I keep wanting to boost the high 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

I am going to reinforce this point as it is strongly supported by laurend's analysis - your headphones are crap in terms of not being flat at either end of the spectrum - the red/blue line is your freq response (depending on whether you have straight M50's or M50x's) which you need to counter-act

headphonesCompare3.png


decent monitoring and decent flat response headphones will improve your mix
 
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short and simple- you're aware of the problem, so compensate. If it really is a personal taste where you like the highs ''too loud" but you know it isn't what you should be doing, dont. Its no different than having a pair of headphones that are lacking in the mid range, so since you're aware of this problem, you boost a little extra in the mids to make up for it.. same idea, you know where your taste 'lacks', so acknowledge it while you're working and consciously compensate for what your ears are tricking you into doing.

Maybe doing that will also eventually train your ears to keep the highs down after awhile


Didn't read any posts by the way I'm just replying so I have no idea whats being said before me.
 
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There's also a lot of either-or's being thrown around here...for example: just because you can hear the harshness doesn't rule out hearing loss; it's usually gradual and means reduced hearing of certain frequencies, not complete cut-off above a certain point (note: I'm not saying you have hearing loss, but it wouldn't hurt to get your ears checked). Also, the headphones you have aren't crap, imo, but they're also not that great for mixing either. They're actually very decent phones for tracking, but I'd probably try something else for critical mix decisions. This SOS article is a few years old, but mostly still very much relevant.
 
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.

I can't really specify how long it took me to get more comfortable with a flatter response, but it was a pretty long time. I've been favoring that smiley EQ for my entire life, so to reverse that and change it is akin to forming a brand new habit.

I think referencing to other tracks, as you've been doing, is one of the biggest things that can help. Like I mentioned, look at spectrum analyzers on yours and commercial ones and try to spot some differences. Of course, each track will be different, but if you see a noticeable bump in the high end in your tracks, that's a tell-tale sign.

I actually tried boosting my mids instead, but then of course it sounded muddy and too overbearing. Something that helped a lot was compressing my midrange and raising the gain, but it was a bad way to do things, so I turned to fixing the synths themselves. EQing them alone wasn't enough; I used to use way too many high harmonics.

Something I suggest is to start with a duller-than-normal sound in a new track and concentrate on your lows and mids only. You'll be surprised, but a warm track actually sounds really good. Then as you're working, add in highs as you need it.
 
If you think that the commercial songs lack high end, maybe you should consider getting new headphones/monitors.

Bandcoach said that you might have had some hearing loss, chances are he can be right but I hope that's not it.

Reason is that I used to have some kind of monitors that had a really boosted high end, that even the commercial songs sounded nasty.
So I needed to cut some highs (even on the commercial songs) to make them feel right.

Something that also happened to me was to buy new headphones but they were faulty ones.
I didn't know that and I thought that I was hearing more bass to the right ear.

I am so glad it was the headphones that had the problems and not my ears.

So, I hope it's not hearing loss. I am sure the solution is easier: Change monitors/headphones!
 
Thanks a lot for all the help guys! Lots of good advice and tips in this thread... I'll be looking into better headphones/monitors, as well as attempting to re-train my ears so I don't feel the need to boost the high end all the time. I might also get my hearing checked. Thanks again!
 
I used to have that problem but lately I am starting to think of mixes with a 3D depth perception.

A sound close to you will have more high end because proximity brings clarity. If a sound is heard from 10 yards away, you won't hear the high end clearly. That's why strings/pad/instruments in the back of the mix with a lot of verb are very often mixed by taking off some highs. If I am deciding whether to boost highs, I am thinking do I want this instrument to be in the front or in the back?

Also, use a reference and stick to it even if your ears tell you differently. It may suck hopefully that urge will go away with time and you will notice your mixes are more balanced. There is a reason why pro tracks are mixed "like that" and obviously you want to be considered pro right? :P
 
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
 
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

That's some fantastic info right here.

I may not actually do the number thing but I somehow work like this, cause I too
have fallen to the "the brighter the better" trap some years ago.

It's good to remind yourself some things, thanks
 
If I'm being completely honest, if you hadn't told me you were over-boosting, I wouldn't have even noticed. I tried to listen with an unbiased ear and that's what it told me. I did listen at a relatively low volume and notched it up progressively, but it still didn't seem too unpleasant to me. I really like where you're going with the track as well.
 
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