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musicman · Posted - Thu Apr 19, 2001 7:10 am

First of all, I'd like to thank all of you who have been answering my questions, I've learned so much. =) Ok, now for my new question. I recently finished mastering a track (dance track). It has some really cool sound fx going on in the midrange area which give the track much depth and substance. Now, my friend is a DJ and he will be playing my track over a huge sound system at a club this weekend. The track sounds perfect on my studio reference monitors at home but I have this feeling growing in my stomache that if he played what I have now, the bass will explode and drown out much of the good stuff which is going on top of it. How can I make sure that doesn't happen without totally ruining the dynamics of the track? Some EQ, or maybe directly increasing the volume of the individual sound fx tracks? I just want to make sure that it will sound the way I planned at the club this saturday, but also if someone happened to throw the disc into a boombox, it would still sound great. Please help! Thanks!

Syntrillium M.D. · Location: USA

The eternal question...will it sound good everywhere? Best answer...test it on a bunch of different systems. Portable CD player, Car CD, boom box, home stereo, friend's stereo, with headphones...maybe even make a cassette and try that somewhere.

Of course, you can use tools like the Analyze>Frequency Analysis and Spectral View to see if you have an abundance of Low End (with a lack of mids) that could possibly cause some deceiving playback in a club setting.

But overall, the best method is to audition on different systems; and, USE A REFERENCE CD. Surely, you have a 'commercial' CD of like-music. A-B this against yours; this always works for me.

Good luck.

---Syntrillium Support

musicman · Posted - Thu Apr 19, 2001 9:43 am

Thanks for your help SS. I probably should have mentioned this in my initial post but that's exactly what I have been doing. Actually, after listening to it on my car audio system (subwoofers, the whole 9 yards) is when I realized that while the mix sounds great in the studio, it might not hold up in the club or another system with huge bass drivers. Then you got your "commercial" cd that sounds great in my car, in my studio, in my boombox, etc. I guess my question was, what can I do to my mix to ensure that when I play it in my car for example, the whole sonic spectrum will sound clear, yet remain the same quality in the studio (i.e. don't want to hike up the mids so that it sounds clear in the club, but is way too overpowering in my studio, etc.). I think you get the picture. =) Again, thanks for your help!

Syntrillium M.D. · Location: USA

Well, if the commercial disc sounds right in all environments, then that's telling you that you probably need to work on the bass/low-mids from your track.

If it's extremely lows that are your problem, try attenuating around 40-60hz, 3-6dB. If it's low-mids that are clouding the image, try cutting 250-315hz, not too wide of a Q, but not too narrow, around 4-8db. This should free up some space down below and tighten the attack of the low, low end without over-accentuating the mids and highs.

Bass is hard to do right. Also, if you hadn't compressed your bass/kick drum tracks (individually) before your mixdown, this could also be a cause of the low-end flubbiness. So, you might want to give that a shot and do an additional mixdown-then, apply the suggested EQs.

---Syntrillium Supoprt