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RealBand
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I need some advice around having my sound in my studio mix matching the sound on the CD. I've got my studio pretty well set up...I'm happy with the sound. I use Roket G6 monitors and the bass mix is great. When I record to a CD the bass is too loud. Any thoughts on what I should do inside the studio to correct this. I don't want to have to run the bass so low that I have to "guess" on the final sound. I don't feel that adding traps would help as I'm setting equidistance from the monitors and it would seem that I'm hearing only the sound from the monitors uncolored by studio acoustics Any help would be greatly appreciated! JMK@KnightSounds
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RealBand
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Joined: May 2000
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If the result is the bass is too strong, you'll have to learn that those monitors are not providing the correct amount of bass during your work time. You can get a suitable EQ type plugin to push a little more bass to the speakers and use it regularly so your mixes do not end up too heavy, or learn to use an analyzer to 'see' the bass in your mix.
Another aspect (more likely in my mind) is that those monitors only reproduce down to 49Hz (according to specs), so you may want to incorporate a subwoofer. I don't think you are hearing the true bottom end as is.
Just a couple thoughts on it.
What are you comparing it to, as far as the CD playback? Any chance that system is not true?
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Make your sound your own!
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RealBand
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Another even more likely issue: The room you monitor/mix in may have some very strong room modes, that coupled with where you monitor in that room, causes you to mix with not enough bass. You can send a swept sine starting with about 10 Hz up through 500 Hz or so (I know there are swept sine .wav files available on the internet - if not, I'll look through my archives and find you one and post to my website) through your entire recording system, with a microphone located at your listening/mixing position, and record that signal back into your DAW. First make sure that you are not feeding back that microphone signal to playback!!!!. Look at the recorded waveform. If you see something other than a flat response recorded back - you likely have some room modes to contend with. This is highly highly likely, as most home studios aren't designed as mixing rooms. What you will likely see is at least one or two regions in the recorded waveform that are much much higher amplitude than other regions. These are the evil room mode frequencies. Using a freeware FFT analyzer plugin like SPAN from Voxengo, or rharv's old fave freq analyst http://www.bluecataudio.com/Products/Product_FreqAnalyst/you should be able to see what frequency(ies) those are. Those require some EQ out of your final mix bus. Gingerly play with them using a parametric EQ to pull them out so that when you try the sweep recording again, you get a more flat response. Another way to do this is to send white noise through your system and record. Here's a place with lots of .wav files to download and use for recording your system's overall response. http://www.burninwave.com/
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You'll first need to buy a mic that is meant for taking measurements.
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RealBand
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John, I agree with you in spirit but not in whole. Most mics are flat enough, or have a gentle slope, such that if you go through a room mode, you still will see it 'loud and clear', when you do either a sweep or a broadband noise excitation as I suggested above. I agree with you in spirit because for 20+ years I have used measurement grade microphones from Brüel & Kjær and G.R.A.S. on the job, when I needed precision. In this case precision is really not necessary. Even an SM 57 http://www.shure.com/idc/groups/public/documents/webcontent/us_pro_sm57_specsheet.pdf has a flat enough response in the low end such that you can do these kinds of measurements. If there was a big resonance bump in the low end response, then that can throw one off. With an SM 57, with it's gradual rise in the low end as frequency increases, what one should expect to see in the recorded time history is just a gradual rise in the recorded level over the sweep. However, my suspicion is that Knightsounds' room is like most of our home studios, in a bedroom or basement or office, where room modes can dominate low frequency response. If the monitors are in a corner or close to a wall (say within 1.5', then he/she is going to couple with those room modes and they will totally mess with low frequency mix ability. The recorded sweep will have pretty sharp bumps where the room modes are an issue. -Scott
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RealBand
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Joined: Oct 2011
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OP
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I appreciate your suggestions...I have worked with several of them. I believe The easiest solution (I believe) would be the plugin to push a little more bass to the speakers suggested by rharv.
Rharv, I'm fairly new at this "computer recording" but if I understand correctly, I'd hear more bass in the speakers when mixing down but this would not be in the final mix when using the plugin. What specifically should I get?
Also, I'm comparing my final sound to commercial CDs that I like.
My studio is twelve by twenty four and is only used for my music. The monitors are in one end about 18 inches from a windowed wall. The right one is about 8 inches from the side and the left is about 5 feet from the entry door. It is offset in the end due to the entry. Would the right speaker possibly be the issue as it is close to the wall?
Thanks,
JMK
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RealBand
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Maybe speaker placement, you can tinker with it.
Yeah, if you end up hearing more bass while working, you'll trun it down which is what you are looking to change in your end CD.
Try the PGMusic 10 band EQ, boosting 30 and 60, put it into the main out FX area and use it while working. Once you get it set correctly (thru experimentation) save that setting as a preset for easy use in the future. To set it quickly, try different settings, and make notes, so later when you play the CD elsewhere you can go back and say "that';s the one that worked".
When you go to do the final merge just use the bypass button on the plugin. This way you are hearing more bass from your speakers, but not writing it to the end result for other systems .. then test on other systems.
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Make your sound your own!
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Another thing to try is play your fav CD through the same studio system you're mixing with. Do direct A/B comparisions using several different songs and EQ your recording until it matches the CD. It's also helpful to record parts of your CD and look at the waveform in the Audio Edit window, then look at your preliminary final mix track in the same window. Just comparing the waveforms can tell you a lot. Many times with a commercial CD you'll discover it has been compressed and limited to death and the thing looks like one solid mass with a hard cutoff right at -0.2db. Hardly any dynamics at all. I hate that but if you really want to match the CD then that's what you need to do as well.
Bob
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