Ableton Forum

I have those same monitors. Its not your monitors (unless you have the volume on the back of them too low).

Its the position or the room or both. And get some risers. Auralex about 29 bucks at Guitar Center. You can probably get em cheaper on line.

google around a bit for reference monitor placement and you'll get some good hints.

H20nly wrote:I have those same monitors. Its not your monitors (unless you have the volume on the back of them too low).

Its the position or the room or both. And get some risers. Auralex about 29 bucks at Guitar Center. You can probably get em cheaper on line.

google around a bit for reference monitor placement and you'll get some good hints.

My position to the speakers is an equilateral triangle and the tweeter's are at my hears level. I'll check out on the auralex and find something equivalent in europe.

those speaker are not the best, but they should be able to handle what you're doing with them.

and yeah, its probably your room causing the problems. more than likely you're gettting more boom from the room and its muddying everything up. if you can get the speakers away from the wall, or even into a bigger room, i think you'll be pleasantly suprised.

Superchibisan wrote:those speaker are not the best, but they should be able to handle what you're doing with them.

and yeah, its probably your room causing the problems. more than likely you're gettting more boom from the room and its muddying everything up. if you can get the speakers away from the wall, or even into a bigger room, i think you'll be pleasantly suprised.

I'll try recording a sample of the track I'm working on and listen to it on car's hifi or even through my TV speakers to see what comes out of it and if the problem remains. Will let you know later. Thanks.

post the file up hear too, i'll compare it on my speaker setup

It's always a good Idea to playback your tracks though different speakers. cars, radios, computer speakers, cheap headphones, spaceshuttles, monstertrucks, submarines, UFO's and timemachines.

Trial and Error wrote:It's always a good Idea to playback your tracks though different speakers. cars, radios, computer speakers, cheap headphones, spaceshuttles, monstertrucks, submarines, UFO's and timemachines.

+1 especially in timemachines. That way you can really test the longevity of your track.

I agree that room acoustics are usually the cause of muffled sound.

eggnchips wrote:I agree that room acoustics are usually the cause of muffled sound.

totally disagree.

improper speaker support is HUGE. room acoustics matter when you play LOUD.

not to mention bad mixing which everyone is guilty of for years before we learn.

Tone Deft wrote:

eggnchips wrote:I agree that room acoustics are usually the cause of muffled sound.

totally disagree.

improper speaker support is HUGE. room acoustics matter when you play LOUD.

not to mention bad mixing which everyone is guilty of for years before we learn.

Didn't know this. What is classed as proper speaker support? I use books.
My kicks sound so thuddy and have a huge decay in my room though sound dry through the headphones. I blame the room.

i think everything that's been suggested makes sense. your room is bouncing your lows around, and your desk is absorbing them.

and your bass is too low. 35 and 50 are too close for comfort. some of the more anal producers i know have their kicks around 80 and low-cut the bass at 100 or higher(!) i'm not suggesting that's what you should do, but it's a pointer. i love a kick at 50 but then your bass shouldn't go much lower than 80.

anyway, when mixing, walk around the room, stand in a corner and see if that makes a difference. and if your room is unreliable, trust your headphones asuming they're good.

eggnchips wrote:

Tone Deft wrote:

eggnchips wrote:I agree that room acoustics are usually the cause of muffled sound.

totally disagree.

improper speaker support is HUGE. room acoustics matter when you play LOUD.

not to mention bad mixing which everyone is guilty of for years before we learn.

Didn't know this. What is classed as proper speaker support? I use books.
My kicks sound so thuddy and have a huge decay in my room though sound dry through the headphones. I blame the room.

if it's the room you would know because it would sound different in different places.


ideal speaker stands are either non-existent as if the monitor is floating in the air or ROCK SOLID as if the speaker was glued down to a million ton granite boulder.

sound is pressure waves in the air.

the pressure waves are the driver pushing on the air.

the driver pushes against the cone.

the cone pushes against the speaker's cabinet.

the cabinet pushes against whatever it's resting on.

floating in the air, the speaker's sound isn't influenced by what it's sitting on. but it has nothing to push against so you lose some bass, just turn the bass up.

sitting on a solid surface the monitor can push more easily against the air. you get lots of bass and might have to turn it down.

anything in between results in non-linear speaker response. it's unpredictable.


when I brought my Adams home they sounded like shit, the low end was muddy and far from clear. I have them sitting on a wooden desk shelf that's only connected to the desk on one end (it's a 'wing' style shelf.) I was pissed, I called Adam. they said to put down some Auralex, it made a HUGE difference.

I am going to have a bit of a crack at this.

Lets assume that your headphones are hyping the mid and upper bass frequencies but have no sub bass response and your monitors are pretty flat. I would go with the monitors as they might be telling you whats going on at the bottom end where as your headphones are not. Try rolling the master off at 80 and seeing if that makes it sound more like your headphones. If so then you need to go easy on the bottom end because you are trying to hard to mix this bit, just let it be and work on the bass above 60. Check out the response of your headphones and monitors and compare.

It's a common problem if you work on headphones, i don't think there's anyway around it other than using monitors to get the sub right and layering in more midbass to cater for lower range systems.

Still working on headphones as well is useful as well imo, stuff can sound nice and clean on your monitors but then you try it on phones and the stereo effects make you go dissy and it feels like the sounds are coming from in between your ears, it's definatly somthing should pay attention to if you think might people might listen to your track on an ipod.

Still the only way round it, unfortunatly is to check the mix on monitors and late night when you can only check at a low volume (which incidently makes you put too much bass in) this is a bummer, but I'm not sure it is possible to have accurate reproduction on any set of cans.

in addition to what everyone else has said, you can also try cutting the bass a little in the 60-80Hz range and the kick in the 100-120Hz range - let the bass have more of the 100-120 and the kick handle the subby stuff

course it depends on the kick and bass sounds you're using, but as a very general point that can be a good way of making them Gel together