Exactly.

 

The feeling i have when i listen to your mix is that the dynamic range is strange. I don't feel the transients, they seem kinda blurred and struggling to appear, and are not cohesive. Trying to fix that with compression and eq's on your 2buss is too late. And limiting is not the key to fix that. Try to saturate and compress individual channels, at least the channels you want to be upfront. There will be more space with extra headroom. I don't agree you should push tracks to -8 or -10 LUFS for the sake of it, at least if you don't want your jazz musician client to be mad at you. The track should be as loud as it asks to be. And the limiter is not the place you're going to find the loudness your record needs. Eye Of The Tiger was mastered at -16 LUFS and it's clear, loud, punchy and for sure sounds way better than any Metallica's Death Magnectic songs limited to the ass. Uptown Funk, mixed by Serban Ghenea is also not that loud (-11.8) and one of the punchiest tracks of our era. A loud and balanced track is a matter of mixing. Enhancing it to deliver the best output for consumption should be a matter of mastering.

 

A wide variation in music from a youtube playlist. They all have different focus points inside the mix.Take note of the center balance (even those with the bass instrument pushed to the back).

African Popular Music

 

Last edited: Nov 19, 2024 at 5:35 AM

Two bits of software that I find immensely helpful when mixing and checking mixes:

Mastering The Mix "Expose". This is a stand-alone app not a plug-in. It's good for highlighting phase issues, levels, tonal balance etc.

Audified "Mix Checker". A plug-in. It doesn't analyse or fix anything but it does simulate all manner of output devices from HiFi to headphones, TVs, laptops and phones. It really speeds up the process of tweaking a mix to suit many platforms. This really helped me get vocals to stand out on more platforms. (Top tip: ignore the small TV speakers and laptop speakers.)

For me it was all in the mid's and in finding bass sounds that fool the ear into hearing lower frequencies that are not there (!)

I don't know what your end target for your music is but you should focus primarily on that. In general, people listening on expensive HiFi is very much in decline. Music is far more likely to be listened to on ear buds or on small Bluetooth speakers via a bitrate-limited streaming service. It's possible to do different mixes for different targets but I don't think that should be necessary apart from club mixes, where mono-compatibility and the low-end are a very big deal.

But it's fine if you want to do yourself a specific mix for your own specific system!

 

What I meant is about a mixing technique that is independent from the musical style, you are going to add a little bit of harmonics to the point that it will be present on a smartphone speaker and it's what mix engineers are doing to solve that "issue".
If you think this is not acceptable for that style of music, then it means that this kind of music is not made to be listened on a smartphone speaker and also the video you linked, is very weak on a small speaker, so if the harmonics workaround is too much, you have to live with that and accept that good music must be listened on a proper audio setup.

 

I did some further experiments. I decided I let the idea go to make a comrpomise mastering. This material is just not suitable for that, moreover things from Youtube that are more suitable, they sound also somewhat bad of the HiFi, even if on other type of devices they sound okay, and not just because of the low bitrate.

So I decided to make a different mastering for online releases. The problem here was that low and middle dominancy in the HiFi mix many have mentioned and I was also aware of.

1. So, this is the orginal HiFi version, this sounds bad and silent on mobile:

2. This one is what shinjiya created:
https://pixeldrain.com/u/Y2Ze4KN1

This one sounds much better on low end speakers, and it is still okay for better ones, but still the low and middle parts are a dominant, and the other problem is that I already noted: some parts are distorting on low end speakers. For example the part from 3:50-4:48, because of the high guitar, but other times it is the voice. I guess this version is still too much for those speakers.

3. So I decided to EQ the rendered song in Goldwave now working on the laptop speake. I could create a version that sounds great on low end speakers like phone and laptop. It has power, and the key for that is that piercing kind of character:

But now the problem is that this one is too much for headphones and for my desktop speaker. Those pearcing highs are just too much. But I listened on various stuff, and my conclusion is that most of the mix is now okay on everything in this version, it is only the commentator's sharp voice due to the S-es that is a problem.

Do you have any idea how it could be adjusted? The obvious way would be to go to Logic, copy the curve I used in Goldwave, and then listen there and adjust the voice until it sounds good on both the headphone and the laptop speaker. Unfortunately I can't do that now. My laptop is HP, but I also have OSX installed on in, but in OSX I have no built in sound. So I cannot do this from Logic. If I need to monitor both on the line out and the built in speaker, I can only do it in Windows but the song is in Logic, so I can only touch the rendered final song in Windows if I want to monitor on built in speakers.

Is there any way to regulate the S-es in this particular wav I linked? To address just that and avoid touching the cymbals for example. Because I noticed their harmonics are quite close.

If not then I don't even know how to do it because I can use the headphone in Logic, but relying on the headphone only is tricky and I can easily overshoot again. And it is annoying that for setting just something little I need to reset the laptop and reload a different system that takes minutes.

 

Check TDR Arbiter or the Softube Weiss De-Esser for a mastering-oriented de-essing, but I think it might be difficult to fix (haven't listened to it, just based on general experience).

Why not fix the sibilance in the source? Do you not have the project anymore? If you posted the mixed stems (rendering each track with your mixing instead of a single stereo master) it could be easier to master.

 

Because if I switch to Logic, in the Mac OS I don't have built in audio, can't verify on the laptop speaker, to do that I have to render, close, reset, load Windows and listen. It is not very precise.

I could export the stems but won't the outcome be different compared to when you render everything together? There is a mastering compressor on the stereo out, won't it happen that the stem render won't be compressed because the compressor is not detecting it due to the absence of the other stems? I always thought if you render stems separately and you put them together, the overall sound will be different.

 

Making sure a song translates well into other systems, doesn't start on the mastering stage, but a few choices here and there will make the mix pop up, initially when i first listended to your mix, i almost knew why you have issues...

give this a listen:

ps sorry for the gain increase.