seriously audio guru's plz help

[laboroflove]

my right channel of my mixes fart out and clip and distotr the right channel.i can hear it only on bass guitar in the studio i just figured one of my monitors were bad and i can live with that i guess.but when i take it to my truck i can hear it worse but only at times during the song not the whole song.even a lowcut bass and mid light guitar track.do i have a problem with something in my system?how can i do some tests on it?btw i can listen to poorly recorded zeppelin songs with not so tight lowend and it dont do it in my truck.nor does pretty much any other cd just my freakin mixes.:mad:

[jpleong]

You can try a few things:
1. Check your gain structure -a) make sure when you PFL each channel that its average peaks are somewhere at unity (0 dBu or, if using a digital console, -10 to -6 dBFs) and not consistently shooting above. b) Make sure you're not pushing a whole lot of faders past unity. c) Make sure you're not overdriving anything that can overload like effects units, equalisers, etc...

2. Pan everything left and see if you can recreate the problem on your left channel. If yes, then obviously there's something with the mix. [<- edit: should say, "there's something wrong with what happens before it hits the master faders"] If no, then it could be hardware.

3. Run a commercial CD through your mixing console and hear how it sounds like on your monitors. Is Zepplin distorting your right channel, too?

JP

[Smithcok]

Tell us a little bit about your studio setup. Equipment, DAW, plug-ins you are using?

It could be a number of things, but definately do what jpleong said about checking your playback with a commercial CD.

[laboroflove]

very good advice guys.but its to where on my monitors if i solo the bass exp with no subtractive eq cutting out the bad frequencies and unusable lows i hear the rattling on the speaker cone.its always the right speaker and my bass is positioned str8 up mono.i just dont get it .and yes i always take a day out of the week or two to just listen to cds highly over squahed cds but dont notice it.its not just bass its guitar tones 2.i just purchased the control 24 but it did it b4 that.i use pro tools le 7.3.1 with usally waves plugins.mostly q 10s or q 6s whatever q i need lol.and usaually the renasance comp.my bass goes out of the tech 21 str8 in the control 24.if my guitars werent set up right like intonation it would prob be on the left speaker two.i dont get it but thx for the help though.now i do recall i had an mp3 of system of a down and it ratted my speakers to but i think it was both speakers equally.

[jpleong]

laboroflove, did you try the panning exercise? I know your bass was fired up mono, but it's worth seeing if the problems can be replicated elsewhere along the chain. Also, when you use headphones to listen to the mix, what do you hear?

and unrelated, netspeak is very hard for me (and lots of others) to read, especially when we're already using a bunch of acronyms and numbers. Please try to type things out so it's easy for us to help.

JP

[laboroflove]

alright,i recorded a piece of bass guitar with the levels not even close to clipping and panned it hard left and my speaker rattled then i panned it hard right and it didnt rattle.now if i turn down the volume really low theres no rattle.but i cant mix that low in volume i just cant.so i took a parametric eq and carved out alot of the frequencies in the lows on the bass using narrow bandwidth.i had like 7 dips going on at like 60 ,80,100,125.etc hz.-18 in volume.it helped some.i even picked up the speaker off the table while listening back and it still rattled.i mean should i put more cutting in the lows during mastering or whats the norm on this.this was only a drum and bass song and it still rattled in my truck .im trying to figure this out b4 using guitars.i dont care much about having the loudest cd on the block i just hate this bogging out of the lows.now my moms caddy everything is wonderful.

[jpleong]

...which makes me wonder...

How do you get from mixer to CD?

And, again, what happens when you plug in headphones to your mixer? Does one side flab out?

JP

[laboroflove]

i go str8 into the control 24 and bounce to disc in pro tools.and yes i think my cans flab out 2 but not as bad as my monitors maybe bcs they aint turned up as loud i dunno.all this low end mixing is horrible.do yall have problems with the low end or just me?in my truck theres a preset called powerful and it raises the lows 4 db mids 2 db and the highs 4 db.stuff like the chilly peppers sound a little dull on the preset but they dont fart out the lowend like my mixes.do i need more subtle comp ?or maybe carve out the lows on the final mix?i really appreciate the feed back maybe i can help u someday who knows.

[jpleong]

Mixing kick drum and bass guitar is one of the more trickier things. Both instruments overlap to a large extent and require some creative thinking.

But, the weird thing is that your symptoms don't add up completely to a mixing problem nor does it completely add up to a hardware problem.

If it's in the mix: you should be able to pan and move the problem around.

If it's not in the mix (i.e. your right monitor speaker): you shouldn't be able to bounce to disc and have the problem follow you to the truck.

Check your meters again, make sure the kick and bass guitar combined don't cause over shooting. Look at your final mix in spectrum form and see what it looks like. Make sure there's no processing being done on your Right output that would overload your right channel mix and mixdown.

JP

[laboroflove]

with the kik and bass and guitars i always carve eq holes to make each fit.and the levels are near perfect if i even red line once ill re record it.im just that way.actually i thought i was using too many low cut filters on individual instruments causing the little distortion noises.so i made a mix of no low cuts at all and it still did it. since then i have been using the waves c4 compressor and just compressing the lows not the highs or high mids well unless a vocal is hurting my ears in combination with the ren compressor and it seems to have cured it considerably.the l2 ultramaximizer but ive always used that.its just too bad for me that i have to do that and not just mix it done once for the client.as of now just myself but anyway.i think evrything cool now thx