The cheapest mastering monitor solution？（20-20khz flat）

[Maxicut]

I myself started out in 1981.
If you use subs &/or large monitors to mix/master anything, the lows will disappear in the mix when played back in real life. You can get away with using 8" monitors only in very large (and expensive) mixing rooms & anything above 8" is nothing but internet BS.

 

[pierre]

I myself started out in 1981.
If you use subs &/or large monitors to mix/master anything, the lows will disappear in the mix when played back in real life. You can get away with using 8" monitors only in very large (and expensive) mixing rooms & anything above 8" is nothing but internet BS.

I am not sure to follow. Do you mean that you need to boost bass in a recording because what people are usually listening with are small speakers that would not reproduce well the low end?

 

[Maxicut]

I am not sure to follow. Do you mean that you need to boost bass in a recording because what people are usually listening with are small speakers that would not reproduce well the low end?

No, if you mix the lows when accentuated, you will mix the lows down.

EDIT: To build on that, that's one of the reasons that a lot of modern tracks are compressed so much, so an mp3 on your iPad sounds OK.

 

[QMuse]

No, if you mix the lows when accentuated, you will mix the lows down.

In other words you are adjusting LF part of the mix relative to the 6" drivers as that is what most people have?

 

[Wombat]

No, if you mix the lows when accentuated, you will mix the lows down.

EDIT: To build on that, that's one of the reasons that a lot of modern tracks are compressed so much, so an mp3 on your iPad sounds OK.

What I take from what you are saying is normal lows are accentuated lows so remove them for mixing. Could you clarify?

 

[Maxicut]

In other words you are adjusting LF part of the mix relative to the 6" drivers as that is what most people have?

Sort of. This is where audiophiles collide with pro-audio. Audiophiles want the best sound possible to their ears, where engineers want the best sound possible for all ears. It's actually a very hard thing to achieve & it takes many years of experience.

 

[Maxicut]

What I take from what you are saying is normal lows are accentuated lows so remove them for mixing. Could you clarify?

How I always answer questions in my own head is to take the question to it's absolute extreme, so imagine you are mixing a track using an 18" sub & 18" monitors. When you mix the track, you can only go by what is coming out of the speakers used. The speakers in this case are gonna be bass heavy, so you dial back the bass to compensate, which in real life playback will sound thin & lifeless.

 

[tifune]

You do not/cannot master using subs...
6" flat curve nearfield monitors. Anything bigger than 6" is for playback & is not suitable for mixing or mastering.

Can you recommend some reading on that? I see you've explained it a bit further down the chain but bass is my current subject of study so anything more in-depth would be appreciated

 

[Sancus]

How I always answer questions in my own head is to take the question to it's absolute extreme, so imagine you are mixing a track using an 18" sub & 18" monitors. When you mix the track, you can only go by what is coming out of the speakers used. The speakers in this case are gonna be bass heavy, so you dial back the bass to compensate, which in real life playback will sound thin & lifeless.

Why would any speakers be bass heavy if the room is treated and properly EQed? I don't see how the size of the drivers involved is relevant at all? If you are talking about uncorrected sound then sure maybe.

 

[TimVG]

@Maxicut

If you'd know anything about the science of sound reproduction you'd choose your words more carefully, because most of what you just said is flat out wrong. Just because you can drive a car doesn't mean you can build one.

 

[QMuse]

Sort of. This is where audiophiles collide with pro-audio. Audiophiles want the best sound possible to their ears, where engineers want the best sound possible for all ears. It's actually a very hard thing to achieve & it takes many years of experience.

I fully understand your logic and that is the way it should be. But that also implies that such mix will have slightly accentuated bass when listened with SW, right?

 

[QMuse]

Why would any speakers be bass heavy if the room is treated and properly EQed? I don't see how the size of the drivers involved is relevant at all? If you are talking about uncorrected sound then sure maybe.

Size of the driver is proportional with how low the speaker goes. It has nothing to do with room treatment and EQ.

 

[Sancus]

Size of the driver is proportional with how low the speaker goes. It has nothing to do with room treatment and EQ.

I didn't say otherwise. How low the speaker goes has absolutely nothing to do with being "bass heavy".

 

[Blumlein 88]

Size of the driver is proportional with how low the speaker goes. It has nothing to do with room treatment and EQ.

So what is the problem? It goes low, if not accentuated it would be more or less accurate. If you mix some realistic lows they'll be there, and JohnnyQ Public with his little speakers will never hear it. His little speakers may choke trying to re-produce it. So the answer is to put no real lows on your record? I don't know if that is the thinking in the business.

With digital a smarter approach would be to have a standard where you have 1st order roll off centered on 100 hz. Little speaker guys are happy, and people with better gear can reverse EQ something like the phono RIAA curve. Of course no such standard is happening.

Can you master a track to sound best with 20 hz response or do you have to chop it off and pump up the 80 hz range to make it kick for everyone? Both approaches are used. Depends upon how you are trying to get it to translate. Then again translation is a little bit BS if you care about fidelity at all. Any nods toward translation automatically reduce fidelity.

 

[Wombat]

How I always answer questions in my own head is to take the question to it's absolute extreme, so imagine you are mixing a track using an 18" sub & 18" monitors. When you mix the track, you can only go by what is coming out of the speakers used. The speakers in this case are gonna be bass heavy, so you dial back the bass to compensate, which in real life playback will sound thin & lifeless.

So, do you mix without the bass masking the rest and then mix the bass in later?
(Maybe it is like trying to concentrate if you can hear a distracting metronomic noise in the background)?

 

[QMuse]

I didn't say otherwise. How low the speaker goes has absolutely nothing to do with being "bass heavy".

I think it does. Because if you mix with a speaker that goes low you would tend to use it that way and that would make problems with the speakers which cannot handle it. Think of rattling sounds in doors of the cars, high membrane excursion with small woofers etc.

 

[Blumlein 88]

How I always answer questions in my own head is to take the question to it's absolute extreme, so imagine you are mixing a track using an 18" sub & 18" monitors. When you mix the track, you can only go by what is coming out of the speakers used. The speakers in this case are gonna be bass heavy, so you dial back the bass to compensate, which in real life playback will sound thin & lifeless.

Let us apply this concept the other way. Extreme. If you are mixing a track using a two way featuring a 3 inch mid-woofer you can only go by what is coming out of the speakers used. In this case, they aren't able to have any bass, so you'll pump it up until the 3 inch woofer cries uncle. In real life playback it will sound bass heavy. What is going to happen below about 150 hz is a mystery, because you never heard any of it even boosted. Who knows what you'll get? Maybe you'll cut everything out below 50 hz just to be safe. Kind of messed up if you ask me.

 

[Sancus]

So what is the problem? It goes low, if not accentuated it would be more or less accurate. If you mix some realistic lows they'll be there, and JohnnyQ Public with his little speakers will never hear it. His little speakers may choke trying to re-produce it. So the answer is to put no real lows on your record? I don't know if that is the thinking in the business.

Honestly, it may be for some tracks. I think with arguments like these, there's an attitude that there is "one right way to mix" and that's it. But it's really the total opposite. I'm not a mixing engineer, but I've listened to enough music across enough genres and types to know that well... there are CLEARLY as many opinions about "how to mix" as there are opinions about what the best music is.

You have some EDM tracks with absolutely insane low-bass that is not normally present in any sound outside of film tracks, for example. And then you have some pop music that seems like it must have been mastered with an 80hz high pass lol.

To add to that, surround, film, and concert mixes often seem very different from "normal" stereo mixes in terms of tonal balance. Hans Zimmer's Live in Prague concert in Atmos for example seemed like it had quite a lot more bass in the mix than his normal distribution stereo albums.

So yeah, like every other industry, I expect that there are many competing visions about what you should mix on and how you should mix it for different types of content and playback systems.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Translation is tricky business. When I've done a little of it (mastering), I wanted a monitor that was solid to 40 hz. No more, when I used a sub a couple times I rolled it out below 40 hz. My thinking is very few domestic rooms are large enough to do much with lower than 40 hz. And very little (usually no music) is below 40 hz. That is a compromise. Translation always is. But I'm just an amateur hobby recording guy so this has no bearing on real music business.

My real preference is to use 2 or maybe 4 mikes and make it sound real with no processing. But that is totally unviable in a large commercial (or even small commercial) sense.

 

[Sancus]

I think it does. Because if you mix with a speaker that goes low you would tend to use it that way and that would make problems with the speakers which cannot handle it. Think of rattling sounds in doors of the cars, high membrane excursion with small woofers etc.

I don't really buy it, tbh. Especially not nowadays. The vast majority of the devices people are listening on have response down to 20hz(headphones). For the devices that don't(phones, laptops, some soundbars, bluetooth speakers, etc) literally all of these devices are high passed(sometimes dynamically) so that they don't heavily distort.

There are plenty of Netflix shows I can watch on my phone that clearly have big parts of the bottom end missing compared to when I watch them on my HT system, but the phone doesn't explode with distortion just because there's some loud low bass beyond its capability at the start of Russian Doll, for example.