Original Message 1/35                 Date: 13-Apr-05  @  11:30 AM   -   anyone got good eq ears?

monkeybasket2001

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Hi all,

after spending inordinate amounts of time trying to balance my mixes ive come to the conclusion i have a mointoring problem, i have very little room to move things about (although im moving house so that will change)- what im finding is that im mixing and balancing stuff, getting a good approximation but when i try the tune out on say my headphones it sounds unbalanced.....badly...was wondering if anyone with particularly good eq ears could tell me what they think is wrong with say a couple of short examples, that way when i go about setting my new space up i can make sure im not doing anything that would just compound the issue

any takers?

greg

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Message 2/35                 Date: 13-Apr-05  @  01:24 PM   -   RE: anyone got good eq ears?

monkeybasket2001

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ive put two examples up at my soundclick

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/6/dubmunkeymusic.htm
and will upload more examples this week...when i play my stuff back to back i notice the difference in sound to normal mixes so am think some monitoring issue is causing thing to be mixed unbalanced...

greg

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Message 3/35                 Date: 13-Apr-05  @  03:05 PM   -   RE: anyone got good eq ears?

milan

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hmm... are your monitors forward sounding? cause the mixes sound a bit dull, eg. no highs. plus i'd say the bass drum is mixed too loud without being punchy and well defined. but on the whole i wouldnt say the mixes sound unbalanced because nothing seems to get lost in the mix. its more the case of the missing frequencies imo.

what are your monitors? do you mix loud or quiet? how are they lacking in your oppinion? give us more details please  

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Message 4/35                 Date: 13-Apr-05  @  03:30 PM   -   RE: anyone got good eq ears?

monkeybasket2001

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Cheers Milan,

alaesis montior 1s mk2...

one is on the side of my kitchenette (i live in a v small bedsit) and the right side is on my computer desk- so there is room under and around the right side but not the left-, very little space from the back of the speakers to the thick walls behind them....

i generally monitor at listening level and then go up and down to make sure nothing gets too load or quiet at those volumes....i try and match my kick levels to other house tracks and build around that- means the kick often peaks at 0db (i use 0db as the ref and will often turn the master down when recording so it doesn't clip) and the rest is in relation to the kick...

what i feel im lacking is high-mid detail....it often sounds quite harsh so i reduce or eq or compress but then find im loosing definition....i try and isolate any sound i feel is causing offence and its usually always in the high-mid range...i always feel the bass is not defined enough deep but doesn't hold up on smaller speakers/andor the bass drum suffers- and as ive said im not convinced my high-mids are represented properly-

i use soley hardware btw and record via a mia-midi into soundforge as a 24-bit wav- high pass the rumble out and then converted to mp3...

i have consumed an inordinate amount of info on eqing, compression, balancing, monitoring etc yet my stuff still doesn't hold up to pc based tunes which always have a very well defined top end yet nice and balanced bass....its bad cos im trying to get some tunes out there but always feel let down by my cheap sounding mixes....

greg

kit:
alesis m1 mk2
mpc2kxl
art tube eq
dbx 266xl comp
spirit fx8 mixer
lxp1
vf1
various synths

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Message 5/35                 Date: 13-Apr-05  @  04:26 PM   -   RE: anyone got good eq ears?

k

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I cant play the tracks at Soundclick, I get an error in media player - cant find the stream or something

___________________________________

I had an idea for a script once. It's basically Jaws except when the guys in the boat are going after Jaws, they look around and there's an even bigger Jaws. The guys have to team up with Jaws to get Bigger Jaws.... I call it... Big Jaws!!!

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Message 6/35                 Date: 13-Apr-05  @  05:29 PM   -   RE: anyone got good eq ears?

milan

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aha... so you're basicaly mixing on a mixer with two fixed frequency shelves and one swept eq, which you're often using to cut hi-mids, leaving you with not much else to work with... well no wonder you cant get much detail out of the mixes then, compared to x bands of fully parametric eq you could have in a sw based system (and compression too!). i understand that recording all the tracks to the pc for mixing might be tedious (if your pc is even up to the task), but it'd probably be more than worth it if you want good results.

"i always feel the bass is not defined enough deep but doesn't hold up on smaller speakers/andor the bass drum suffers"- well, that too would benefit from a better eq- with few bands of parametric you could boost the bit which you need without making it boomy or rumbling, plus you could cut out the bits that mess with the bassdrum. plus you could add elswhere to improve 'presence' for listening on small speakers etc etc...

any particular reason why you dont wanna use a pc for mixing?

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Message 7/35                 Date: 14-Apr-05  @  04:51 AM   -   RE: anyone got good eq ears?

psylichon

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Yeah, I also think you're hurting in the EQ dept. most.

You're also basing your mixes around the "kick level" of fully mastered CD's, which is setting unrealistic standards for yourself. Try bringing the CD in on some faders where you can attenuate it (at least 6 dB, possibly even 10 or more knowing how shit gets mastered these days) before you try to match it. Even that won't be a truly fair comparison. There's a lot you need to read up on RMS vs. peak levels and the mastering process in general. When you reference commercial CD's while mixing, try to match overall balance and tone rather than level. That's for mastering.

Doing what you've been doing, I bet you're overloading your mixer all to heck trying to compete. How hot are your channels/mix bus levels on an average mix?

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Message 8/35                 Date: 14-Apr-05  @  09:00 AM   -   RE: anyone got good eq ears?

monkeybasket2001

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cheers

i thought that may be the problem- im gonna stop trying to a/b to cd's as as you say its not a fair comparison....

i don't have a powerful enough pc to record onto or anything other than sound forge and some plugs to use which isn't mulitrackable...i dont mind using the pc as a posh tape recorder but ive never multitracked on a pc and worry about sync issues when trying to put all the tracks back together....

what im more up for is recording any locked loops and then replaying them outta my mpc but obviously i cant eq them

i guess my main issue is that loads of classic tunes have been recorded with just samplers, synths and stuff outside from a pc and sound great- i know hardware is going outta fashion in todays sound but i much prefer using it and really just wanna be able t0o record my comps as one at the end...

the ONLY way ive been able to balance stuff is through multiband comp and that to me is not the way to go as im not looking to master it and using mulitband often locks tones down irreversably...

i had a little more luck with the bass last night splitting it into two channels- one for low low and one for lowmid- got better.....

thanks for the advice i think im gonna try a couple of different things (ie mix with bd down by 1db etc), record the results and play accross as many systems as i can find to try and reach a balance

ta

greg

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Message 9/35                 Date: 14-Apr-05  @  09:05 AM   -   RE: anyone got good eq ears?

monkeybasket2001

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also what would you consider the best stereo para is for say under £300??? ive used behringer before i didnt really like them- i like what my art tube eq does but it has fixed q, fixed shelves and is mono....suggestions?

greg

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Message 10/35                 Date: 14-Apr-05  @  05:39 PM   -   RE: anyone got good eq ears?

milan

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"i guess my main issue is that loads of classic tunes have been recorded with just samplers, synths and stuff outside from a pc and sound great"

yeah, but they possibly had a better mixer, and possibly they were eq-ing stuff before bouncing it back to the sampler... lotsa old mixers with two swept bands to be had for not too much money btw (soundtrax, soundcraft, mackie maybe, a&h(?))

"thanks for the advice i think im gonna try a couple of different things (ie mix with bd down by 1db etc), record the results and play accross as many systems as i can find to try and reach a balance"

but your balance is not bad i think, its more about the detail etc like we said.

"also what would you consider the best stereo para is for say under £300??? ive used behringer before i didnt really like them"

yeah, they're kinda useless  . dunno... maybe a used joey meek, focusrite, tl-audio, tc electronics or something along those lines?

or if you decided to get a multitracker and track to pc, you could always slave the MPC to it via MTC so sync wouldnt really be an issue any more.

or if you're hardcore, you could get a better analogue mixer?  

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