Studio Monitors have turned my world on its head!

[KnightsOfTheRound]

Hey guys. Haven't posted much on here. Mainly because I've been trying to drink up as much knowledge shared on this board as possible. It's a wealth of excellent advice and info. Thanks to everyone who shares!

Okay, so I like to make tunes in my apartment. Most of the stuff I make is hip hop. It comes pretty easily to me. But I also like to play around with deep, dark dubstep, some dancehall, etc.

Due to budget constraints, I've always just produced on my logitech 2.1 computer speakers. I know that's generally frowned upon, but hey...you work with what you have, right?

So after selling a few things off, and acquiring a little bit of spending money, I bought my first pair of studio monitors. Yamaha HS80Ms. I took some of my stuff to the shop, and played it on multiple speakers, and that's the set I decided on. I also got some isolation pads, which made a pretty dramatic difference in how I perceived the low end in my mix. Next order of business is to put a bit of reflection treatment on the walls.

So I try to play by the rules as far as digital music goes. I usually mix down and keep it peaking around -6dB (thanks dubstepforum.com for the tips). Now I would generally master, for better or worse, with Ozone 4, and when using the logitech speakers, the mastering stage was relatively easy. I would start with a preset, tweak it to my liking, and also bring it up to reasonable volume (I'm a pacifist on the loudness war, so if it's up at 0dB and it sounds nice, I don't see fit to squash it unnecessarily).

As I said, this was all fairly easy on my Logitech speakers.

I have my studio monitors set relatively low on the back gain knobs. I think each one is dialed to "1" on each monitor. I keep the volume relatively low because I don't have a lot of acoustic treatment in my little laboratory. I try to gain stage and EQ as tastefully as possible, but at the mastering phase, it doesn't matter if I have the mix peaking at -6dB or -24dB....if I try to bring it up to volume (with the limiter), i get a SHIT TON of distortion. The closer to 0dB it gets, the shoddier it sounds. Now, if I bounce the track, and listen on other speakers, I don't hear any audible distortion (perhaps the commercial/consumer speakers are simply coloring the crap away?). And if I master on the Logitech speakers (as I did previously), I don't hear any distortion either. So my question:

1) Is the distortion simply a product of my monitors being brutally honest, and saying "Your mix is shit. Go back and fix it before getting to this point?" The monitors sound stellar in any other situation, so I can't imagine it being a product of the monitors themselves. But it's so dramatically different, that I was shocked the first time I heard it.

I knew I would have to unlearn what I had previously learned, given that I had previously learned the ropes on the wrong kind of speakers, but man...I wasn't expecting it to be this difficult, hahaha.

Any advice, or encouragement would be appreciated. I certainly feel like I've taken several steps back in my learning process.

[nowaysj]

Sounds like you're clipping something before it gets to your master. Are you using any Waves plugins? Any 24 bit plugins?

Post up an example of a distorted mix.

Try and "master" the tune with just an eq, compressor, and limiter on the master, leave ozone out of it. Still get the distortion.

I def can see this being your monitors showing you what is there that has been hidden the whole time type situation. But there are other factors. Need more info. What daw, btw?

[KnightsOfTheRound]

I generally make my tracks in Reason 5, and bounce them out to REAPER for mix down and mastering. I'll solo all the tracks in the drum machine and bounce them to their individual track for reaper, and all that.

In order to give you an idea of how cruddy it sounds coming out of the monitors, I'd have to make an external recording. Because, like I said, once I bounce the master out, and listen on regular speakers, you don't hear the distortion. It's just on my monitors, and it's ONLY when I'm bringing the gain up.

As for clipping, I work at as low a gain as possible, all the way through mixdown. So if anything is clipping, the meters definitely aren't telling me about it! Haha.

So yeah.

[nowaysj]

Naw, post up a recording that sounds distorted on your monitors. We'll all listen on our monitors and tell you whats what.

Reason... Honestly suspect it is reason. It is really easy to clip inside of reason, and it doesn't sound good. No meters to show you that you're actually clipping.

[Depone]

Try setting your Yamahas at a lower initial level. try like -6db on the back. Do you get the same problem? If so you might be overloading its amps on input? does that make sense?

[KnightsOfTheRound]

Yeah. I'm trying to maybe grow out of Reason and hop into Ableton. But like going from Logitech speakers to Studio monitors, it's not as easy as I would have anticipated, haha. If I turn the monitors down any lower, they'll be turned down completely. I literally have them turned to the first 'dot' you come to.

[JFK]

Sounds like you're clipping something before it gets to your master

Yeah.... that would have been my first guess.....

It might be the synth patch.... does it have a lot of low level distortion added purposefully and your just hearing this become more apparent as you push the limiter?

[KnightsOfTheRound]

Sounds like you're clipping something before it gets to your master

Yeah.... that would have been my first guess.....

It might be the synth patch.... does it have a lot of low level distortion added purposefully and your just hearing this become more apparent as you push the limiter?

It doesn't, actually. But now that you mention it, I do have a Scream distortion unit on it, but it's set on tube with low damage....just for a bit of warmth. I can't imagine that being the culprit, though, as subtle as it is. I may take it off and see what happens.

[Disco Nutter]

Do they sound like that when you're playing only your tracks or do they do it with any track?

[bassbum]

you might be overloading its amps on input?

Are they passive, if so you might be clipping your amp?

[KnightsOfTheRound]

They're active. And I'll check it against other tracks tonight. Like I said, if I turn off Ozone, it's not there. So I think the limiter is just brick walling something pretty hard. I just don't understand why it would do that if my faders are super low. The master could be peaking at -13dB and it will still distort when I push it up close to 0dB.

[KnightsOfTheRound]

Here's the track I'm wrestling with. I generally apply verb, delay, etc outside of reason, as I have more control over it that way, so this is pretty dry. But even with no effects, when I use ozone to polish it off and bring it up to 0dB, I get terrible sounding distortion.

Soundcloud

It's (going to be) a remix of this jam: http://wandcore.bandcamp.com/track/room-of-requirement