Query: mixing for different listening environments - tips?

Snags

I'm very much the newbie on recording/mixing still, but learn more things with each thing I do, so ... the next step appears to be getting an "OK" sound regardless of what the resulting output is played back on.

I normally do all the mixing/production in Reaper either via headphones (reasonable quality AudioTechnica jobbies), or some Mackie monitor speakers attached to the laptop dock. Using either of those I can get stuff to sound reasonably balanced and OK to my ears (and Mrs Snags when I use her as a guinea pig).

Then I render the output and upload it somewhere, or send it to a friend, or just listen via the native laptop speakers or on a phone, and it sounds like arse. In particular the bass and the drums just vanish, especially on the laptop speakers (Surface Pro 4) because, frankly, they're rubbish for music, unsurprisingly.

Boosting everything so it sounds OK on tinny speakers then leaves it a bit too present on the headphones etc. etc.

Obviously a mix is never going to sound great on pants speakers, but commercial stuff sounds "OK" on the laptop, if not brilliant, so there are obviously a few things one can do.

I've got the idea of reference tracks, and obviously I'm now starting to do the initial mix, and then switch the outputs to something less favourable and bounce between the two, tyring to find a compromise position, but figure there's probably some handy techniques that I'm ignorant of that will help level the playing field a bit.

Musicwolf

The problem that we all face when working from home is mix translation i.e. how it sound when played back on other systems / different rooms compared to our mixing setup.

In short this is because your room / monitors are 'colouring' the sound.  When you listen back you are hearing the direct sound from the monitors plus sound that is reflecting back off the walls / ceiling / desk top and alike.  Some sound is hitting your ears after one reflection but there are also paths that bounce of more than one surface.  These various paths have different lengths meaning that some of the reflected sound is in phase with the direct sound (so it adds), some is out of phase (so it cancels).  The effect is frequency dependant.

Imagine an artist painting a picture.  They want their studio to have strong, natural, light so that they can see the colours.  The room where the paint is displayed my have artificial light or it may be daylight – but they have no control over this.  By paining in the best, most neutral, light they achieved the best result whatever the viewing conditions.  Now imagine if they painted in a room light by yellow sodium lights.  They may achieve something that looked ok in that room but it would look very odd in almost every other situation.  That’s what’s happening when mixing in a small, untreated, room.  It’s not because you can’t mix it’s because you can’t hear what you are mixing.

How to fix this?  You can optimise your room layout.  If it’s a rectangle then fire your speakers down the length of the room (i.e. set up so that the room is longer than it is wide).  Of course this may not be possible due to room symmetry, position of doors and windows etc.  A room where the length, width and often the heigh are similar dimensions (unfortunately this describes a typical spare bedroom) is the worst condition.  Install broadband absorbers at the mirror points (first reflection points) and bass traps in the corners (loads of DIY stuff on t’internet) – don’t bother with foam.  Keep listening back to your stuff on other systems and take notes (I listen in the car).  Listen back on quality headphones (you need to get used to them).

There are room correction software packages available but, whilst they are getting better, they are no substitute for a treated room (they are a solution that you might try after you have treated the room).

Danny1969

Some great advice from @Musicwolf above but I would also add that to get a great mix you need to understand how the different parts need to be even in dynamics and overall volume and how they need to make room for each other in the frequency spectrum. 
Mixing is actually 50% frequency cuts and boosts, 50% volume cuts and boosts. The denser the mix, the more important this is. If you solo the individual elements of a professional mix you might be surprised how thin the tracks are in isolation. 

So first of all just solo one track like a guitar. Then put a high pass filter on it and adjust it and listen to what it's doing. You will generally find you can set it around 120Hz and it won't lose anything bottom end wise you really need. The look at the region between 250 and 550Hz, can you cut some of that out to thin it a little and stop it clouding the vocal ? 

That kind of thing is what you generally do to clean things up EQ wise. Then turn your mind to how dynamic the individual tracks are . You don't want to squash the crap out of every track but things like Kick drum, snare drum, bass guitar, clean guitar and most defo vocal need some compression before they will sit in a mix right. If your not used to dialing in compression just set the ratio to 3:1, set the attack time to medium and lower the threshold until you see the gain reduction meter show around 3 to 4dB of gain reduction.  The experiment from there. Notice how you can actually change the sound of the snare just by varying the release time of the compressor. 

Panning
There's no rules but in general you will find if you keep the main elements in the centre, like the kick, snare, bass and lead vocal and pan everything else to the sides it becomes easier to hear these elements without them being excessively loud. 

With regard to getting the bass and lick to be audible on small speakers there are a couple of tricks. Adding a little distorted synth bass to the bass line an octave set low in the mix above can help, adding some distortions to the attack of the kick drum will also help. Have to say though anyone who listens to music for pleasure on laptop speakers deserves a shit mix. 

Once you have a decent handle on how to tame the dynamics of a track and how to make room EQ wise for tracks you will find getting a good balance is a lot easier. From there automation is your friend, most mix's require a fair bit of movement in terms of fader riding to make room and accent different bits. Then you need to learn a set of speakers to get a rough idea which you can then improve by listening in the car, on headphones, basically wherever you can. 
Do most of your listening at low volume, check the mix at higher volumes but do the majority of it at low level in speakers rather than cans. 
Also remember the mastering process is the final stage to get a mix to translate properly. You can learn to do rough masters yourself but a professional master really needs better gear than even a professional studio has. 

andy_k

Some great tips here, and all I can add is that you can't expect to get great sounding mixes from home studio setups, or headphones.
You can get good sounding stuff, but the extra bit that is added by proper mastering is the reason it is a separate process.
I like to use stuff like SPAN on my final mix bus, and to compare my mix with a good reference track.
The car test is a good one to show how hard it is to get the low end right, and don't bother trying to get mixes to work on laptop speakers, if it is a half decent mix it will be fine on small speakers. Most of the problem areas are low and low mids, which do not show up unless you are listening on good quality studio monitors, in a tuned space. 
I tried a few of my mixes, which were far from perfect, at a friends home setup, which is a loud surround sound kind of thing with a sub, and I was surprised how much low end was emphasised considering I had gone a bit crazy with the hi pass filter on my recent mixes.
The problem was with the extra boost you get with higher volume listening, commercial mixes of 70s and 80s stuff sounded fine, we are all of that generation. Prodigy sounds great on his system so it works well in general.
Using your ears with reference tracks is fine, but I do find it useful to look at the analysis of tracks good too because whatever speakers or monitors you use have a massive effect, it takes a long time to get used to them and it is important that you listen to stuff at a constant relative volume, commercial tracks will already have gone through a mastering process and that can be deceptive.
Louder always sounds better, and the final process usually puts things at the limits of compression, your unmastered mix can't really be volume matched without this consideration.
Have a look for Dan Worrell on YT, and his settings for SPAN, I found that very helpful to get it set up for showing the waveform in a good way, SPAN is a good EQ visualiser by Voxengo, and can have presets to show various levels of detail and stereo MS information.

Snags

Thanks all, this is very much appreciated.

To clarify, I'm obviously not expecting what I do to sound like a professional, commercial job. I'm using cheapo kit in decidedly non-ideal conditions and am simply varying degrees of amateur at all of it (writing, playing, singing, recording, mixing etc.), so my target is simply "the best it can be in these very limiting circumstances", not world domination

I'm also not expecting anything to sound good on laptop speakers. Just less shit than it does now.

I'm mostly conscious that when I WhatsApp stuff to a mate, chances are he listens to it on his phone, and it bugs me that half the track might disappear more than it would if I knew a bit more about how to do a better job up front.

Right now there's nothing I can do about the room, but that may change this year (possible garage rebuild and partial conversion being investigated).

I'd got my head around the basics of EQ, compression and automation, but hadn't really sussed the high pass filter thing, and also looking at the various EQ options it's clear there's a lot more there that I can bone up on. I'm also going to change my current practice of sitting on the sofa with the cans on loud, so I can "be with" Mrs Snags whilst mixing, to sitting upstairs with the monitors on quietly, as that's already made a difference too.

I'm going to get my head around that in more detail, then move on to some of the other bits mentioned and let it all feed in. Every layer peeled back has so many options; the pointers from here, Google, and a mate I occasional tap up give much needed focus on a sea of WTF, quite often.

Each new recording adds a bit more learning and gets a bit better - baby steps and slow growth, but it's kinda fun (and frustrating) getting there, so I very much appreciate the input.

poopot

If you are mixing on headphones, get some open back ones... less bass buildup over long periods... 

reference tracks!...

reference tracks!...

reference tracks!

did I mention reference tracks?... really important... if you can get your mix to be close to a commercially released track most of the battle is done...

listen on as many possible devices as possible... earbuds, phone speaker, little Bluetooth sound bar, stereo system, car etc etc etc 

tou won’t get a mix to sound exactly as you intended on every system... there will always be a compromise... Justin timberlake released one of his albums specifically mixed and mastered for earbuds!... it sounded fantastic on earbuds, shit on everything else!...

but... when all is said and done... it’s what comes out of the speakers that matters... does it make you dance? Does it make you feel an emotion?... 

A lot of great songs have really shitty production... but they are great songs!...

Danny1969

@Snags ;
Don't think you can't achieve near professional results recording on shit gear in a shit room and mixing on headhones. Since lockdown we have recorded 8 songs on a 2007 iMac with a 2006 Mbox interface in a shitty OSB box I built in my large garden to record vocals in lockdown conditions. 4 of those songs have been played on BBC and local radio and are bringing in tiny but promising revenue on iTunes and the usual. 
I can listen to this stuff and I know it's not quite there compared to a professional studio recording  but the average listener wouldn't probably notice and the BBC were happy to play it. 

Snap

Years ago I bought a Focusrite VRM box, which is a little processing unit that you plug into with headphones and it is supposed to emulate how your mix sounds in various environments. Avoid - not really that useful IMO.
Reference tracks are a much better way - just get a WAV of a track you think sounds great and compare to your own mixes. A visual meter will help, and loads are available for free. Put the meter on your track and the ref track, then fanny around with the mix of your own to try to get as near to the visual profile in the meter that your ref track has. As good a start point as any really.

andy_k

Don't forget most of the stuff you will reference against will be mastered within an inch of its life for loudness, louder always sounds better. At least we have ways to measure it now so things can be level matched.

PolarityMan

Snap said:

Years ago I bought a Focusrite VRM box, which is a little processing unit that you plug into with headphones and it is supposed to emulate how your mix sounds in various environments. Avoid - not really that useful IMO.
Reference tracks are a much better way - just get a WAV of a track you think sounds great and compare to your own mixes. A visual meter will help, and loads are available for free. Put the meter on your track and the ref track, then fanny around with the mix of your own to try to get as near to the visual profile in the meter that your ref track has. As good a start point as any really.

There's software that does that now both for headphones and also to adjust for defecits in your room. The most popular one is called sonar works. I tried it out once but didnt really gel with it. 

Whistler

Snags said:

Right now there's nothing I can do about the room, but that may change this year ...

Snags, I would like to disagree with you!

Professional studios are often built from the ground up with all acoustic requirements built-in to each room. Home studios, on the other hand, start with a ready-made room and add acoustic treatment, all of which can be taken with you to the garage or wherever our next room will be.

This means you can make a start as soon as you like. I, along with others, would be happy to show you where to look on the internet (be careful you don't follow someone who doesn't know what they are doing) or to explain and show you from our own personal experiences.

If it helps, below is the room I used for several years. (Edited to add that it cost me just over £600 to make all the acoustic treatment in that room back in 2011.) I rented an office and so everything (apart from painting the room) had to be portable. Get ready to make the first step to improving your room and thereby your mixes.

Snags

@whistler Disagree all you like, you're welcome. You're also wrong

The room I currently use is roughly 2.5m square with, with shelves down two walls (for necessary storage) and other wall fixtures on the third. The fourth is basically the window. It houses a corner desk, working desk, a four-drawer filing cabinet, stationery cupboard, workgroup printer, NAS, an amp, most of my pedal stuff, and most of the guitars/cases. It has to double as storage space for some of Mrs Snags' stuff, and currently I also have to use it as a home office, which means what little floor space there is is often completely full of other computers, laptops, boxes, detritus.

There is nothing meaningful I can do with that space given the current professional and domestic needs over and above my personal music interests. Not short of closing the business and getting a divorce, anyway

It's one of the reasons we're looking at getting the garage enlarged, and using a chunk of that as a music space. Simultaneously gives me a playpen, gets a hell of a lot of other stuff out the house (we have a 2x12, 1x12, combo and head in the living room too), and lets me do something a bit better. Until that happy day ... make do and mend!

Whistler

It sounds like there is room in there for a cloud - which is just an overhead broadband trap.

Here's looking forward to an enlarged garage for you!

Snags

Fuggov! I'm not cramming anything else in there  

Egged on by @poopot I've grabbed a couple of plugins, one of which is supposed to fake up studio acoustics in your headphones. Between that and some of the tips in this thread there's already a definite difference. I'm still at the point where getting a better grasp of theory and practice will make the most difference and then the environment will follow.

Anyway, excuse me, I just need to chase my piggy bank, as it's trying to escape out the back fence at the thought of the garage rebuild ...

Branshen

Post it here and you can get some forum feedback! 

Stratavarious

Sounds like you are on the wsy.

Mastering is a key stage/process - eq, maximise loudness, multiband compression...   also keeping each instrument eq’d tight for its range - good advice above on that and careful use of panning.  

Snares I find hard to get right everywhere. I still have a lot to learn on that.

if you want a shortcut, I might suggest you upload your basic mix to bandlab (free) and try their default mastering options.. CD, bass boost, bright.  You can then listen to the impact and reproduce.  You will probably find it adds the body you are missing.  You can get mastering vsts.

Like others mentioned, a tonne of pro stuff has being produced at home for some months now with the situation.  I have been doing TV music from a tiny bedroom setup and a conservatory with some fabric over the flat hard windows.  No one would know... unless they hear a cow or tractor from the field.  

I use KRK monitors and AKG open backs for their very flat response for mixing and then test on a couple of devices and in the car in the driveway and the living room TV.  I am using acoustic guitar IRs more now to supplement piezo on acoustics to be less dependent on the mic/room.  A close miced marshall sounds like a close miced Marshall - room fx i get from IRs or reverb fx.
 
Studios have experience... the room acoustics are a part, sure, but the knowledge of the principles is what they really bring.  Like any interest area, its easy to get obsessed by the gear and look to that for the fix.

Sing under a quilt, hat stands with loads of coats on or curtains on rails in corners.. plenty of pros are improvising simple but effective sound control measures to keep working.  Our band is all recording stuff remotely.. mix of drums in a garage, bass di, and the singer with a head in a furniture foam lined box!

I’d certainly see if the room can have some simple damping if its boomy and you are hearing that.  A sheet of bedding or curtain type material hanging under roof can help.   

Stuckfast

I'm going to be contrarian here and say mastering is NOT a key stage, or at least it shouldn't be. The mix should sound like a finished track when it leaves you. It's not up to mastering to somehow elevate it from not good enough to good enough. Mastering is about making small adjustments so that individual tracks work together as a coherent whole.

By all means use multiband compressors and whatnot on your master bus if it helps you get the mix right, but think of that as part of mixing, not mastering. Professional mastering engineers rarely use tools like multiband compression.