Distorted drums

pinder325

New member
Hi,
I am in the middle of making a track, and the kick drum has sounded good while mixing with my headphones, but when I tried it on speakers it sounded distorted. Why does this happen and how do I fix this?

Thanks,
Chris
 
It is a super (!) common issue to mix bass elements (like kick, sub) too high while using headphones and only realise when you run it through speakers. Sounds to me like it's too loud.
 
The first thing you wanna check is the kick's overall volume. You want it to be well below 0dB, as it'll start clipping if you get it too close to this. Around -3 to -6 dB on your kick is a good volume level to go with. But this obviously depends on how loud all your other song elements are. The key is to make sure your Master Track stays below 0dB.

As mentioned above, there's often a lot of overlap between the kick and the bass. Either you can sidechain the bass. The way that sidechaining works is that you use a compressor on your bass track. Once the volume of the kick goes above a certain level/threshold (e.g. -5dB) it will start to reduce the volume of the bass. As soon as the kick volume goes below that threshold, the bass synth will go back to it's normal volume.
 
Back
Top