Song mixed perfectly for HiFi sounds bad on mobile

sono · Nov 19, 2024 at 1:46 AM

Melodic Reality said: ↑

Because millions of people actually do, go outside, every third person have ear bud in their ears, half of people I work with have one ear bud on them all the time for music and phone calls, it's rare that people listen to music in perfect triangle on full range speakers, so yeah, if you job is to mix something for someone that actually wants his music to be listened by those people, yeah, you should actually care. If you are making music for your own enjoyment, who cares really, except you.
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Exactly.

Riddim Machine · Nov 19, 2024 at 3:42 AM

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.

quadcore64 · Nov 19, 2024 at 5:35 AM

sono said: ↑

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:

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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

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Song mixed perfectly for HiFi sounds bad on mobile

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