Any new thoughts on mixing low end for ear buds?

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percussion boy
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Any new thoughts on mixing low end for ear buds?

Post by percussion boy » Fri Jan 18, 2013 10:44 pm

I used the search function some on this one (e.g., the original crapppy little earbuds thread, but was looking for more insight . . .

How do you deal with a mix that translates well across everything EXCEPT th typical $20 skull logo earbuds -- which is what my friends are most likely to hear my stuff on?

Between the non-existent low end and the resonant places in the upper mids, earbudland can be a scary and brutal place. I've been fooling with EQ and the Renbass plug to hype the bass instruments' upper frequencies, but the earbuds seem to attenuate those too sometimes. Given that the fit of the bud in the ear changes the frequency response, the whole thing is a huge crapshoot.

I notice whole genres of current pop music are solving the problem by putting almost all of the music in the mids and upper-mids -- even the upper range of the bass guitar seems to have been taken out of the equation. That doesn't work for me though, I like bass.

Any thoughts?
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Post by Gregg Juke » Sat Jan 19, 2013 12:31 am

If today's earbuds tempt you to "fall into despair-o," you probably didn't live through the mono "earphone" era. I still have one of those from an old portable tape player or radio, and I stick it in the iPod every once in awhile. You wanna talk about non-existent frequency response? Dang, those things were all high mids. Nothing else.

Tell your friends to use the smaller rubber ear-pieces on the buds, and to jam them into their ears as far as possible (only being a tiny bit facetious here)... It really does give you a lot more bass to get them into that canal...

GJ

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Post by ott0bot » Sat Jan 19, 2013 7:29 am

I good way I've found is to cup you hands around your ears while you have the earbud in. once you do, if most of the bass returns then you know your mix is translating as good as possible under the circumstances. Checking bass on a small mono speaker...as seen on a popular little thread this month...has always helped me.

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Re: Any new thoughts on mixing low end for ear buds?

Post by chris harris » Sat Jan 19, 2013 7:49 am

percussion boy wrote:the whole thing is a huge crapshoot.
Yep. Checking your mixes on lots of playback systems can be good. But, you should definitely remember to check against other music, too. Almost all of the playback systems your music will be played through after leaving your studio, will be compromised in some way. Each separate system is it's own level playing field.

My philosophy is to make the best sounding mix I can and let the chips fall where they may once the playback is out of my control. There are things that I don't like about my mixes when they're converted to online streaming formats. But, the things that I hear that bother me are also present in great mixes that have been converted to low res formats. Same with earbuds.

It's obviously not wrong to want your mixes to sound better, regardless of the playback system. But, in the end, I think it's a waste to spend a lot of time trying to compensate for one listening variable, when there are MILLIONS of variables. There was a time when most people who would be listening to my music would have been doing it while driving. I never mixed songs unbalanced just because the driver sits on the left (US) edge of the stereo field. Even with ear buds, there are tons of potential variables, from the brand/quality, to the type (foam? rubber? plastic?), to whether or not the listener knows how to even place them in their ear properly. I wonder how many people every day pop their ear buds into the wrong ears and never know the difference.

If you compare your mixes to other good mixes, on every playback system you use to reference your mixes, then you can find out whether the "problem" you're trying to solve is really a problem with your mix, or if it's just a problem with even great sounding mixes on that particular playback system.

To my ears/taste, the songs that sound best on my studio monitors, also happen to sound the best on earbuds, or mp3, or broken boom boxes, or clock radios, or department store PA systems, etc...

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Re: Any new thoughts on mixing low end for ear buds?

Post by Dakota » Sat Jan 19, 2013 10:52 am

percussion boy wrote:I've been fooling with EQ and the Renbass plug to hype the bass instruments' upper frequencies, but the earbuds seem to attenuate those too sometimes.
+1 on all above comments that it's foolish to chase the tweaks of one expected flawed playback system - it'll just make things worse all around. Get the mix and master universally good, let the chips fall from there.

That being said, there is one important thing you can do to help here, mixing to include expectations that the playback system has little real bass response - make sure you really have the "phantom fundamental" thing understood and happening. Just boosting the bass's own harmonics may or may not do it, if they aren't strong enough or well distributed enough.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_fundamental

If you can get your upper bass harmonics nicely handled, the ear will definitely fill in a phantom fundamental even if it's completely not there at all.

Note: bass "voice" or "vowel" frequencies are often enough somewhere in the area of 500-1000hz, often at 700-800hz, an area to "tag" for the listener to notice the bass even if the fundamentals aren't there much. Think of it as generally harmonics 4 through 12 for regular bass parts, somewhere tasty in there. You have to choose the exact tag area by ear, the sweet spot is different for every song, and sometimes by separate song sections.

If the dry bass track just doesn't have much harmonic content in that area, the most direct way to generate harmonics is with nice sounding distortion, and then to EQ shape the distortion by itself, and blend that back in with the dry bass. Plugs like Ren Bass and such sort of do this, but it can be done way better and with more control if you do it from scratch.

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Post by terryb » Sat Jan 19, 2013 9:30 pm

I recorded a simple singer/songwriter track with acoustic guitar and vocals and some fairly heavy-handed compression on vox. My girlfriend (not an audio person) noticed on earbuds that right before the vocals came in you can hear what she called 'the mic turning on'. it was really just the point where the vocal waveform began and considering it had so much compression you can hear it come in quite obviously in earbuds. What's disconcerting to me is that I cannot hear it in either my mix monitors or my living room playback speakers.
Any idea why it's so much more obvious on shitty earbuds?

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Post by drumsound » Sun Jan 20, 2013 1:03 pm

I just do my best to deliver a mix that makes sense. Usually when I do that it translates well. Like Chris said, it's out of our control how people listen.

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Post by percussion boy » Mon Jan 21, 2013 9:06 pm

Gregg Juke wrote:If today's earbuds tempt you to "fall into despair-o," you probably didn't live through the mono "earphone" era.
Used to listen through one white phone to mono cassettes as a kid, riding my bike around town. The mastodons couldn't figure out what the thing in my ear was.
Tell your friends to use the smaller rubber ear-pieces on the buds, and to jam them into their ears as far as possible (only being a tiny bit facetious here)... It really does give you a lot more bass to get them into that canal...
True, but can't really tell the customers how to behave. Might as well go in their houses and draw an x on the floor where the sweet spot between the speakers is.
ottobot wrote:I good way I've found is to cup you hands around your ears while you have the earbud in. once you do, if most of the bass returns then you know your mix is translating as good as possible under the circumstances.
THIS I might be able to sell people on. No way they can screw up the technique.
Checking bass on a small mono speaker...as seen on a popular little thread this month...has always helped me.
So far my mono Avantone has been a lifesaver , EXCEPT with bass for earbuds. Although I guess it does help me keep the vocal in front even on those little rubber bastids.
"The world don't need no more songs." - Bob Dylan

"Why does the Creator send me such knuckleheads?" - Sun Ra
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Re: Any new thoughts on mixing low end for ear buds?

Post by percussion boy » Mon Jan 21, 2013 9:25 pm

chris harris wrote:If you compare your mixes to other good mixes, on every playback system you use to reference your mixes, then you can find out whether the "problem" you're trying to solve is really a problem with your mix, or if it's just a problem with even great sounding mixes on that particular playback system.
Yeah, reference music is always an eye-opener. I've heard both outcomes -- songs that sound great even on earbuds, and songs that sound great everywhere BUT earbuds.
My philosophy is to make the best sounding mix I can and let the chips fall where they may once the playback is out of my control. There are things that I don't like about my mixes when they're converted to online streaming formats. But, the things that I hear that bother me are also present in great mixes that have been converted to low res formats. Same with earbuds. . . . To my ears/taste, the songs that sound best on my studio monitors, also happen to sound the best on earbuds, or mp3, or broken boom boxes, or clock radios, or department store PA systems, etc...
I'm thinking of earbuds (along with mp3 as a delivery medium) as the 21st century equivalent of mono vinyl delivered through AM radio in 1964. Musicmakers then knew their stuff had to work on the radio, and they arranged and mixed with that in mind. For example, most Jamaican records pre-1970 have a guitar doubling every note of bass, because it was assumed the bass would disappear in small speakers.
dakota wrote:There is one important thing you can do to help here, mixing to include expectations that the playback system has little real bass response - make sure you really have the "phantom fundamental" thing understood and happening. Just boosting the bass's own harmonics may or may not do it, if they aren't strong enough or well distributed enough.
I understand it but I have to keep working at DOING it, whether it's using bass synth sounds with more upper harmonics, doubling bass with another instrument, or whatever.

Re using distortion to generate harmonic content -- heard about it, gotta try it. The Waves bass plug doesn't help much, although I think I had good luck once with Vintage Warmer, might re-buy it. Mainly I'll have to try rolling my own distortion, as you (Dakota) suggest.

-----------
Thanks for all the ideas -- interesting thoughts here, as usual.
"The world don't need no more songs." - Bob Dylan

"Why does the Creator send me such knuckleheads?" - Sun Ra
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Post by percussion boy » Mon Jan 21, 2013 9:32 pm

terryb wrote:I recorded a simple singer/songwriter track with acoustic guitar and vocals and some fairly heavy-handed compression on vox. My girlfriend (not an audio person) noticed on earbuds that right before the vocals came in you can hear what she called 'the mic turning on'. it was really just the point where the vocal waveform began and considering it had so much compression you can hear it come in quite obviously in earbuds. What's disconcerting to me is that I cannot hear it in either my mix monitors or my living room playback speakers.
Any idea why it's so much more obvious on shitty earbuds?
Sometimes earbuds have resonant frequencies that make certain sound events stick out, stuff that doesn't show up on other speakers that are more even in frequency response.

It's both a nuisance and an education when some little blemish jumps out of the earbuds -- usually it's something you should fix.
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"Why does the Creator send me such knuckleheads?" - Sun Ra
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Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Tue Jan 22, 2013 11:23 am

fwiw i've found that even just adding some amp sound to di bass can help a lot with having it come through on small speakers. also don't be afraid to just shelve down the low end of the bass and turn the track up.

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Post by Bro Shark » Tue Jan 22, 2013 1:53 pm

I love how on older recordings, the bass was given an almost godly amount of space... but generally, the mixer wouldn't use much "low end" at all. It was more about using a few select frequencies to give the bass life in a track, and make it pop, and drive the tune. It sounded like the bass was allotted tons of room around it like it was so important. And it sure was.

Nowadays there's low end all over the place, but it's hard to hear what the bass is doing.

Maybe back in the day you had guys who really knew how to play the damn instrument, too.

Making any sense? Relevant? Senile? Probably.

Anyway.

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Post by drumsound » Sat Jan 26, 2013 9:06 am

Bro Shark wrote:I love how on older recordings, the bass was given an almost godly amount of space... but generally, the mixer wouldn't use much "low end" at all. It was more about using a few select frequencies to give the bass life in a track, and make it pop, and drive the tune. It sounded like the bass was allotted tons of room around it like it was so important. And it sure was.

Nowadays there's low end all over the place, but it's hard to hear what the bass is doing.

Maybe back in the day you had guys who really knew how to play the damn instrument, too.

Making any sense? Relevant? Senile? Probably.

Anyway.
Bass was treated much differently in the pre CD era. Mixers had to IMPLY deep bass without actually adding deep bass. If they did the needle would jump put of the grooves of the LP.

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Post by Waltz Mastering » Sat Jan 26, 2013 10:50 am

The newer apple earbuds (29.99) are actually a "big" improvement over the older model.

The thing with a lot of cheaper in-ear phones is how they fit.

If they are loose you are apt to get very little or a light low end.
If they are pushed tighter and farther into the ear you will get more low end.

..so there can be a quite varying difference of response even using the exact same phones depending how they fit.

Usually if you shoot for the best of sonics and translation on the best of speakers and environments it will trickle down to good translation on the worst of monitoring environments.

In theory and practice the opposite way seldom ever works.. making it sound good on shitty earbuds and then hoping that it will translate up to a very good system.
Imo/e it's alright to check on phones, but I would put my faith in a full range tuned environment.

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Post by ashcat_lt » Sun Jan 27, 2013 9:35 am

Just yesterday this idea came back to me. It's a thing I had hit on early in my mixing career. Haven't consciously thought about it in quite a while, and it became kind of instinctive. I think it might have been this thread that brought it back to my head.

Consider: In theater/film sound, when mixing for 5.1 or 7.1 or whatever, the .1 - the subwoofer - is referred to as the LFE channel. LFE = low frequency effects. The subwoofer is for special effects. It should not be "always on" or it becomes a droning rumble. We don't recognize individual notes in these ranges, just the pressure.

Now, even if we're not actually monitoring on a system with a sub, I think we all have a pretty decent idea of the range of frequencies which would be sent to the sub. And I think we should avoid leaning on those frequencies to carry any important information in the mix. Be stingy and selective about what we send there for two reasons:

1) So that it actually means something when you do feel that rumble,

2) So that you don't miss it when it's not there.

And then the bass becomes a bonus! It sounds good on my earbuds, and even decent in my Geo Metro where the only working speaker is in the door on the passenger side, but when I put it up on the big system I get all this extra ear candy.

The same can be said for the "air" frequencies as well. Don't punish people for listening on inferior systems - they deserve to hear a decent mix. Reward people for listening on decent equipment.

OTOH - There are a lot of things I'd like to be able to do which would be completely awesome on a decent system. Phase dependent positioning can get extremely realistic localization in three dimensions, but needs to be encoded correctly for the playback system (headphones, or speakers) and the listener has to be right in the sweet spot. Surround mixing would open up so many more possibilities in the types of things I do. But, of course, these techniques fall apart in real-world situations. I have been tempted to just do an "audiophile" mix and to hell with everybody else. Since nobody's buying my mixes anyway...

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