Deadline, deadline, deadline. Time's up, now onto the next. Just keep creating, learning from your mistakes while continually absorbing information from every source available, be it here or other forums, magazines and books, videos, and of course listening critically to everything that you hear and wondering how you yourself would create the same likeness. As time goes on you will notice your improvement and your ability to react instead of having to think by rote. Practice makes competency.

 

How to know when to stop? When the Producer tells you to do so.

 

But what if you are the producer?

 

Oh, for goodness sakes. You stop when it's good enough. If you don't know when it's good enough, you don't know your genre well enough and you need to listen to more of it. By the way, people advising on getting better speakers will not help you because you need to know how your music will sound on all the different types of speakers, from great to little mobile phone earphones. Something that sounds great on a an expensive pair speakers will not necessarily sound great on cheap little speakers.

 

That’s right, just for this sake of this thread I’ve done an experiment on my girlfriend. When she came home from work, I’ve set up a marshmallo song with isotope ozone 8’s codec monitoring option set all the way down to a shitty mp3 with only 64kb/s!! I also added Mixchecker on right before ozone 8 in the chain with a reference impulse that sounded crappy.

Guess what her reaction was? (As she listens to this kind of pop-edm kind of music).

She was like “yaaaaay, let’s get it started” and she started dancing next to me telling me to turn it up.
Then I’ve stopped the playback and I asked her (without her knowing what I’ve done to that song) “what do you like about the song?”
Her answer?
“That frigging energic melody line, the rhythm, I don’t know, it just feels like positive, catchy with an entertaining vibe to it”.
She mentioned nothing about the sound quality, did she still like song? Hell yeah.

And guess what, Marshmello is using Nexus (a romper) for most of his leads sounds. He both showed it into his official tutorials and also you can immediately tell in the song.
We all know that Nexus is limited in terms of sound design and generic.

Moral of the story: you’re supposed to entertain people with your music, they care more about its compositional aspect like melody like, rhythm, positive and energic vibe. They don’t necessarily care about what they’re listening to that song on if it packs the CONTENT, they don’t care about the outside/packaging aspect.

That’s what many don’t get, you’re not showcasing an extended hi-fi pure sonic test to the listeners, but actually the story and the entertaining compositional content that makes them either dance, energic, crying, motivated, etc.

Great musical content in a song will always prevail above any exterior sonic fidelity “packaging”.

Another thing, I’ve listened to that “Nautilus sound test YouTube reference” posted previously by someone else, I’ve listened to it on my old iPhone’s spekers on a low volume but still enough to clearly understand the lyrics and guess what, It gave me goosebumps! It was the content that did that...

 

OP specifically said have hard time hearing small adjustments. if you cannot hear what is actually there, what you just going to guess at what it comes out like?

you are describing engineering and mastering which in those cases yes you want o have a variety of playback systems

you have different stages.


tracking pre-production
production mixing
post roduction engineering
mastering

each stage you are accomplishing different things with playback speakers


the logic that you just use cheap speakers that have no detail

sacrificing hearing what is actually there to make adjustments in order that matter is pure ridiculous
the point is NOT to make it sound good on expensive speakers, it is to HEAR what exists in the music.
ALL speakers alter the sound, more cloudy and less detailed than the real audio.
the point is to have speakers that do that the least amount possible

then sure, once you are at the end finishing stages you want to see how it sounds on the more common low end speakers and headphones that most people use.

you are missing the point that low end speakers are not putting out what is actually there, but a line drawing cartoon version of the real music,
you dont adjust to defects in speakers, you adjust based on the music ITSELF
EVERY low end speaker and headphone is going to drastically change what you hear
the only why to get it to sound great on EVERY pair of speakers to make adjustments ON PURPOSE to the AUDIO the MUSIC.

when working on a cheap set speakers for the whole process, how would you go about distinguishing from the defects in your speakers and adjustments which need to be made in the music itself?

(our ears combine both)

 

Last edited: Apr 10, 2018

How Speakers compare to tv and Monitor resolution (analogy)

average dollar store speakers equivalent to black and white early tv
average hi-fi system for 89$ at walmart equivalent to color television
average computer speaker for $120 equivalent to DVD resolution 480i
average mid level home stereo for $200 equivalent to DVD 480p
entry level studio monitors for $250 pair slightly higher than dvd 720p
studio monitors for $400 equivalent to 1080p (1920x1080)
audiophile home system, or studio monitors for $1000 2k (2048×1080)
higher end studio monitors for $1500 equivalent to 3k (2880 x 1620)
entry level mastering speakers for $2500 equivalent to 4k
low to mid level audiophile or mastering speakers and amps $3800 equivalent to 6k
low to mid end audiophile system with amps for $5500 equivalent to 7k
low to mid end mastering speakers around $10,000 equivalent to 8k
mid to lower High end mastering speakers amps around $25,000 equivalent to 10k
higher end master speakers and amps system around $50,000 equivalent to 12k
higher end audiophile system with amps or high end mastering speakers around $150,000 equivalent to 16k (15360 horizontal pixels by 8640 vertical pixels
high end masteirng speakers and amps around $500,000 equivalent to 20k
high end mastering speakers and amps ( or audiophile) around $1,000,000 equivalent to 25k

 

Last edited: Apr 11, 2018

Exactly, It's not even the case of comparing. It's obvious that switching from bigger higher quality speakers will sound "smaller" with less fidelity on smaller/lesser consumer grade speakers. But the point of a studio monitor is to get the balances and the music sounding right in an objective manner in order to eliminate the posibility of "not sounding so great" reason right from the signal/response of that audio file so the ultimate reason of "not sounding so great" will be down to the consumer speaker built itself (cheap/lack of fidelity) and not the song itself.

Do studio monitors achieve the right balances in a mix that will lead to an objective overall frequency response that will therefore be tolerated by other sound systems/speakers/headphones/etc. in a decent way? Hell yeah.
Can you do the other way around? Not really. If the cheap little speakers has no bass for you to hear the bass in the first place, or muffled highs so you end up boosting the hell out the cymbals and hi-hats, will that song still be objectively playing back among most of the sound systems? No, cause most of the consumer grade sound systems are not neutral sounding and if they're bright by default, they'll make those initially boosted cymbals sound like an ocean of piercing frequencies ready to dig holes into the listener's eardrum.

It is not the case of making a small speaker copying what a monitor does, it's about eliminating the reason of "sounding bad & unbalanced" from the song/printed record itself.

 

.

 

Last edited by a moderator: May 23, 2018

I'm not enjoying the process of playing vidya gaymz ugaise, am full of despairz. Wat do? I'm super srs!

 

Guess what?
It never ends...

The pain, the torment and torture, profanity
Nausea, suffering, perversion, calamity
You can't get away

What Evorax said, see the end result in your head. Work towards that end.

"Why do we know when to stop when assembling a puzzle? Cause we know from the reference photo how it should look like."

 

Last edited: Apr 10, 2018

These things are key for what the OP is talking about in finding a happy spot in your final mixing/mastering process.

But.. it also depends on your intended audience (if any). Sometimes it helps to listen on the crappiest equipment available. Your comp might sound as good as think you can get it and you're really pleased with yourself. Then you pass it on and it sounds completely different (not just a little). Two things have happened with speakers (let's say music delivery systems to keep it broad enough) in the last two decades: they've gotten a bit better and they've gotten much worse.

Like it or not, and I hate it, if you're authoring for an audience a great deal of them are going to listen on some of the crappiest speakers imaginable. Phones, laptops and tablets are our arch enemies. The amount of people who use the speakers on these things for music and movies is ridiculous. Even just plugging in the stock-standard earplugs that come in the box with a phone is too hard for them sometimes (even the crappiest ones are 100 times better than the speaker).

I would never say cater to the masses but keep it in mind. It's almost to the point where we need a one-click "crap mix" button that will stuff hints of the outlying frequencies into a busy central section so that you can have 2 versions available: one for people who really want to listen and one for most people (I hate to say it like that... but I fear it's true).

 

When you will see your mastered project you will undestand you drunk enough!

 

Imagine you are editing and producing a 4k movie on a 480p tv screen, there is no way that is going to look good in the end.(when you finally see it on a 4k screen.)
the same goes for your playback speakers while making music.
it is easy to work on a 4k monitor with 4k material then shrink it at the end to 480p but you cannot do it the other way around!
you cannot take a tiny image than blow it up becuase you will get blurry or square pixels

its because of the fine grain detail
music has a fine grain detail texture equivalent to this situation
crappy speakers cannot hear the actual detail which exists in the music itself.
(of course at end stages after you work with HD monitors you play it on crappy speakers to see how it does sound on them though)
because it easy to take a 4k image then shrink it down to 1080p or 480p

 

Last edited: Apr 11, 2018

2. Now imagine that 99% of the people will watch it on 480p screen
3. Realize that these 99% will be watching it via a highly-compressed 360p stream
4. Realize that you didn't know your neato pixel-size grain, which looked so cool in 4k, looks like sh17
5. Try !2 crie

 

When to stop - never - Sorry too hard to resist - An oldie but a goodie...

 

Moin,

@OP: exactly know that. Adding more and more plugins. Messing around with sounds. And get lost.

All I can tell you. Keep it going. You'll learn when and how to use certain plugins. How they will alter the sound. How they make the sound better.

Then... I guess you make digital music. like dance, techno or something like this.
IMO, there is a big difference from Analog (even digital Instrumentals like a guitar) and pure Digital music.

It's like, with Analog (instruments) you want exactly THAT sound.
In digital productions (e.g. techno) using synthies and all the crazy sound manipulation options there is not something like THAT sound.
Actually you are free to do anything.

I use Ableton Live 9.x and only use internal plugins from Live. (the common once only)
I stack these plugins. Over and over. Build up routes, divide the sound each with a different processing. mix them again until something cool is happening. (i have only a vague idea of what i'm doing at this point). if it finally sounds useful and cool enough try to polish that sound so it sound rich/powerful. At this point the mix should be already kinda good so you actually hear how it will (probably) sound at a later point.

You said that at first your melody sound nice and after a couple of hours you don't "feel" it anymore.
Here things start to get very interesting. What you have heared is actually something your brain made up of the actual sound/melody. You brain adds timings, a certain groove, alters the sound so its good to listen to (makes it nice and flowy) and not to forget your mood is changing which has an impact on how you feel(!) the music. Especially when you set up a synthy and often change its sound/character. Mostly just because you changing it makes it interessting and things sound so much cooler. then when stoping messing around with the synth it sounds just straight... tooo often far too straight and boring.
At this point you have so many options to get to that sound again. in most cases (if the synth sounds already very nice) the timings of each note (or even the whole track) is maybe not optimal and should be changed ms by ms unless the groove is cool and/or the sound becomes richer again and each tone is exactly(!) in place. you can already mess around and spent so much time with this only. it's kinda magic how 1-3 ms alters the whole groove/sound (in a mix).
Then (at least with Max for Live) you can use a LFO and make your sound constantly changing (a tiny bit or even go mad)
In "Max for Live" you have these LFO-Devices which can be mapped literaly to any knob/fader/button in live and/or buildin plugins. so cool!

Same as for each tone/synth/sample you use. learn how to make them sound richer/more powerful (compress, saturate, distort a bit, ... whatever). This is because, sometimes, a rich and powerful synth/tone is powerful enough for a good sound and its final (done, because amazing sounds ^^)

...And again mind the mix.

Now at that point, if you have already something cool done and you are about to move forward with your track/song and finish it you should consider adding some master plugin suite like izotope ozone (I use v7) to your song and get a feel if the mix and the overall sound is ok. when you messed up the mix or when there is something to loud .... you will instantly hear it. Its easier for me to apply the Master plugin (Ozone) and do the mix then the other way around. with techno and ultra strange sounds mixing can get very complicated. And if you are a guy like me whos synth/sounds/samples interlock each other so badly, than mixing can be a nightmare (kinda). then having a standard mastering preset and a "final" preview makes things easier.

Btw. ...My CPU is often like almost 100% (from buildin live plugins only). That is the point where I say, ok, now its enough. lol
I don't care. If it sounds interesting i'm fine with it. ^^

Hope you understand my try-to-english. Hope it makes any sense. Hope it helps.

greetz
iCe!

(I'm a real amateur, far from good and I have almost no time to make music anymore)

you can check my shit here:

 

Last edited: May 1, 2018

you will constantly be confronted with this problem as you continue to evolve, you will surpass this stage sooner or later,
just to face it again and again.

everything normal,
this is the price of progress

if its not the case and you lack any result, then may try to:

- keep it simple
- keep it simpler
- lower your expectation:
instead of trying to perfect everything, accept it as soon as it sounds "decent" to you
- set deadlines to yourself or force you into some by participating in remix-contests and similars,
where you have to deliver in a certain time frame.

many report that the pressure of a deadline to be extremely helpful for this "issue"
there are successful people that cannot finish anything without a deadline ;)