Why do my beats sound weak in the car but strong in the lab?

  • Thread starter Thread starter BarNeY RumBlE
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BarNeY RumBlE

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I'm using protools6.9, mpc 2000xl, the purple and yellow emu sound modules, and a yamaha psr-350, oh and my monitors are KRK rokit 5's. I load up all the sounds into the mpc, i don't midi any sounds into the mpc, i just xlr everything. From the mpc I track out the beat into protools. I do my EQing, my compressing,limiting, effects adding and all of that mad scientist work. In the lab it's like "yes, another beat I have conquered, i am victiorious!" But then i take it to listen to it in the car and compared to commercial beats mine sound...underwater, faint? I dunno hopefully someone knows what i'm talking about and can give me some good advice, thank you. P.S. i'll be taking some audio engineer courses in january, but i just wanted some info so i could keep at these beats instead of being all frustrated and what not.
 
Sounds like it could be lack of high frequencies makin it sound dull and not bright. just a guess tho.
 
on of the reasons could be is that your car probaly does not have the power to push the sounds of your music like your studio speakers. if you have sounds in your car and your music still sounds weak then it is your mix.
trust me I know I have been mixing for 7 years now. if you have any more questions let me know
 
My car just has factory speakers, but i'm sayin though, commercial cd's sound all nice and be thumpin on a low volume level, but my beats you have to turn up the volume up 'bout two or three notches to get it to the commercial quality. What could i do different in my mixing to have my beats soundin' emaculate in the car as well.
 
the folk that mix the music in the industry are pro's. remember mixing is not a science it' an art. I would have to hear your music in order to tell you whats wrong.
 
BarNeY RumBlE said:
...but my beats you have to turn up the volume up 'bout two or three notches to get it to the commercial quality.
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Volume or quality?

BarNeY RumBlE said:
...What could i do different in my mixing to have my beats soundin' emaculate in the car as well.
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If you're looking for more volume, compress the stereo track more. But the more you compress for loudness, the more the quality will drop.

If you're referring to the quality of the mix, I'd suggest importing some professionally mixed/mastered songs into Pro Tools and compare them to yours there. What you hear in your studio is a mix of the room and monitors. Get your mix to "match" the commecial release on your monitors, then see how they compare in the car... and where ever else you can listen.

Ultimately, you'll need to "learn" your monitors/room.
 
But ultimately, your monitors/room must be capable of reproducing the mix accurately - 95% of home and budget project studios just don't. Everyone seems to ignore the important things (the monitoring chain and the room treatments - especially bass trapping) in favor of gear lust.

Gear lust is great - but you cannot tweak what you cannot hear.

As important as I feel the mastering phase is (oh, really?), the mix should be 90% "there" before it ever gets here. If it's not, most of the time it can be attributed to the moinitoring chain of either the tracking or mixing facility.
 
Sounds like a level problem. Maybe it's how you are monitoring. In PT it could be very quiet and you crank up your mixer and it sounds great. But when you get it to the car it's quiet just like in the software...Does that sound like it?
 
breakscience said:
Sounds like a level problem. Maybe it's how you are monitoring. In PT it could be very quiet and you crank up your mixer and it sounds great. But when you get it to the car it's quiet just like in the software...Does that sound like it?
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lets say that is the problem, how would i eliminate it?
 
Make sure your monitors level pots aren't set to max. Keep your mixer at 0 dB and adjust monitors while playing a commercial song through the mixer. Then adjust PT's main out level to that.
 
Massive hit the nail on the head.

In any room the things I will explain can happen but in a small room it will just be a lot worse.

1. Standing waves. The reflections of the music will meet more often and cause and increase in sound levels and a decrease in sound levels.

Play a good commercial CD in your room and slowy walk around. My bet is you will soon notice in one spot it appears louder and taking a few steps it gets quieter.

And this is all room size dependent (modes) as to which frequencies are affected the most.

2. Early reflections: Since sound travels at 1 foot per milisecond a wall 8 foot behind you will have a 16ms reflection. That delay smears the stereo field.

Try this: Sit where you mix and listen to a CD. Now place your hands right behind your ears like two big doors. I bet you notice the music becomes brighter and tighter in the stereo field!

3. Comb filtering: Easiest way to describe this is all of the sound coming out of the speakers mixing with all of the reflections off of the walls, desk, everywhere. Causing a lot of phase cancelling/ enhancing of the freqs in your music. Sort of like standing waves.

Now how can you EVER expect to mix properly in a room like that? Nearfield monitors cannot overcome it. They were meant to overcome it in decent rooms and to provide more detail.

4. Last but not least I would bet you have way tooooo much low end in your mix. There is a way to make your music thump and a way to allow it to rob all of the power from the system it is played on.

The low end takes the most power for a system to recreate. You are probably compensating for it by cranking up your monitor amp.
 
well i'm gonna go and compare my beats with a commercial cd since i just figured how to import audio files into protools windows, hopefully i'll come out Victorious!
 
sadarius said:
the folk that mix the music in the industry are pro's. remember mixing is not a science it' an art. I would have to hear your music in order to tell you whats wrong.
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Actually, it can go both ways. Most of my mixes fall into the science catagory. But, sometimes, I like to get a little creative with my mixes and do some real acrobatic stuff.
Anyhow, to get to the point. Your room must be accurate to begin with. I know this may be hard to do, but at least get it as close as possible. After that, do a nice shut-in listening session for about an hour or two. Do this more than a few times. When you are doing this, listen to every commercial release that you normally listen to in your car.
Basically, what I am getting to is that you need to learn your monitors. This takes some really personnal time with your monitors. Every monitor has it's weaknesses and strengths. You have to learn them. The other thing this does is show you how commercial speakers emphasise different freqs. This is really important. You have to learn to hear things as they actually are rather than how they are when they're hyped through commersh speakers, This is a hard obsticle to get around due to the fact that we usually hear these type of speakers for the majority of our longer years. Well, at leat until we got into audio production. Trust me, you just aren't reading your monitors as an engineer, you are doing it as a regular joe. No offense.
 
yes compare a commercial beat on ur monitors and see if u notice a difference in the sound level. Also it may have sumthing 2 do with the mixing??

also when ur done with the mixdown what volume level do u leave ur mix at? most commercial tracks have a flat 0.0 db signal mostly thruout, well at least the ones that ive monitored. If needed i would suggest u put ur mix/mastered song at 0.0 db from there if there is still a difference in the sound then its likely sumthing with the mixing/eqs.
 
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U have to compensate different spaces vary your amplification, try not to add to much reverb, natural reverb and digital reverb is not a good mix making speaker output sound hollow. a good rich space filling sound add volume to your track increase high freqs and low freqs slightly decrease mid freqs, if your using a cd burner the software is going to ramp down your track, rerecord your track to compensate for that
 
J67 Skawair said:
U have to compensate different spaces vary your amplification, try not to add to much reverb, natural reverb and digital reverb is not a good mix making speaker output sound hollow. a good rich space filling sound add volume to your track increase high freqs and low freqs slightly decrease mid freqs, if your using a cd burner the software is going to ramp down your track, rerecord your track to compensate for that
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What is this? Reverb?! Telling him how to mix without even hearing the track? CD burner/software gonna ramp down...rerecord...to compensate?!

Please tell me you are joking.
 
I certainly wish people would read the whole post instead of jumping "half in"

The guy had problems with the mix sounding strong in his mixing room but losing life on a car stereo system.

Certainly this is not a reverb problem and most certainly this is not a problem of not mixing as close to 0.0 dB as possible.
 
the problem is with mixing i never said it was because of mixing close to 0.0 db.

If he has 2 raise up the car stereo knob there is obviously a problem with the sound level.


I suggested he try to mix it down to 0.0 to compare against commercial cd's. If there is still a problem with the volume level then it most certainly has 2 do with bad/improper mixing.

tell me what is ur suggestion/solution.
 
My sugestion along with Massive's was on the first page. I still stick with that post.
 
both were good posts and they both put it down 2 problem being with mixing.

Basically u stated that the room environment was not giving a good mix due to improper room settings etc which is good, if u have a bad room/bad vibrations u cannot properly monitor/mix the track the way u want it but it all comes down 2 the mixing of the music/track. Regardless of what kind of room setting u have. It will not sound the same on ur monitors or car stereo due to the mix/eq not being done properly. There is no escape, it all comes down 2 basic mixing/eqing dont try 2 fight it. It was nice how u tried/try 2 argue though. lets see what u come up with next.
 
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