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so i have a track pretty much finished.. all the levels seem pretty good.. sounds good on my krk rokit 8's and it sounds good in the car... but, i got a chance to play it at an actual venue and the hihats and crashes were piercing. im glad that i got to hear it on a big system in order to know that was happening, but im frustrated as hell because i cant hear that problem at home on my monitors so how am i to know its happening!!????!! like i said, the track sounds good everywhere else, but not on a big system.. is this like a common problem with tracks? i feel like if i turn those things down then i wont be able to hear them at home, but they will come through at a venue? is that how i should approach it or is that a flawed way to think about it? could it be im boosting the highs too much in ozone? just dont get it.. anyways, any feedback would be appreciated. thanks

On all my hats I totally wipe the lows, and boost the highs at 10k hz at about .6 db, just something I do.

I get this problem a lot too, I have the rokit 6's, what I do to sort it out is first and foremost, test on other systems first, I test mine on headphones, vxt 6's at college, my mates speakers etc, i find the rokits don't show much harshness in the highs so its useful to get a reference on some other monitors too. Another tip would be to not overlimit your track, limiters sometimes bring out the harsher highs when pushed too much, also high pass the master at 18k. If all of this doesn't work you might have a nasty frequency somewhere in your track (it could be in the mids, not just the highs) that needs cutting out, try boosting a small band to find it and then bring it down accordingly. Hope this helps.

Was the venue full of ppl or empty? Did u reference a pro track too? Where in regards to the speakers where you stabding?

the venue was fairly empty.. by reference a track do you mean like mid-side mastering or something else? did play a professional track before mine to make sure the speaker levels were ok.. i was standing near the speakers at one point, then back from them..
thanks for the replies so far. maybe it is a nasty frequency in the track. the way the highs were coming through, like when they hit was damn near unbearable, esp the crash. wondering if turning down the multiband dynamics settings for the mids and especially highs in ozone will help to tame my hihats, crashes, and high end without losing them..?

Use a reference track inside your DAW listen to a shit ton of music with your KRK's.
Also, I think fixing it at the source rather than at the multi band comp will get you a better result. take some heat off of the compressor so it can do its job better.

A lot of people like and use ozone. To me, it always sounds brittle and harsh in the highs. I can usually hear it around dsf when someone is using ozone. Just me, and I'm known to trip.

You can't make a recording that is going to sound the same everywhere, every system and room is going to sound different. Really quality mix and master engineers can sort of make a compromised/balanced sound that will sound relatively good everywhere.

Jeklo_ wrote:Use a reference track inside your DAW listen to a shit ton of music with your KRK's.
Also, I think fixing it at the source rather than at the multi band comp will get you a better result. take some heat off of the compressor so it can do its job better.

+1 Obviously your KRK+room are far from a perfect monitoring system. So you need to know them perfectly to get a chance to achieve a good mix using them.
Ozone is a great tool for home mastering, but it won't solve this monitoring issue.