3 Secrets To Making Your Mix Sound Good Everywhere

your mix sounds great in the studio but when you listen to it in the car on your phone speakers or through your headphones it sounds terrible here are three simple steps you can take to start making mixes that translate to other speakers and sound good everywhere the first step is to make sure that your headphones or studio monitors are telling you the truth let me explain what I mean by that the ideal mixing system would provide you with the most accurate sound possible so that you can mix your music knowing that the signal going into your speakers matches the signal coming out of the speakers every component of your system will have an impact on the signal passing through it there are components that don't make much of a difference in sound quality like cables and there are components that make a big difference like studio monitors headphones and room Acoustics studio monitors and reference headphones are typically designed to provide a flat frequency response where the tonal balance of the signal at the output matches the tonal balance of the signal at the input this is called the frequency response because it represents the way way the device responds to different frequencies if you're using headphones or speakers that tend to boost the bass frequencies then you may end up over compensating and removing too much bass in your mixing process then when you play the mix back on another pair of speakers it may lack the punch and low end that you had originally intended the opposite could also be true if your studio monitors tend to cut the bass frequencies you might create a mix that has more bass than needed which will end up sounding boomy or muddy when played back on another system that's one reason why someone would invest in expensive studio monitors or reference headphones if they know that the sound they're hearing is true to the sound of the mix itself they'll feel confident that they're making mixing decisions based on the mix not based on the imperfections of their own listening system but even if you invest thousands of dollars into the most accurate studio monitors in the world there's still a chance that the sound will be very inaccurate by the time it reaches your ears that's because the Acoustics within the room can also radically change the balance of the sound and this sets you up for the same problem making mixing decisions based on the inaccurate representation of your mix software like sonar works and other system tuning tools have been developed to counteract these problems sonarworks is a software that you install on your computer you tell it the headphones you're using and it will apply an EQ profile that compensates for any imbalances in the frequency response of those particular headphones the idea is that your headphones will then have a flatter frequency response you can also use sonarworks for studio monitors and for this process sonarworks will send you a microphone and the software walks you through a series of tests to determine how sound behaves in your unique room after that sonarworks applies a custom profile that attempts to fix the frequency imbalances I'll leave a link to sonarworks in the description below it's a useful tool but there are problems that it can't fix for example it won't fix problems where certain frequencies tend to have longer Decay times than other others and it won't fix problems where there are extreme acoustic cancellations the most effective way to optimize your system is to use a more holistic approach with high quality studio monitors acoustic treatment and a solution like sonarworks acoustic treatment can come in many forms including several types of absorption and diffusion I'll warn you though acoustic treatment is a deep rabbit hole and you'll probably never reach Perfection it can also be very expensive so don't feel defeated if you can't afford any acoustic treatment just work with what you have and make the best of it if possible try placing absorption panels on the side walls and ceiling in the spots where the sound from your studio monitors will take the shortest indirect Pathway to your ears you can find these spots by sitting in your listening position and having a friend move a mirror along the wall until you can see the studio monitor's reflection having absorption panels in these spots will help to reduce the sound that reflects off those surfaces which would would normally interfere with the direct sound and cause severe comb filtering at the listening position if you try fixing this problem with EQ or with a software like sonar works it won't work as well because the frequencies that cancel out will still cancel out no matter how much you boost them the best way to solve this particular problem is by physically preventing the reflection with absorption in addition to these early Reflections you're probably also dealing with low frequency buildup and resonances especially if you're working in a small room like I am this is a bit more complicated so I'm going to recommend that you reach out to gik Acoustics for advice on how to handle that in your room I'll leave a link in the description below as you work to make your system as accurate as possible you'll begin making mixing decisions based on the mix rather than the limitations of your own listening system but even once you can trust what you're hearing in your studio the problem Still Remains the end listener won't be listening in your studio most listeners will be playing your mix on a smartphone in a car or through a pair of headphones so the next step to creating mixes that translate is to check your mixes on other playback devices this is somewhat a matter of opinion but I believe the job of mixing engineer is to make the music enjoyable to the enlistener no matter what playback system they're using I've talked with some other music producers who believe that you should only tailor your mixes to the people who care enough to listen on High Fidelity systems and that you shouldn't even think about the listeners who will play their music on a smartphone however I just can't shake the feeling that we should at least make sure our mixes sound decent on any playback device especially considering that the vast majority of our listeners may not even have access to a high fidelity sound system don't get me wrong I believe the mix should sound even better on a great playback system but we need to at least consider the limitations of other common devices for example smartphones have very small speakers which often leads to a deficiency in the low frequencies in this case even turning up the bass probably won't completely solve the problem one tip that I learned from mixing engineer Willie Green is to use saturation to help low frequency components of a mix translate to smaller speakers when you saturate a signal it creates harmonics at higher frequencies so if you have sub bass frequencies in your mix and you know that a smartphone will never reproduce those frequencies you could use saturation on that low frequency element to excite the higher frequency harmonics associated with it let's say one element in your mix has a 50 hertz fundamental frequency and it sounds great on full range speakers but you can't hear that element of your make at all on a smartphone using saturation you can excite the harmonics above the fundamental frequency 100 Hertz 150 Hertz 200 Hertz and so on so even if a smartphone doesn't reproduce the fundamental frequency The Listener will still hear the element of the music through those harmonics it's so important to listen to your mixes on a variety of playback systems while mixing it's the primary reason why Willy green and many others use alternate studio monitors in the studio to check how the mix sounds on different speakers Willie Green had a pair of atom S Series monitors in his Studio to hear the most accurate sound possible but he also had a small mix Cube for checking how the mix might translate to smaller speakers studio monitors like the iloud Precision series even allow you to load various profiles so you can check what your mix would sound like on a variety of common playback systems you just load the profile you want and the studio monitors will emulate the tonality of those speakers at the very least you can render a sample of your mix and play it on your phone a Bluetooth speaker or your car speakers and make adjustments accordingly at this point your system is optimized to give you an honest reference for how your mix sounds on a variety of playback systems you've got accurate speakers for making adjustments in your mix and some alternative speakers for checking how that mix will translate however you've still got to have a reference point for identifying problems in your mix and making adjustments you've probably already noticed that all of these steps revolve around establishing reliable reference points you can build reference points with better equipment with acoustic treatment and by training your ears this can come in the form of consistently listening to professionally mixed music on your mixing system or in the headphones that you're familiar with that way you know what good music should sound like on your system providing you with a Target when you're mixing your own music you can also use reference tools like these plugins from izotope where it creates a reference for you based on Sample mixes from the same genre these tools are only getting better so I expect this technology to become even more and more powerful as time goes on I've personally had a lot of success improving my mixes with ear training in my opinion the best method is to establish reference points at the octave frequencies between 250 Hertz and 4 kilohertz which will each be associated with a different vowel sound 250 Hertz sounds like ooh 500 Hertz sounds like o foreign kilohertz sounds like ah two kilohertz sounds like a and four kilohertz sounds like e so if I'm mixing and I hear Too Much ah then I know that I might be able to fix that problem by cutting around one kilohertz in the next video it's our new screen now we'll go into more depth on how to use this method to improve your mixes I'll see you over there

Channel: Audio University

Views: 170,891

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Id: 8_4Bkl0RYd8

Length: 10min 10sec (610 seconds)

Published: Thu May 18 2023