Too much bass!!! (ye olde headphone reference problem)

[lmv]

Facts: I am shy and very poor.

Due to the former, only one person that I know listened to my tracks and he didn't like them. No details. He just didn't. I had them on the Internet for some time and almost nobody listened to them, and those who did didn't listen them entirely. The site can tell when a listener quits halfway. I know what you're thinking, my music probably sucks, but please bear with me.

Due to the latter, I only have a very lame pair of headphones and a very lame mono computer speaker. I can't afford anything else so please bear with me.

I make my music with the mono computer speaker so I don't get ear fatigue. When mixing and mastering and doing any other polishing, I use the headphones. Finally, I upload the track to my phone and listen to it on the phone with headphones because I really think the phone has great playback quality. I really do. I just think I should have better headphones.

Well, one day I was wasting an hour at the mall and went into a music store. I asked to see their headphones. They let me test the headphones, four pairs. And then it happened. They let me hook it up to my phone and of course I played my own tracks and... My God! So much bass! Very unpleasant. I can imagine people listening and wondering what kind of idiot mixed and mastered it that way. It sounded ruined. VERY different from what I hear at home.

The store clerk was very nice and helpful and, long story short, he made it clear that people these days are all about the bass. Many customers will bring it up spontaneously. They ask for it. I explained that I'm kind of old fashioned and would like something more... uh... balanced. He seemed to understand my position, but assured me that what I wanted would be hard to find because the uber-bassy thing has pretty much become a standard.

I don't only listen to my own tracks. I listen to a lot of things, and my tracks don't sound bad at all in comparison. At least not like I turned the bass up to eleven. One may not approve the style or the composition or my poor mixing, whatever, but until my visit to the store I could never imagine that the bass would be exploding like that. And many subtleties of the arrangement (i.e. treble) disappeared too.

Finally, the question: what can I do about that? How can I get a better idea of how other people will be hearing something that I produced? Should I buy one of those super ultra mega bass headphones and accept that as the standard? Does everybody listen to music that way? I doubt it. Come on. What do you suggest in this situation?

[Freaqpeak]

I feel you. When I started out all my mixes were terrible. Tried "high quality" phones, and consumer speakers. A dead end.
Wasted a lot of years until I bought good monitors. Then realizing the room treatment was more important than any decent monitor. Room treatment for nearfield monitors is almost free or less than 50 euro if you build bass traps or absorbers your self.

To me, mixing in headphone is impossible. I know some ppl do it, but I have never heard a single great mix that was mixed on headphones only. Its incredibly hard to translate what you hear in any headphones to what it sounds like in a pair of speakers or monitors.
It does not need to be expensive at all to get you a good setup. Pretty much any 2nd hand nearfield monitors will do. Just be sure to build some absorbers in your listening position. Below 50-60 hz is hard on small speakers. But compare your mix with commercial tracks with just the subs using a steep LP filterbat 100 Hz. Analyze other tracks that are similar to yours. I didnt do this myself for many many years coz i thougth it was cheating.... I wish I would have from the start 25 years ago.

You CAN get cheap monitors second hand, so that is my best tip.
Anything will be better than pc speakers or headphones. Small nearfield monitors are great.
If you cant produce on speakers due to neighbours.. well, its a tough one....
Maybe buy a decent pair of studio headphones (2nd hand for better price) and listen to alot to others music in them. Learn them. Learn how the sound translates to speakers. Open headphones, closed ones are almost always worse. DONT buy consumer/listening headphones, its just not going to work.
I dont have any tips on headphones more than I like some Beyerdynamics, really confy and OK sound. But.. I could not mix entirely in any headphone ive tried.

[lfm]

Finally, the question: what can I do about that? How can I get a better idea of how other people will be hearing something that I produced? Should I buy one of those super ultra mega bass headphones and accept that as the standard? Does everybody listen to music that way? I doubt it. Come on. What do you suggest in this situation?

Don't only go by price and certainly not those with enhanced bass.

I think the magic words are "that translate well".
- not to sound good

Legendary Yamaha NS10 monitors were said to not sound so good, but when getting it as good as it gets, it sounded really good and balanced on other devices.

A lot of wisdom from cnt, just adding that.

I had a lot of frustration mixing with some general purpose phones, and then in hifi speakers, in the car, mobile phone in ear stuff.
- I had to redo final mix so many times I really needed a solution.
- just boring and time consuming redo it for every song

I searched internet for tips for phones that translate well.
- I tested one that was adviced but it sounded crap
- when getting the second pair as adviced sounding crap the coin dropped
- phones were 250 ohm and phones out on interface did not do that well
- so learned about headphone preamps

In my case Sennheiser HD650 with a headphone preamp Pro-Ject Headbox S were the keeper.
- $300 + $100 total cost at the time, 10 years ago

It''s not just about getting enough volume, it's also about driver of phones can drive full frequency range.
- you may feel volume is enough
- but frequency response not linear anymore as heard

My monitors are not a big brand available everywhere, so don't mention those.
- but the choice was based on a review of those
- one guy said that he really heard how different recording quality there were on various records he had on his shelf.
- the coin dropped, this is what it's about, hearing differences

Many hifi gear for listening in general are fixing up by boosting bass, many like that.

Monitor can to some degree be evaluated with waterfall graphs.
Check out this document about NS10 monitors
https://dt7v1i9vyp3mf.cloudfront.net/as ... /ns10m.pdf

Many interesting comparison graphs over monitors of various brands.

So when signal stop the speaker cone should stop too as soon as possible.
- you see comparison with NS10 which is very shallow
- waterfall graph is not so deep, but almost flat
- those that are deep, it takes a long time for cone to stop at that frequency
- this means when a certain signal disappear, no matter which frequency, cone stops too
- so nothing added to music signal which is complex

This is example of what I read called
- consistent in frequency domain as well as time domain
- this is nerd stuff I don't fully understand but can be summed up shortly
- when you make a certain adjustment of eq you hear that change exactly as it is

Cheap stuff not meant for mixing will blur that up to sound as pleasent as possible making up for inconsistencies in speakers.
- and as cnt pointed out, resonances in your room can trick you the same way
- so room treatment might be needed for monitors if you have trouble on another device getting good balance of your mix.

Looking for mixing monitors check that there are options to adjust those on monitors themselves.
- if close to a wall, often general adjustment from 300 Hz and below
- boost or drop some bass, mid or treble etc
- it helps and separate mixing monitors from hifi speakers

Even plugging ports, if having any, makes a difference to frequency response.
- pic below on my monitors
- plugging port can make frequency response different
- in my case a bass port that can be plugged as needed
- my monitor is plugged more close to wall since a wall boost bass a bit
- this actually works

You can see a port on a monitor as a flute kind of tube, that will resonate on a certain frequency.
- depending on dimension and depth it boost a certain frequency
- some I read just put socks in ports to fix that, makes monitor more accurate in time domain without ports
- my monitors came with plugs to use

Some stuff I picked up....

[osiris]

Let me guess, they were Sony or JBL. I used JBLs the longest time until they wore out. Got Sennheiser and was amazed at the difference. Now, the problem is there's an 80 hz bump in these phones, so you have to make judgements about the bass.
https://crinacle.com/graphs/headphones/
Above is a good site that has measurements on many different headphones. I've tried the 'room simulators' and I don't like them, so I just make adjustments.

[_al_]

Ok, so you are using cheap headphones which don't have much bass, which in turn, prompts you to add more bass than you should, to your tracks, yes?

Ok, so you listened to your tracks on good headphones, and heard the overpowered bass you couldn't hear before...

Followed this so far, but a bit confused after that:
Are you saying you didn't like the sound of your tracks, or are you saying you also heard other music through the good headphones, and you think the headphones have too much bass? Not just your tracks?

If it's just your tracks that have too much bass, then you could place an EQ on your master channel, and give it a low shelf boost, so that you are hearing the bass 4db+ louder than what it will be when rendered.
That will allow you to create your tracks at a level that sounds normal to you on your cheap headphones, but when you switch the EQ off for rendering, the bass will be at a more expected level.

If your problem is you want new headphones,but all modern headphones are too bassy, you can just follow the above advice in reverse.
EQ with bass cut, and switch it off during rendering

[mjolnir]

mixing is already super duper hard. if your monitors/speakers/headphones aren't right, then it's even more hard.
i have similar problems lately. but also be sure to do proper speaker placement. i forgot that, and had my speakers in the wrong triangle shape for a while.

also, sometimes you might just get lucky with a good mix even if you have bad speakers/headphones. really, it does happen sometimes.

also don't forget to compare your tunes to different tunes that you like from different decades.
believe me, tunes from the 80s sound different from 90s and 2000s etc. even major hits might sound weak compared to modern crap.

so be careful with how you mix.
back in the day, the home stereo systems were i feel more abundant and more powerful. so if the hit tunes were mostly in midrange for car radio and tv sync, it was no big deal because the home stereo filled in the bass and treble.

these days music is spoiled by the MP3 algorithm, earbuds, bluetooth mono, and people with monster speakers in their cars.
choose a demographic to market to in terms of speakers that they own, and go with that.

if you try and market to other musicians, just remember that they/we often have the fanciest expensive monitors/speakers than everyone.
and something that would've been perfect for TV sync might have been terrible for movie sync.

a lot of my all time favorite tunes would've been shot down by crappy modern standards, but they were truly hits from Technotronic, Nitzer Ebb, Jan Hammer, etc.

All in all, we're not doing so bad.
just be sure to compose carefully too. some tunes are just harder (or impossible) to mix compared to others.