Not able to hear "harsh" sound when designing a sound from scratch

[himalaya]

At this price range I would be looking Adam A7 (very revealing, nothing can hide from these monitors. People confuse its transparent sound as 'harshness' but its not so), Focal Alpha 80, Dynaudio BM5 (very 'silky', also revealing but more silky than the Adam's)...there are many more, but no recommendation is worth your own assessment in a shop, especially if they have a proper demo room. Treat yourself to a trip, even if you have to travel far, book the shop demo studio and audition several monitors with music material you know well. Monitors are so important.

[Auplant]

Thank you for responses.

[xoxos]

one of the old school truisms,

play your material out on different monitors. listen to your mixes on as many sets of speakers as possible so you get an idea of how it translates.

"harshness" = ??? possibly, your high frequencies are too loud? in the age of computer music people think glitches et c. sound hype and that's where our "sound" is now, but you play that on big monitors (or headphones!) and you will fry your ears.

it's like that procedural music guy kelvin lord(sp?) trying to get rich playing bitshifting music, he's just frying people's ears, won't be able to hear anything in a few years.

once you know how sound translates, the quality of your monitors isn't such a big deal. iirc the old story is that prodigy mixed their first single on one monitor.

use a spectral analyser. if your highs are the same volume as your lows, they're too loud.

i take this principle to heart, eg. mixes on my last album, the hats are barely audible. just nestled "in there" - crank it and you can hear their timbre alright. at low volumes they're a whisper. like how people used to mix before computers.

[zethus909]

get better headphones get HD600 headphoness.

[ThePresent]

Krk's are already bi-amped so a lack of bi-amping can't be the problem.
Before spending your cash, help yourself using some old speakers or borrow some monitors and put them in your room. Play the "invisible" harsh sound. If you cannot hear the harshness with these too, maybe the fault is in your room.
Headphones don't suffer from room modes so maybe that's why you can hear the harshness through them.
I'm using a combination of krk's, Sennheiser 380 and a little crap mono speaker. I also ocassionally experienced invisible harshness when using excessive distortion with the krk's but you have to consult different listening devices anyway and that's how I discovered the problem and dealt with it. And kept my cash

[Auplant]

Krk's are already bi-amped so a lack of bi-amping can't be the problem.
Before spending your cash, help yourself using some old speakers or borrow some monitors and put them in your room. Play the "invisible" harsh sound. If you cannot hear the harshness with these too, maybe the fault is in your room.
Headphones don't suffer from room modes so maybe that's why you can hear the harshness through them.
I'm using a combination of krk's, Sennheiser 380 and a little crap mono speaker. I also ocassionally experienced invisible harshness when using excessive distortion with the krk's but you have to consult different listening devices anyway and that's how I discovered the problem and dealt with it. And kept my cash

It's hard to know, my room is very small and there's practically no reverb in here. but I'm thinking too, that it might be because i'm playing uncompressed sounds too loud, and maybe it's a case of just listening to unprocessed sounds while I'm creating something. I just hate how I have one coloration on my earphones, another coloration on my headphones (sennheizer hd280pro) and then another on my krk's. It gets too confusing when I try to mix down a track. I just want the reality on one source, think it would be so beneficial. maybe i'll post some of the layers I made and you can see what I mean by the harshness of the punch, it's the 4K to 7K which I'm unmindful of with the KRKs

[JJ_Jettflow]

A question to to the OP; is your room treated or using room correction in any way?

While new speakers may help some , placing expensive monitors in an untreated room will do nothing to improve the listening environment.

[JJ_Jettflow]

double post

[Auplant]

A question to to the OP; is your room treated or using room correction in any way?

While new speakers may help some , placing expensive monitors in an untreated room will do nothing to improve the listening environment.

Nope it is not treated and I'm guilty of that *bedroom producer here, haha. Will it makes a difference to hearing in the mids do you think? If I say "ahhhhh" I hear a very, very faint reverb since my room is so small, like 3% reverb. I hear no apparant reverb when I play audio through the monitors. I used to be in a bigger room (untreated) with the same monitors, and I heard a lot of reverb, was almost useless to use the monitors there.

[JJ_Jettflow]

A question to to the OP; is your room treated or using room correction in any way?

While new speakers may help some , placing expensive monitors in an untreated room will do nothing to improve the listening environment.

Nope it is not treated and I'm guilty of that *bedroom producer here, haha. Will it makes a difference to hearing in the mids do you think? If I say "ahhhhh" I hear a very, very faint reverb since my room is so small, like 3% reverb. I hear no apparant reverb when I play audio through the monitors. I used to be in a bigger room (untreated) with the same monitors, and I heard a lot of reverb, was almost useless to use the monitors there.

removed

[JJ_Jettflow]

A question to to the OP; is your room treated or using room correction in any way?

While new speakers may help some , placing expensive monitors in an untreated room will do nothing to improve the listening environment.

Nope it is not treated and I'm guilty of that *bedroom producer here, haha. Will it makes a difference to hearing in the mids do you think? If I say "ahhhhh" I hear a very, very faint reverb since my room is so small, like 3% reverb. I hear no apparant reverb when I play audio through the monitors. I used to be in a bigger room (untreated) with the same monitors, and I heard a lot of reverb, was almost useless to use the monitors there.

I think you are dealing with what I went through; I believe you are dealt with what is called "standing waves". In all rooms, but especially smaller rooms, low frequencies do not dissipate and tend to gather in the corners of the room. That is why is pro studios use what is called bass traps.
So when you start listening to your monitors, the signal coming from them gets mixed with your listening environment causing you to hear an inaccurate version of your audio. In most cases either boom or muddy. So the first thing that you will do is correct what you think is wrong by either adding some top end or cutting some bass. It sounds good in your room but when you listen to it in another environment, like your headphones, it will sound thin or harsh because you cut out bass that was not really coming from the sound or your speakers but from room.

[JJ_Jettflow]

A question to to the OP; is your room treated or using room correction in any way?

While new speakers may help some , placing expensive monitors in an untreated room will do nothing to improve the listening environment.

Nope it is not treated and I'm guilty of that *bedroom producer here, haha. Will it makes a difference to hearing in the mids do you think? If I say "ahhhhh" I hear a very, very faint reverb since my room is so small, like 3% reverb. I hear no apparant reverb when I play audio through the monitors. I used to be in a bigger room (untreated) with the same monitors, and I heard a lot of reverb, was almost useless to use the monitors there.

I think you are dealing with what I went through; I believe you are dealt with what is called "standing waves". In all rooms, but especially smaller rooms, low frequencies do not dissipate and tend to gather in the corners of the room. That is why is pro studios use what is called bass traps.
So when you start listening to your monitors, the signal coming from them gets mixed with your listening environment causing you to hear an inaccurate version of your audio. In most cases either boom or muddy. So the first thing that you will do is correct what you think is wrong by either adding some top end or cutting some bass. It sounds good in your room but when you listen to it in another environment, like your headphones, it will sound thin or harsh because you cut out bass that was not really coming from the sound or your speakers but from room.

[Auplant]

A question to to the OP; is your room treated or using room correction in any way?

While new speakers may help some , placing expensive monitors in an untreated room will do nothing to improve the listening environment.

Nope it is not treated and I'm guilty of that *bedroom producer here, haha. Will it makes a difference to hearing in the mids do you think? If I say "ahhhhh" I hear a very, very faint reverb since my room is so small, like 3% reverb. I hear no apparant reverb when I play audio through the monitors. I used to be in a bigger room (untreated) with the same monitors, and I heard a lot of reverb, was almost useless to use the monitors there.

I think you are dealing with what I went through; I believe you are dealt with what is called "standing waves". In all rooms, but especially smaller rooms, low frequencies do not dissipate and tend to gather in the corners of the room. That is why is pro studios use what is called bass traps.
So when you start listening to your monitors, the signal coming from them gets mixed with your listening environment causing you to hear an inaccurate version of your audio. In most cases either boom or muddy. So the first thing that you will do is correct what you think is wrong by either adding some top end or cutting some bass. It sounds good in your room but when you listen to it in another environment, like your headphones, it will sound thin or harsh because you cut out bass that was not really coming from the sound or your speakers but from room.

ah that is very interesting, thanks for informing me about this

[JJ_Jettflow]

removed