Too much low end in my rough mix

[Mark Alan Miller]

Markmeat:
But how does he think other people's records sound with his preferred settings? Can he even tell? If he thinks they sound great, and you're mixes are too bassy in comparison, well, then, you made him happy, and that's the best you can do. ("What else can ya do??") And maybe, just maybe, your mixes are a little bassier than the records he compares them to...

This stuff really is a moving target.

[Brett Siler]

I had a guy in a metal band....

MARK! Good to see you on here.

Was that the Black Metal band you recorded recently? I liked the way it sounded. It sounded like the old crusty Black Metal stuff, which is just what they were going for.

[I'm Painting Again]

A strange thing is happening. I am mixing this band, and when they get the rough mix to home they always complain about the low end. Listen to mix in home and change the eq later is normal, but this time the diference from what we hear in the studio and later in home is huge. I have to drop 4 dB in 100 Hz to sound right. Had anyone this kind of problem? I start to thinking that the problem occurr when I bouce the tracks to estereo.

P.S.: I work with Pro Tools in my Mac.

how are you measuring and are you using a control for your experiment?

maybe your monitoring environment has a 4db dip or theirs has a 4db rise at 100Hz? or something in between..

bouncing does do weird things to a multitrack DAW project in my experience though..(Logic 4.8-7.1)

[markmeat]

Markmeat:
But how does he think other people's records sound with his preferred settings? Can he even tell? If he thinks they sound great, and you're mixes are too bassy in comparison, well, then, you made him happy, and that's the best you can do. ("What else can ya do??") And maybe, just maybe, your mixes are a little bassier than the records he compares them to...

This stuff really is a moving target.

To me, everything sounded like shite out of that boombox... I mean, it was a boombox on batteries... anyway... the customer is always right, eh?

Brett (InvalidInk):
Yeah, that was the same band... I liked those original mixes I posted, too... you should hear them now... I just can't fathom this guy using a boombox he keep sin his car as a reference!!!!

MEAT

[grrrayson]

1. (As a tangent, I think the boombox reference is usually somewhat valid, but I don't want to get into that...)

2. It's unlikely that bouncing could've messed anything up. the easiest way to mess up a bounce is to accidentally bounce with the incorrect output(s) as the bounce source.

3. The main point I wish to share here:

I say screw listening to speakers in home studios in spare bedrooms with whack acoustics. Get yourself some Sennheiser HD-600 or HD-650 headphones. They have tons of bass, and they sound the same in any room from any source, with only minimal differences in sound due to D/A converters and headphone amps. Anyway, D/A converters and headphone amps won't be so different as to change the bass level.

Headphones are impervious to room acoustics; you can't beat that. I've been doing some work in someone's home studio, and when it came time to mix I basically ended up mixing mostly on headphones (HD-600) for this reason. I use his speakers (Mackies, not bad) to check vocal level and panning issues, but the HD-600s proved to be more trustworthy overall, and my mixes started translating better as I relied on them more. I know a couple of other professional engineers whom I respect who use the same headphones when they go to home studios.

Perhaps a good pair of headphones might seem expensive ($350-$450 new), but compared to the aggregate cost of speakers, amps, and acoustic treatments they're multiplicitly more affordable. What's one decent speaker model that you can buy for $400 each, let alone as a pair? And then you still have the whack home studio acoustics to deal with.

I really believe that headphones are the best mixing reference (especially for frequency response) when you're working in different rooms or in rooms with suspicious acoustics.

I hope this helps.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

i'm gonna beg to differ. for $450 you can buy a ton of rigid fiberglass and fabric and make a bunch of absorbers and bass traps. they are the easiest things in the world to make and they are absolutely the best thing ever for any home studio.

anyone who argues that probably doesn't have any up.

good headphones are good to have, for sure, but do you really want to be spending all your time, making all your critical decisions, with headphones on? i sure don't. spend a little time putting up some acoustic treatments and moving your monitors around and i guarantee you can improve your whole monitoring situation a ton.

[I'm Painting Again]

2. It's unlikely that bouncing could've messed anything up.

It does everytime I have ever used it in Logic..sounds completely different then my multitrack programme..horrible..shite..every time..sounds fine going out AES to the masterlink though..

[MoreSpaceEcho]

the program is fucked if that's the case. the bounce should null completely (or at least to -130 something) if you flip phase and line it up next to the multitrack session.

[I'm Painting Again]

i'm gonna beg to differ. for $450 you can buy a ton of rigid fiberglass and fabric and make a bunch of absorbers and bass traps. they are the easiest things in the world to make and they are absolutely the best thing ever for any home studio.

anyone who argues that probably doesn't have any up.

good headphones are good to have, for sure, but do you really want to be spending all your time, making all your critical decisions, with headphones on? i sure don't. spend a little time putting up some acoustic treatments and moving your monitors around and i guarantee you can improve your whole monitoring situation a ton.

I really like headphones too..but I need both phones and speakers to be happy..I like multiple references..but you can totally do it on phones only if you wanted..plenty of people only use headphones..and the reasons are extremely valid..

[I'm Painting Again]

the program is fucked if that's the case. the bounce should null completely (or at least to -130 something) if you flip phase and line it up next to the multitrack session.

Well I find it "sums" it to the stereo file in a most innacurate way..a very striking difference from the actual digital stereo out..

[Mark Alan Miller]

I did a test in ProTools a few times, twice recently, once a couple years back. Posted on it in the Computer forum recently.
The gist? To test the very common belief that "Bounce To Disk..." sounds worse than recording to two tracks internally.
In summation: 100% cancellation when a Bounce To Disk file and a recorded-to-a-stereo-track file were summed with one track polarity inverted.
I surmised that the Bounce To Disk somehow sounds bad through the audio outs, durning the bounce becauase the CPU is worrying about making an accurate file, not streaming a jitter-free audio signal to the audio outs. I sometimes can hear "degredation" when doing a PT Bounce To Disk, but only during the bounce. The resulting file always sounds just fine.

I suggest highly checking the method(s) you think sound best in your favorite DAW to the ones you suspect don't sound good. If the don't cancel completely then there is a difference..! (-130 db doesn't cut it for me. It's gotta be complete cancellation. A flat-line waveform. Otherwise, it's ovbiously got some difference going on. And that's not good.) It's, of course, critical that the two files are lined up to the sample for this to make any sense.

Then, if there is a difference, make sure the settings for things like dither and noiseshaping are the same for both, or all, methods of getting audio out...

[MoreSpaceEcho]

the reason i mentioned -130something is cause i was told the following, and thought it made sense: if you bounce to a 24 bit file with NO DITHER, it will null totally and completely to -144. if you add dither, like you're supposed to when bouncing to a 24 bit file, the random nature of the dither keeps the bottom two bits moving, and hence the variation between -144 and -130.

[Mark Alan Miller]

the reason i mentioned -130something is cause i was told the following, and thought it made sense: if you bounce to a 24 bit file with NO DITHER, it will null totally and completely to -144. if you add dither, like you're supposed to when bouncing to a 24 bit file, the random nature of the dither keeps the bottom two bits moving, and hence the variation between -144 and -130.

Sure! But as that, by default, is a difference between the two files, it removes the possibility of telling if "Bouncing To Disk" and recording the mix to a track or out to an external recorder are any different. So, for the comparision to be valid, ideally there would be no dither or noise shaping used. (I assume, like you say, that a lot of dither is pseudo-random, and that having it turned on in all instances might yield the -130 db results. If that is indeed true, that degree of cancellation might make some folks satisfied that there is no practical difference in methods of outputting stereo mixes. But as the residue from such a test would by the very nature of the conditions of that test exist, it would be impossible to know for sure if the files were otherwise exact. And as the difference between a Bounce or Render and a recorded-to-a-track file would probably be down in the bottom couple of bits anyway, one would need to remove that other variable (the dither) to really know what is happening, if anything.)
Wordy - sorry. Hope that made sense.

What I want to know is, why would any decent software engineer allow a non-realtime Render or Bounce have a lesser resolution or precision than a real-time one? Seems strange to me.

[@?,*???&?]

Is your equipment or workstation against a wall or very near a wall or is it free-standing in the middle of a room?

Are your monitors ported? Front or rear?

[I'm Painting Again]

yeah I dunno the whole thing sounds weird to me too..all I know is that in Logic it sounds different..or at least I percieved it as different in the past..

I'm definitely open to the idea that it doesn't alter the mix..but I just remember such a difference it's hard to believe that..

haven't messed with bounce to disk in a long while..If I get some time I will try it again..