Mixing for Cell Phones

[Ronnisi]

Ok, the time has come.. I'm actually mixing content for cell phone distribution (video clips played on cellphones). I've been playing with a combination of filters from Waves including R-Channel -rolling off highs and lows and using the L1 to slam the stuff so its as loud as possible on tiny cell phone speakers. Does anybody have any experience doing this kind of mixing? Any suggestions? Someone suggested Max Bass (from Waves) but i don't know if it will add anything to the sound.
thought?

[Eric Lambert]

I just finished a big job creating and mixing the ringtones that will ship standard with a major manufacturer's cell phones and I can tell you that you're going to end up frustrated by the sound quality, but you have to do your best to get everything to pop through.

We actually had a beta of the phone itself and a process to quickly upload to the phone, so we were getting the mixes close through auratones, then uploading and listening through the phone and tweaking as necessary. We learned pretty quickly what would come though and what NEVER would. It's a simple process of choosing the important elements and nurturing them. For instance, unless there's high harmonic content to your bass parts, they're going to disappear. I had to recompose a couple ringtones using alternate bass sounds that were more "buzzy" because the buzz actually came through. Hi hats will cut very well, so don't feel like you need to push them. Same with snares. Even the kick drum, again assuming that there's some smack to it, will cut through the mix.

Keep in mind also that the soundfile will be greatly compressed and try to emulate that compression and listen and tweak as necessary before you finish. We went down to something like 64k mp3 to get a feel for what the compression would do.

I'd strongly suggest finding some speakers that sound as close to a cell phone as possible and use them as a reference.

[Ronnisi]

Those are good tips. Maybe the speakers on my ViewSonic LCD monitor or on my Sony PVM 14M4U monitor would be good for simulation purposes. i didn't think of that.

Question: when you say compression, you mean compression as in Data compression right?

I'm producing content for MobiTV and Amped Mobile and I'm assuming there is no added audio compression like on TV or Radio, but i don't really know.

Any experience with something like Maxx Bass?

[phil2000]

in my experience, the most important thing to make it sound good on cell-phone speakers is
to cut a biiiiig hole in the midrange area (between 300hz-3khz) before limiting....
and cut out anything below 100hz.

regards-

[Eric Lambert]

Question: when you say compression, you mean compression as in Data compression right?

Any experience with something like Maxx Bass?



Yep, data compression.

I've used Maxx Bass and I think it might help add the upper harmonic content I was referring to earlier, the stuff that'll cut through on small speakers. Worth a try, but be sure to set the additive frequency high enough that the enhanced bass will cut through the cell phone's speaker. Otherwise, a lower frequency is only going to make things worse.

[Carles Vila]

Most modern cell phones with that abilities can be heard through headphones and can be provided with audio outs. So I think it should be a completely different matter creating ringtones (should be heard "decently" through the phones' speaker) or multimedia content, which could theorically be heard through any audio equipment. In this case I would not compromise audio quality too much just to hear it right on the phone speaker.
Bye

[jeremyroberts]

Anyone here in the ringtone business?

I have a catalog of songs from my record label that are ripe for exploitation as ringtones...

I can manage the mixing/tech stuff -- but if anyone is actually in the business of selling these things, please email me. Maybe we can exploit this content together?

If anyyone has experience in the physical distribution of ringtones, I'd love to hear from you. My email is in my profile. Thanks!