Recordings that sound good on phones and computers...

[TBman]

How is it done? "Hot" track with compression? Just curious. Some of my recordings sound ok on a computer, but none on my phone. I thought I would ask before blowing a few hours on my pc,

[rick-slo]

Originally Posted by TBman

How is it done? "Hot" track with compression? Just curious. Some of my recordings sound ok on a computer, but none on my phone. I thought I would ask before blowing a few hours on my pc,

So you get your phone calls in stereo? Thought not.

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by TBman

How is it done? "Hot" track with compression? Just curious. Some of my recordings sound ok on a computer, but none on my phone. I thought I would ask before blowing a few hours on my pc,

Hi Barry

I think one's imagination adds quality to music on my phone or iPad. A decent set of Bluetooth earbuds helps too.

[Brent Hahn]

Originally Posted by TBman

How is it done? "Hot" track with compression? Just curious. Some of my recordings sound ok on a computer, but none on my phone. I thought I would ask before blowing a few hours on my pc,

Do you mean when you're listening to your phone's speaker (as opposed to earbuds/headphones)?

[TBman]

On my phone's speaker. I listen to something like YouTube or Bandcamp and the recordings sound full, mine not so much.

[Al Acuff]

Do you listen in mono when you are recording and mixing? When I sum them to mono it sounds like your stereo recordings aren't mono compatible because of phase issues. Nulls and nodes.

Try this: Make and mix a mono recording so that it sounds good to you. Now listen on your phone speaker. How does the mono recording translate to your phone playback?

[TBman]

No I do everything in stereo. I don't have a treated recording room and now especially that everyone is home I have to keep the input gain low so house noise doesn't get picked up. I guess I'm just comparing my home brewed stuff against professional studio stuff and its apples and oranges,

I'll play around with it, not much else to do.

[MikeBmusic]

Keeping the gain low doesn't minimize signal-to-noise. Close-miking will help with outside noise, though.

I've never heard music through a phone speaker that sounded particularly good, but you are asking about is 'how to make mixes that translate well to other systems' - basically, you need a mixing room that lets you hear the music and not the room. This has to have decent monitors and some acoustic treatment. and then experiment. Make a mix,play it back on other systems (phone, car,etc). Make notes on what needs to be changed. Do it again, and learn what works and what doesn't.

[TBman]

Originally Posted by MikeBmusic

Keeping the gain low doesn't minimize signal-to-noise. Close-miking will help with outside noise, though.

I've never heard music through a phone speaker that sounded particularly good, but you are asking about is 'how to make mixes that translate well to other systems' - basically, you need a mixing room that lets you hear the music and not the room. This has to have decent monitors and some acoustic treatment. and then experiment. Make a mix,play it back on other systems (phone, car,etc). Make notes on what needs to be changed. Do it again, and learn what works and what doesn't.

Yes, I was close mic'ing too. Ok, thanks the solution is beyond what I do.

[Gordon Currie]

Barry, one thing to try is to normalize your mixes. You may be comparing against music that has been level-adjusted, and if your recording is (for example) 6 dB lower, it might sound less impactful due strictly to the level difference (see Fletcher-Munson).

(And when I suggest normalization, I specifically suggest normalizing to a level below full scale. For example a soft fingerpicking song might normalize to -18 dB. A song with vocals and multiple instruments might be set to -9 dB.)

[Chipotle]

Also: on good speakers, how do your mixes hold up against commercial stuff?

Pick a reference track, a commercial song you know well and think is well-mixed. Listen to it on your studio system. Then play your stuff--how does it compare? If you can get your stuff closer to the reference on good speakers, it will have a better chance of sounding closer on bad speakers, too. And vice versa--if it doesn't sound as good, it still won't sound as good later.

[TBman]

Originally Posted by Gordon Currie

Barry, one thing to try is to normalize your mixes. You may be comparing against music that has been level-adjusted, and if your recording is (for example) 6 dB lower, it might sound less impactful due strictly to the level difference (see Fletcher-Munson).

(And when I suggest normalization, I specifically suggest normalizing to a level below full scale. For example a soft fingerpicking song might normalize to -18 dB. A song with vocals and multiple instruments might be set to -9 dB.)

In bold = game changer.

I had no idea how to adjust this so I played around with Rx7 with the Ozone plug in and in the "Maximizer" I could adjust the db. What a difference. I would need a very quiet and clean recording to go to -18db, but even going to half that is good, much better than what I did on my own. And now if I use a reference file I now know something that I can adjust to bring it down a bit.

Thanks!

[TBman]

Getting closer now. Thanks everyone.


Vaghe Belleze Demo. Not super clean playing, but I wanted to eq something with the new found information: