Ableton Forum

Evening all,

I have noticed that the tunes I make in Ableton, while sounding OK on my PC through (not the world's best) headphones, when I export them to WAV and play through my stereo, they sound kind of muffled.

I did a search on this forum, and the answer seems to be to mix down/master the track correctly.

However, I did a test - imported an mp3, didn't do anything to it, saved it as a project, exported to WAV and when I play it against the original mp3, it sounds more muffled than the original.

Any ideas, could it be something wrong with my set up?

You can't compare mp3s, they are converted in the background by Live to .wav/.aiff files, these conversions can affect the audio quality.

Secondly - you need to improve your monitoring situation. Stereos, home theatres, car stereos, etc all tend to hype and colour the sounds, so you can't hear the true sounds. Get some proper monitors, even budget end stuff like KRK Rokit 5s will do OK as a starting point and Audio Technica ATH-M50 or Beyerdynamic DT770 headphones etc. You can't make mixing decisions on equipment which can't give you a true picture on the mix.

You already had the right answer - muffled sound means your mixes need improvement, especially on the low end 500 Hz and down and sub bass frequencies (probably a lot going on under 50Hz which you can't even hear on your equipment but which is eating into your bandwidth). This in conjunction with leaving headroom and maintaining good levels without clipping but leaving headroom are key here.

Tarekith has a good mixdown guide http://www.tarekith.com/assets/mixdowns.html
Bobby Owsinksi's 'The Mixing ENgineer's Handbook (2nd edn)' is also a great book written in non jargon terms.

Learn how to hipass/lo cut filter non bass instruments, and use shelving filters especially to clear room for your bass to kick through without being muddy.

Thanks for the advice. It is as I suspected - there is no short cut!

One other thing, is it safe to trust the 3.5 m headphone jack on my laptop or should I be thinking of getting a decent external soundcard?

Ed

Hi,

One other bit of advice needed for this. I often import a couple of tunes into Ableton and mess around with them a bit for my DJ sets. What is the best way to mix down these and avoid the muffled output previously described because I only have two channels - one for each tune.

Thanks,