I'm lost and confused at the moment. I have an album that sounds great on my studio monitors, my car, your car, iphones on headphones, BUT....if you introduce a sub or play it on a PA system, its a bloody muddy bassy mess around 80-120hz. any attempt to rectify this has resulted in a strange, weak or thin outcome. I hear it on the bass guitar most, then bass drum , and even on the low end of the snare..also guitars when palm muting at 100-150hz... How can i keep this energy out of the subs?...

If you mix it on a system without a sub, which apparently you are doing and using such small 5" speakers, you are not hearing the total mix accurately. 

My guess would be that as a result of mixing on the small speakers in the studio, you are over compensating the bass and low end so it sounds good on them..... likely the car speakers and system there are similar...low power, small speakers. 

When you put it on a PA system which has a capable low end all that stuff that you compensated for now becomes more than evident and the mix is ruined. Also.... be sure on the PA that you are using a WAVE and not the MP3 version. The mp3 can be a source of low fidelity in a nice system. 

With out getting too technical, I would suggest adding a sub to the home studio and you really don't need to spend a huge amount on one.... Check Best Buy and plan to get something at least 10" and 100+ watts.....  I use a home stereo/theater style sub from Polk Audio.  Also, using ARC properly set up will help you overcome some of the limitations in the listening environment which could also be skewing the mix.....after all, it you can't hear it, you can't mix it properly.

I use both ARC and a sub with my 5" Mackies.

you may be absolutely correct guitar hacker

Kinda like short guys and big cars.... 

Guitarhacker


Kinda like short guys and big cars.... 

Yeah, they have a problem seeing over the wheel.

How does it look in an analyser? Both the individual tracks and the master bus?
Usually you can reasonably well spot such problems visually, if you can't monitor.

Ah, the classic translation paradox, something everybody struggles with. The mix sounds good in one environment but not another, and fixing it for an alternate environment makes it sound worse in the first. 

It would seem to be an impossible mission, if not for the knowledge that professional recordists do somehow manage to consistently pull off this bit of magic, so you know it can be done.
The basic problem in a nutshell is that your listening environment (your speakers + your room) is not sonically neutral. Consequently, many of your mix, EQ and effects decisions are being made to correct defects that aren't really in your song at all, but rather in your environment. Consequently, when you take the song to another environment those corrections are no longer appropriate.

The ultimate goal is therefore to create a sonically-neutral listening environment for yourself. Not an easy goal! In truth, it's quite impossible to achieve a perfectly neutral space outside of an anechoic chamber. But you can make it better. 

First, the easy part: your speakers. Recognize that any speakers with 6.5" woofers or smaller cannot represent the entire low end of the spectrum. (Tip: on those Alesis speakers, try stuffing socks into the ports - it will help.) Understand that your speakers cannot accurately reproduce frequencies below around 60-70 Hz (maybe higher with the socks installed), and you will have to use a spectrum analyzer to check levels down in that range. 

Try to situate your speakers as far from any walls as possible. Worst-case scenario is having them right up against the wall behind them, which will seriously fu, er, mess up the low end.

Do not add a subwoofer at this stage. It will cause more problems than it solves. Rely on a spectral display such as Voxengo SPAN to judge levels at the very low end, and err on the side of attenuating them. Remember, most playback systems have even less bass than your studio monitors, and they're not going to miss that nice 40Hz whump at all if you filter it out entirely. Many commercial recordings routinely high-pass the 2-bus around 30-40Hz.

Now the hard part: room acoustics. That's almost certainly what's messing you up more than anything, way more significant than your modest speakers or the lack of a subwoofer holding you back. I'd suggest a visit to Ethan Winer's RealTraps site as a good starting point; it's a treasure-trove of practical advice and information.


Finally, don't forget to use reference recordings. Load a commercial track that's similar in style to what you're working on - import it right into your project - and compare its spectrum to yours. Don't try to match them exactly, because you can't and shouldn't. But if yours is radically different, that can be a clue where to start EQing.

The mix translates well enough on other stereos, it was just 100 and below...to rectify, i brought another stereo into the room that had a sub and compared and mixed to taste. Firstly, we were on the same page about bringing another song into the mix to compare. i did that and it i noticed the problem.. thanks guys...one thing though bit...which holes do i stuff, the inside or the outside, does it matter?

A good book to read : Mixing Secrets for the small studio (Mike Senior) 

This book starts off with the first several chapters discussing the monitors and monitoring the sound.  It approaches it from the point of view that if the monitoring speakers and environment is not right, that will adversely affect everything you do in that studio. 

It covers the strengths and weaknesses of the different types of speakers on the market and in use in most studios. 

Doesn't matter which holes you stuff, inside or outside. You might even end up stuffing both, if the speakers are very close to the wall. (For those unfamiliar with the OP's speakers, they have two ports per speaker.)