Wetness vs monitors

[LostTheTone]

I have been playing with some of my practice tracks, just trying to polish them up a bit more and get a better idea of how everything would sound in a genuine professional human music track but I'm struggling a bit with my reverbs and delays. I can get my tracks to sound good - Properly wet - But when I move to a different set of cans the balance of reverb to original track is way off.

I know different speakers sound different, but I'm not talking about the actual EQ of the track. I'm talking specifically about how prominent the reverbs are. When I mix a track on my cheap downstairs earbuds so that the reverb is just barely on the cusp of audible, when I listen upstairs through my desktop monitors the reverb is really audible, and through my IEMs my subtle "just for wetness" reverb sounds like my "the first verse is supposed to be in an echo chamber" reverb.

When I just go and tweak the levels then it's fine, the tracks doesn't need any actual EQ adjustment. It's driving me somewhat crazy, because the difference is so stark that a good track I was happy with suddenly sounds shite and I'm not super keen to share a mix that sounds garbage if you listen to it the wrong way.

Advice please!

 

[RevDrucifer]

You need a good set of reference monitors. When I first started recording, I was using my home entertainment system for monitors and thought everything sounded awesome. Then I got some actual studio monitors (Yamaha HS-5’s) and realized everything sounded like shit. All my edits were clear as a bell, low end was all over the place, effects were off the rails, etc.

While you’re never going to get a mix to sound the same across every set of speakers, getting a really clear representation of what you’re recording will certainly help get closer to that.

Every sound has it’s own frequency range, reverbs have tone-shaping capabilities with LPF’s/HPF’s, some have straight up EQ’s on them. It’s a balancing act between the reverb type (plate/chamber/hall/etc) how much is mixed in to your signal and the EQ of the reverb. Different speakers will accentuate different aspects of it, obviously, which is why you’re having this issue.

In general, even when I can clearly hear the reverb/effects I’m adding to a recording, I’ll get it to a point where I think it’s just right and then I’ll lower just a pinch. I’ve heard a bunch of producers/engineers suggest that so I gave it a try on a whim and it’s worked out pretty much every time.

 

[Drew]

Even with good reference monitors - I use a set of Yamaha HS80Ms, which are quite good - the room you're in is going to be a factor, too.

I've finally gotten around to treating my room, though my left wall is mostly a row of windows so this is likely still going to be an issue, but one of the persistent problems I'd have with translation was how much of a struggle it was for me to hear ambience in my mixes. I'd have it sounding pretty good in the room, pull it up on another system, and suddenly there would be hugely obvious reverb on everything, particularly clouding up the low end. Through trial and error I got to the point where if I set reverb at a level where it was JUST audible when I bypassed my reverb bus but didn't call attention to itself when the bus was engaged, I was getting results that would translate pretty well, but it took some practice to figure out where that threshold was.

Mixing in anything other than a good acoustic space is kind of a nightmare, and getting used to how your mixes translate on other systems can help, but it IS still frustrating.

 

[LostTheTone]

I agree that it would be nice to get better equipment... But the problem isn't that I'm mixing something then other people tell me it sucks on their setup, it's that when I move onto my existing (cheaper) monitors that it sucks. A £300 set of proper reference monitors will still leave me with the same problem, I'll just be able to hear that it sucks with greater accuracy. I can already mix to my monitors, but then it sounds super dry on anything else.

What's really frustrating me is that it's just the reverbs where it's really audible. The rest of the tracks don't sound identical, but they still sound balanced, and definitely not with any part of the spectrum 8db out like the reverb is. And of course, it's not very likely I'm getting artifacts from the room when I'm going between two sets of in-ear headphones. Sure, not the perfect way to mix (my only option in the evenings) but it does make me think that it has to be the headphones themselves. In fact, the most similar sounding of the three are the earbuds and my desktop monitors; it's 1 or 2db to tweak just to get it "just so" which is not surprising.

Is it possible that both flavours of monitor simply have a wider range of sound reproduction than the earbuds and that's the source of my problem? Or that the earbuds (which are the cheapest SkullCandy ones from a year or two ago) have some non-obvious EQ profile?

 

[Flappydoodle]

It's a psychological thing IMO. And I've noticed it too.

If you're using headphones, especially in-ears, things need to be REALLY wet for you to really notice the ambience. Open back headphones are better.

Whereas through monitors, the physical distance from the sound source matters, and of course the room itself is adding some ambience.

 

[GunpointMetal]

Earbuds, closed-back headphones can mask the reverb because there’s no “middle” compared to speakers. There’s obviously still stuff up the middle, but you’re not hearing the combined effects of both sides in both ears. For me space like reverbs and stereo delays and then vocals are really hard for me to get right in headphones. Always too loud or too quiet. I live in an apartment and my gear is in the living room, so my gf wouldn’t appreciate me using my monitors for hours at a time on weeknights so I have to work in cans all the time.

 

[LostTheTone]

Earbuds, closed-back headphones can mask the reverb because there’s no “middle” compared to speakers. There’s obviously still stuff up the middle, but you’re not hearing the combined effects of both sides in both ears. For me space like reverbs and stereo delays and then vocals are really hard for me to get right in headphones. Always too loud or too quiet. I live in an apartment and my gear is in the living room, so my gf wouldn’t appreciate me using my monitors for hours at a time on weeknights so I have to work in cans all the time.

I'm in a similar situation - I have my monitors up in my office with all my other work stuff and my (non-work) audio kit, and if I had a choice I would mix through them all the time. However, it is legitimately my work-from-home office and it's upstairs and very separate from the rest of the flat. The noise isn't really the problem, or not the primary one anyway. It's reall that my better half is opposed to me spending all my evenings upstairs instead of chilling with her. She doesn't mind me playing with my mix on the sofa, she just wants to see me.

In any case - Do you think that playing with the stereo mix a bit might help? Not mixing it down to mono, but separating the L and R out of my last bus, then mixing a little L into the R, and R into the L. So creating a little stereo overlap specifically for headphones to try and better recreate what I can hear in the speakers?

 

[LostTheTone]

Oh and... In general do you guys aim to mix to the monitor, or to mix for a more normal set-up?

I have heard that professionals do actually mix for the average person's headphones these days because that's how most of the listening happens.

Which sounds good, except that I'm recording demos that are going to be heard by people who at least some amount of audio production themselves, so aren't necessarily the typical listener.

 

[GunpointMetal]

In any case - Do you think that playing with the stereo mix a bit might help? Not mixing it down to mono, but separating the L and R out of my last bus, then mixing a little L into the R, and R into the L. So creating a little stereo overlap specifically for headphones to try and better recreate what I can hear in the speakers?

Waves NX, Slate VSX both attempt to solve that issue in a more elegant way. Can't speak to VSX, but NX with a little space between the speakers and some room tone definitely make it easer, still not perfect imo. Airwindows also makes a plugin called Monitor and it's useful because you can check you center, slew, sub, with a simple slider, as well as a couple simulated speakers (think Avantone cubes) and some stereo manipulation/EQ adjustments for headphones. And its free.

 

[Drew]

Oh and... In general do you guys aim to mix to the monitor, or to mix for a more normal set-up?

I have heard that professionals do actually mix for the average person's headphones these days because that's how most of the listening happens.

Which sounds good, except that I'm recording demos that are going to be heard by people who at least some amount of audio production themselves, so aren't necessarily the typical listener.

I mean, the point of really good monitoring is that you don't have to choose there - if you can hear everything that's happening in a mix, clearly and exactly as its happening, then you're going to minimize the number of surprises you get when you move from system to system, where maybe there's a bit of a gap at 500hz in your setup and there's a lot of energy building up there, so when you move to a different setup suddenly something that you couldn't hear before becomes really audible.

When I'm suggesting "getting used to how your mixes translate onto other speakers," what I'm suggesting in a roundabout way is to try to learn things like "my speakers and roon don't do a good job translating what's going on below 300hz, so I may be having problems there," or "my speakers tend to make everything sound wetter than it is, so I want to mix to a point that sounds a little too dry to me," or otherwise try to learn where the blind spots or oddly accented parts of your monitoring chain are, and try to plan around that.

 

[Hollowway]

It depends on the specific species. You can have desert monitors, which aren’t really used to wetness at all. But then there are those like the Asian water monitor, which loves wetness.

 

[gnoll]

I don't know about monitor lizards but my snake loves wetness

Jokes aside, this was a good and interesting thread

 

[LostTheTone]

I don't know about monitor lizards but my snake loves wetness

Jokes aside, this was a good and interesting thread

I am glad my ignorance is helpful to others

 

[JesperX]

Definitely seems like a combination of frequency response of different speakers and listening environment, as have been discussed.

You could try to isolate it by identifying where the reverb primarily lives in your mix to find what’s not translating. Also potentially a factor is that things that are brighter will sound more forward in the mix, so speakers with a darker response will de-emphasize a bright reverb and push it further back.

The key to translation really is in the mids. As a test, try putting an EQ with high pass at 300 and low pass at 4k on your master bus. What happens to the reverb? If you can make sure it sits properly in the midrange broadly enough, it should translate better than relying on it to poke through too high or too low.

 

[LostTheTone]

Since I first posted this thread I have been trying to use more tools to better visualise what is really going on in my mix - I did try the free tools that were recommended above but they were just a bit too Spartan to be useful to me. Instead I've added Izotope's suite to my kit bag and it seems to have solved most of the issue.

Its tools for detecting frequency clash, and thus seeing frequency build up even when it's not audible are great (can't recall if that's in neutron or ozone, but one of them certainly). I'm now at the point where my reverb sounds much more consistent and that's got to be a good thing.

 

[4Eyes]

I found out that I was never able to get the right amount of delays and reverbs on my tracks when mixing on headphones. It was always way too much than it needed, never had such problem on monitors. I guess it has something to do with psycho acoustics and how our brains perceive sounds when received from headphones playing directly into our ears compared to sounds received from speakers in front of you with all the reflections from the room.

yes, some pro mixers do their grammy winning mixes on headphones, too. but it takes years of experience and mixing thousands of tracks to get to the point where you're able to do proper mix with right levels of time based effects on headphones that will translate on speakers, too. Room emulation SW for use with headphones will help, too

 

[LostTheTone]

yes, some pro mixers do their grammy winning mixes on headphones, too. but it takes years of experience and mixing thousands of tracks to get to the point where you're able to do proper mix with right levels of time based effects on headphones that will translate on speakers, too. Room emulation SW for use with headphones will help, too

I suppose it all depends what you consider to be "mixing on headphones". I doubt any profit seeking entity mixes on one output anyway. I have to imagine it comes down more to your workflow; use whatever you're comfortable with to do most of the work, then final mixing where you try it on a few things and tweak. When you're choosing takes and poking AutoTune and whathaveyou then you don't need perfection, just a comfortable, easy working environment.

 

[4Eyes]

I suppose it all depends what you consider to be "mixing on headphones". I doubt any profit seeking entity mixes on one output anyway. I have to imagine it comes down more to your workflow; use whatever you're comfortable with to do most of the work, then final mixing where you try it on a few things and tweak. When you're choosing takes and poking AutoTune and whathaveyou then you don't need perfection, just a comfortable, easy working environment.

I believe that it was Andrew Scheps who was a big advocate for in the box mixing and mentioned on number of occasions that he made lots of his mixes entirely with just his laptop and headphones in hotel room, some of which were either nominated or won some big name music awards. Maybe I have formulated it not very accurately - it's for sure not the preferred way, but if there's no other way, some PROs do it without issues and such mixes appear on big records.

 

[LiveOVErdrive]

I learned from practicing guitar with headphones that you need more reverb for the mix to sound "right" through headphones than with monitors. I assume this is because with monitors you actually get some diffusion in the room, while headphones are basically completely dry.

At any rate I, too, have noticed that mixes I worked on primarily in headphones sound wayyyy over-wet with reverb when I listen on speakers.