Old 07-25-2021, 01:37 PM   #1
eclef
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Default Mixing advice pls - hi hat levels?

Hi folks. I'm mixing a beat (in the ~hiphop genre) and I'm having some trouble with the hats.

I generally prefer the hats not too loud. When I mix at normal listening levels against (almost any) reference track, the hat levels sound about right.

But when I turn the volume right the way down to a very low level, and compare against the reference tracks that way, I find that the hats are almost the loudest part of the track on all the reference tracks, but they completely disappear on my track!

So if I turn the hihats up to match, then play my track at normal volume again, my hats sound crazzzzy loud.

Instead of adjusting the volume, I tried (whilst at low listening levels again) to adjust the EQ of my hats, to match the reference tracks. This was basically a huge boost in the 3-7kHz region.

But again, when I listened to my beat at normal levels, the hats just sound way too loud, dominant, and gross.

Anyone have any idea what might be going on?

Thanks!
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Old 07-25-2021, 10:40 PM   #2
jrk
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without hearing the track? No.
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Old 07-26-2021, 03:20 AM   #3
uksnowy
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One thing that springs to mind when reading your test is that your hats become the loudest parts when you turn the volume down. To me this suggests your lower frequencies are disappearing at low volume. This could be your room or the monitors you are using. When comparing your track against the ref track at low volumes, how do the lower frequencies compare?
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Old 07-26-2021, 05:53 AM   #4
eclef
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Quote:
Originally Posted by uksnowy View Post
One thing that springs to mind when reading your test is that your hats become the loudest parts when you turn the volume down. To me this suggests your lower frequencies are disappearing at low volume. This could be your room or the monitors you are using. When comparing your track against the ref track at low volumes, how do the lower frequencies compare?
Thanks for the reply. Just to clarify, it's the other way round; at low levels the high hats remain loud on the reference tracks, but on mine they almost disappear.

Everything else seems just right. Kick, Bass etc match the reference track, only my hats disappear at low volume. I've tried changing hat samples and lots of EQing etc, but it's puzzling me how it still seems to be happening regardless.

It's the same through headphones and speakers. I need to turn the hats up to a stupid level for it to be audible at low levels.

Maybe it is impossible to answer without hearing the tracks, but I thought there might be a known reason why this could happen occasionally.

If not, then I guess there's something else wrong with the mix and I just need to figure out a way to increase the volume of the hats whilst making them sound nice, or something.

Cheers anyway

Last edited by eclef; 07-26-2021 at 05:58 AM.
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Old 07-26-2021, 06:43 AM   #5
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How are you compressing the hat, if at all?
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Old 07-27-2021, 08:37 AM   #6
Philbo King
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One thing that has worked well for me is to use compression on one band of TDR Nova (selecting freq & Q to work on the freqs the hihat occupies), and carefully tweaking the attack time so the transient peeks through while the 'splash' gets a bit squashed by the compression kicking in.

However, if volume changes affect your mix that much, you might have a monitoring problem. Possible causes include 2 bus compression somewhere downstream (like on the Master track or on a Drums folder track), speakers, or room acoustics.
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Old 07-27-2021, 09:11 AM   #7
ramses
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My guess is your hats are brighter than the references. More high highs and less mids. Thus, they "disappear" at lower listening volumes. It's a "feature" of the fletcher munson curve.

"The human auditory system is sensitive to frequencies from about 20 Hz to a maximum of around 20,000 Hz, although the upper hearing limit decreases with age. Within this range, the human ear is most sensitive between 2 and 5 kHz, largely due to the resonance of the ear canal and the transfer function of the ossicles of the middle ear.

Fletcher and Munson first measured equal-loudness contours using headphones (1933). In their study, test subjects listened to pure tones at various frequencies and over 10 dB increments in stimulus intensity. For each frequency and intensity, the listener also listened to a reference tone at 1000 Hz. Fletcher and Munson adjusted the reference tone until the listener perceived that it was the same loudness as the test tone. Loudness, being a psychological quantity, is difficult to measure, so Fletcher and Munson averaged their results over many test subjects to derive reasonable averages. The lowest equal-loudness contour represents the quietest audible tone—the absolute threshold of hearing."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contour

Last edited by ramses; 07-27-2021 at 09:18 AM.
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Old 08-03-2021, 09:30 PM   #8
eclef
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Many thanks for the replies.

I have very light compression on the drum bus, and the hats up til now had zero compression.

I've followed the dynamic EQ tip and have definitely noticed some improvement here, although not as noticable as I'd like still, it has been somewhat useful, thanks. Great tip in general, too.

As for my high hats being overly bright, I did kind of notice this when I was trying to match the references by EQing. It hasn't helped as much as I would have liked but I still probably could play around with increasing the hat mids even more and playing around with EQ some more.

Whilst the problem is not 100% sorted, I think I've had some great input here which has definitely improved things. I'm hoping the rest of the problem will be sorted with me improving the mix in general.

Cheers!
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Old 08-06-2021, 07:48 AM   #9
pkev
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Hi not sure whats going on but!....an idea for you to try

Put an instance of pink noise or white noise on a track and set it to say -6b

Then go through each track and reference it against the pink noise so that you just hear the instrument and no more. The idea being that when you have done this you should have a fairly balanced mix to work from. You can then tweak from there.
So really the idea is that the pink noise signal is constant and it kinda takes the place of the reference track.

This is a tried and tested method so im told but it helps me anyway!

Regards
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