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Checking the mix in the club
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| Design |
Hi guys,
I just finished producing my first original trance track. The production involved mixing my own sounds obtained by playing JP8000, Motif 6, Novation KS rack and Korg Electribe ER-1. During the recording sessions I was very carefull to have a clean signal path and get the sounds that I had in mind. After this, mixing was not particularly hard. It was just a matter of setting levels right and of course compresing the kick and bass and some equalization if needed.
Since, professional mastering is expensive I decided to master my own material. I used an equalizer, a multiband compressor and a maximizer. I checked the song on several audio systems, including mine and my friends car and it sounded very good on all systems. Then, I decided to finally check the mix in the club, so I took the mastered CD with me and asked if they can play it. When listening to it in the club I noticed that I could not hear higher frequencies as well as on smaller systems. There was solid bass and a kick that was maybe a bit overpowering but the pads and some of the percussions were lost in the mix. Also, the leads were not loud enough as I expected when listening to my nearfields or other systems.
Therefore, my question would be, how do you really make sure your track is ready for a club?
I can't go to the club everyday to check my mixes, so it would be good if I could somehow know in advance the approximate sound of my mix when played over those huge systems. |
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| Pjotr G |
I think this has more to do with mixing experience and knowing what to look for in a mix i.e. amounts of bass, volume of kick.
Using monitors you should be able to mix a track so it sounds well on any system, that's the purpose of them. Do you try referencing from other tracks from artists you like?> |
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| Design |
Yes,
I referenced the track with a professionally mastered CD. It sounded good. Of course, I could not attain the same clarity, but the amount of base and the levels were pretty close. |
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| Pjotr G |
| what monitors do you use? |
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| dj-sean |
| I suffer from this same problem, but fortunately I have a club at my disposal so I can check my stuff there regularly. I have this problem because I have e monitoring at home, if your monitoring is good though I can't really suggest much. |
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| Design |
| I use Dynaudio BM6A monitors |
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| dj-sean |
Weird, no idea. I do most mixing with my headphones, and in those I know that I'm going to get midranges that are usually about 100% louder than they will be in the club, and sub-bass that is about 5% as loud. On my home speakers/sub it's about 25% louder in the mid-range and 25% louder in the sub range (for whatever reason; I think it's due to the fact that my speakers and sub "muffle" the bass somewhat, whereas at the club it's more crisp and pronounced bass which doesn't come out as comparatively loud).
The only thing I can really suggest is that you overcompensate a little in the areas that seem weaker at the club; either that, or just hope that your track is good enough for a label to take interest in it without it being perfectly mastered, and have them master it for you. Sounds to me like you've taken all of the precautions to safe-guard against this sort of thing, so I'm at a loss as to what to suggest. |
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| Design |
Thanks for the pointers.
Maybe I just need to learn to recognize the sound of my nearfields and compensate for the lack or overrepresentation of certain frequencies. |
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| Pjotr G |
yeah I don't know.
Just try to test on a PA as much as possible then :p |
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| dj-sean |
| quote: | Originally posted by Design
Thanks for the pointers.
Maybe I just need to learn to recognize the sound of my nearfields and compensate for the lack or overrepresentation of certain frequencies. |
Almost every good club I've been to has bass that rocks it a lot louder than the mids, so in my amateur opinion it's safe to suggest that you can always over-compensate a little in the mid-range area. Within reason of course, hehe.
To give an example, I'm remixing 'Naked Angel'. In my headphones and on my home speakers, the AHHHHH male chorus sounds pretty good and loud enough at home, but muffled to the point where it's barely audible at the club. As a result, I've turned it up to the point where it's noticeably too loud on my Sony 700 headphones (designed for DJ'ing, so they really boost the midrange a stupid amount), and now it sounds just about right at the club (could probably even be turned up more). Pretty much all of my productions have had this problem with the main lead too, and to fix this I always add a bit of whitenoise to my leads to make them more pronounced (check the lead in Pulser - My Religion to sorta see what I'm talking about). Of course depending on the feel and sound you're going for, this could be totally useless to you; if you have a piano type lead then you don't want whitenoise along with it =P |
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| Design |
Yeah, I like the sound of white noise, so I might try that. But, it seems that mid and higher frequencies must be much louder than what I have now. I'll try it.
Thanks |
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| Damie Mckeown |
| I thought clubs would have an EQ'ed channel when playing the music because of the way the room is |
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