Studio Monitors have turned my world on its head!
Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2012 3:31 pm
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.
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.
