How do you know your mix plays well with any system?

N

n777l

New member
Hi,

I am very confused because I have my own studio with JBL monitors, and the finished song sounds really good in the studio but when I play the song in my car it got way too much bass.

Then back in the studio when I reduce the bass it sounds horrible in the studio but good in the car?

So then I plugged in my laptop to the car to see if I can do some live EQ but then it sounded good..probably because the AUX cable sends the music differently to the car monitors?

But when I send my song to my cellphone (honor 8) it got too much bass as I said...

So I am here like ultra confused.. How can you be sure that it sounds well on every system???????????
 
A few options:-

A. Sort your monitoring situation out, treat your room, upgrade speaker, even switch to just headphones if your room is particularly bad
B. Try your mix on as many different systems as possible to hear any weakness that might pop out (like your too much bass in car example)
C. Reference to other well produced tracks of a similar style
D. Send to a mastering engineer
 
Generally... if as Jrace said, if your room is not treated, and your speakers are not particularly flat, or suitable for mixing, then you will suffer this quite a bit...

A good studio, will have speakers worth over $5000, each speaker... some can range to ridiculous prices..

The rooms will be treated... and some even have like 5 sets of speakers.. shitty speakers, big speakers, far field, near field, headphones, etc etc...

A good engineer will gauge a balance between all the speaker systems... and then finalise it...

Reference tracks are needed, so you know how your room sounds, and if the reference track sounds like shit on your monitors... make it sound like that... cause that track has been commercially mixed and mastered for distribution etc...

Anyway :)
 
Your monitoring simply has to exceed a certain minimum quality level. Once you have that with experience you also learn how to balance the weight of the mix which helps too. Over time your monitoring skills improve and good translation eventually is just a natural bi product of it all. At that point the mastering is finalizing it into a final product that just works.

If you dont have super great monitors and room, then use a number of speaker sets.

Pros perfect this kind of stuff more than you currently imagine.
 
Agreed with the others. The biggest thing to do you don't have a budget is to listen to it on as any different systems and speakers that you can. It sounds like you got a lot of variety by listening in your studio, car and phone but you could keep going. Also, I second reference mixing. Reeeaallly helps.
 
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