Mix sounds good on monitors , bad on headphones

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kareemmx

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Okay so here's my problem : When I started producing music , I started out on headphones for about 5 months. I only used headphones and everything was okay. Then , I finally bought my pair of KRK Rokit 6 G3 wich I was dreaming about and since that day I forgot about my headphones for about a week . They sounded so good compared to my (fake) beats studio. One day all my family was asleep so i had to use the headphones. When I heard the mix It sounded so bad compared to the monitors and I was really disappointed and I still am. I read threads that krks are really bad and shit , other threads that i need to make a balance and mix on both , and threads that say that the room is not treated well (my room isn't treated at all I only have a big carpet on the floor). Do you think that when I forgot about my headphones for a week I got used to the sound of my monitors and now every track not playing through them sounds bad ? When I listen to oliver helden's tracks they sound good on both tho but better on monitors. And not just oliver , every famous producer. Do you think that I need to get a new pair of headphones ? Thanks
 
kareemmx said:
Okay so here's my problem : When I started producing music , I started out on headphones for about 5 months. I only used headphones and everything was okay. Then , I finally bought my pair of KRK Rokit 6 G3 wich I was dreaming about and since that day I forgot about my headphones for about a week . They sounded so good compared to my (fake) beats studio. One day all my family was asleep so i had to use the headphones. When I heard the mix It sounded so bad compared to the monitors and I was really disappointed and I still am. I read threads that krks are really bad and shit , other threads that i need to make a balance and mix on both , and threads that say that the room is not treated well (my room isn't treated at all I only have a big carpet on the floor). Do you think that when I forgot about my headphones for a week I got used to the sound of my monitors and now every track not playing through them sounds bad ? When I listen to oliver helden's tracks they sound good on both tho but better on monitors. And not just oliver , every famous producer. Do you think that I need to get a new pair of headphones ? Thanks
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Since you have a bigger contrast between your monitors+room and your headphones, than the mixes you compare against, this is what plays a trick on you. There might be huge unbalances involved in your mix as a result of mixing against your monitors+room. The answer here is that you need better of both so that you can minimize the contrast on each frequency band between the two and hence be able to get the frequency balance right in between and as good sounding as the mixes you compare against, so that they translate as well as you want them to. I know monitors and headphones that are very unbalanced in their frequency response. First of all you need to be aware of that and be aware of the difference of mixing against such compared to mixing in a much higher quality monitoring environment. You can read this from the frequency response chart of the monitors/headphones. When it comes to headphones I recommend mixing on closed back headphones. Although these generally bring more ear fatigue and hence work less over time, they help to identify dynamic issues, the sooner and more easily you identify those, the better. Open back headphones have the tendency of letting too much attack energy through the pads, so what happens is that instead of getting the dynamics right early, you get them right much much later and that generally produces a lot of overhead and loss of audio quality. The dynamics should be set right as soon as possible, the sooner the better, hence it's best to get right in recording. High quality monitoring helps you set the dynamics right early, that in turn helps you to gradually build a more balanced sounding mix. Poor monitoring solutions allow you to dial in a pretty even frequency response against those particular monitors/headphones, but left are huge issues with the dynamics and as soon as those issues are fixed the frequency balanced you produced earlier dissolves. Left is typical a number of over compensations and gain staging issues, that you can fix but it's a lot of work... So it's always best to aim at a monitoring solution that quickly and easily make the dynamics "sit". If you time and again have issues with for instance the snare, then that's a good sign you need to work on your monitoring environment.

If you want to better understand the issue you currently have, I recommend that you sweep through the frequencies so that you know where you have tons of frequency accumulation. If you provide a download link to a mix done on this monitoring setup, I can help you identify the issue.
 
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Thank you for your reply. Do you have an email so I can send you the mix ? And I have another question about this. Well I forgot to say that the mix sounds waaaaaaaayyyyyy better before I mastered it myself. I followed this tutorial to master it quickly but it didn't seem to work on my track. The loudest peak in my song is maybe -5.5db is it too much or okay ? When I added the limiter it sounded so weird like the main lead changes volume idk how to explain this and all the drop effects and crashes sound so loud. I also added a compressor which I never use , oh , and I didn't mention that there is no compression in the mix :/ I don't how how to use it , I never said "This needs compression" because I still don't understand why it's used and when and how much. I don't know when and why to use it so I don't .Could you send me a small mix or a drum loop and tell me why it needs compression and why it needs the amount of compression you used ? Is it a matter of dynamic range ? I am starting to think that my mix sounds bad because no compression is used. Please explain I watch a lot of vids about compression but the idea isn't getting in my head. Sorry my English is a tittle bad but this is hard to explain.
 
I don't use ableton so I watched another vid for fl studio. It sounds the same there are no big differences. I checked in in mono with the master effects turned off and it sounds pretty good. When I turned on the limiter and compressor the problems started showing so I guess it's from bad limiting/compressing. Like i said I have a lot of headroom in my mix so I 'over limited' my track so it gets back it's loudness. What do I do in this case to avoid over limiting ?
 
do not use the fruity limiter on your master channel it will trick you into thinking things are good when they are not - faux loudness mastering (which is what the fruity limiter is giving you) is not doing you any favours if your mix is not balanced to begin with

the trick to getting a balanced mix is about small tweaks of different things at different points in the process

for me the process starts with gain structuring - getting every channel at unity gain to begin with, aka 0db on your channel faders

then I might do a level balance mix, where I adjust every track down by 1 dB except for the most important track, I may continue to deduct 1dB or 0.5 dB from each track/channel until I can clearly hear the track I am trying to highlight. I will repeat this process for the next most important track and so on down until I have the level balance I am looking to create

next I will pan instruments to where I want them in the stereo sound field - as a result of this I may need to adjust some tracks up or down but never over unity gain (0dB on the channel fader)

now I will consider eq if necessary and compression, also if necessary. Adjustments to the (input and) output gain of these inserts may be required to maintain unity gain on the channel (aka Nominal Operating Level) which can have a subsequent affect on the level balance, requiring a third tweaking of these values up or down but never above unity gain on the channel fader.

lastly I apply FX as required, remembering that reverbs and delays are send FX and distortion/overdrive/saturation and most other FX are inserts

when you reach the end of this process you should then listen to the mix as a mono only mix and as a stereo mix to confirm that you have a "clean" mix with consistent imaging and levels.
 
What headphones do you use? Do other professionally mixed tracks you know of sound bad in those headphones? I'd say get a better pair of headphones. As stated above, m50s are awesome. I'm not a fan of KRKs though
 
No it just means that you will have no 'stereo image'.. its all down the middle.... u should use a PAZ analyser or something, then you can see what frequencies are 'shooting out' of the stereo image... and the general frequency spectrum of your mix...
 
Same thing happens on my cheap gaming headset. I only realized this after I got a new set of speakers, and decided touching my eq's with those headphones are a bad idea until I get something a bit higher in quality.
 
Melloh said:
What headphones do you use? Do other professionally mixed tracks you know of sound bad in those headphones? I'd say get a better pair of headphones. As stated above, m50s are awesome. I'm not a fan of KRKs though
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I use beats studio. They are fake but they sound really good. I also have a pair of pioneer hdj-500. The mix kinda sounds the same on both headphones.
 
bandcoach said:
do not use the fruity limiter on your master channel it will trick you into thinking things are good when they are not - faux loudness mastering (which is what the fruity limiter is giving you) is not doing you any favours if your mix is not balanced to begin with

the trick to getting a balanced mix is about small tweaks of different things at different points in the process

for me the process starts with gain structuring - getting every channel at unity gain to begin with, aka 0db on your channel faders

then I might do a level balance mix, where I adjust every track down by 1 dB except for the most important track, I may continue to deduct 1dB or 0.5 dB from each track/channel until I can clearly hear the track I am trying to highlight. I will repeat this process for the next most important track and so on down until I have the level balance I am looking to create

next I will pan instruments to where I want them in the stereo sound field - as a result of this I may need to adjust some tracks up or down but never over unity gain (0dB on the channel fader)

now I will consider eq if necessary and compression, also if necessary. Adjustments to the (input and) output gain of these inserts may be required to maintain unity gain on the channel (aka Nominal Operating Level) which can have a subsequent affect on the level balance, requiring a third tweaking of these values up or down but never above unity gain on the channel fader.

lastly I apply FX as required, remembering that reverbs and delays are send FX and distortion/overdrive/saturation and most other FX are inserts

when you reach the end of this process you should then listen to the mix as a mono only mix and as a stereo mix to confirm that you have a "clean" mix with consistent imaging and levels.
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I always turn off the limiter when opening FL. Anyways this is the song i'm talking about :



. Not the best but pretty good for a 15 year old who started producing 6 months ago imo. Could you all tell me what's 'wrong' with the track. And please be honest.
 
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There's nothing wrong with krk's for indie music production. People who say that they are not up-to-par probably have a biased opinion towards them. Same thing as the quality battle between daws, some inexperienced people will say "this [insert daw] sounds sooo much better than [other daw]." In reality, it's just subjective due to their knowledge of the daw's.

Mixes not translating well to other systems is a common problem though, it's just something you have to learn to factor in to the equation. Mix on as many systems as possible; I mix on my monitors and reference on standard ear buds, my car system, phone speaker, laptop speakers. The more the better.. Monitors are very accurate and high quality, however your mix that sounds good on them sometimes can fall apart on smaller speakers and headphones. You just have to learn what things are causing it to sound good on the monitors and not the headphones. It's not the speakers, it's the mix. Small headphones often point out the details you don't notice on monitors due to them actually being in/on your ears.

The most important thing in my opinion, is to know very well what your track should sound like on the speakers you are working with. You can do this by listening to a commercial beat/song (that is similar to yours) on all of your speakers. Just try to get it to sound like that, and referencing to that song during your mixing can help.
 
bandcoach said:
do not use the fruity limiter on your master channel it will trick you into thinking things are good when they are not - faux loudness mastering (which is what the fruity limiter is giving you) is not doing you any favours if your mix is not balanced to begin with

the trick to getting a balanced mix is about small tweaks of different things at different points in the process

for me the process starts with gain structuring - getting every channel at unity gain to begin with, aka 0db on your channel faders

then I might do a level balance mix, where I adjust every track down by 1 dB except for the most important track, I may continue to deduct 1dB or 0.5 dB from each track/channel until I can clearly hear the track I am trying to highlight. I will repeat this process for the next most important track and so on down until I have the level balance I am looking to create

next I will pan instruments to where I want them in the stereo sound field - as a result of this I may need to adjust some tracks up or down but never over unity gain (0dB on the channel fader)

now I will consider eq if necessary and compression, also if necessary. Adjustments to the (input and) output gain of these inserts may be required to maintain unity gain on the channel (aka Nominal Operating Level) which can have a subsequent affect on the level balance, requiring a third tweaking of these values up or down but never above unity gain on the channel fader.

lastly I apply FX as required, remembering that reverbs and delays are send FX and distortion/overdrive/saturation and most other FX are inserts

when you reach the end of this process you should then listen to the mix as a mono only mix and as a stereo mix to confirm that you have a "clean" mix with consistent imaging and levels.
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Great post.

I think a lot of us need to be reminded of this process over and over - even after we get over that lengthy learning hump (where you actually understand what you're doing instead of trying to get lucky)
 
kareemmx said:
I also added a compressor which I never use , oh , and I didn't mention that there is no compression in the mix :/ I don't how how to use it , I never said "This needs compression" because I still don't understand why it's used and when and how much. I don't know when and why to use it so I don't .
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kareemmx said:
When I turned on the limiter and compressor the problems started showing so I guess it's from bad limiting/compressing.
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Here is a tip that will be extremely helpful to you… not only in music, but in your life in general.

When you don't know how to use something => don't use it.

and if you do, don't be surprised when it makes things worse.


of course, using a compressor/limiter will not kill you if you use it wrong, so by all means go ahead and experiment with it and learn how to use it… the worst thing that will happen is your music will sound like shit.

But don't take that same line of thinking with a circular saw because you will likely cut your arm off.
 
kareemmx said:
Okay so here's my problem : When I started producing music , I started out on headphones for about 5 months. I only used headphones and everything was okay. Then , I finally bought my pair of KRK Rokit 6 G3 wich I was dreaming about and since that day I forgot about my headphones for about a week . They sounded so good compared to my (fake) beats studio. One day all my family was asleep so i had to use the headphones. When I heard the mix It sounded so bad compared to the monitors and I was really disappointed and I still am. I read threads that krks are really bad and shit , other threads that i need to make a balance and mix on both , and threads that say that the room is not treated well (my room isn't treated at all I only have a big carpet on the floor). Do you think that when I forgot about my headphones for a week I got used to the sound of my monitors and now every track not playing through them sounds bad ? When I listen to oliver helden's tracks they sound good on both tho but better on monitors. And not just oliver , every famous producer. Do you think that I need to get a new pair of headphones ? Thanks
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I feel ya.

I was exclusively on headphones for about a year before I started working with nearfields. Sounds like we went through the exact same experience.

My problem ended up being that my headphones were actually consumer headphones on steroids and didn't boast anything close to a flat frequency response which is the type of headphones what you'll want for mixing.

I picked myself up some beyerdynamic 880s (headphones suggested by pro mixer Mike Senior among others) and suddenly my mixes translated much better to other systems. It's possible that the current headphones you have sound great, but that they boost and cut certain frequencies to make the sound more appealing to a general audience, but that obviously isn't transferable to other monitoring devices.

Beyond that, the krk's are just fine.

And listen to what bandcoach said above about his mixing procedure. He has a great method.

Best of luck!
 
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