Different sound after exporting.

[mikebailey92]

The mix isn't translating. What are you using to listen to the mix on?

[Grunt562]

Originally Posted by mikebailey92

The mix isn't translating. What are you using to listen to the mix on?

well i master it on FL and listen to it through FL

[mikebailey92]

I mean like what headphones or monitors?

[remote337]

Congratulations you just started out on what could be a very long painful, difficult and potentially expensive road!


The whole reason people spend so much money time and effort on acoustic room treatment, high end converters and monitors isn't just cause its slutty. It's to make sure the mix you are hearing is as close to reality as possible. What that means is that if your monitors, room etc make the bass really loud or hyped, you will tailor your mix accordingly i.e. turn the bass down. Result being when you play it back on a system that doesn't have the corresponding hyped bass response your mix will have little or no bass. This applies across the frequency spectrum both positively and negatively.

Your best starting point is either spend money on room treatment and the best monitors possible or spend many, many hours learning your current setup which is cheaper but not ideal. By that I mean constantly check mixes on different systems in different rooms. I know some guys get great mixes in crap rooms on crap monitors simply because they know the issues and can account for them, but as I say not ideal.

Hope that helps?!

[Heyclown]

What they said.
You didn't say anything about how it is different. Thats where you have to start; identifying the difference. Monitoring on different systems never sound the same. After some time you will find out what frequencies has to be there to compensate. As an example a bass sound has to have frequencies in there that will be heard on a low bass system. In a case where you only mixed in 120hz bass and filtered out the stuff above 180hz, there won't be any bass sound at all on a transistor radio or similar cheap PC speaker.
You got to have several listening environments. After some time you will know what you need and can rely more and more on how you know to mix it to sound ok on several systems.
I have a cheap set of PC speakers connected that I can switch to and also a mono button to be able to listen to the mix in mono.
Most of us has been where we brought the mix into our cars just to find out it didnt sound as expected. It´s a good place to start learning mixing. Go make it shine on both systems. Then you´re on the road of mixing. Which is fun and sometimes exhausting.
Best of luck.

[RiF]

I walked the same road. My mixed did not translate very well, if not at all. Frequency response had been quite off, depth staging (reverb) had been off, level balances of tracks had been off, everything... And I did not hear it in my "studio", but I could clearly hear it in my car or on my home stereo after only 10 seconds into the song.
Here's what I did to solve that:

• I now listen at reasonable levels. I simply listened too loud and loud makes everything sound good, but it actually doesn't.
• I am using reference mixes (commercial songs that sound similar to what I want. I just choose one not several ones per mix) in the first 60% of time while mixing a song. After that 60%, I A/B way less and go my own route. This recalibrates my ears to frequency responses, punch and balances. This doesn't work always, but can help to get a "common sense" for how things should sound.
• I am taking breaks. The ear adapts to what it's hearing quite fast. One thing why I am heard things in my car that I did not in my studio had been that there had been a time gap between mixing in my studio and listening in my car. After I came back to my studio I heard some of what I heard in my car (after a break!).
• I treated my room. If your room fools you, you'll never make your mixes translate. It's not perfect in the low-end yet, but I know what to expect and how to compensate.
• I upgraded my monitors (passive Tannoy Reveals) to better ones (ADAM A7X). Huge difference. Now I can hear compression and depth (or lack of them) that I did not hear before.
• I upgraded my headphones (AKG K-500) to more suitable ones (Audio Technica ATH M30, which I bought for tracking but do their job until I'll upgrade again to M50's).
• To check the level balances, I turn up the headphones and put them on my desk. Listening to what comes out of them tells me quite exactly if vocals are too loud/soft, snare is too loud/soft etc. Sounds weird, but really works.
• My next upgrade will be some Auratones/Behritones, because I am still struggling a bit with level balances which are told to be judged better on these types of monitors.