Hi,
I'm finishing up the mixing process of my song to send it over to a mastering engineer, but I've run into a strange problem. I'm mixing on an old 2009-model Macbook (FL Studio running on Windows 7) and basically my equipment consists of a pair of studio headphones (Audio-Technica ATH-M50x) and a pair of KRK Rokit RP4 G3 studio monitors, hooked up to a Lexicon Alpha audio interface. I know it isn't much of fancy, expensive studio gear I'm using, but from my experience, it still works great for mixing quality songs and even my ME told me the mixes sound great, or at least sufficient to have it professionally mastered. Now, the problem I ran into with this song is that it actually sounds great on my own mixing laptop, regardless of what I use to listen to the song: in-ear iPhone headphones, over-ear headphones, laptop speakers, studio monitors, portable radio speakers, everything I've tried basically. I also played it on my car stereo, my iPhone and my Samsung tablet and it sounded great on all those devices as well. I thought it was all ready to send over to mastering, so I put the track on a USB stick and I went over to my brother's house to e-mail the song using his laptop (I can't use internet on my own mixing laptop). Right as I was about to send out the song, I played it one more time on my brother's laptop (ASUS) to make sure I didn't forget about anything. I couldn't believe what I was hearing: the song sounded totally different! The lows of the song sounded so dominant and the bass was overpowering the entire song. Without exaggeration, it was like I was listening to my bassline with the rest of the song (drums, synths, vocals, etc.) softly playing the background. Obviously the first thing I thought was that it was the laptop making it sound so weird, so went to YouTube and played a few random songs to hear if the lows were overpowering on there as well. Well... the lows in those songs were definitely more powerful than what I was used to, but those songs still sounded balanced. They were still clean songs, the only difference was the bass had been a little boosted. Obviously I was really bummed out, because I thought I was finally done mixing my song after weeks of working on it, and it turned out I was just getting started on the hardest part. It had me wondering what the problem could be. How is it possible that there's such a huge difference between listening on one laptop and listening on another? Could it be that the sound quality of my own mixing laptop has been 'deceiving' me for weeks? If so, how come the song sounded great in my car, on my iPhone and on my tablet? How come it only sounds weird on my brother's laptop?
I went back home to fix the problem and I took my brother's laptop with me so I could use it for reference. After some extra EQ'ing on both the bass and the low synths and keyboard, I turned down the bass by a few dB. I kept on doing this until the bass wasn't overpowering the entire song anymore on my brother's laptop and I did manage to do this. It sounds pretty good now, or at least a little more balanced, but the problem is that I've been cutting and lowering the bass for so long now, that I can barely hear it anymore on my own mixing laptop. The song sounds really soft now and compared to other released radio songs which sound similar to mine, it sounds like there's no bass at all in my song. By now, I hope you can imagine how frustrating this is for me. What's the problem? What am I doing wrong? How come every radio song sounds great on both my mixing laptop and my brother's laptop, but my own song sounds so different on these devices?
Not only do I want to know how to fix this issue, I also want to know what caused this problem in general. Does it really matter that much on what PC you're mixing? I realize every PC and every laptop has its own sound card, giving them all their own sound quality but I thought getting a decent audio interface with a built-in sound card would compensate for mixing on different machines, making the difference in sound quality unnoticeable. Is this not true? So what I do now? Does anyone have any experience with this? How do I create a balance between two totally different sounding mixes? I can make it sound perfect on one device, but then it would sound like garbage on the other, or I could make it sound 'kinda good' on both devices, but neither one of them would sound perfect, which is obviously what I'm going for. If it really is just my laptop's garbage sound quality, would I just have to give up, or is it still possible to try and create a well-balanced mix which sounds good on every device? At this point, all tips and advice are welcome, both on mixing for all devices and on fixing overpowering bass issues. Thanks!
Freddy
I'm finishing up the mixing process of my song to send it over to a mastering engineer, but I've run into a strange problem. I'm mixing on an old 2009-model Macbook (FL Studio running on Windows 7) and basically my equipment consists of a pair of studio headphones (Audio-Technica ATH-M50x) and a pair of KRK Rokit RP4 G3 studio monitors, hooked up to a Lexicon Alpha audio interface. I know it isn't much of fancy, expensive studio gear I'm using, but from my experience, it still works great for mixing quality songs and even my ME told me the mixes sound great, or at least sufficient to have it professionally mastered. Now, the problem I ran into with this song is that it actually sounds great on my own mixing laptop, regardless of what I use to listen to the song: in-ear iPhone headphones, over-ear headphones, laptop speakers, studio monitors, portable radio speakers, everything I've tried basically. I also played it on my car stereo, my iPhone and my Samsung tablet and it sounded great on all those devices as well. I thought it was all ready to send over to mastering, so I put the track on a USB stick and I went over to my brother's house to e-mail the song using his laptop (I can't use internet on my own mixing laptop). Right as I was about to send out the song, I played it one more time on my brother's laptop (ASUS) to make sure I didn't forget about anything. I couldn't believe what I was hearing: the song sounded totally different! The lows of the song sounded so dominant and the bass was overpowering the entire song. Without exaggeration, it was like I was listening to my bassline with the rest of the song (drums, synths, vocals, etc.) softly playing the background. Obviously the first thing I thought was that it was the laptop making it sound so weird, so went to YouTube and played a few random songs to hear if the lows were overpowering on there as well. Well... the lows in those songs were definitely more powerful than what I was used to, but those songs still sounded balanced. They were still clean songs, the only difference was the bass had been a little boosted. Obviously I was really bummed out, because I thought I was finally done mixing my song after weeks of working on it, and it turned out I was just getting started on the hardest part. It had me wondering what the problem could be. How is it possible that there's such a huge difference between listening on one laptop and listening on another? Could it be that the sound quality of my own mixing laptop has been 'deceiving' me for weeks? If so, how come the song sounded great in my car, on my iPhone and on my tablet? How come it only sounds weird on my brother's laptop?
I went back home to fix the problem and I took my brother's laptop with me so I could use it for reference. After some extra EQ'ing on both the bass and the low synths and keyboard, I turned down the bass by a few dB. I kept on doing this until the bass wasn't overpowering the entire song anymore on my brother's laptop and I did manage to do this. It sounds pretty good now, or at least a little more balanced, but the problem is that I've been cutting and lowering the bass for so long now, that I can barely hear it anymore on my own mixing laptop. The song sounds really soft now and compared to other released radio songs which sound similar to mine, it sounds like there's no bass at all in my song. By now, I hope you can imagine how frustrating this is for me. What's the problem? What am I doing wrong? How come every radio song sounds great on both my mixing laptop and my brother's laptop, but my own song sounds so different on these devices?
Not only do I want to know how to fix this issue, I also want to know what caused this problem in general. Does it really matter that much on what PC you're mixing? I realize every PC and every laptop has its own sound card, giving them all their own sound quality but I thought getting a decent audio interface with a built-in sound card would compensate for mixing on different machines, making the difference in sound quality unnoticeable. Is this not true? So what I do now? Does anyone have any experience with this? How do I create a balance between two totally different sounding mixes? I can make it sound perfect on one device, but then it would sound like garbage on the other, or I could make it sound 'kinda good' on both devices, but neither one of them would sound perfect, which is obviously what I'm going for. If it really is just my laptop's garbage sound quality, would I just have to give up, or is it still possible to try and create a well-balanced mix which sounds good on every device? At this point, all tips and advice are welcome, both on mixing for all devices and on fixing overpowering bass issues. Thanks!
Freddy