Ear Fatigue or Crappy Mix/beat?

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RufusTheThird

New member
Hi, new here to the forums and I'll probably stay a lurker... But I had a question about ear fatigue. I've been mixing this beat most of the day and it came out alright. I put my headphones down and played it through the speakers and it sounded like the sounds don't mesh well, the bass didn't seem like it made sense and the other sounds playing didn't help either...

Could this be ear fatigue or just a dud of a beat?
 
Probably ear fatigue exacerbated by a bad mixing environment. If you are mixing in an untreated room, on laptop speakers or cheap headphones, that is usually the product.

GJ
 
Yeah, try to mix on multiple headphones and systems. Use quality headphones, "iPod headphones", laptop speakers, and quality studio monitors. Every sound system has a different frequency range so you may have to add layers to your bass to allow the listener to hear the bass on laptop speakers and pod headphones.

So if you bass is really low, around 40 or 50 hertz, you have to add a layer thats higher around 60 - 70 hertz. This is important because if the bassline falls out (on laptop speakers, etc) the harmony of all the melodies gets messed up.

You have to make your song play nicely on a lot of "sound systems".

What exactly is happening when you hear it on your headphones vs. the speakers?
 
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I can't explain it really. It's like the whole beat just didn't make sense... I'm hoping it was just ear fatigue from mixing to long with my headphones. I have a decent pair too. I have Sennheiser HD 280 Pro's.

I'll post the track in my signature and see if it makes sense to you.
 
right on, ill check it out. Ya, breaks are important. Don't mix for too long or ya, you start to mess up. Take breaks and let your ears recover, then go back to project.

Let me know when you post it.
 
haha this is tight form the start! Change into something after the first 12 seconds! haha the bassline is really nice too. I like this a lot. For monitors, hmm idk any pair for a couple hundred bucks will do the trick. I got my studio monitors from a local coffee house owner.

but on the real, this track has a lot of potential. It's a very good instrumental.
 
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Thank you! I'll look into some monitors at guitar center and see what they got. Idk what happened with the track not making sense to me... I'll try not to mix for as long as I did.

Thanks for the help!
 
Sounds pretty good as far as mix/EQ. You were probably just tired.

You will probably confuse most rappers with that loop, but it's a cool idea. Hard to go wrong with Chris Squier and Bill Bruford. "Shine delirious" and all that...

GJ

PS-- If there is a Guitar Center near you, they frequently have the Alesis desktop monitors on sale.
 
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Thanks! Glad I seem to be doing ok mix wise and that whole yes album was great too. Listened to it all the way through.

That's actually the brand I'm using now but they're 3 inch cones and I miss my big M - Audios. The left speaker blew out on it a while ago. If they have something a little more quality in Alesis I'd definitely pick them up though. My alesis's now are in rough shape.
 
RufusTheThird said:
Hi, new here to the forums and I'll probably stay a lurker... But I had a question about ear fatigue. I've been mixing this beat most of the day and it came out alright. I put my headphones down and played it through the speakers and it sounded like the sounds don't mesh well, the bass didn't seem like it made sense and the other sounds playing didn't help either...

Could this be ear fatigue or just a dud of a beat?
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Are you mixing with headphones? Which headphones? It's better to mix using monitors than headphones, but a good pair of these can be good for the job, but still not the appropriate. My advice is to wait to buy very good monitors with a good subwoofer, i.e. KRK Vxt4 + KRK 10s. Vxt is a good choice and 4'' is ok if you use a subwoofer for the low-end frequencies. I hope I help.
 
lol what do you have against KRK? I got mine for a discount from the coffee house owner (I think he had to pay for a lawyer...in a case i was involved in too, but he never really told me why he sold his monitors and interface)

Anyway, just wondering.
 
I'd say get klipsch 2.1, eris or jbl over krks but krks are fine.
When it comes to speakers you can't really go wrong unless you go Sub 100$.

at that point you might as well just stick to headphones like hd 448 or q40 or srh440 or akg.
 
Overly broad statement, my friend ^^^^^ ("Rolls Royce has four rubber tires; so does a Pinto!").

I just don't like the sound, they are over-hyped in the bass range to appeal to a particular music demographic, and at least the earlier models were plagued with quality issues.
So many other choices...

GJ
 
I use Sennheiser HD 280 Pro's at the moment. But since my monitors are kind of crap, I switch back and forth between the two. I usually stick with headphones for most of my fine tuning and go to my speakers when I want to test the volume and overall quality of the mix. Since these little Alesis's don't hit low ends like I want them too, I usually just mix with the headphones. Do I necessarily need a sub woofer? I'd love to have one but if I can just have a good pair of monitors, I'd be cool with that. Any advice is helpful Mahonik!
 
RufusTheThird said:
I use Sennheiser HD 280 Pro's at the moment. But since my monitors are kind of crap, I switch back and forth between the two. I usually stick with headphones for most of my fine tuning and go to my speakers when I want to test the volume and overall quality of the mix. Since these little Alesis's don't hit low ends like I want them too, I usually just mix with the headphones. Do I necessarily need a sub woofer? I'd love to have one but if I can just have a good pair of monitors, I'd be cool with that. Any advice is helpful Mahonik!
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1- I recommended the sub because I think it's better KRK Vxt4s + subwoofer than KRK Rokit 8''s for example, Vxt rules, but Rokit is good too, I use them.

2- About your phones I never used a Sennheiser HD 280 Pro's, but the brand is very good, you compared your phones with others? These pair has a lot of bass or a lot of mid frequencies, it's crispy? I used in the past a pair that accentuates mid-range and it wasn't good.

3- About time, it's not healthy to mix more than 50 minutes without pauses of 15 minutes. I recommend to mix in the maximum 6 hours in a day.
 
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Alright, I'll consider looking into a sub then. I'm kind of in the process of building my set-up anyway. I believe these headphones are pretty good compared to the other headphones I've used in the past. The bass isn't over exaggerated and the mid's/high ranges are clear. I haven't used any other dedicated studio headphones, so I can't say if they are great or the best for mixing but I think they do pretty well. They are really precise across the frequency range. And I have to work on time scheduling then, because I can sit and tinker with things all day. Haha
 
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