it’s my 1st post here and I’m still new to electronic music making with hardware. Please forgive me if my question is quite a basic one but I think I’ll rather get straight and relevant answers here from experienced people who use Elektron gear than in a general audio engineering forum!
I don’t want to start an general technical/engineering discussion but I got this problem:
I can’t get my AR II to sound “good” or “right” through my monitors, even when I’m jamming with preset sounds. It sounds wonderfull through my studio-headphones (beyerdynamic DT-770 Pro) but on my pair of Eve Audio SC203 speakers it just sounds dull, muddy, kind of distorted and the world I built within my phones collapses through the speakers, it’s totally different
I DO KNOW that things can sound different on headphones and speakers but I’m wondering if I’m doing something wrong or maybe I just don’t have the skills
I ALSO KNOW that the SC203 speakers a really small (3", delivering 62-2100 Hz, so no sub-range) but they sound fine and deep enough when I listen to music, also electronic stuff, e. g. Kiasmos (or is it just because it’s proper produced and mastered music?)
So I really would appreciate some (even short) advice from you people here who propably know what they’re doing (other than me, for now)!
Do I have to keep tweaking until it sounds fine on the speakers?
Are the speakers not suitable for electronic music making because they are to small?
Or is it maybe a mixing issue, do I have to process the audio to make it sound like it does on the headphones? Though I try to stay out of the box as far as possible.
Just a short note on my setup:
When jamming it’s just the AR MKII and the master outs (l and r) goe straight into the SC203s analog inputs (unbalanced 1/4# plugs to cinch). When finally recording I switch to an Audient iD44 Interface and use their Line-Outputs for monitoring.
just an idea:
headphones generally have difficulties doing the low frequencies.
Or you could say, every type of speaker-thingy (headphones, monitors, in ears, whatever) has his own style of representing the audio. that´s why there‘s some time of getting to know new monitors or headphones after you accquired them before you really know the quircks of the new equipment and how „good“ bass (for example) should sound on this piece. this „getting to know - time“ usually includes lots of testing, hearing different styles of music, A/B comparisons on other speakers of your mixes, etc.
So back to your headphones: As we like a powerful bass in music, we really wan‘t to hear or better feel it. But feeling on headphones is not really possible. Cause feeling bass happens in the gut, not in the ears. Now what happens if you don‘t know your gear: you crank up the bass while producing on headphones. Sounds good right? But it actually is too much. That‘s why your music sounds muddy on the monitors. Try A/B ing with the style of music you want to produce while beatmaking. Often we need less bass than we think to have enough of it.
Other point: AR just has really BIG balls. Lots and lots of bass. But not much EQing potential on the device itself. So that makes it even more important to have a good representation of bass while designing the sounds.
Alright, so I understand it’s actually a lot about skills/experience, get to know your gear and learn how to use your instruments, that’s what they say …
Yeah, I tend to use reference tracks, thats a good thing to do and it can be fun to jam along some of my favourite tracks. Thanks for the advice!
While looking at the specs for those Eve speakers, I noticed one thing: Input level dip switch, +8dBu/+22dBu
That might be worth investigating to see if it makes a difference.
Next, you could load a recording of a song into the Rytm and compare.
Pick a song by an artist (Kiasmos, whoever) that you like and know very well. Rip that song to a WAV file and edit out a short clip (10-20 seconds) that has a lot going on - lots of bass, highs, and drums. Use an audio editing program that will let you split the Left & Right channels (for PC, Audacity is free), and save your short clip from one channel only so you now have a mono WAV file. Don’t mix L&R into mono, because there’s always a chance of phasing issues when doing that.
Now load that clip into the Rytm using the Transfer app. Assign the sample to a pad and set the pad to always trigger max velocity. Make sure compression is turned off, and the filter is open (max cutoff, no resonance).
Set up your speakers so you can monitor both the Rytm and your computer/laptop at the same time. For the best comparison you’ll want to play the mono clip from your computer too, not the original stereo song. And most importantly, the volume levels of each needs to be matched. When listening to an A/B comparison, we naturally thing “louder” sounds “better”…so they could be the exact same things, but if your volume is off on either source, you will be fooling yourself.
The Rytm, when properly set up, will be very neutral sounding. You might notice a slight difference in the sound, but it shouldn’t be huge. If it does sound bad, then there’s likely a hardware problem - outputs, inputs, cabling, something like that.
Monitoring is a perennial topic in music production and is highly subjective. Everyone has to work out what works for them. Knowing the characteristics of your speakers and headphones inside out is critical. Only working on headphones is major pitfall, unless you know very very well what you’re doing.
Some hardware will just not work for certain individuals. I for one didn’t like Beyerdynamic headphones, for the reason you stated: I found it very hard to make a mix that translates well to other systems.
I’m now working on Genelec 8040B monitors and Audio Technica M50x cans. These work well for my needs and translate well to other systems. When I’m mixing I compare to other artist’s material in the same genre, with a quality I’d like to match. That really helps to find the problems in a mix, cause when listening to my same material for extended periods I loose the ability to critically analyse it. Ear fatigue. Playing something else gives a reference to compare against. This process is also very useful to get to know your monitoring gear.
