My mixes sounds bad in... cars!

[smcoptyltd]

My mixes sounds good on top Hi Fi systems and on cheapies as well. On various computer speakers they sounds good too. I do not have CD player and good system in my cars (Money went into PT!)
What is the trick with car systems?
Complains are: bass to boomy and top is way to harsh and prominent.
I do suspect some particular frequencies overexposed in car systems in bass and near top end.

Any light on the subject?

Help!

TIA


TIA [img]images/icons/mad.gif[/img]

[blake eat world]

Yeah, cars are rough. They really test a recordings width and dimension, you'll need a lot of harmonics and controlled low frequencies to sound good in a car. Usually while driving there's a lot of extranious noise so some of the things that sounded fine in the silence of your home sound dull in a car. it takes those harmonics to pop out at our ears and give us a feel for what's going in a car. Also there's a lot of material for sound (particularly lows) to resonate on so it really tests the dynamics of your bass guitars and low vocals when they start swamping the mix.

[Corey Shay]

This is why I love my car. I know if my mix sounds good in my car it will sound good anywhere. Conversely, if it sounds bad, it will inevitebly sound bad on other cheap systems. This is where getting used to your studio monitoring environment is key. You have to know how a mix on your monitors is going to translate into your car.

This is how I solved the problem in my early days. Do a mix, take it into my car and listen. Too boomy? Then go back and take some of the really low stuff out of the kick or bass guitar. Anything getting lost? Maybe bring it up a bit more or find the right eq. It's a pain but you actually have to do a lot of running back and forth until you get it. Then eventually you'll instinctively know how the mix on your monitors will sound in your car.

[Mount Royal]

Good advice above from Corey and Blake, as usual. Do, though, consult different cars. Car systems vary a lot more than the nearfield monitors that we argue about being so "night and day different" from one another.

John Caldwell

[gh10606]

This is all good advice. My suggestion is not an alternative to the above comments -- just an addition:

Get your mixes as good as you can possibly make them, and then have your project mastered by someone really good. It'll probably cost between $150 and $250 an hour (more if you're in New York, LA or Portland, Maine) but most mastering engineers work fast (maybe 2-4 hours for a standard length project).

Translation on a number of different systems, IMO, is the number one benefit of mastering.

Good luck,

Glenn

[MichaelEarthMedia]

Hi,
Sorry for asking! What near field speakers are you mixing through?
That's probably where the problem starts?
I had the same problem, changed speakers, now no problem!
Regards Michael [img]images/icons/rolleyes.gif[/img]

[lwilliam]

I'm with Corey...the real acid test for my mixes is my car.

I get them sounding good on my Tannoys, Auratones, and headphones (2 sets), then I burn a test CD and take a drive. Inevitably, I end up tweaking a bit more - usually the mids and lows need adjustment in my system...

[dstagl]

Whenever I'm working on an unfamiliar system, I always check it out with my reference CDs. I've listened to my reference CDs extensively, especially my car so that I can adjust to the new environment.

Dave

[dBHEAD]

This is just a suspicion: you are mixing the bass too heavy. It often happens when mixing through monitors which are supposed to be relatively flat, and that's what happened to me on my first project on PT.

It was also a car system which exposed the problem. My mix sounded good and full in the studio, really full on an audiophile system with subwoofers, not that great on cheap systems and terrible in cars.

The problem with good home systems is that they're made to be able to handle lots of bass transparently but many car systems can't. They're made very colored to begin with, and the cones in most of the speakers simply can't handle the bass; even the subwoofers they make for cars these days are made to sound very bass heavy to begin with.

I'm not sure what the problem is with the highs, but if they EQ they're own stuff, they probably already have they highs boosted as high as they'll go -- it just seems to be what consumers always do with EQ in the car.

What helped me was running the mix through the TC Electronics Finalizer. You'll get a variety of opinions on that peice of gear, but I had almost EXACTLY the same problem as you when I first started mixing on PT and that really did solve it.

[smcoptyltd]

Great guys. Many thanks.

Yes! I'm heavy on bass and ... it is transparent on the biggest systems. I've played my stuff on $80,000 speakers in Hi Fi shops and sound was very good.

Thanks again....