. . . . The age old problem . . . .

ORIGINAL: Dizzi45Z

Put your speakers on stands.

I was having many of these same problems with my ASP8's. When I finally made the purchase to put them on $100 speaker stands, I was blown away with how different it sounded. I could then also position my speakers exactly where they needed to be. My monitoring environment is extremely good right now. My mixes translate very well now.

Don't ignore this step. Speakers on the desk add muddiness to your mixes around 200-240 hertz and you lose a lot of bottom frequencies.

I own ARC and my mixing only improved about 5% through using it. When I put my speakers on stands, I measured it in ARC and realized that I had really, really good response in my treated room. So I stopped using ARC and my mixing has improved at least 30% because of the speaker stands. Definitely worth the shot. You can get speaker stands much cheaper than 100 bucks nowadays.

Your subwoofer may be working against you. I love having one, especially for playing music for enjoyment, impressing visitors, and video games. But the truth is you're probably better off not using one at all.

I seem to always agree with everything bitflipper says

ORIGINAL: bitflipper

Getting a mix that sounds good in my car has been my personal holy grail for years and years. I've pretty much given up on it ever happening.

When I first started seriously recording at home, I really only had my car stereo as the sole alternate reference. First attempts were shockingly bad.

After about the 100th attempt I upgraded my monitors.

After about the 200th attempt I spent a year seriously studying acoustics and acoustic treatments, bought several cases of 703, drilled a lot of holes in the ceiling, entombed myself in the stuff.

After about the 300th attempt I upgraded my monitors again. Sometime after that I bought a subwoofer.

And after all that money and effort, the CDs still sounded like crap in the car.

Then I took my CD to a professional studio where a friend was recording. The engineer was kind enough to let me play the CD through his expensive speakers in a room treated with multiple floor-to-ceiling Helmholtz resonators. I first listened to some exceptional jazz fusion stuff he'd recorded there, and it sounded mahvelous. Then I loaded my 24-bit waves into Pro Tools, sat in the mix chair, and to my amazement it sounded good. Really good. Bass was right where it should be.

At that moment, I had an epiphany: it was the stereo in my car that sounded like crap.

So I next went through my CD collection, pulling out albums that I knew well and that I'd always admired for their sound quality. Guess what? They all sounded like crap in the car!

At this point I was beginning to doubt everything I thought I knew about audio. I could not find one record that sounded good in my car. What had happened?

Here's what had happened. The car stereo was always substandard, I just didn't know it. But over a 3-year period of intense listening my ears had become more and more observant, more picky, better trained, better at critical listening. The better my mixes became, the more I expected from them. And all along, the car stereo was crap.

So I made some measurements in the car. Jeez, I had no idea how bad it was. An ear-piercing bump a 4KHz, a woofy peak at 80-100Hz, nothing below 60Hz. Resonances all over the spectrum. The only way a mix was ever going to sound good in there was if I EQ'd it specifically for that space.

The moral of this story: beware of using your car stereo as a reference. For starters, the car's interior is a small space, which is an acoustically bad thing all by itself. There are large reflective surfaces (glass) on all sides, pretty much assuring rampant comb filtering galore. In my Yukon, the tweeters are actually aimed at the windshield! The woofers are mounted in the doors. Doors that are intentionally resonant so that they make a satisfying whump when you close the door, giving the illusion of vault-like isolation. Everywhere are plastic things that rattle and buzz. Add to that the asymmetry of sitting to one side - there is no "sweet spot". Acoustically, the car is a mess, and if you're sitting in a pickup truck it's going to be even worse.

On top of that, the stereo is by Bose, that once-proud manufacturer that went to the dark side in the 80's. That big 100Hz bass boost gives the illusion of having lots of bass response to the casual listener. But in reality, the bass is very uneven and sorely lacking in the very low end.

So what to do? First, use a spectral display as a sanity check to make sure you're not doing anything too evil yourself. Load up some commercial CDs that are similar to your own style and study their spectra. Of course, you can't just get away with copying somebody else's curve, but you can tell if you're in the ballpark.

Next, take some measurements of your room. You can use Ethan Winer's stepped sine SONAR project and your own microphone, so it won't cost a dime. Simply knowing where the room is weak will help you make informed decisions, even if you do nothing else to mitigate the problems.

Your subwoofer may be working against you. I love having one, especially for playing music for enjoyment, impressing visitors, and video games. But the truth is you're probably better off not using one at all. But if you're already too attached to it, try moving it around to different locations in the room, re-measuring the bass response of the room with each move. One method, which I've used myself, is to set the sub on your chair and crawl around until you find a spot that sounds just right. That's where you want to put the sub.

ORIGINAL: bitflipper

Getting a mix that sounds good in my car has been my personal holy grail for years and years. I've pretty much given up on it ever happening.

When I first started seriously recording at home, I really only had my car stereo as the sole alternate reference. First attempts were shockingly bad.

After about the 100th attempt I upgraded my monitors.

After about the 200th attempt I spent a year seriously studying acoustics and acoustic treatments, bought several cases of 703, drilled a lot of holes in the ceiling, entombed myself in the stuff.

After about the 300th attempt I upgraded my monitors again. Sometime after that I bought a subwoofer.

And after all that money and effort, the CDs still sounded like crap in the car.

Then I took my CD to a professional studio where a friend was recording. The engineer was kind enough to let me play the CD through his expensive speakers in a room treated with multiple floor-to-ceiling Helmholtz resonators. I first listened to some exceptional jazz fusion stuff he'd recorded there, and it sounded mahvelous. Then I loaded my 24-bit waves into Pro Tools, sat in the mix chair, and to my amazement it sounded good. Really good. Bass was right where it should be.

At that moment, I had an epiphany: it was the stereo in my car that sounded like crap.

So I next went through my CD collection, pulling out albums that I knew well and that I'd always admired for their sound quality. Guess what? They all sounded like crap in the car!

At this point I was beginning to doubt everything I thought I knew about audio. I could not find one record that sounded good in my car. What had happened?

Here's what had happened. The car stereo was always substandard, I just didn't know it. But over a 3-year period of intense listening my ears had become more and more observant, more picky, better trained, better at critical listening. The better my mixes became, the more I expected from them. And all along, the car stereo was crap.

So I made some measurements in the car. Jeez, I had no idea how bad it was. An ear-piercing bump a 4KHz, a woofy peak at 80-100Hz, nothing below 60Hz. Resonances all over the spectrum. The only way a mix was ever going to sound good in there was if I EQ'd it specifically for that space.

The moral of this story: beware of using your car stereo as a reference. For starters, the car's interior is a small space, which is an acoustically bad thing all by itself. There are large reflective surfaces (glass) on all sides, pretty much assuring rampant comb filtering galore. In my Yukon, the tweeters are actually aimed at the windshield! The woofers are mounted in the doors. Doors that are intentionally resonant so that they make a satisfying whump when you close the door, giving the illusion of vault-like isolation. Everywhere are plastic things that rattle and buzz. Add to that the asymmetry of sitting to one side - there is no "sweet spot". Acoustically, the car is a mess, and if you're sitting in a pickup truck it's going to be even worse.

On top of that, the stereo is by Bose, that once-proud manufacturer that went to the dark side in the 80's. That big 100Hz bass boost gives the illusion of having lots of bass response to the casual listener. But in reality, the bass is very uneven and sorely lacking in the very low end.

So what to do? First, use a spectral display as a sanity check to make sure you're not doing anything too evil yourself. Load up some commercial CDs that are similar to your own style and study their spectra. Of course, you can't just get away with copying somebody else's curve, but you can tell if you're in the ballpark.

Next, take some measurements of your room. You can use Ethan Winer's stepped sine SONAR project and your own microphone, so it won't cost a dime. Simply knowing where the room is weak will help you make informed decisions, even if you do nothing else to mitigate the problems.

Your subwoofer may be working against you. I love having one, especially for playing music for enjoyment, impressing visitors, and video games. But the truth is you're probably better off not using one at all. But if you're already too attached to it, try moving it around to different locations in the room, re-measuring the bass response of the room with each move. One method, which I've used myself, is to set the sub on your chair and crawl around until you find a spot that sounds just right. That's where you want to put the sub.