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Post by Dan on Jun 21, 2024 8:31:09 GMT -6
My car has a sub, but I don't think it's obtrusive at all. HOWEVER, it has this sneaky Bose enhancement thing that makes stuff sound hyped like crazy and I had to dive deep into the settings to turn it off, then I found some other stereo enhancement thing that I also needed to turn off. Essentially I turned everything off and flattened the EQ curves that were all overhyped by default. I dunno if you have something like that, but it wasn't obvious that this stuff was ON, or even what it was. Once I did that, everything sounded normal to me when doing mixes. The other trick is, of course, to hype your sub in the studio to get less bass elsewhere if it continues to be a problem. That’s my question though…IS it a problem? Should I be mixing to make it sound amazing in my room - which I’ve spent a lot of time and money tuning - or should I mix for a car speaker? I think you should take into account a variety of setups. Even desk reflections from a big desk (mine used to hold small mixers/tascams) or a typical console can add a lot of low mid gunk. A lot of my clients have weird setups like bass boosted headphones or weirdo old car systems so they request revisions (usually eq or levels) that don't matter for most translation except to their system. I just play along.
I usually use 5-6" woofers to 1" tweeter speakers and... get this... HD 25 dj headphones because that is what every DJ not using IEMs (which you can never predict the response of anyway and they have a construction site portajohn full of nasty crossovers and weird timbre) will be using and they sound very normal in the mids despite having a slightly boomy bass, low mid gunk (it better be clean), and a 7khz breakup or so. There's nothing real after 7 khz in there except for some spikes. I just switched to HD 26 which has less murk and clearer sound but has a little midrange peak at 2-3 khz that the 25 doesn't so anything that's nasty on the 25 and monitors, is really nasty on the 26. It's like having a gunk checker and a resonant crossover / surround thing. Like a darker LS 3/5a on your head with deeper bass. |
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Post by christopher on Jun 21, 2024 11:29:00 GMT -6
There really isn't that much sub bass in that song. It's all harmonic stuff higher up that makes it sound like there's a lot of bass. But the levels of the vocals are much higher than those of the "bass" too. It's just that the sparse mix makes it seem like there's a lot more in the bottom than there is. The rabbit hole led me to this sort of. And the Neil Young kinda proves it to me… It’s about being very deliberate in what you want to allow in the sub, and what level, in concert with the limiting. What a pain in the ass. The nice thing, whether you put the kicks peak at 30Hz or 70Hz, you don’t need to fill the sub. Just a little bit will work to be enough. I’m very guilty of wanting a bass player to shake every environment, I have to manage myself. |
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ericn
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Balance Engineer
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Post by ericn on Jun 21, 2024 13:05:09 GMT -6
Also, car manufacturers will talk about their great stereo consoles with all the wizbang apps and shit while using speakers with fucking paper tweeters. i am no audiophile by any stretch but I certainly know when something sounds awful. Man, ar manufacturrers and cheap POS speakers seam to be a marriage made in hell. When I had the X5 there was this company that offered a “ speaker upgrade “ I had one of their woofers in my hands and wondered how this thing was an upgrade? Ended up going with an aftermarket head that looked stock, some Volt 8’s on special brackets the tiny Morel Tweeets and 2 old school Sound stream Class A amps. It sounded like a pair of rolled off H108’s. |
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