Could Use Some Advice on Optimizing for Different Sound Systems

[Zac Kyoti]

I'm looking for some advice from the audiophiles out there. It concerns some theory regarding using a self contained rig on varying sound systems.

To give the background, I use a self contained rig that routes TPro in external mode into Ableton, where my controllers + Ableton act as a virtual mixer. The audio is processed with a number of devices in Ableton, including a sonic enhancer and some light compression to gel the mix.

At home I use a pair of good workhorse studio monitors, the Event PS-8s, with no subs. The whole idea behind good studio monitors is so that when you finalize your mix, it should sound good on as many systems as possible. OK, fine.

So I've tweaked everything to the point where the mixes sit well, everything sounds great all the time, and even without subs, the output sounds HUGE. Great.

But the question arises as to what happens when dropping that output into another monster system with it's own rack of maximizers, exciters and compressors. I worry that certain frequencies will then become very overpowering. To me this kind of defeats the whole purpose of mixing on your studio monitors to sound as good as possible.

I ask because I just played this large system where I spent the entire gig with my bass eq turned down like -15%, just to keep it in check, and the overall character of the sound suffered as a result. At home things sound great with my bass eq anywhere up to +20%

Should I actually be tweaking the rig in a way to "dumb down" the sound on my studio monitors? Just thought the point was to make it sound as bangin as possible at home. It seems counter intuitive to be asking a club what enhancers/maximizers they have in the chain, and if they could turn them down a couple notches.

Thoughts?

[charo]

how much have you treated the room acoustically? have you tried the song in the classic test evnr. the car?

I would develop a game plan before making any changes...

to me your monitors should be like reference speakers, you should be listening to other songs in the genre and then listening to yours and making changes based on that. monitors should be transparent so they will often sound different then home audio speakers.

then you should be testing with other speakers, your headphones, and like i said earlier the car.

You should be trying to make your track sound the best in all places, not trying to precompensate for anything a club may be adding in terms of compressors or exciters. sounds like they could be overdoing it, but that should be taken care of on their end....

i don't claim to be an audiophile or anything.

also when you had to turn down your eq to make it sound right, did you instead try to turn down the compressors etc in ableton?

edit this is a good read IMO: http://www.tweakheadz.com/studio_monitors.htm

[Zac Kyoti]

To answer:
1) No, my studio isn't acoustically treated. It's carpet and mostly bare walls, irregularly shaped.

2) My mixes sound great on the reference speakers, headphones, and my own home stereo. Haven't heard my latest Ableton tweaks in a car yet.

3) And yes, I did turn down the output from my maximizer in Ableton at that gig. And I still turned the bass down to -15%.

I guess I'm just questioning the theory behind reference monitor mixing: If you make your mix sound massive on a reference system, shouldn't you expect it to be overblown when ported to a system that pushes the low end even more??

[charo]

for me i guess i understand it that your monitors should be colourfree and give you the most accurate representation of the music.

i don't really see it to mean you fine tune your music to sound the best on your monitors.

like is said in earlier, i think it useful to play a profess track on your monitors and go back and forth between your song. You should be able to tell if some eq bands are too loud or quiet on your song by doing this.

then switch from your monitors to more traditional speakers that the song will most often be played on (that tend to colour the sound, common is a smiley face, raised highs & lows, dipped mids) and do the same thing.

but you're going to have to be aware of what your room is doing to the sound, both in terms of reflection, absorbtion, but also the stereo field.

You could be adding to the bass levels of the mix cause your room is absorbs some of the bass etc.

best of luck

[djhipnotikk]

You could be adding to the bass levels of the mix cause your room is absorbs some of the bass etc.

this is what i'm thinking. it's hard to get the right mix in an environment that isn't properly treated. it may sound like it doesn't matter too much, but if you can do this: play a song and stand in different parts of the room. if you notice different freq's getting louder in certain parts of the room (bass usually gets louder if you're standing in a corner), then the room is off balance