plenty of low end....maybe a little too hot for some ...but its in the realms of personal taste now as oppose to being technically flawed

we need to be able to hear what is happening to the mix while dialling in parameter changes and not have to try and teach the brain to compensate via guesswork between what it is hearing and what is actually happening in the DAW.

Absolutely....If you can exaggerate your monitor output as per Dave's suggestion, that's gonna be a massive help

i don't know anyone in the forum who uses calibrated monitoring

Sure you do Dave....Me....My standard monitor output is calibrated to 60 dB SPL when generating -14dBFS pink noise...which yields 70 dB SPL when mixing to K20 (slow response, C weighting)

Without a healthy dose of sub, to me, this song really sounds flat.

Apart from those with "golden ears".....I think most of us either have a bass bias or a treble bias. I remember an interview with "sting" who said as a kid, he always reached for the bass control on the radio/record player.....I'm the opposite....I always reached for the treble.....You're probably a Bass Man

I've been told many times that my mixes are bright in the past...and I wasn't really aware of it.....but I've become conscious of learning to produce mixes that are more neutral and really listening to reference material.

So now you can get back to doing what you do best....going crazy with re-amping, tones and plug-ins

Cheers, Simon