Weak, small sounding mixes? Vocaloid Users Welcome!

Hi Ken,
 
Why do you not post a link to a song of yours in the songs forum, then peeps can hear what you are talking about.
 
Please note that I think you need five or more posts under your belt before links work properly, but you can still add the url without the http part, I think...
 
cheers
 
andy

Cheers for the welcome!
Phase isn't an issue, it's certainly fine on that hand. By "Trebley", I mean it's certainly lacking the "Oomph" of professional mixes. I'm not sure if it's missing enough bass end or mid range, or just has too much high end. Or it could be the lack of compression or mastering?

Excessive treble is probably an indication of a less-than-neutral monitoring environment, a combination of the speakers and the room. You're simply not hearing everything correctly and consequently compensating for shortcomings in your playback system.
 
Fixing that is time-consuming and expensive. It's why mastering engineers have $50,000 speakers and scientifically-designed rooms. Fortunately, there are things you can do that don't require a second mortgage.
 
The first and easiest thing you can do is use a spectrum analyzer on your master bus. This will help you distinguish between what you hear and what's really there. Load up some of your favorite commercial recordings and get used to seeing what they look like on the analyzer so you'll know when your own stuff is in the ballpark.
 
Next step is to take objective measurements so you can get an idea where the weaknesses lie. This can be as simple as playing white noise through your speakers while recording them with a reasonably good condenser microphone positioned where your ears normally are, and then observing the spectral distribution via SPAN or similar spectrum analyzer.
 
Although this kind of crude measurement doesn't paint the whole picture (you need a waterfall plot to see a more complete picture) it's a start and can be an eye-opener.
 
Do you use a subwoofer? If so, it may just be turned up to loud. Most have a volume control on them. Even if you don't use a sub, many powered speakers have bass and treble adjustments on the back. In either case, you may just be hearing too much bass while monitoring. If you're only monitoring through headphones, your cans are probably bass-hyped, as many consumer headphones are. Better (flatter) headphones are a fairly inexpensive investment, maybe $100-150.

to get good at mixing,
you have to have good monitors,
a balanced/treated room,
or software to correct for it,
and you have to have spent hundreds of hours listening to your favorite pro mixes thru those good monitors to learn how those mixes translate AND what you have to do to your mixes to make them sound the same.
 
if you listen to well recorded guitar tracks a lot,
that will inform you as to your own guitar tracks.
 
drums, same.
vocals, same.
 
the most pure path from source to mix,
is a good mic,
a good preamp,
a good room,
a good source,
and minimal processing of any kind.
 
 
 
 
start with THAT,
and you are more than half way there.