I dunno if I'm asking the right question here, but I'ma ask anway. I just started recording live music, and some mixes- etc. When I play them in my monitors- they sound good.

When I check the levels in the lil programs I got, they look aiight.

But when I play 'em in other peoples speakers they sound different. So, if the monitors are supposed to be accurate- that's gotta be a mastering issue, right?

You gotta make it so it sound good in anyone's shit?

How u go about doing that?

What programs are good for that. cus right now- I'll be honest. I;m just usinge Sound Forge and Acid Studio.





<---The real World Cup.
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it's not a mastering issue, it's a mix issue. there are no such thing as perfect speakers, you have to rely on your ears.
can mastering help many things? yeah... but a poor mix that doesn't travel is just a poor mix. maybe if you post audio, people can offer suggestions
c


::con?one::
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I been trying to fix it, but I honestly dont know how.

http://djvariable.net/audio/grits/grits_gravy.mp3


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oooppsss - update in a minute



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9KC7uhMY9s
You Know What Love Is.

there's some clipping at the beginning for sure though,
which is creating distortion. When you record, make sure nothing
is going over unity (0 dB). It's also messed up just because
it's an mp3 (compressed audio). What software did you use to
record the mix, or did you use a portable do hicky?

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would help.

I got Ableton, but I aint set it up on the PC, and since I no longer use the MAC for production ish (since I don't have any recording programs on it) I didn't use Ableton or anything for the EFX.

I used Sound Forge for 'em too.

Some people says it sounds LOW, others say it's too loud- but it sounds perfect on the monitors.

And I do mean tracks as well, I'm just not posting any of those.


<---ATL Hip Hop. Learn on it.
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monitors is that so often they're TOO honest; they don't reflect any consumer-end systems whatsoever.

I alternate between some pretty nice headphones and my PC speakers, which are just some Altec Lansing 4.1 joints. I have self-set neutral, low, and high bass settings for the woofer to simulate different kinds of systems, and I've gotten tuned into the variances in frequency response (just from hours of using them).

It's weird, because what might sound like a subtle mix effect that still comes through on the headphones, when brought to the speakers, just doesn't work sometimes.

A number of cats on here will happily tell you what's called the car test: if it sounds dope in the car, it IS dope.

<---Okay Jima (© Bridgetown)

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chopped off at 0.0, then someone had shit cranked outta control and hard-limited it and basically screwed the sound.

Yeah, essentially game over for that track. Now, if you have a track that goes over but wasn't truncated, you should be able to compensate for the hot signal by bringing down the level at the first stage of the chain (like in Acid, if you lower the input on a channel EQ effect, it'll stabilize the sound cleanly).


How bad is it, though?

<---Okay Jima (© Bridgetown)

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is DIFFERENT. What kind of monitors do you have, and what
studio space do you use them in?

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<---ATL Hip Hop. Learn on it.
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mixing is to get the RELATIVE levels of each instrument and
their effects right.
DIGITAL MASTERING (for a SINGLE TRACK) is used to take an
ALREADY MIXED TRACK, EDIT start and
stop times and initial and final silence, do a touch up eq over
the whole mix, exciters
for different levels, compression whether single or multiband
compression to even out the levels thoughout the mix, control
the stereo image for different frequency bands, LIMIT the out put
so that it doesn't go over unity or other volume setting near unity,
without clipping or distortion but still introduce gain in ROOT
MEAN SQUARE loudness, and finally introduce dithering if necessary
if bouncing your track from a higher sample rate bit rate audio
to standard cd audio 44.1 kHz 16 bit audio file.
There is also tape mastering and vinyl mastering which often require
more brutal eq curves to compensate for the medium they will
be mastered to. Mastering technically also includes the manufacturing
of a physical template that will be used to make copies of the media,
so there is such a thing as CD mastering BEYOND the digital process,
i.e. making the cd stampers (I used to work at a cd/dvd)
mastering/duplication place part time)

Peace.

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i took a listen, and my 1st question would be "how was this stuff tracked?". i'm a big supporter of the 'crap in = crap out' logic, so it's the first question i ask.
as far as getting a good mix, if that mix is a representation of as good as you can seem to get it, my best advice would be to bring it to a mixer who knows what they're doing and you take as many notes as possible. if that's not an option, i recommend reading as much as possible (we all should...). there's a wealth of information out there between book, magazines and the internet. read as much as you can and experiment with the concepts and techniques you read about until you find the sound you are looking for. once you're there, you can take it wherever you want.
when experimenting on a mix, it MAY help to take a record that has a mix you like, and try to a/b between the two as a sort of guage.



::con?one::
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I've never done a mix before, and was tired of waiting on folk to use their equipment, so I said fuck it and tried it on my computer. I had been reading up on mixes, etc for a few weeks prior, and thought I could use that little bit of knowledge I got.

Problem was, that I don't really know how to measure the db's- like once it got to a certain level of orange on a track- I just figured if they all were at that level, it would sound right as long as it aint go in the red.

Then I noticed the shit was loud as fuck according to the readings, but some shit I was reading in Mix magazine was saying that alotta folk record shit extra loud and that music today is ALOT louder than it was back in the day.

I called my boy, and he says he likes it loud and would not expound, so when I played it back in my monitors and it sounded str8, I said- fuck it.

Then I played it in my car, and my boy's car and it sounded fine.

But I know the shit aint right.

I'm wondering if I gotta remix the shit, cus I didn't save the tracks as I mixed them. I'd have to redo the whole thing.




<---ATL Hip Hop. Learn on it.
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just to help clarify, when you read about things being too loud in Mix or EQ, they're usually referring to an over-compressed mix that is usually a result of a mastering engineer getting heat from labels to push the levels on all their albums.
you should concentrate on just getting the best sound you can. experiment and read is the only thing i can suggest. i know what i'm doing, and i read a ton of books and magazines, because you never know it ALL.
it may really benefit to pay someone to mix and go there to observe... or contact your local studios about possible internships. if i didn't waste so much time at d&d and powerplay in the 90's, i wouldn't have picked up ALOT of the things i know now that often save my ass in the studio

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don't try to record to peak AT 0 dB. You have a
floor to ceiling range (dynamic range) of 144 dB if recording
24 bit audio (or it might only be 130 dB depending on the sound card)
so it's alright for the mix to be "quiet" because you can
gain that 6 dB or less later through normalization/compression/
limiting with out losing much clearity at all.

After you record the mix, although it's quiet, normalize it to
-0.5 dB or so, then run a compressor over it ratio 2:1, fairly
short but not to short attacks say 10-30 ms, and fairly long
but not to long release times, say 50 ms - 100 ms.
and thresh hold as low as you
can go with out it sounding too sparse or "dehydrated",
something that will get you 4 to 8 dB gain reduction,
just something to even out the levels over the entire mix.
Then after that through on a brick wall limiter and limit to
-0.3 dB to 0 dB with no more attenuation of perhaps -3 dB or so,
if any attenuation at all, so as not to destroy to much dynamics of
the mix while still massaging the loudness of the mix.
If you measure the RMS of the mix and the average is -10 dB to
-12 dB RMS, it's plenty loud. These are only ball park figures
man.

Then you always save your 24 bit file (if I can I shoot for
96 kHz sampling rate, but 44 kHz is ok), and then you can
save it to the f'd up 16 bit 44 kHz wave later after applying
dithering, and then from that the even more f'd up mp3 or ogg
compressed file of 320 to 192 kbps, and it won't sound as
"raspy" and "harsh" and "uneven" as the mix cd you put up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_system_measurements

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Try taking a look at the frequency analysis for the track in something like adobe audition... I was having this problem with one of my tracks with some live guitar, and turns out a small range of frequencies were busting out from the guitar track, effectively ruining the vocals without the global levels looking suspect at all.

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