crossover nightmare......if you dare keep with me

[affiliations]

Well I now have a 60 minutes long track on Ableton that I wish to burn into a CD.
The track sounds great here on my monitors but as you know making it fit nicely into a CD involves a bit more.
I am down to adjusting mainly the low cutoff frequency, slight compression and eq, maximisation, width, and basically how bassy or not the whole CD will sound.

My monitors are as follow: (yes I know a bit of an overkill)
2 yamaha S112IV
2 homemade 12" subs
1 ART310 active crossover
1 QSC RMX1450 amp for the yamahas
1 Yorkville AP800 amp for the subs
There also is a pair of BX5 monitors but my problem applies to them as well

problem:
Setting the levels on the crossover for low output vs high output.

1- My first taught was to set the subs outputs 3dB higher that the yamahas as the subs sensitivitys are 3dB lower. (with equal gains on the amps)
this never worked since it just never sounds right playing any material. The crossover's low outputs need to be louder than that.

2- I've recorded a few frequency sweeps using a the radioshack sound level meter microphone, one side at a time. Those recordings were grossely discusting with peaks and valeys so
I dont think I am acomplishing much here. But tweaking that for awhile the crossover's low outputs are now about 12dB louder than the yamahas which sound ok most of the time but yes a bit too bassy on average.
My head also hurts from listening to all that sinusoid sweeping stuff. And my neighbours hate me even more now.

3- Now this is my latest idea: Both the yamahas and the subs are capable of a relatively flat response between 200-1000HZ which is about one octave inside their respective cutoffs.
I have taken a pink noise and filtered it to those values so that only that range of frequency is theoritically output from the computer's audio.
First with all speaker muted but the left yamaha, and the crossover freq all the way down to 80 HZ, the left yamaha registers 80 dB on the SPL meter. Then with all muted but the left sub and the crossover freq all the way up to 9.2KHZ, I adjusted the left low output level to register 80 dB SPL as well. Then the same procedure on the right channel.
Low outputs are now 8 dB above high outputs and it does sound generally satisfactory.

But how do I know? Everytime I fiddle with that crossover even slightly, I need to go back and re-adjust hundreds of parameters for an hour long track on ableton's plugins to get the sound I want.
Anything else I should be watching for? comments? suggestions?..............

[DeadlyKungFu]

An SPL meter is the only way to go. Everyone's ears have dead spots in them. Tune the room with pink noise at 80dB SPL and don't touch anything.

Ultimately you should take your mix to a great sound system, a crap sound system, a portable stereo, your car and in a portable CD player to evaluate the sound quality. Real producers mix for the their audience's listening device of choice.

Sounds like you're well on your way.

[mikemc]

how many xover points do you have on this? a) lowest, low, mid, high? or just b) low mid high? I think you need 'a' to avoid overlap on the yamahas and subs. But if you have b, I think you need to turn off the subs, do your mix, then mute the yamahas and adjust your crossover to 'lowest', mentally audiolize and work on getting any mud out of the the sub bass.

also, dkf is on point, you want to a/b with the BX5s, then burn a disc and go out to the car.

[affiliations]

mikemc, Im not sure about your question. There is one crossover point that is adjustable anywhere between 80HZ and 9.2KHZ. I usually like it at about 150 HZ. There is also a passive filter inside the yamaha for the tweeter horn but I dont think this is what you are talking about.
I think you are suggesting re-working the bass end with the yamahas muted? I've worked alot with the subs muted, but never even thaught of trying the other way arround. Ill give that a go for abit.

I do alot of a/b ing' with the BX5s also but they are far more difficult to tune with the subs than the yamahas as they are plugged straight into the mixing board and not via the crossover. I guess I could always change that though.

[gomi]

Well I now have a 60 minutes long track on Ableton that I wish to burn into a CD.
The track sounds great here on my monitors but as you know making it fit nicely into a CD involves a bit more.
I am down to adjusting mainly the low cutoff frequency, slight compression and eq, maximisation, width, and basically how bassy or not the whole CD will sound.

My monitors are as follow: (yes I know a bit of an overkill)
2 yamaha S112IV
2 homemade 12" subs
1 ART310 active crossover
1 QSC RMX1450 amp for the yamahas
1 Yorkville AP800 amp for the subs
There also is a pair of BX5 monitors but my problem applies to them as well

problem:
Setting the levels on the crossover for low output vs high output.

1- My first taught was to set the subs outputs 3dB higher that the yamahas as the subs sensitivitys are 3dB lower. (with equal gains on the amps)
this never worked since it just never sounds right playing any material. The crossover's low outputs need to be louder than that.

2- I've recorded a few frequency sweeps using a the radioshack sound level meter microphone, one side at a time. Those recordings were grossely discusting with peaks and valeys so
I dont think I am acomplishing much here. But tweaking that for awhile the crossover's low outputs are now about 12dB louder than the yamahas which sound ok most of the time but yes a bit too bassy on average.
My head also hurts from listening to all that sinusoid sweeping stuff. And my neighbours hate me even more now.

3- Now this is my latest idea: Both the yamahas and the subs are capable of a relatively flat response between 200-1000HZ which is about one octave inside their respective cutoffs.
I have taken a pink noise and filtered it to those values so that only that range of frequency is theoritically output from the computer's audio.
First with all speaker muted but the left yamaha, and the crossover freq all the way down to 80 HZ, the left yamaha registers 80 dB on the SPL meter. Then with all muted but the left sub and the crossover freq all the way up to 9.2KHZ, I adjusted the left low output level to register 80 dB SPL as well. Then the same procedure on the right channel.
Low outputs are now 8 dB above high outputs and it does sound generally satisfactory.

But how do I know? Everytime I fiddle with that crossover even slightly, I need to go back and re-adjust hundreds of parameters for an hour long track on ableton's plugins to get the sound I want.
Anything else I should be watching for? comments? suggestions?..............

i've always had better results mixing without subwoofers..

in the post production world the only frequencies ever sent to the subs are 120 and below..
nothing else.. ever. so if you have a kick, and it's not below 120.. don't send it to your
sub. your midrange should have all the pump and juice to drive those sounds..



my pet peave are those guys who drive around with subwoofers in their cars..
wtf is the point of that? thats not music, it's a fucking mobile heart attack.

[affiliations]

mmm, that is interesting.
Yeah, the more im figuring this out, it seems there is less and less coming out of those subs. That must be a good thing. I dont like seeing them move too much either it never sound right.