I need some help with a mixdown problem

[the4thImpulse]

I dont know exactly how to explain this so I will try my best and please ask questions.

I am currently working on a prog house style track. I have the arangement almost completly done and have started work on the mixdown. When played on my main monitors, headphones, and cheap computer speakers I have everything sounding great harmonically and overall volume wise, however when I play it on one of my churchs PAs some parts lose a lot in the middle and high end of the frequency spectrum, I estimate around everything above 300.

I will break it down by the diffrent tracks:

- My drums are fine. Kicks, hi hats, snare and claps there is no change.
- My bassline/lead pluck are almost untouched, they dont sound bad but there is a little missing
- My high pluck loses a lot of volume (its almost unnoticable) and they lose some of said frequencies
- My pads lose a lot of said frequencies and their volume is greatly decreased
- My cymbals crashes/ builds and noise sweeps lose a little in those frequencies (its barely noticeable and probably just the speakers themselves)

I believe this has something to do with phasing which I dont know much about. Can anyone help me out here or point me in the right direction? I understand there likely won't be a quick fix solution and will be an oppurtunity to learn something.


TL;DR
Parts of my track lose some frequencies of certin speakers and I dont know why.

[TheSunAndTheRainfall]

Well, we'd need to hear the song to know if there is anything that could be fixed in the mix, but really, maybe the PAs are just crappy.

[the4thImpulse]

Well, we'd need to hear the song to know if there is anything that could be fixed in the mix, but really, maybe the PAs are just crappy.

I will get it up on soundcloud soon, I dont believe its the PAs as I have DJ'd on them for almost two years now and nothing like this has happened in any professionaly produced track or even my other work.

Here is the track, the main problem area is around 1:44 - 2:44
http://soundcloud.com/the4thimpulse/unamed-work-in-progress

[vladnuke]

Maybe it's just getting overpowered by the church's reverb? Too many echos muddying up the sound? You could just EQ that section so the drums and bass are lower.

[the4thImpulse]

Maybe it's just getting overpowered by the church's reverb? Too many echos muddying up the sound? You could just EQ that section so the drums and bass are lower.

The room has mild acoustic treatment at head level and ceiling other then that it has a concrete floors and walls. It could be echos muddying that particular sound up but I have never heard anything like it in the years of music I have played and heard in there. Like I said its only the pad and the high pluck that change drastically where as the cymbals and hithats in the area are normal.

What do you mean by EQ the section so the drums and bass are lower?

[vladnuke]

I mean lower the volume of the drum and bass.

[the4thImpulse]

I mean lower the volume of the drum and bass.

Its worth a shot, later today I will have a chance to hear on some new speakers at my friends studio.

Thanks for the help, I realize its hard to understand without hearing it in both my studio and the church.

[Sugarholik]

Are you sure that the church's PA was two-channel?
It sounds like something like that would happen if you played it from mono-source.
Try rendering the song as mono and see how it sounds.

[the4thImpulse]

Are you sure that the church's PA was two-channel?
It sounds like something like that would happen if you played it from mono-source.
Try rendering the song as mono and see how it sounds.

The PA is mono, I will try this out next time I'm there. Could you explain why this would work and how I could get a good sounding mono and stereo mix?

[guitarskills]

mono causes sound to be very muddy. Your ears expect all the sounds to come from different locations, so when you have them all at the exact same spot, the instruments end up fighting each other for dominance. Now how to make it sound better in mono, I don't have enough experience to think of a way to stop that, besides going all out and changing around unison and pan spread. though, Your church PA seems to also just have a decrease in volume compared to your speakers at home when it comes to the areas you talked about.

[the4thImpulse]

mono causes sound to be very muddy. Your ears expect all the sounds to come from different locations, so when you have them all at the exact same spot, the instruments end up fighting each other for dominance. Now how to make it sound better in mono, I don't have enough experience to think of a way to stop that, besides going all out and changing around unison and pan spread. though, Your church PA seems to also just have a decrease in volume compared to your speakers at home when it comes to the areas you talked about.

After a lot of reading through articles on stereo and mono mixing today I have figured out the problem! You are right about multiple instruments fighting for the same area and the other part is the amount of A-B presence in my mix (the audio that doesn't exist in the middle of the speakers and then doesn't make it into the mono mix).

This article has helped me a lot in understanding this stuff, Its worth a look if anyone is interested (it may help you one day ) http://www.moultonlabs.com/more/from_st ... _and_back/


Thanks for the help everyone

[Sugarholik]

I didn't mean that it would sound better in mono. That was just for diagnostics...
In my opinion the church should just get better PA's and you should keep playing around with stereo effects. No but seriously, it may not sound as good in stereo when you mix it to sound good in mono.

And guitarskills, you are right but there's more to it than just that. If you didn't read the article i'll try to explain a bit what causes these problems between mono and stereo.
The main issue is stereo effects: a delay with a several millisecond difference between left and right, reversed polarity on one channel etc. For example if you have that delay with a bit of difference between channels and you mix it to mono you will get a notch in the frequency spectrum. Or to put it simply: the sound suddently has a phaser. Just with a broken LFO.
Now why this happens is because all sounds behave as a series of sine waves. In the case of delay if we had one millisecond difference, it would result in a notch at 500Hz. Because for a sine wave at 500Hz it takes 2 milliseconds to complete it's cycle and adding another sine that kicks in a millisecond later would have precisely opposite phase. Imagine that they are like mirrored images of each other: when the other is at the top, the other is all the way down. When added together you'll get nothing: they cancel each other out.
Sometimes you may have a sound with reversed polarity on one channel. When you listen it using stereo headphones it sounds nice but mix it to mono and all you have is silence. This is similiar to what I explained before. Reversed polarity means that normally when the wave goes up, as reversed it goes down. Again it sounds cool when one channel has it and the other doesn't, but mixing it to mono means you sum them together and get nothing.

[the4thImpulse]

I didn't mean that it would sound better in mono. That was just for diagnostics...
In my opinion the church should just get better PA's and you should keep playing around with stereo effects. No but seriously, it may not sound as good in stereo when you mix it to sound good in mono.

I have spent the day messing around with the stereo dynamics of each little piece of the track, I think I have found a good medium between stereo and mono now. I wish there was room in the budget for a better PA for the youth room (it is the largest youth group in canada! around 1,000 kids every week) but it would be very expensive.