Exported audio sounds different on different speakers?

[Ron Pipes]

Okay...Okay...yeah, I know, and I get it.  All speakers sound different, and even a certain speaker of XYZ brand can sound a little different than another same model speaker from XYZ brand.  But, with that in mind, let me explain the situation a bit here and see where this goes.

I have the beginnings of a song, roughly about a minute long, and I cannot get this to sound decent through any speakers other than my monitors, a pair of M-Audio BX5's.  They're not high end monitors, but they sound decent when playing my keyboard.  I've recorded with my Korg Kronos with the audio outputs going to my little Scarlett 2I2, and the usb from there to my computer.  Simple enough operation.

I've watched numerous videos, tutorials, for mixing trying to figure this out.  So I cut this frequency here, boost it there, panning, gain staging, setup buses for tracks, for effects...I've tried it all.  And yet, when I export the audio and play it on anything else, it sounds like it's in a box....that's the only way I know to describe it.  I've tinkered with this kind of thing in the past and I've usually not had the problems I'm having now.  Each track is a single stereo track, there are no mono tracks.

So....I started to go through things track by track, re-recording with the effects on the Korg for the programs/voices, as well as just recording the dry sound and adding effects via plugins in Cakewalk.  Same problem either way.  If I record it dry, when I export the song it sounds dry and has a cheap boxy sound to it.  Record wet and the music has the effects but has that same boxy sound.  So.....I figured that I've tried EQ, tried recording dry, recording wet, went through all the gain staging, mixing, putting each instrument in its own space, etc.....what else is there?  No matter what I try it just doesn't work.  When I play back the exported audio and listen on the monitors, it sounds fabulous (to my ears).  But going through the car stereo, home stereo, bluetooth speakers, headphones, it all sounds like *****.   I'm not the only one to experience this...and it's nothing new....right?

Here's the thing though.  I took a couple of the voices and recorded just small parts in a new project, with each as a stereo track just like in the song.  Recorded both with the onboard Korg Kronos effects (Reverb, delay, whatever else comes with the sound ) and also recorded them with no effects at all.  I exported those two tracks to two different audio files.  Both play and sound great through the monitors, and both sound like ***** through anything else.  Thus, it's not a mixing issue.  Each sound by itself sounds awful through anything except the monitors.  One of the voices is a string section and what I found is that if I run the audio through a Bose stereo speaker plugged into the computers headphone jack, I'm then able to EQ the voice to sound pretty good through the speaker by cutting the heck out of the midrange and low end while boosting the upper end a bit.  So...I then took the song, EQ'd that one track with the strings in the same manner, exported the song, played it back through the speaker and, surprise....that section of the song no longer sounds like it's in a box.  I then copied the track within the project to another stereo track,  panned each stereo track differently, sent both tracks to their own bus and added a plugin to that bus to  expand the stereo image.  So, I now have two stereo tracks panned diffently, both tracks going to a bus, and have the stereo imaging plugin on the bus.  Seems a bit extreme, but it worked.  Full spacious strings sound without that boxiness.  Although I had to cut the heck out of the bass frequencies as well as the upper and lower midrange for that particular track, when played together with the Bass and drum tracks in that section of the song, it doesn't sound thin at all and the boxy sound is gone, at least in that portion of the song.

The problem here, though, is that now when I switch my audio to run back through the monitors, that section of the song still sounds good, but nowhere near as full and spacious as it did before since I cut the heck out of the lower end and the midrange.  Still sounds good, but nowhere near as full.  Unlike when playing through the regular speaker, when played through the monitors the string section now sounds a bit on the thin side.

So....I guess my question for the more experienced out there is simply this.  Is this how it's supposed to work?  Realizing that it's all subjective and that there is always going to be a compromise somewhere, is it just a matter of learning what sounds need adjusting here, and others there, in order to find that compromise?  I guess what I mean is simply that when you mix the song, is it generally the case that you may need to have the sound not quite right through your monitors in order to get it to sound good or acceptable on regular audio speakers?  This seems a bit counter intuitive to me and, although I'm sure this would come with more experience, is this how it's supposed to be?  The reason it seems counter intuitive is that it seems to me that the better the sound system, the better the song should sound, but that doesn't seem to be the case here at all.

It could also simply be the case that since it's my own creation I'm hyper critical of the sound.  Where I think it sounds thin on the monitors, someone else might think it sounds even better.

[Glenn Stanton]

one more thing to add: ask someone you can count on for objective listening to give a listen when you think you've made progress as sometimes the things you thought should be at one level or another, when someone else is listening, they may have a different opinion on that... a second set of ears can really help to focus and get your mixes to improve.

[bats brew]

ah, the argument for more expensive monitors, and some room treatment, are inside this post.

[Byron Dickens]

https://ledgernote.com/columns/studio-recording/bass-traps/

[Glenn Stanton]

23 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

This place is also a fantastic resource for learning about room acoustics:  https://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=3

I can say without question that the reason my studio sounds so good (and therefore my mixes translate well) is because of that forum.

not to mention the awesome designer ? lol

i have to say, my Bose 901 are brutal to bad mixes. a good mix sounds great, a great mix - it's the reason people bought them in the first place. you cannot mix on them though, only listen. but if your mix passes the 901 test for goodness, it tends to translate really well. an older pair can be bought cheaply. 

otherwise, as Tim noted - mix on the best pair of monitors you can afford, and then listen on a bunch of other systems - headphones, mono speaker, phone, PC, car, TV, TV surround, etc and after a while you'll begin to know what you need to hear from your monitoring and room in order to get the translations.

[Tim Smith]

Setting up a room for mixing and calibrating the monitors can seen like a daunting thing to a home studio guy. It really isn't a difficult thing to correct.

While what happens when we DON'T have anything calibrated has already been explained, I will try to explain the same thing condensed in another way, just in case you might not be getting what's going on. 

Here is a a very real scenario in many home studios- 

The mids and bass have a longer wave than higher notes. Why is this important in most rooms with no sound treatment? If you could see an audio wave, you would be able to tell the size of the wave itself closely matches the room dimensions of the walls and ceiling. The invisible sound wave matches the  visible dimensions of the room. One you can see, the other you can't but we KNOW these invisible waves are close because we know how long a given wave is for that frequency.

Why is it important to know this? Because the result is what are called 'standing waves' . These waves will have a tendency to not only color or make muddy lows and mids, it also has the effect of amplifying these same frequencies. If you use a set of monitors that already has  some mud, the room will only make it worse.

When you hear this in an untreated room the first thing that will fool you is you will think there is too much bass or low mids. What you didn't know is  the room only made it seem there was too much bass. As a result you will reduce those frequencies or knock down the bass in EQ. When you play the track back on a more balanced system guess what? It will have all or much of the bass taken out of it. This is because you heard the ROOM and not the real mix. Similar issues can occur if recording something like an acoustic guitar in a similar room. The recording picked up way too much low end woof in that room. SDC mics help in that as well, instead of LDC mics since they minimize the low end.

Different rooms can have different hype at different frequencies, but GENERALLY most rooms are picking up and reflecting more bass and mid than high end.

How do you solve this? Bass traps can help as can some sound absorption panels here and there. You don't want an acoustically dead room either, you just need to knock the resonances out. Believe it or not normal everyday towels stacked tow or three high and put into some kind of a pretty frame to hang on the wall are more effective than acoustic foam. There is a science to the way this is done. Ceilings and floors are just as important. A carpeted floor or large rug saves you some trouble there. Panels are often hung from ceilings.

I've  successfuly used electronic correction options with pretty good results. This can save so much work in room treatments. If you can use both it's even better.

What I use-

IK Multimedia's ARC 3 for my room monitors

Sonarworks headphone correction to correct imbalance in my mixing headphones

Louder volume works against you while mixing. It is best to mix at lower volumes. Long mixes can cause ear fatigue and you then get the Fletcher Munson effect. This is your tired ears fooling you. This is why a mix always sounds worse the next day because your ears are rested.

Edited May 12, 2022 by Tim Smith

[Tim Smith]

Another very important thing is monitor height and position to your ears. A triangle configuration is generally recommended, but often HEIGHT is not mentioned. You will want the monitors at ear height, not below your ears and about 3ft away minimum. You need to be able to pick up the detail coming from the tweeters as well as bass detail.

[Quick Math]

I used to use the same monitor. The frequency response of the monitor isn't that flat. And without a subwoofer nor headphones, you can't hear extremely low frequencies from the monitors.

I really don't know what's the cause of that but maybe you could let others listen to the mix so that one can identify the problems of your mix?

And having a reference tracks when mixing would be helpful.

Headphones with some frequency adjustments (like what Sonarworks plugin does) can be more reliable than monitors in untreated room.

And mid range is the more important than high frequencies simply because other speakers are usually not as good as your monitor speakers, so high and low can be compromised and what you hear is basically mid range frequencies. I don't mean you should simply boost mid range with EQ but mid range needs to be clear and powerful, or "standout". And this kind of thing is from mastering perspective and not necessarily about mixing so perhaps you might have missed that?

Mastering is like to make your mix sounds great for any speakers and headphones.

[Starship Krupa]

On 5/9/2022 at 12:12 AM, Ron Pipes said:

I had to cut the heck out of the bass frequencies as well as the upper and lower midrange for that particular track, when played together with the Bass and drum tracks in that section of the song, it doesn't sound thin at all and the boxy sound is gone, at least in that portion of the song.

So you cut the bass and midrange and it no longer sounded boxy. This is not surprising.

What may we glean from this? In general, if you find that things have too much midrange and/or bass when you reference them on other systems....that suggests that your monitoring setup is somehow deficient in those areas. Simple as that. You're cranking those freqs to compensate for it.

Good on ya for chasing down the issue. No longer a mystery, now you know what's wrong, you just need to figure out how to correct it. Mixes not "translating" is an old old problem for which there are well-established solutions.

On 5/9/2022 at 3:50 AM, Lord Tim said:

How do you know how your speakers sound compared to others? Listen to great mixes on each of them. How do you know if there's any holes in your frequency spectrum in your room? Listen to great mixes in there and compare that experience to other places that sound good.

This is the most golden of advice. One of the first tricks I figured out all by myself back in the days of cassette 4-tracks. Like how Bauhaus sounds? Play some Bauhaus on your mixing system every once in a while to "remind" yourself what a well mixed and mastered track sounds like. Yes, I was into Bauhaus back in the day.

So, now we've established that at least compared to your other listening environments, your BX-5's, sitting where they are, have some frequency dips at your listening position. What can we do to help the situation?

Take a look at how you're positioning the monitors in relation to your head and how you're mounting them. Those things look to be back-ported, so make sure you don't have the backs jammed up against the wall. As much as you're able, try moving your workstation to a different place in the room. Ideally, as most know, your speakers should be placed to form an equilateral triangle with your head. Try to achieve that as much as possible. If they're sitting on a desk, raise them up. If you turn your head to look at a monitor, you should be staring straight into its tweeter.

Do they have frequency balance adjustment controls on the back? If so, experiment with them. If they don't, you could possibly put an EQ on an output bus, after the bus you export your mixes from.

You can get a reference measuring mic for around $50 new. That will allow you to take accurate measurements of frequency response at your listening position. I did this, but just grabbed the most accurate LDC mic in my locker ("a half-***** job is better than none!"). Put it on a stand where my head usually is and swept tones and white noise through my speakers while watching on an analyzer plug-in. The Meldaproduction FreeFX Bundle comes with all of the software tools you need to do this.

Doing this satisfied me that there wasn't anything TOO weird going on with my setup. I don't have bass traps as such, but I also don't have 4 parallel walls and I do have multiple bookcases in the room, which actually serve as pretty good bass traps in practice. 10' ceiling with coffer beams also helps. Worst is a room with nothing on the walls, uncarpeted, parallel walls, 8' ceiling. But some people have that because that's what they have.

I won't say unequivocally "you need to treat your room in XX way" because we don't know exactly what freqs your room is emphasizing (although upper mids and highs sounds likely, so you could try hanging a blanket on the wall behind you and see what happens).

Can you afford to consider different monitors? Maybe now that your ears know better, it's time to go audition some and take it to the next level. Maybe not. None of my monitors is likely to show up on anyone's wish list (more likely they'll say they had a set of them back in 1997 and outgrew them) but I know their sound and how it compares with other setups. My Events are, as they say, "revealing," which works for me.

[John Vere]

I bought my NSM 10’s in the mid 90’s when I had a real studio and music store. So my relationship goes way back. I’ve had those in both properly treated spaces and in my spare bedroom drywall box. Guess what those mixes came out like?  I’ve been in less that perfect spaces since I sold the studio 15 years ago and all I can say is it’s extra work to mix in a crappy room.

You can do it, but in the old days I would nail  a mix first time round. I’m still always very close but I look forward to finishing my new space.

The wife sort of wanted a new kitchen, bathroom etc first. But after 2 year those projects are almost done. Just yesterday I was stuffing Roxul insulation in the ceiling joists. It’s in a half finished basement space. I’m going for dead but with lots of soft wooden slats and shapes. 
Anyhow. My answer to the op is like the others. The right monitors in the right room. Or. Spend a million hours re mixing. Or get lucky ? 

[Tim Smith]

On 5/23/2022 at 12:47 AM, John Vere said:

I bought my NSM 10’s in the mid 90’s when I had a real studio and music store. So my relationship goes way back. I’ve had those in both properly treated spaces and in my spare bedroom drywall box. Guess what those mixes came out like?  I’ve been in less that perfect spaces since I sold the studio 15 years ago and all I can say is it’s extra work to mix in a crappy room.

You can do it, but in the old days I would nail  a mix first time round. I’m still always very close but I look forward to finishing my new space.

The wife sort of wanted a new kitchen, bathroom etc first. But after 2 year those projects are almost done. Just yesterday I was stuffing Roxul insulation in the ceiling joists. It’s in a half finished basement space. I’m going for dead but with lots of soft wooden slats and shapes. 
Anyhow. My answer to the op is like the others. The right monitors in the right room. Or. Spend a million hours re mixing. Or get lucky ? 

You are much further along than I am. I still have several projects in front of my dream mixing room. At the rate I'm going I might not be able to use by the time I get to it.