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Old 06-26-2020, 11:37 AM   #1
Pevec
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Default Rhodes piano crackling in the mix - phone speakers

Hi,

I made a looped track for my mobile project, and it sounds okay on monitors, but when I crank phone speakers to the maximum, I can hear crackling of the rhodes piano.
I can't seem to find a way to fix this.

Can you guys help?

Here's the link of the song:
https://app.box.com/s/jmsf0aitmmfit0n3mkp8ghgg2uh6cd6z
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Old 06-27-2020, 12:39 AM   #2
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Hi,

Hearing all sorts of weird noises when cranking phone speakers to the max seems perfectly expectable to me.

That being said, your song is severely unbalanced throughout the frequency spectrum so I believe that a more sensible balance would solve at least part of the problem, if not all. You need to roll off a lot of the low end and a bit of the low-mids. Boosting the hi-mids and highs a bit wouldn't hurt either. But the main problem is the low end. What monitors are you using? Maybe the problem is below the range that your monitors can reproduce and that is why you are not hearing anything wrong.

Try this balanced version of your song and let us know if it's better? https://drive.google.com/file/d/1as0...ew?usp=sharing

Last edited by Lophophora; 06-27-2020 at 12:57 AM.
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Old 06-27-2020, 01:18 AM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lophophora View Post
Hi,

Hearing all sorts of weird noises when cranking phone speakers to the max seems perfectly expectable to me.

That being said, your song is severely unbalanced throughout the frequency spectrum so I believe that a more sensible balance would solve at least part of the problem, if not all. You need to roll off a lot of the low end and a bit of the low-mids. Boosting the hi-mids and highs a bit wouldn't hurt either. But the main problem is the low end. What monitors are you using? Maybe the problem is below the range that your monitors can reproduce and that is why you are not hearing anything wrong.

Try this balanced version of your song and let us know if it's better? https://drive.google.com/file/d/1as0...ew?usp=sharing
Thank you for your reply.
I'm using Mackie CR3. Im not professional in mixing, so I don't know a lot about it.
I still hear cracklings when I max my speakers on the phone, but it only crackles in my song.
I guess rhodes vst is causing the problems, but I tried a bunch of rhodes vsts and the problem persists in all of them.
Only solution is to lower the mids on my rhodes vst, but then I lose that rhodey sound.
I don't know what else to do :/
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Old 06-27-2020, 02:08 AM   #4
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Mackie CR3 have a frequency range that is quite restricted on the lower end: 80 Hz – 20 kHz (3dB tolerance), so you can't hear properly what is really happening under 100 Hz and most of the excess energy is in this "blind" area for you. I believe this is the main issue here.

Just checking: by crackling you are referring to some sort of distorsion, right? Your kick has some saturation but I believe this is intended. You Rhodes doesn't have any distorsion or crackling on my monitors, just a huge amount of low end.
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Old 06-27-2020, 02:16 AM   #5
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Everything sounds great on my monitors, but phone speakers are bothering me when I crank them to the max.

Maybe I expressed myself wrong, better explanation would be that Rhodes VST is causing "fuzziness" instead of crackling.
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Old 06-27-2020, 10:49 PM   #6
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It's only on your phone speakers right? If you plug a headset into your phone it's clean?

Any chance you could record your phone so we can hear the issue?
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Old 06-28-2020, 04:30 AM   #7
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What's the phone?

Some phones have near perfect DSP treatment of the sound, some are really pointed to voice legibility.

There's nothing much you can do about it.

Try listening on another smartphone as a test?

Same result --> too much bass?
Different result --> lesser phone?
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Old 06-29-2020, 09:10 AM   #8
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The phone is Samsung S7. Tried on Samsung A5 older version, still problem.
I recorded only the rhode piano and exported. Then I recorded sound coming from my phone.

You can hear the problem here:

https://app.box.com/file/684907286282

Especially on the first two chords.

On the image below you can see the EQ for rhodes:
https://i.imgur.com/GIzhl9D.png
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Old 06-29-2020, 11:08 AM   #9
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Can't access your link without a Box account...

Can you make it public, please?
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Old 06-29-2020, 11:37 AM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cyrano View Post
Can't access your link without a Box account...

Can you make it public, please?
Box is kinda messed up, heres another link: https://voca.ro/9vLEqvWLDub
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Old 06-30-2020, 11:25 AM   #11
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Sounds like too much low and low-mids is causing the speaker to distort.

Try drastically lowering the low end and playing it on your phone, if the crackling disappears then that was the issue... and you can gradually roll back some low end until you find a compromise.
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Old 06-30-2020, 01:12 PM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lophophora View Post
Sounds like too much low and low-mids is causing the speaker to distort.

Try drastically lowering the low end and playing it on your phone, if the crackling disappears then that was the issue... and you can gradually roll back some low end until you find a compromise.
Lowering low mids solves the problem, but then my rhodes doesnt sound like rhodes at all.
But in similar mobile game, there's a song with rhodes in it and when I crank it up to the max, it doesnt distort.
Heres a song that doesn't distort: https://vocaroo.com/nDcs3unl1WB

I'm not sure sure how they kept lower mids up without distorting on phone.
Do you have any insight on this?
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Old 07-04-2020, 03:48 AM   #13
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Well having listened both the song that doesn't distort and the one that does, I'm pretty sure the problem comes from the low end because the latest file you sent has a good tonal balance while the first file you sent is vastly imbalanced.

Again, you can't hear that because most of the excess content is below the range that your monitors are able to reproduce. I am a mixing/mastering engineer and my monitors go down to 35 Hz, and I can tell you that playing your file makes my room tremble, even at a moderate volume.

Is the bass line in your file played by the rhodes or by a bass synth? If it is a bass synth, try muting it and leaving the rhodes "sounding like a rhodes". If that works on your phone, then you have your culprit and you just have to set your bass right in the mix.
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Old 07-04-2020, 07:27 AM   #14
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lophophora View Post
Well having listened both the song that doesn't distort and the one that does, I'm pretty sure the problem comes from the low end because the latest file you sent has a good tonal balance while the first file you sent is vastly imbalanced.

Again, you can't hear that because most of the excess content is below the range that your monitors are able to reproduce. I am a mixing/mastering engineer and my monitors go down to 35 Hz, and I can tell you that playing your file makes my room tremble, even at a moderate volume.

Is the bass line in your file played by the rhodes or by a bass synth? If it is a bass synth, try muting it and leaving the rhodes "sounding like a rhodes". If that works on your phone, then you have your culprit and you just have to set your bass right in the mix.
It's a ReaSynth (bass settings).
When I solo rhodes and cut low ends completely, it still distorts on the phone.
The only workaround is to cut lows completely and low mids drastically. But I'm not fond of that since my rhodes is losing it's sound then.
And I'm not sure why bass sounds so bad since I cut down everything from 80hz to below and everything above 300.

EQ image: https://i.imgur.com/KJ1KRny.png

Last edited by Pevec; 07-04-2020 at 07:32 AM. Reason: explaining the situation further
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