This is a song I mixed recently. I am not a professional, but I tried to mix it in a way so I enjoy listening to it, so that it sounds pleasing on my system. I optimized it for my own HiFi, that consists of a pair of 90's KEF passive small towers (about 1m high) and an amp made by my father who is an audiophile and built quality stuff into it. I am listening to it in a big living room.

This is the version that sounds very good on my system:

The problem is when I upload this to Youtube and listen to it on mobile devices on their own built in speakers, it does not sound very good. It becomes middle dominated, the secondary instruments in the background like secondary guitars and the marimba comes to the front too much and starts disturbing the rest of the song. And the whole thing is very silent, too. I set it to -14 lufs, but it is very silent compared to most stuff in the genre on youtube. If I add an adaptive compressor and push the volume up, it still sounds bad. It is louder, but the middle becomes too loud as well and the mobile speakers start distorting.

I decided to put an EQ in the Stereo Out channel in Logic, and pulled down the middles. It sounds somewhat better on mobile platforms, but still not too satisfying. But better. However, that version is awful on the HiFi: it sounds terrible, as if I was listening to a tiny 50 year old radio.

Do you have any suggestion how to solve this issue? The problem is: I like the HiFi mix so much that I don't want to change that. It sounds very satisfying to me. If I imagine that I downgrade it with additional mastering for mobile, and then people will load that stuff from youtube into their big HiFi: NOOOO. I cannot let that. Is there any trick to make it sound good on both platforms and keep as much as the original mixing as possible?

Here is another song to compare, from the same genre. It is much louder, and the balance of frequencies is much better. The annoying is, however: if I feed this kind of mixing into the HiFi, it sounds bad. Not just because of the low bitrate (I have the CD version of this, so I know), but because of the way it was mixed.

I have started experimenting a bit by the way: if I maximize the volume, than add +2 more db, this adjustment in the EQ improves a lot, turns down distortions, but there is still some remaining on the vocal and lead guitar:

 

it's all a matter of compromise (hence the use of FRFR) just get a good pair of headphones you know well and adjust the mix a bit. Also get a reference track (one that works on your system, YT etc.,) to compare with yours, that will help you out to make decisions on what to adjust in your mix.

 

Last edited: Nov 18, 2024 at 12:33 AM

Given the lack of at least a properly analyzed and equalized room/speaker-set to mix with, getting an audio analysis from a spec-an is a step in the right direction. The Sonible automated Pure-EQ and TrueBalance can help in this realm to make certain your levels and energy spread throughout the audio spectrum is balanced. Izotope Neutron is another one that can help with the mixing portion in the absence of a proper room/speaker setup.

 

Checked your mix with Realphones, yeah, it sounds great on the HIFI, which is never the case, highs are almost always piercing and etc, but your mix sounds so good there and that reference you posted sounds standard/horrible as it should on this device. On other hand on other devices, yeah, like you said, it sounds like 50s radio. Dunno, maybe use Michael Jackson - Thriller as reference, it's solid compromise you can have, while sounding decent on every device, but probably it will sound the worst on your HIFI.

 

You see guys, that is the problem. But it is just one part of the problem, there is something else I did not mention. This genre usually sounds very bad on my HiFi with Passive Speakers. And I have a lot of stuff, my father collected items that worths thousands but this music sounds very bad on it. However once I have been in a studio, and the same CD that sounded bad at home on the passive speakers, sounded differently, almost acceptable on the expensive Dynaudio monitors. So isn't it the case that as this music is originally for the dancefloor, it would be better to mix it for active club PA? And not use the home HiFi as a reference? Because indeed, this time I had the chance to do the mixing for this artist, so I connected logic to my HiFi, and that's it, you see it sounds great, but on everything else it is bad.

What further complicates the case however is that I have lots of rock CD's that sound good both on the HiFi and the mobile device if I upload that to Youtube. So I don't know.

The only thing I know is that my mix is superb on the HiFi, but that is not the target system now unfortunately but youtube and mobile or small desktop speakers.

 

Fix your room. Or else, monitor at low volume.

 

I read your post on my phone and decided to come all the way to my computer to give you a proper, serious answer. I haven't listened to the track yet, though.

Let's get through it in parts:

That's a perfectly acceptable thing to do if you want to listen to it in a single place and in that place only, but that doesn't seem to be the case since you want to have it up on Youtube and are actually checking it out in other devices. To put it as simple as possible, a mix that doesn't translate is not a proper mix. You need to go back to the basics and actually understand why it doesn't translate. Let's spin this idea: why any other music you enjoy actually translates into any system, but yours don't? Part of the issue is that you're focusing on making it sound good only in your system, and that is only half of every mix. It's a telltale sign of a distinct lack of balance that is masked by the issues in your monitoring system.

That's a common mistake. Three things: learn to limit and clip individual tracks to reduce your peaks, learn to properly balance and lastly, never aim for -14 LUFS, aim for somewhere around -8 to -10 LUFS. Limiting is not only about loudness, but also consistency.

The issue here is that you're trying to fix an issue too late into the mix. This is also a very common mistake. Example: my mix sounds too harsh, and instead of addressing the source of the harshness, I try to fix the harshness in a place where it affects things that are not harsh. Food analogy: you're trying to season your chicken after it's already cooked.

My suggestion: go back to the basics, learn proper mixing technique. You're falling into all the pitfalls that everyone goes through. Repetition is key if you want to improve that. Make sure to keep old mixdowns for comparison.

 

What would say this specific genre is? It sounds like something I would more likely hear on a film soundtrack, rather than in a club. So I won't guess. It sounds fine to me on my monitors.

I would look at a plugin like APU loudness limiter, because it has targets for quite a few of the bigger streaming platforms. There are others, and it doesn't have to be that specific plugin. I think that is a decent gauge of what your average listener is going to get. So I would take the final output file you already have, re-import it into the DAW, stick a limiter with targets on the 2 bus, and see what kind of magic you can work to make it sound good on a phone. Mix into that final limiter with it already there, if that works.

I would like to mention I am usually skeptical about this kind of thing. "my track has something wrong with it".

 

You're actually supposed to mix and master in the DAW. This includes monitoring monitors that were invented for this purpose. Then you should listen to or test your mix on several sources. Then you go into the car with the burned CD and listen to your mix. An old cassette recorder (mono) also serves its purpose.

The following text is edited by Neuman:

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HOME STEREO SPEAKERS AND STUDIO MONITORS?

Pop music is made to be played back on home stereo systems. Wouldn’t it make sense to use the same kind of hi-fi speakers for monitoring and mixing? Yet recording professionals prefer dedicated monitor speakers for studio work. Here’s why!

TECHNICAL DIFFERENCES

Let’s first talk about technical differences. Home stereo or hi-fi speakers are almost always “passive” speakers; i.e. they require an external (power) amplifier with speaker outputs. Studio monitors, with very few exceptions, are “active” or “powered” speakers, which means the power amplifier is built into the speaker cabinet. So you have to connect it to a line source with a volume control, i.e. an audio interface or a dedicated monitor controller.

How do you know a speaker is active or passive?

There’s a quick way to check: An active or powered speaker must have a mains inlet.

Active speakers offer some advantages. Usually, they contain not only one power amplifier but several. The woofer, the tweeter and (if available) the mid-range speaker each get their own power amplifiers, which results in a punchier, more accurate dynamic response. That’s because the woofer, which requires lots of power on each bass note and kick drum hit, won’t take away any energy from the other speakers – as it might on a passive speaker, powered by only one amp for all speakers.

Having dedicated power amplifiers for each speaker also makes it easier to build top quality crossovers. Not only because the crossover can be placed before the power amps, but also because active circuitry can be used to obtain steeper filter slopes. This reduces overlap between the woofer, mid-range speaker, and tweeter, which results in a clearer, more detailed sound image.

DIFFERENT TOOLS FOR DIFFERENT TASKS

When music professionals listen to music, they do it with a different mindset than music consumers. Enthusiasts simply want to enjoy the music they love as best as they can. It doesn’t really matter if the sound they hear is an accurate reproduction of what the artist intended. All that matters is the listeners’ subjective impression. Most music consumers therefore prefer speakers that seem to enhance their listening experience.

Many hi-fi speakers accomplish this by boosting the bottom end and top end. The resulting “smiley curve” makes the music appear more powerful and crisp.

Musicians, producers, and engineers want something different. They need to hear the plain truth. They want speakers that add no extra sugar and hide no imperfections. It’s no different in the home studio. If there are wrong notes, extraneous noises, or imperfect sounds, you want to address those issues before anyone else may notice. So you need speakers that give you quite a bit more detail than usual hi-fi speakers.
At the mixing stage, you need to hear if the balance is perfect. There is a fine line between loud and too loud, between powerful drums and the drums overpowering the vocals. And there’s an even finer line between solid bass and booming bass, between crisp treble and harsh treble. It takes accurate and linear speakers to make such mix decisions with any degree of certainty.

www.neumann.com/en-de/knowledge-base/neumann-im-homestudio/homestudio-academy/difference-between-home-stereo-speakers-and-studio-monitors

 

Are you monitoring on active speakers?

This is Congolese music, it has always been a dance music first of all, in abroad they refer to it with different names: highlife, congolese rumba, soukous, ndombolo. Here is a concert event:

This particular track that I worked on is a kind of exception, resembles the dance style, but it was a campaign song for the elections last year for the president. So it was for the TV first of all not the dancefloor. The artist asked me to remix it because he knows I have some experience about their music and audiophile stuff at the same time.

 

But there is something I don't understand about this: if the passive system is boosted here and there, that alone does not explain the need of active studio monitors. You just construct the passive system in a way that you omit the boosters, and you are there. The only difference according to the article is that the home HiFi is made to be boosted, but it does not mention that it is boosted by default. They can make it that way if the customer prefers that. Don't they? I mean they do that to sell it like that, but it doesn't start from there, it is an adjustment they add.

 

You always write about the hi-fi system, if I understand you correctly you don't use "proper monitoring monitors". Example https://www.thomann.co.uk/yamaha_hs...LCJjdXJyZW5jeSI6NCwibGFuZ3VhZ2UiOjJ9&reload=1

Every big band you hear and every film score is recorded in studios, in an optimized room and with monitoring monitors. Then it is mixed and mastered and the end result is a CD ROM or a record that the user listens to on their hi-fi system at home or on the go.

Musicians, producers, and engineers want something different. They need to hear the plain truth. They want speakers that add no extra sugar and hide no imperfections. It’s no different in the home studio. If there are wrong notes, extraneous noises, or imperfect sounds, you want to address those issues before anyone else may notice. So you need speakers that give you quite a bit more detail than usual hi-fi speakers.
At the mixing stage, you need to hear if the balance is perfect. There is a fine line between loud and too loud, between powerful drums and the drums overpowering the vocals. And there’s an even finer line between solid bass and booming bass, between crisp treble and harsh treble. It takes accurate and linear speakers to make such mix decisions with any degree of certainty.

Ask Me Audio Ep. 2: What's the difference between studio monitors and hi-fi speakers?

 

I don't think Hi-Fi vs studio monitoring is a very productive discussion, changing boxes here probably would not change much. I believe OP's speakers can reproduce every frequency, even if it's not flat, but nothing that some room correction wouldn't make usable. I would instead focus on mixing with headphones (Sony MDR-7506 are Scheps choice iirc) and use the speakers for checking the mix. Either way, the way I see it, the issues presented here are more fundamental than speaker type.

 

+1 on mixing with cans, I would sincerely advise on giving Realphones a go, just the experience of flipping through so many sources in second can reset your ears/brain and things start pocking out/missing, learn how those apply to great mixes and find the balance with your own one. Your mix sound bearable on most horrible HiFi in Realphones, but the reason for it is because your hi end is really shy, there's nothing to upset those speakers and they have so exaggerated hi end, probably yours have even more, that's why you have a feeling your mix sounds like 50s radio everywhere else, there's really not much hi end information there.

 

One thing I noticed when importing your wave file into Logic, is that your waveform is anemic. The perceived loudness is nice. I see people do this, and more power to you; but I never do it. I use the clip gain in Logics track inspector to do what some people might use Sausage Fattener for. If it is multiple regions, I will usually use the Normalize Region Gain function in Logic.

 

Downloaded the track & loaded into DAW. One thing that stands out to me is the Bass guitar seeming to wonder in the stereo field. Also not enough mid to high definition for the bass. Do like the low end of the bass to a point. btw...listening on headphones.

In Samplitude Pro X8, I used the Master Bus EQ to create a one band peak filter @ 765.58 Hz and at the default Q of 0.40. Raised it to what sounded like a more even frequency response, not perfect, just more even. From here I could here more clearly other balance issues between instruments & vocals. Horns may benefit from a reverb with detailed spaced and a short decay to help separate without raising the level.

From there you would have to figure out what else needs attention. The plugin from Musik Hack called Master Plan, has two useful features that work in tandem:

1. Unity (unity gain to match original signal)
2. Five output monitoring mods - N-10, Phone, Band, Mono, Dim

This is just my humble input using only your posted track as a reference point. I do like the overall direction that the mix is leaning into.

 

Actually I meant my mix with the middles adjusted downward a bit for Youtube sounds like a 50 year old radio when listened on the HiFi, not the mix itself in its original form on other devices. But this is a minor thing, the essence is that this mix does not seem to be cross platform.

But there are certain things here that you don't consider, but it is forgiveable because I did not go into other aspects in detail. One reason is because I wanted to discuss certain factors in another post that could make a topic of their own due to their complexity. But let me summarize my concerns and issues and add some more details to what I already mentioned:

This recent mixing project is the outcome of a decade of experience in this genre. And many decades on the side of my father who is an audiophile. I have experience about how a lots of different things sound on audiophile stuff. I have a kind of reference in this. The problem is that for decades I listened to jazz, progrock, oldies, other rock on our such systems. They were always passive. Then I got into Congolese music. First I listened to it on earphones from the iPod, because I was away from home a lot and I had no CDs. When I purchased CDs of this genre, and I started listening to it on our home audio, I was surprised to hear it sounds very bad. For me the bass is just too booming, for example, sometimes the overall sound has a box sound, other times the balance between the instruments is not good. It was odd, because in the car you could not notice it, nor on the earphone or on the iMac built in speakers that I was limited to in those years. So either the usual passive system is not suitable for this music (my father's friend runs an audiophile store, he has stuff that worths millions, I tested this there too), or something went wrong when those releases were recorded, and the expensive home system exaggerates those errors. This is something I don't know. I want to dedicate a separate thread for asking about that oddity, because it is quite a complex thing, too much here to include.

This time I had the chance to do things in a way to omit those errors. And I am satisfied because the bass seems to be correct now, and most of the other things as well. So the goal is achieved. The question now: how to get to that compromise to make it cross platform.

Now back to the reasoning of Radio: I do understand well what you described about studio monitors. Even myself I had some clue about why those are used, and not the HiFi to mix in the studio. But in my case, I think those things that you described make no sense. Not universally, but in my specific case. Now consider this link of situations:

As I mentioned something is not okay with the Congolese releases when you play them back on high fidelity passive systems. One is that booming bass. One reason can be that the passive system boosts it. Okay, noted. Now imagine I go to the studio. Record stuff with my friends. We mix on active monitors. We hear it is good. Go home, listen to it: booming. No matter we had the recommended system to mix, the outcome is bad. And that's the problem. So even if you are right about studio monitors, in this case it doesn't matter, because it doesn't help in my case. Anyhow the industry usually does it, in this case you need to consider these problems on the passive system and address it right on the mixing. I can't think of other ways than mixing directly on the high fidelity audio.

Let me note however that these high fidelity systems we have and that I listened to during my life, partly in our friend's store: they were not equalized systems. So equalizers were always omitted. These from KEF, HEYBROOK, B&W audio and lots of other brands that name I forgot, we always used and tested them without equalizers, to keep the original sound from the CDs. I know that every system adds its own flavour, but apart from how it was assembled and optimized in the factory, we did not modify or boosted anything on it, and during decades I can't recall a system component that had any tone adjustment knob on it. Only the player, the amps with a volume knob, and the speakers, as they came from the factory. That's it. These were not like that Sony home audio with equalizers and a lot of booster buttons.

So the essence: the stuff I produce for myself with these guys, I want to target it for home HiFi. Then when produced, if possible, as a secondary step, I want to set a compromise for it to make it cross platform as much as possible. The other option is that I buy the Dynaudio speakers and listen this music on them myself. This particular song is the first step towards to these goals. It is not my production, but this song has served its purpose, the elections that it was written for are over, my friend sent the Logic projects for me to experiment, if the outcome is good he will upload it to his channel, but based on this I can test how we will do things for the production that I will make.

So this is the complete story.

I don't say that if I had the active monitors right now, it could not happen that I make a proper mix on it, and due to it being a proper source, everything will sound better cross platform. But 1. I don't have funds right now to buy that system 2. my friend who created this song has active studio monitors, and every time I receive stuff from them has the problem I mentioned: booming bass, box sound, unbalanced instrument volume relations. So before I collect and devote money for an expensive active monitor pair, I would like to know first why these problems happen. Because what further complicated the case: when I was present in the studio, the mix of these songs seemed proper. So it is a total chaos. But based on all these experiences this seems to be the situation: the passive system is not a friend of this music and I will need to mix it on that if I want to listen to it with satisfaction on my home audio. I cannot think of other way.

 

The bass is the one why I like my mix at the first place. I would not touch that. Nor any other thing. When I sit down and listen, this is how I hear it to be perfect. But to understand what I mean as problems, I should have presented here the bad examples from other releases. As I mentioned I wanted to do it in a separate thread, but I see it is unavoidable now. But I am going to sleep, tomorrow I will show examples and you may understand why I insist on my mixing method so much.

 

Laptop speakers are better but not by much. Phase cancellation is also going to be an issue, most top end phones don't sum to mono but the the speakers are close enough to each other and attached to a super rigid frame that is really good an transmitting vibrations. The wandering stereo bass might sound cool in a big room on big stereo speakers so consider separate post products for lossy/streaming vs lossless hi-fi.

Catchy song if I could vote for number <20> I would definitely consider it but I haven't heard the opposing beat yet...

 

Consider the following:

1- "Audiophile" is not a term that carries the same quality you think it does. For once, audiophiles believe and hear things that do not exist, and most of them know absolutely nothing about audio science. This is not a dig into your father or his friend, it's just facts. Being an audiophile doesn't mean you understand physics. It's like saying you know all about car mechanics just because you enjoy driving.

2- The fact that you put music into your home stereo, and it sounds bad, is most likely linked to room acoustics than to the music itself, since it does translate well enough in any other device. You can put one billion dollar gear into a room that sounds like shit, and it's going to sound like one billion dollars of poop. Can't fight physics.

3- This passive vs active speaker thing is a waste of time. Means nothing really, don't hang on it. As long as you preamp the speakers properly, it really doesn't matter at all.

This is counterproductive. You can't make your mix translate as a secondary step. It either translates, or it doesn't. No engineer ever sits down to mix a song and expect it to only sound almost good on 99.9% of devices.

Consider investing into Sonarworks' SoundID, IK Multimedia's ARC Studio or any calibrated microphone with REW and a DSP device.

 

Last edited: Nov 18, 2024 at 5:34 AM