The spectrum analysis displays a 20 dB boost starting at 1 KHz to highs end.
Okay. So I guess I need to avoid boosting the high end, and focus more on warmth in the mids and low end. Is that what you would recommend?
The spectrum analysis displays a 20 dB boost starting at 1 KHz to highs end.
the other issue may be that your headphone response curve is colouring your judgement - the athm50s have a bass boost and treble cut profile everything above 2kHz is significantly down when compared to everything below 250Hz
again compensating for this curve with an anti-curve may help to even out your mixes
How long did it take you to recalibrate your ears, and how exactly did you go about doing that?
When you were in that smiley EQ phase, is it fair to say that if you took off the high-end boosts from all of your instruments to achieve a more commercial EQ balance, it would sound dull to your ears? Just trying to see how similar my problem is to what you experienced.
You are dealing with a couple things here bro. 1. The theory of relativity-what happens is, when you boost highs (or any frequency for that matter) and listen to it for a short period of time, then return it back to 0db boost, it will inherently sound duller even if the track was already considered bright to start with. So The remedy is simple...first, if you find yourself wanting to boost the high end on a commercial track you are using for reference, you apparently don't care for the how the track sounds overall. Find yourself some reference tracks that you consider good or great and use those. Then just compare your balanced unmixed track to your reference track and aim to get the same overall brightness/dullness.
The 2nd issue, is that you are likely falling into the trap of "brighter is better". This is very similar to "louder is better" Its true, our ears and brains have been conditioned to think that louder and brighter is better. Be that as it may, the secret to what you are trying to achieve is BALANCE. This balance will vary from mix to mix, but If you tend to like brighter mixes, hey that's great. Its your own personal taste. So while you are trying to achieve this balance , its perfectly ok to err on the bright side if you prefer, simply avoid extremes.
To do this, you will need to re-train your ears out of the "brighter is better" thing. It may take some time, and initially your mixes will seem dull to you. Just deal with it for a bit, while focusing on balance. Lastly, I'll share with you my sort of visual approach to achieving balance...Think of 3 frequency spectrums, highs, mids, and lows. I imagine these on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the highest). What I do is try to keep these spectrums within 2-3 numbers different. So for example, If my lows are at a 4, my mids and highs don't go above 7 or below 1. I do this for each frequency and usually keep the numbers around two numbers different, three would be headed toward a noticeable imbalance to me.
Keep in mind this approach is subjective, but it will get you playing in the ballpark of overall balance. Hope this helps!
Terence