O Ye Gods of Mixing and EQ...

[Foolomon]

That means most of you here.

I'm a bit miffed.

Whenever I download stuff from Lenny or others, the music sounds clear no matter what speakers I'm using: my laptop; monitors; or car.

Whenever I record anything that is not _100%_ sample based it may sound good on the monitors or even the laptop, but invariably it sounds muddy in the car.

It could be a couple of things:

1. I'm using Bandcamp now which means that the codec to stream the music is just good vs. Cubase's MP3 codec which I've read here sucks.

2. It could be that I'm totally clueless on the proper way to EQ something.

3. It could be that maybe I do need to load up a new project with the WAV file from the mixdown and do some sort of mastering voodoo magik on it.

4. It could be something else or a combination of the three.

Whatever it is, it's really annoying now. On O Come Emmanuel it sounds fantastic on the monitors and even quite good on the laptop (taking into consideration the lack of bass response on the latter). But when I put the Cubase-rendered MP3 in my iTouch, the result sounded like crap in my car: the bass was muddy; the drums were a bit louder than the "a bit too loud" I intentionally made them in the original mix; and the last guitar solo was virtually non-existent.

1. Can anyone offer suggestions?

2. Would someone be willing to take a look at either the project or the resulting WAV (44.1 kHz / 24 bit) and see if they can come up with a better result? AND THEN TELL ME WHAT YOU DID...please. Save a bald man the agony of having to pull his chest hair out because he has no hair on his head to yank on.
_________________

"Just call me Larry."

Lenovo T400 laptop (Windows 7 64-bit + 8GB RAM)
AMD-Phenom II based system (Windows 7 64-bit + 8GB DDR3 RAM)
Tascam US-144 / M-Audio 2496 interfaces

Other hardware: See my website, below, since there's too much to mention here.
Software: Cubase 4.5.2 / Kontakt 3.5 / Battery 3 / Melodyne

Stop by and visit! http://www.shaven-goodness.info

[wizardofice]

from what you describe it may have to do with acoustic treatment in your mixing room. Might try some bass traps and see if the music will sound better in different systems after that.
_________________
Custom PC with Asus MB M3A78-CM, AMD Quad 4 940 3.1Ghz, 8 G ram, 4 HDs at 750 G each, win 7, Win Vista 64 home, and Win XP home, dual monitors, Cubase 5.5, Wavelab essentials 6, Soundforge 9, CD Archetect, Ozone 4, Melodyne Plugin, Autotune evo, AVOX, Addictive Drums, HSO, Outer Limits, Vocaloid Miriam, T-racks, Amplitube 3, liquid mix, Sampletank 2, Focusrite Saphire pro 40, IK multimedia ARC, Frontier Alphatrack, KRK monitors, Bigknob, Emu PK6, Microkorg, Aphex C2, DBX 166, Voicetone correct, voicetone double, voicetone create, Digitech RP500, POD, 100 miles of cables and a room full of guitars.

[Chris Beuermann]

Hello,

perhaps you have also a look at this one http://www.ikmultimedia.com/arc/features/

I personaly did not worked with it, but perhaps somebody here can give some information regarding this tool.

Gr,

Chris
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[split]

Take your room out of the mix it says...

Take your mix out of your room say I
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Split V4.5.2 The Devil is in the detail

[Foolomon]

[midimaddness]

Room treatment is a really small part of the mixing equation if you are nearfielding on some really good full range flat certified studio reference Monitors in conjuntion with some good full range FLAT Cans. Having a well 'Treated' room is absolutely necessary for a Mastering Engineer, but not absolutely essential for guys like us who are, for the most part, mixing in our carpeted spare bedrooms. In short, I would much more trust mixing with my head stuck between a pair of Mackie 824's than finding that 'sweet spot' in a 10x10 box with bass traps and a bunch of electronic acoustical compensation gadgets that, when it is all said and done, can't be proven or disproven. Good Engineering.....well that's a whole other can of worms! JMHO! mm
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[Foolomon]

[Sound Drifter]

Don't worry too much about your speaker eq curve. Get a reference mic and check your room. That will dictate what you are up against and what you can easily change.

A little acoustic treatment goes a long way as long as you approach the deficiencies of the room acoustics.

Check your PMs Larry
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[leedsquietman]

People make too much of the mp3 codec used in Cubase.

They use the official Fraunhofer Institute (the people who invented mp3 in the first place) codec. Fraunhofer charge a licensing fee for it's use (and it's not cheap, something only bigger selling software could consider) and this seems to upset some people, so they go for the freeware LAME codec. A lot of people are against Fraunhofer because of this and technically, (if they ever wanted, but it would be suicide for them), Fraunhofer could demand that anyone who uses their product has to pay THEM a licensing fee too. They have also threatened to take the open source LAME encoder to court for copyright infringement at least 2 or 3 times without actually doing it, upsetting all the linux and open source people.

Plenty of other programs use the Fraunhofer codec too, including Soundforge etc and given that I always do my mix finalizing with Soundforge (Soundforge has 2 or more Fraunhofer codecs, which give priority for speed or for quality etc), I have no qualms about using it - I've tried both codecs on various material and heard only very negligible differences between the two (lame is slightly better on hotter, more compressed material with fewer coding artifacts - on low bit rate, once you get up to >=256 Kbps, then I notice no difference). Whatever, if the music you present is poorly mixed, it won't matter whether you're using Fraunhofer or LAME, your music will still sound bad and probably worse after being compressed into mp3.

Always reference your material on several systems works for me, given that while I have a semi-treated, OK ish sounding room, and know the sound of my monitors and how to compensate for them (ditto headphones), I always check my mix on monitors, 2 sets of cans, boombox, home theatre, car stereo, portable mp3 device etc, and note what happens on all of them and then often tweak the mix a tad so it translates better on all systems.
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Dell XPS 1530 laptop, Core2Duo 2.1 Ghz, 4 GB ram, Vista Ultimate 32 SP2, Nvidia 8600M, Alesis IO14 FW, Cubase 5.5.2, Ableton Live 7.0.18 Suite, Sony Soundforge 9, Sonalksis Essentials mkII bundle, various devices/controllers

[Foolomon]

[wizardofice]

I have and use ARC. It works well along with some basic acoustic treatment.

When hearing too much treble in your mixes it is likely that you are hearing too much bass in your room causing you to turn down the bass to compensate. Then the mix sounds very trebbly in the car.

Other side is if the sound in the room is too trebbly it could be a bass mode in the room cancelling some of the bass not letting you hear it. It can be severe.

It could be just the speakers (monitors) If they are not very flat you really cannot hear what is recorded so you cannot mix it easily to sound good in another room or another system.

The first 2 problems are helped by some acoustic treatment and helped a lot with acoustic treatment and ARC. Even with very good monitors you cannot mix too well without the treatment. With poor speakers and no acoustic treatment every adjustment you make is going to be a guess. Money spent on room treatment is better than money spent on almost anything else in your studio.
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Custom PC with Asus MB M3A78-CM, AMD Quad 4 940 3.1Ghz, 8 G ram, 4 HDs at 750 G each, win 7, Win Vista 64 home, and Win XP home, dual monitors, Cubase 5.5, Wavelab essentials 6, Soundforge 9, CD Archetect, Ozone 4, Melodyne Plugin, Autotune evo, AVOX, Addictive Drums, HSO, Outer Limits, Vocaloid Miriam, T-racks, Amplitube 3, liquid mix, Sampletank 2, Focusrite Saphire pro 40, IK multimedia ARC, Frontier Alphatrack, KRK monitors, Bigknob, Emu PK6, Microkorg, Aphex C2, DBX 166, Voicetone correct, voicetone double, voicetone create, Digitech RP500, POD, 100 miles of cables and a room full of guitars.

[wizardofice]

ARC........It comes with a reference mic and 2 programs. The first program is used to check the room. It sends out a series of pulses and measures the response at the mic usually done at 16 or more locations in the room. From this it calculates a eq curve to help correct the frequency problems in the room. It will show you a graph that tells you how far off you are hearing the sounds at different frequencies. Alone it will help somewhat but I really do not think it can help all that much for things like reflections. Adding it to a bit of acoustic treatment at the reflection points, some bass trapping, some absorption at the right places and you can get a room that sounds pretty good.

I used to mix a song then listen to it in the car...then go back and make adjustments to eq and bass instruments...then listen in the car again...then make more adjustments...then listen in the car again...then go back and make adjustments to eq and bass instruments...then listen in the car again...then go back and make adjustments to eq and bass instruments...then listen in the car again...then go back and make adjustments to eq and bass instruments...then listen in the car again... you get the picture..and may have done the same thing.

ARC and some treatment ended all of that. When I mix in the room then listen in the car...or living room...or a boombox...it sounds pretty good now.

I used a combination of these

http://accessories.musiciansfriend.com/product/Auralex-Project-Studio-Kit-for-Room-Acoustics-?sku=421724


http://www.gikacoustics.com/gik_monster.html
_________________
Custom PC with Asus MB M3A78-CM, AMD Quad 4 940 3.1Ghz, 8 G ram, 4 HDs at 750 G each, win 7, Win Vista 64 home, and Win XP home, dual monitors, Cubase 5.5, Wavelab essentials 6, Soundforge 9, CD Archetect, Ozone 4, Melodyne Plugin, Autotune evo, AVOX, Addictive Drums, HSO, Outer Limits, Vocaloid Miriam, T-racks, Amplitube 3, liquid mix, Sampletank 2, Focusrite Saphire pro 40, IK multimedia ARC, Frontier Alphatrack, KRK monitors, Bigknob, Emu PK6, Microkorg, Aphex C2, DBX 166, Voicetone correct, voicetone double, voicetone create, Digitech RP500, POD, 100 miles of cables and a room full of guitars.

[slipstream]

Why don't you just mix in the car......eliminate the room acoustics altogether.

[Sound Drifter]

[slipstream]

[wizardofice]

I tried that...the neighbors called the cops on me


oh and I couldn't find a place to put my lava lamp
_________________
Custom PC with Asus MB M3A78-CM, AMD Quad 4 940 3.1Ghz, 8 G ram, 4 HDs at 750 G each, win 7, Win Vista 64 home, and Win XP home, dual monitors, Cubase 5.5, Wavelab essentials 6, Soundforge 9, CD Archetect, Ozone 4, Melodyne Plugin, Autotune evo, AVOX, Addictive Drums, HSO, Outer Limits, Vocaloid Miriam, T-racks, Amplitube 3, liquid mix, Sampletank 2, Focusrite Saphire pro 40, IK multimedia ARC, Frontier Alphatrack, KRK monitors, Bigknob, Emu PK6, Microkorg, Aphex C2, DBX 166, Voicetone correct, voicetone double, voicetone create, Digitech RP500, POD, 100 miles of cables and a room full of guitars.

[split]

Build a car inside your studio
_________________
Split V4.5.2 The Devil is in the detail

[slipstream]

[slipstream]

[wizardofice]

thought of that....the acoustics were cheaper
_________________
Custom PC with Asus MB M3A78-CM, AMD Quad 4 940 3.1Ghz, 8 G ram, 4 HDs at 750 G each, win 7, Win Vista 64 home, and Win XP home, dual monitors, Cubase 5.5, Wavelab essentials 6, Soundforge 9, CD Archetect, Ozone 4, Melodyne Plugin, Autotune evo, AVOX, Addictive Drums, HSO, Outer Limits, Vocaloid Miriam, T-racks, Amplitube 3, liquid mix, Sampletank 2, Focusrite Saphire pro 40, IK multimedia ARC, Frontier Alphatrack, KRK monitors, Bigknob, Emu PK6, Microkorg, Aphex C2, DBX 166, Voicetone correct, voicetone double, voicetone create, Digitech RP500, POD, 100 miles of cables and a room full of guitars.

[douglas hazelrigg]

There's nothing wrong with checking mixes in your car -- everybody including the highest paid pro's do it. But I'd urge a bit of caution: first, the sound systems in some cars are hyped. Also, mixes can sound radically different from one car to another -- I check my mixes on two cars, an 07 Mitsu Gallant and a 05 Chrysler 300 and they are two completely different beasts. It's when I can get them sounding reasonably acceptable in both vehicles, as well as a little mono clock radio I own, that I start feel comfortable
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TOONS

[Foolomon]

This thread brings teh funneh.
_________________

"Just call me Larry."

Lenovo T400 laptop (Windows 7 64-bit + 8GB RAM)
AMD-Phenom II based system (Windows 7 64-bit + 8GB DDR3 RAM)
Tascam US-144 / M-Audio 2496 interfaces

Other hardware: See my website, below, since there's too much to mention here.
Software: Cubase 4.5.2 / Kontakt 3.5 / Battery 3 / Melodyne

Stop by and visit! http://www.shaven-goodness.info

[Pearldivers]

[Foolomon]

You'll all be happy to know I am an idiot.

I had the low cut (18 dB @ 75 Hz) switch on the loopback channel from the sound card audio out. So when the sound came back to my mixer and then out to the monitors there was a lot of boominess missing that reasserted itself in a huge way once the sound was rendered to MP3, dumped on my iPod, and then listened to in other environments.

I haven't yet remixed after correcting this gross oversight, but I'm fairly confident this will fix the majority of the problems I am having.
_________________

"Just call me Larry."

Lenovo T400 laptop (Windows 7 64-bit + 8GB RAM)
AMD-Phenom II based system (Windows 7 64-bit + 8GB DDR3 RAM)
Tascam US-144 / M-Audio 2496 interfaces

Other hardware: See my website, below, since there's too much to mention here.
Software: Cubase 4.5.2 / Kontakt 3.5 / Battery 3 / Melodyne

Stop by and visit! http://www.shaven-goodness.info

[douglas hazelrigg]

[wizardofice]

[Foolomon]