Making a mix sound good on multiple speaker types

Ask questions and get answers about how to make music in any particular way. Hardware or songwriting or whatever.
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Billy's Little Trip
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Re: Making a mix sound good on multiple speaker types

Post by Billy's Little Trip »

I remember reading about Death Magnet and it's funny because when they were pre-releasing the songs, the first thing I thought was that I must be starting to get too critical as I improve my skills, because it sounded awful on several songs. Apparently the guitar hero versions are before they were mastered and said to be much better. I haven't heard them.
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jb
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Re: Making a mix sound good on multiple speaker types

Post by jb »

Generic wrote:I wrote a super long post, but it appears not to have made it through. Or maybe a moderator deleted it.
Don't get paranoid, geez. You can count the number of posts that have been deleted by a moderator in the last 10 years without taking off your shoes.

JB
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fluffy
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Re: Making a mix sound good on multiple speaker types

Post by fluffy »

So, I did the final mix of this entire album on my Fostex monitors (although I'm not terribly happy with the mix on Better Than Before but that's because I gave up on doing it right and just decided to get it done): http://music.sockpuppet.us/album/radio-ready-ep

And these two songs as well: http://music.sockpuppet.us/track/adding-up-to-nothing http://music.sockpuppet.us/track/strangers

In one of the other mixing threads I talked about how I equalize by reference, by comparing it against another track and EQing until I can't tell which song is playing in any frequency range. I haven't kept very good notes about when I did that, but I'm pretty sure I mixed the Song Fight version of No Brakes that way, using some Nirvana song as the reference track (and the reference for a lot of other things, too). http://www.songfight.org/music/no_brake ... pet_nb.mp3

Discard everything I've said about mixing, accordingly.
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Billy's Little Trip
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Re: Making a mix sound good on multiple speaker types

Post by Billy's Little Trip »

fluf, I had to listen to your no brakes first because I've used Never Mind as a reference album often. I think Albini is the bees knees with extra cheese. I definitely hear your effort there. If it wasn't for the distracting drum track (no hate, just constructive criticism), that would be a damn good song! Honestly, if you turned off the drum tracks entirely I would rank it as good semi unplugged alternative. Then if you did "real" hand percussion, to the guitar and vocal tracks, I'd easily rank it as avant-garde punk.
Did you sing twice and use doubling fx? Because if you sang it twice, damn, you are so on the first track I can't hear any wavering. I'd have to listen harder to be sure.
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Re: Making a mix sound good on multiple speaker types

Post by fluffy »

Billy's Little Trip wrote:fluf, I had to listen to your no brakes first because I've used Never Mind as a reference album often. I think Albini is the bees knees with extra cheese. I definitely hear your effort there. If it wasn't for the distracting drum track (no hate, just constructive criticism), that would be a damn good song! Honestly, if you turned off the drum tracks entirely I would rank it as good semi unplugged alternative. Then if you did "real" hand percussion, to the guitar and vocal tracks, I'd easily rank it as avant-garde punk.
Did you sing twice and use doubling fx? Because if you sang it twice, damn, you are so on the first track I can't hear any wavering. I'd have to listen harder to be sure.
Sang twice, but used FlexPitch to adjust the sour notes. I ain't that good at singing.

The drum track is just made of stock loops (I was in temporary housing and didn't have any of my instruments at the time, aside from the guitar that I'd just purchased) and I was too lazy to replace it for the album.
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Billy's Little Trip
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Re: Making a mix sound good on multiple speaker types

Post by Billy's Little Trip »

I don't have a plug-in like flexpitch. Honestly I try to do everything with retakes until it's right. But it sure would free up a lot of time to do other things I can't perfect before submitting SF songs. It would also keep Dee and Paco from thinking I'm the music Nazi. I'll ask Paco for a retake and he just says no, I have to go to work. I'll ask Denise for a retake on a part that bugs me "with a few light suggestions" and she'll re-do it EXACTLY like the first take. Then I ask again and she sends it EXACTLY the same. This goes on until I make her part work the way she originally sent it and I submit the song. After I submit it, she sends a retake EXACTLY how I wanted it! Almost like she's flipping me a cyber bird for trying to tell her how to do her thing.

Then the reviews come in on the song saying they like her vocals. But she's too polite to bring it up and say "see, I told you so". But I bet you anything that when she reads the review she smirks and says, hmph, music Nazi. :roll:
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Re: Making a mix sound good on multiple speaker types

Post by fluffy »

The closest equivalent I've seen to FlexPitch outside of Logic is Melodyne (which is WAY more advanced than FlexPitch), but Antares Autotune is pretty good as well. It doesn't give you as much surgical precision over your vocal tuning but it's still quite excellent.

I do a whole bunch of retakes until it's Close Enough but then it's never quite close enough, so FlexPitch helps me fill in the last little gap between "adequate" and "decent." (Still not "stellar," as no amount of pitch surgery can fix my terrible delivery or inflection.)
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Billy's Little Trip
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Re: Making a mix sound good on multiple speaker types

Post by Billy's Little Trip »

I just remembered, I do have something called Gsnap, which is an auto-tune plug. I've played with it, but not real impressed. It either made things robotic or no noticeable change. Maybe just not a good one or I just didn't give it proper testing, even though I LOVE and use a couple plugs by that same programmer on a regular basis.

Also, I had a few cran-raspberry vodkas yesterday evening and was in a creative writing mood in my last post. Dee and Charlie are both very gracious collaborators. :D
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Billy's Little Trip
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Re: Making a mix sound good on multiple speaker types

Post by Billy's Little Trip »

We were talking about reference mixes to improve our own mixing skills.
I know several of you have mentioned liking Graham at the recording revolution. About a week ago he had a great tutorial on using a reference mix to improve his.

[youtube]aFbBJFmF2-g?list=UUjRzsiP_aDWWLHV4-2LKBtg[/youtube]


Also, Dave Pasado had a good answer to the reference track use. This is the one that got me to try it.

[youtube]/_5PK8Wa8suQ[/youtube]
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