What does 'mud' sound like?

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popsicle13

New member
I saw a mixing tutorial by the recordingrevolution on YouTube and his objective was getting rid of mud from a song he was mixing. (Sorry haven't made 5 posts yet to post a link). When he would disable the eqs I heard no difference. Just to make sure he actually did something , I put the video into an eq. the snare fundamental and a few peaks around 500 hz did raise a bit when he disabled the eqs so it's definitely just me. Do you need monitors or very good headphones to hear mud? Or am I paying attention to the wrong sounds. I focused on the bass. I plan on getting monitors soon.
 
These things are quite subtle and it does help a lot to have good monitors/headphones.

There terms like 'mud' are annoying because they don't actually mean anything. Generally speaking people mean they have too many frequencies in the mid/low areas when they say muddy, but it depends on the individual. You might as well say something sounds too purple.

You can have more mud or less mud. A lot of mud would be very obvious but a little mud is quite subtle.

Hope that helps clarify
 
Are you perhaps talking about the video called How To Clean Up Muddy Mixes? Because the part where he hipasses the snare, the whole point is that it doesn't sound different - he's cutting out the lows that are there & build up into "mud" when you combine all the tracks but don't affect the snare's sound on its own. He also explains the whole "mud" thing pretty well in the beginning - the buildup of low mids into incohesive "dullness". It's not a particular instrument, it's the overall tonality of the mix.

 
krushing said:
Are you perhaps talking about the video called How To Clean Up Muddy Mixes? Because the part where he hipasses the snare, the whole point is that it doesn't sound different - he's cutting out the lows that are there & build up into "mud" when you combine all the tracks but don't affect the snare's sound on its own. He also explains the whole "mud" thing pretty well in the beginning - the buildup of low mids into incohesive "dullness". It's not a particular instrument, it's the overall tonality of the mix.
Click to expand...

Very good point. Some of the frequencies you don't hear contribute immensely to a mix when everything gets summed up in the end.

And yes its good to have decent monitors or headphones to be able to hear the subtlties in a mix but it also takes ear training. Mixing at low volumes will help your ears build sensitivity to small changes. Try mixing with ear buds or devices with poor frequency responses in certain ranges.

Check out this series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xTXEDxfJwA
 
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Oh no I didn't mean the snare by itself. Just when I put the final results in an eq, the only visual difference I saw was a volume increase in the snares fundamental and like 3 other peaks around 500hz when he'd turn the eq off for comparison. The only times I think I've actually heard what muddy sounds like is when I make a weird sound in serum And then cut some frequencies around 200-500hz. The sound usually is much more clearer after the cut.
 
If you search on Google 6 different frequency and how to spot them , or some time like that..... The first part is about muddiness and there is two audio clips played. One with no eq and one with a cut around the muddy region. I stayed up for an hour trying to spot the difference between the two clips and couldnt. Maybe it is subtle like you said and it's normal not to spot.
 
OK I took another 5 minutes to go back and forth. The bass in the second clip you can feel more but in the first clip you'd feel the bass once in a while. Is that what I'm suppose to be hearing?
 
I also finally hear the difference in the cleaning up muddy mixes video. When he took off the eqs the bass guitar sounded so inconsistent especially when it played the higher notes
 
what is mud
when you watch unprofessional videos ONLINE a problem that you may get to face with those is because you cannot tell what someone is talking about even though you are playing same level that you was OK with another video before that

and no matter how loud you play it just keep bringing something unwanted and you still cannot tell good enough there is no clarity

because of these unwanted things people use POP FILTERS, COMPRESSORS, EQ, to make the vocal more balanced , to reduce a unwanted things that has nothing to do with the vocals so we may use terms like: mud, pop, s-sound, clip, and all that

mud is one of those unwanted sound ; that microphone has picked too much of that and keeps masking the original quality of the sound , like you know how a vocal is supposed to sound like but the record doesn't have too much presence all it has is some frequencies around 300 hz MUDDINESS

you reduce that so you can bring up the original quality of the sound , more clarity, more presence, less unwanted things
 
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When every sound individually sounds great, everything's in tune, in time and on key but when played together sounds like shit... That's mud.

Usually it's frequency clashes in the mix (where two or more sounds are peaking at a particular frequency) - sometimes it can be fixed by a couple of simple pan movements (separating the clashing frequencies so they sit in a physically different space to each other within the mix) but more often than not it's gonna need a cut in EQ to one (or more) of the offending sounds.

It's natural when soloing a track during a mix to make its sound as pleasing as possible - the problem is that there'll be particular frequencies that you find pleasing - so you may inadvertently boost more than one sound in the same frequency range.

Mixing is (IME) a game of compromise. Sometimes a particular sound has to suffer for the sake of the whole; cos it's more important that the whole be at its best.
 
Mud is actually something that applies to the whole frequency range. You can have mud in the center, on the sides. Great gain staging compensates for mud - at the cost of the dynamics. For instance a loud sweet mellow sounding electric guitar panned widely to one side should have a low pass filter, yes low pass filter.

I know many mixes that appear rather clean, but when you pay close attention to them various frequency ranges are contracted, it is like the mix is "locked up". This and what it does I find to be a form of mud as well. When the waveforms of the various tracks combine various frequency ranges can have more cancellation than others at various sections of the mix. When you have a mix that has cancellation at the "wrong" frequencies at the wrong places it can cause the perception of mud. Every recording is unique so there is no way of predicting this, but it is essential to go through phase optimization properly. If your mix tends to easily get low end intensive, it might be that you need to change the phase relationships to effectively get rid of it. I like to optimize phase in mastering, because I can hear it the best when the content has been maximized the most.

Another thing that is very common among mix engineers, I've seen this even among people writing books about mixing, is to achieve balance at a low overall volume of the mix, say -16 LUFS, to leave a lot of headroom for mastering. That might "appear" mud free at that level, but you are most likely going to find out it's very muddy as soon as you bring it up to a commercial level in mastering, so now the mastering engineer has to deal with all the mud, and he/she might not. In my experience balance is loudness fixed, that's why balancing into compression works so well - when your mix is in balance and it is so close to the final loudness level, then the mastering engineer can bring it to the final level without having to re-work the gain structure of the mix. I think it is optimal to mix into compression slightly below the final loudness level. That forces you to fix balancing issues earlier in the overall process and when you hand over the mix for mastering it is more likely the mastering engineer will find it ready for mastering.
 
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It depends on the track, but most often I found that muddy noises can be anywhere in between 100hz - 550 hz.
A good way to find it, is by isolating 100 hz on a track and gradually moving up until you find where it's just really roomy or boxy or noisy. If you can't isolate on an EQ, then peaking with an EQ at 100 and moving up would help!
 
'Mud' is when you have a bunch of instruments/sounds and they dont sound clean.. that is when it has a bad mixing.
 
One thing I started doing in the beginning of the year was, when I start a mix, I try and hipass and low pass every sound in the song to see if I need either extreme, and half the time I can cut a ton of fat out of the song which makes soon much more room and let's the track breathe nicely. Sometimes a filter is too much though so I'll then try a shelf, or a bell. You'll be surprised at how many things you can LOWpass.. and how some sounds are much more pleasing with the sharp hi information removed.
 
Muddy mixes are basically too many sounds clashing. If you can't hear different sounds simultaneously, it's referred to as 'muddy'. Opposite of 'muddy' would be a 'clean' mix. Where all sounds are crystal clear when you hear them. A clean mix is also known as a professionally mixed song.

As someone mentioned, if your mix sounds like shit, another less offensive term for it would be 'muddy'.

Example: Dude awesome track but your drop sounds quite 'muddy'.

Translation: Too many sounds are clashing in your drop and therefore your drop sounds like shit.

:)
 
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There's a few older tracks on my reverb page that I think sound like mud in the mid to low end.. "Whiplash" and "it don't matter" are the tracks that I remember, I dunno, I haven't listened to them for years, there's probably way more, them tracks down are 7 years old now. I just be bothered to remove them now, people still seem to like them..
 
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muddiness can be due to the wrong selection of sounds or too many sounds playing at the same time. it can also be due to bad mixing / eqing (or lack thereof). clashing of kick drum and bass decay is also a common culprit, side chaining can help.

muddiness can be avoided by using a simplistic approach. start with very few sounds (snare/clap, kick, hats, bass line, melody, vocals if you have em).

get them sounding great together and add effects as needed. add new sounds sparingly from there to make the arrangement flow nicely / bounce (transition cymbals, vocal hits, mess with reverb sends etc).

less is more :cool:
 
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muddyness is having noise in the low end or any other inharmonic sound for that matter. it makes your sound sounds like it was recorded in a cave.. (guess that's why we call it muddy...)

you should get rid of it using a high pass filter... just check your ears till it sounds good and turn the cutoff up a notch after that...
 
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