My Recordings Always Sound Bad

[Richard Strickland]

Like the title says, I feel like my recordings always sound bad, as if they have a lofi quality. I've had two songs professionally mixed and they still have the same lofi sound, just a little better. Through headphones the mixed ones aren't terrible, but in the car they prove to have been a complete waste of money. I've been using a Scarlett 2i2 first gen since about 2015, and I'm on my second computer, both good brands. I record vocals and acoustic guitar with either an Audio Technica AT2020 or a Groove Tubes GT55. I run these microphones through a Tube MP/C pre-amp with light compression. I always use a foamed microphone shield and I cover my producer's desk with a blanket to alleviate reflections. For electric guitar I always use a Torpedo Captor X with impulse responses. My room isn't acoustically treated, but I doubt the quality of the overall recordings is a result of that. I was hoping some of you could listen to some tracks I have on SoundCloud and tell me what you think may be the problem. 'Go Unknown' is the only one I have posted that was professionally mixed. I'm interested to know what others think of the sound quality of it, but also the other unmixed tracks. Do your recordings have the same lofi quality until they're properly mixed? 

 

[Byron Dickens]

1 hour ago, Richard Strickland said:

record vocals and acoustic guitar with either an Audio Technica AT2020 or a Groove Tubes GT55.

Not the problem.

1 hour ago, Richard Strickland said:

I run these microphones through a Tube MP/C pre-amp with light compression.

Not the problem.

1 hour ago, Richard Strickland said:

For electric guitar I always use a Torpedo Captor X with impulse responses.

Not the problem.

 

1 hour ago, Richard Strickland said:

I cover my producer's desk with a blanket to alleviate reflections.

Unnecessary.

 

1 hour ago, Richard Strickland said:

a Scarlett 2i2 first gen since about 2015, and I'm on my second computer, both good brands.

Definitely not the problem.

 

1 hour ago, Richard Strickland said:

My room isn't acoustically treated, but I doubt the quality of the overall recordings is a result of that.

Absolutely the problem.

 

1 hour ago, Richard Strickland said:

professionally mixed

Only means the guy gets paid, not that he is any good.

Edited February 15, 2023 by Byron Dickens

[Richard Strickland]

12 minutes ago, Byron Dickens said:

It is absolutely necessary to cover my desk. I get flutter echoes otherwise. The lack of acoustic treatment wouldn't have any effect on my soft synths and impulse response recordings. I'm not saying it isn't the mixing engineer, but his other work sounds great. Granted those recordings may have been done in studios.

 

[Byron Dickens]

3 hours ago, Richard Strickland said:

 

3 hours ago, Richard Strickland said:

It is absolutely necessary to cover my desk. I get flutter echoes otherwise.

3 hours ago, Richard Strickland said:

 

No it isn't and you don't. I don't throw a blanket over my desk and neither does Ocean Way, the Record Plant or Abbey Road. Flutter echoes are caused by upper mid and high frequencies bouncing between parallel walls or the floor and ceiling in small rooms.

3 hours ago, Richard Strickland said:

The lack of acoustic treatment wouldn't have any effect on my soft synths and impulse response recordings.

The lack of acoustic treatment  might not affect anything recorded strictly in the box, but it sure as hell affects your mix. Without an accurate listening environment, you have no idea what you are really hearing.

 

The number one biggest improvement to my own mixes was building some real broadband bass traps.

 

 

 

Soon enough, others will be a long to back me up on this - at least one of whom has commercial releases.

Edited February 15, 2023 by Byron Dickens

[Lord Tim]

Backup arriving; he's right. 

No matter how good your gear is, if your room is fighting you, you can't actually hear it without certain frequencies building up or cancelling out. This isn't just for acoustic instruments in the room either, imagine you've put a song together with a softsynth and you think "wow that sounds wimpy" and you've fattened the sound up to compensate. That might sound great in a room that's nulling 120hz, but in other rooms, you might find that this is way out of control. And if your mix guy is under the impression that this was what you intended for the sound, it won't be fixed, and then mastering at the end (if you get it done elsewhere) ends up as a compromise/fix mistakes session rather than a final shine and prep.

Flutter echoes can be a thing, and a lot of good studios have a cloud above the mix position. I was going to put one in here but I found that even without it the sound was pretty balanced and not a problem for me. I have a keyboard and monitors/computers on the desk in front of me, mixer to the side, and if there's any flutters, I'm not noticing them. But what was a MASSIVE difference was setting up the angled walls, tuned resonators, etc. in the room - the difference was literally night and day.

This all aside, I'm listening to the songs now...

The biggest 2 things that stick out to me are:

Mastering - this stuff is pumping like crazy, like the bass management hasn't been set up correctly first before it's hit the limiter. This can be traced back to the room issue for a start, but this can be mitigated by better mixing, and then if that hasn't solved it, then better mastering (although everything before that point is always the better choice to sort out first)

Mixing in general - the vocals are getting lost behind a lot of things, both with level and effects. You'll find that your mix might sound great alone but once it's mastered you're changing the balance of the instruments. Things like overheads, guitars, etc. will suddenly seem WAY more prominent in the mix, and things like vocals and anything with a lot of transients like snare and kick will just disappear. Turning those up can work, but it might also make the master pump.  Reverb in general is a little loud, and that'll be further exacerbated by mastering effects changing the balance. And I think the last thing is I'm not hearing a lot of clean ups in between phrases, and all of those little noises, hums, hisses, thuds, etc. all add up once they're all blended together.

Like I said, if this is all sounding decent during tracking and then you get it back at the end and you go "this sounds dodgy" (especially if you listen in some other environment and notice it more) then it's definitely your environment first. Then the mixing decisions. Then the mastering. The sounds and performances themselves are fine, but they're getting lost in the problems.

 

[Richard Strickland]

8 hours ago, Byron Dickens said:

No it isn't and you don't. I don't throw a blanket over my desk and neither does Ocean Way, the Record Plant or Abbey Road. 

Not to make this about my desk, but you don't record in my room, and my room isn't Abbey Road. Trust me, I know what I'm hearing and what I'm hearing goes away when I cover my desk. My room is small and I have to be in front of it when recording, and it absolutely produces flutter echoe.

[Richard Strickland]

8 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

Backup arriving; he's right. 

No matter how good your gear is, if your room is fighting you, you can't actually hear it without certain frequencies building up or cancelling out. This isn't just for acoustic instruments in the room either, imagine you've put a song together with a softsynth and you think "wow that sounds wimpy" and you've fattened the sound up to compensate. That might sound great in a room that's nulling 120hz, but in other rooms, you might find that this is way out of control. And if your mix guy is under the impression that this was what you intended for the sound, it won't be fixed, and then mastering at the end (if you get it done elsewhere) ends up as a compromise/fix mistakes session rather than a final shine and prep.

Flutter echoes can be a thing, and a lot of good studios have a cloud above the mix position. I was going to put one in here but I found that even without it the sound was pretty balanced and not a problem for me. I have a keyboard and monitors/computers on the desk in front of me, mixer to the side, and if there's any flutters, I'm not noticing them. But what was a MASSIVE difference was setting up the angled walls, tuned resonators, etc. in the room - the difference was literally night and day.

This all aside, I'm listening to the songs now...

The biggest 2 things that stick out to me are:

Mastering - this stuff is pumping like crazy, like the bass management hasn't been set up correctly first before it's hit the limiter. This can be traced back to the room issue for a start, but this can be mitigated by better mixing, and then if that hasn't solved it, then better mastering (although everything before that point is always the better choice to sort out first)

Mixing in general - the vocals are getting lost behind a lot of things, both with level and effects. You'll find that your mix might sound great alone but once it's mastered you're changing the balance of the instruments. Things like overheads, guitars, etc. will suddenly seem WAY more prominent in the mix, and things like vocals and anything with a lot of transients like snare and kick will just disappear. Turning those up can work, but it might also make the master pump.  Reverb in general is a little loud, and that'll be further exacerbated by mastering effects changing the balance. And I think the last thing is I'm not hearing a lot of clean ups in between phrases, and all of those little noises, hums, hisses, thuds, etc. all add up once they're all blended together.

Like I said, if this is all sounding decent during tracking and then you get it back at the end and you go "this sounds dodgy" (especially if you listen in some other environment and notice it more) then it's definitely your environment first. Then the mixing decisions. Then the mastering. The sounds and performances themselves are fine, but they're getting lost in the problems.

 

I suppose I expected the professional mixing engineer to give me something of better quality. He actually did the mastering on that track, but the others were mastered with Sound Cloud and had very minimal mixing. I'm sure my room contributes to reverb mistakes, in addition to being a novice. 

[Byron Dickens]

1 hour ago, Richard Strickland said:

Not to make this about my desk, but you don't record in my room, and my room isn't Abbey Road. Trust me, I know what I'm hearing and what I'm hearing goes away when I cover my desk. My room is small and I have to be in front of it when recording, and it absolutely produces flutter echoe.

No, I record, mix and master in my room.

This was done in a 10x11 foot room. Including a Miced up guitar amp and the real drums that take over from the drum machine around 1:00 in..

And I didn't throw a blanket over the desk either.

[Richard Strickland]

53 minutes ago, Byron Dickens said:

No, I record, mix and master in my room.

This was done in a 10x11 foot room. Including a Miced up guitar amp and the real drums that take over from the drum machine around 1:00 in..

And I didn't throw a blanket over the desk either.

I-GET-SOUND-REFLECTIONS-FROM-MY-DESK. THE END. 

[Richard Strickland]

9 minutes ago, Byron Dickens said:

You and your f-ing blankets on your f-ing desk are like indexing spark plugs on a motor with a rod knocking.

 

Your mixes are always going to suck because you won't listen to any advice from people who know what they're talking about. The end.

Damn, somebody has anger issues. If only you could accept the fact that your experiences aren't what everybody else experiences. I'm sorry this hurts your narcissistic feelings so much. My f'ing blankets cut down on the f'ing echo that apparently doesn't really f'ing happen because it doesn't f'ing happen to you. If you bothered to actually read you would see that the acoustic environment would have no effect on IRs and soft-synths. Your advice has no merit because it's impertinent to the topic, and also extremely self-centered. But thank you for your brilliant contribution to the forum. What would it be without some jerk who thinks it's his safe place to be the ***** bag that he wants to be in the real world? Get over yourself and seek therapy. 

[Byron Dickens]

You're the one who can't read. You've been told by two different people - one of whom has recorded and mixed commercial releases - where the root cause of your issue is and it is not in the recordings.

 

 

[Richard Strickland]

3 minutes ago, Byron Dickens said:

You're the one who can't read. You've been told by two different people - one of whom has recorded and mixed commercial releases - where the root cause of your issue is and it is not in the recordings.

 

 

The issue was obviously misunderstood by both of you. It's a dead topic now. 

[Lord Tim]

The issue wasn't misunderstood on my part. You said you had issues with your mix and needed help. You said it didn't translate to other environments particularly. I've seen this problem time and time again over the last 30 years - and, at some points, by myself.

You may very well have issues with reflections on your desk. But if it's going to be an issue there, it will be 10% of your problem, as opposed to 90% of it being your room in general.

Real world experience here: for years I worked out of a bedroom with terrible sound treatment and had to continually check my mixes on many other systems to get anything near useful out of them. When I got a professional to finally design my studio, we meticulously went through every part of it making sure the #1 thing was the room didn't screw up what I was hearing, and the difference between untreated and treated as it was being built was MASSIVE.

You can not mix if you can not hear it. That's the real answer here. If you feel like the blanket helps then sure, but I can all but guarantee this isn't your main problem.

You can have whatever you like in the box but eventually you need to adjust the balance of everything, and this comes out of your speakers, which is in your environment. And with a bad environment, you can't trust what comes out of the speakers, and that will influence your mixing decisions of what's in the box. See what I'm getting at?

Start there then circle back to my other points in my reply re: mix / mastering.

If you really do want help, it's available here (and not just from me, but others who have done this work professionally and commercially for years) but you need to go into it with an open mind with suggestions or nobody will be able to genuinely help you. I've been on the other side of the fence with ignoring great advice and believe me, you don't want to waste the time I did back in the day.

Edited February 15, 2023 by Lord Tim

[Byron Dickens]

You're spitting into the wind here, your Lordship.

[Richard Strickland]

2 minutes ago, Byron Dickens said:

You're spitting into the wind here, your Lordship.

Actually he's not. He knows how to give advice in a way that isn't omniscient. 

[Lord Tim]

Well I hope Richard gets something out of it once the dust settles a bit, but if not I like to at least have some useful replies for other people to see and hopefully twig something that will help.

I can say for sure that I certainly needed this kind of post back in the day. Would I have have listened? Maybe? 🙄 But eventually this stuff sunk in and I saw a real improvement in what I did. Shame it took so damn long though... 😒

[Richard Strickland]

12 minutes ago, Lord Tim said:

 

If you really do want help, it's available here (and not just from me, but others who have done this work professionally and commercially for years) but you need to go into it with an open mind with suggestions or nobody will be able to genuinely help you. I've been on the other side of the fence with ignoring great advice and believe me, you don't want to waste the time I did back in the day.

My only issue was the other guy trying to tell me I'm not hearing what I know I am. 

[Robert Bone]

Let's everyone dial it back, to a constructive level of civility, so administrative action is not needed.

Thank you

Bob Bone

[mettelus]

23 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

The biggest 2 things that stick out to me are:

Mastering - this stuff is pumping like crazy, like the bass management hasn't been set up correctly first before it's hit the limiter. This can be traced back to the room issue for a start, but this can be mitigated by better mixing, and then if that hasn't solved it, then better mastering (although everything before that point is always the better choice to sort out first)

Mixing in general - the vocals are getting lost behind a lot of things, both with level and effects. You'll find that your mix might sound great alone but once it's mastered you're changing the balance of the instruments. Things like overheads, guitars, etc. will suddenly seem WAY more prominent in the mix, and things like vocals and anything with a lot of transients like snare and kick will just disappear. Turning those up can work, but it might also make the master pump.  Reverb in general is a little loud, and that'll be further exacerbated by mastering effects changing the balance. And I think the last thing is I'm not hearing a lot of clean ups in between phrases, and all of those little noises, hums, hisses, thuds, etc. all add up once they're all blended together.

^^^^ Before this gets lost in all on the other hub bub, step back and take a look at what Lord Tim said here and focus on this. I am 2 tracks in reading this thread and the individual tracks are not the issue for me either, it is how they are mixed. When things are introduced, they are often 3-6dB, then backed off if they repeat. The vocals are too hidden. On the third track, the drums/rhythm guitar dominate (giving the pumping effect with the FX settings used).

A suggestion would be to take the original tracks (make a new project by doing Save As to another folder), remove FX chains and focus first on balancing tracks and using automation to bring them into focus, then settle in the background. I did not hear a lot of frequency conflicts, but tailoring each track to only pass forward the necessary frequency content is good practice as well. On an individual track it won't cause issues, but when combining tracks you will hear it (why synths are something to be mindful of, since they can and often do cover the entire spectrum unless reined in). Moving instruments to the sides will also help with these conflicts (many things are too centered, and that is often best reserved for things in focus). Motion on the sound stage is a dynamic that is often overlooked (pans, fades, etc.), which is something to think about.

 

[Lord Tim]

I think additionally to this, there's a thought when you start out that adding effects (particularly reverb) will make things sound bigger or hide any problems you have with the performance. And yes, reverb when used properly *can* make things sound huge, but in general it does exactly the opposite for elements you want to be up front, like a vocal.

Think about a sound source in a large room, eg: a vocalist.

If the vocalist is halfway down the back of the room, you'll hear more room reverb and it'll sound a bit duller and sort of distant. Put that same vocalist right in front of you and while you'll still hear the reverb of the room, but it'll be MUCH quieter than the direct voice itself because that's right in front of you.

Which one of those 2 scenarios will give you a more up-front vocal sound that won't get lost? It's not necessarily level (although that'll help), it's how we perceive a sound with its relative level of reverb and EQ.

Taking mixing environment out of the equation for a second, the other big thing that trips a lot of people up are clashing frequencies, and getting sounds to be huge in solo. 

 

Long personal story incoming (I'm sure I've shared this one before, but it's worth repeating here), but this taught me a HUGE lesson in what not to do...

In the late 90s we recorded at a fantastic studio with a big Neve console, Studer 24 track machine, great rooms and outboard gear... it really had everything going for it, except the dumb wanna-be producer kid (who may or may not be me) who thought he knew a lot more than he really did.

We tracked everything one by one, which was fine, and then we got to the mix stage. My goal was to make this thing sound like the heaviest, chunkiest metal album ever, so we meticulously went through every track making sure that the bass had huge low end, bright snap, none of the annoying honky mids... guitars had low end CHUNK, cutting sizzle, heaps of gain for that metal crunch... snare was like a cannon going off, each tom sounded like an explosion... everything had heaps of reverb so it sounded like it was the size of a planet... you get the point. Every part of this was EQ'd and effected to sound utterly gargantuan.

Then we started the mix and ... mud. We couldn't hear the kick drums, so we turned those up and now all we could hear was the thud of the kicks which was making the bass seem wimpy. So we turned the bass up. Why couldn't we hear the guitars now? All we could hear was the sizzly high end, all of the guts went away. Also where did the snare go? Better turn them up. Wait, vocals are too quiet now, better turn them up. Hold on, where are the kicks now?  ... rinse and repeat.

Dumb producer wanna-be me didn't get the idea that frequencies can build up and mask other frequencies. And that effects can sound great in isolation but can really determine where things feel like they sit "front to back" in the mix. I was so concerned about everything individually sounding huge that I missed the big picture of the mix.

Ultimately this was a complete write-off for a mix. We still released it, it still went OK but it's right up there with one of the most toilet grade mixes I've ever had my name on.  That taught me a big lesson about what I think works and what REALLY works is 2 different things, and to start listening to all the people who tried to tell me otherwise.

As a post-script to that, years later we re-recorded that album and it obviously turned out a lot better, and as a bonus I got a rip of the original multitracks and did a remix of it. There were a few poor tracking decisions but overall, with the knowledge I have now, the mix was about 1000x better than the original and a lot of the problems we couldn't solve, or I was trying to hide on the original just wasn't a thing anymore once I learned how it all fit together correctly.

Mixing is a bit of a dark art in that a lot of stuff we assume should sound a certain way is just wrong. If you pull apart a professional mix, you'll wonder why the guitars are so thin, why a lot of the mix is so dry, why it sounds so weird and poky before it's been mastered, etc.  And yet when you listen to the final result, it all works together perfectly.

File this under: THINGS I WISH I KNEW IN THE 90s 😑

Edited February 16, 2023 by Lord Tim