You’ve spent three days working on your latest mix. You finally got to the point where you’ve dialed in every aspect of it. It’s finally sounding great on your studio monitors. Excitedly, you bounce it out, throw it on your phone, and then grab your AirPods to head out on a walk.
You get halfway down the driveway, and as you press play on your mix, you’re met with complete dread. What sounded smooth, controlled, and balanced in the studio now sounds completely harsh, brittle, and broken coming through your earbuds.
The snare that had the perfect punch on your monitors now snaps so hard on your earbuds that it actually forces you to turn down the mix. The guitars that felt like they had the right amount of upper-mid edge now slice right through your inner ear, while the vocal’s upper mids you spent 30 minutes dialing in now feel like nails on a chalkboard.
You immediately stop in your tracks.
Without another thought, you turn back to the studio to tweak the mix again.
Does this scenario sound at all familiar?
One of the worst things new engineers have to find out early in their careers is that a mix that sounds great in the studio doesn’t always translate to sounding great everywhere.
Translation issues can be a big hurdle to overcome. That’s why today I want to talk about one of the biggest culprits that can sabotage your mix on smaller speakers: the midrange.
Most listeners who consume music on a daily basis are primarily listening through small, consumer-grade speakers. That means earbuds, phone speakers, Bluetooth speakers, laptops, and TVs are what they’re actually listening on most of the time. And while most listeners use these mediums, engineers often focus on creating mixes that sound great on their own pro audio setups.
They build mixes that sound great coming out of their studio monitors and sub, which is much different from what the average listener uses. As a result, we easily forget about the translation that needs to occur on those smaller speakers. Smaller speakers have a much harder time recreating the lower frequencies. And it’s these lower frequencies that help to balance out the midrange and let you get away with more of that 2k edge in your mixes. While some consumer-grade earbuds can have an adequate bass response, most still emphasize upper-midrange frequency content and can change the perceived balance of our own mixes. Without the balance of the lows, frequencies we’re extremely sensitive to feel louder and more prominent coming through the speakers.
Those familiar with the Fletcher Munson Curve know that the human ear is ultra-sensitive to frequencies that fall within the 2k to 5k range. This area is called the pain-zone, but what’s extremely interesting about this zone is that it’s also where most of a sound’s
presence and detail sits.
Here’s a quick experiment you can run on your current mix to hear how the midrange can feel totally different when it isn’t balanced by the low end.
1. Take your current mix and add an EQ on the master bus. Create a high-pass band, drag it up to 800 Hz, and then bypass the band.
2. Hit play in your DAW and listen to your track while paying attention to the upper midrange. Does it feel balanced? Is there harshness?
3. Turn the high-pass band back on and listen to how your perception of those same upper-mid frequencies changes. Was it smooth before? Is it harsh now? Now go ahead and delete the EQ entirely.
What you’ll notice is that without the lower frequencies to balance out the midrange, the song becomes extremely harsh, brittle, and skewed toward the frequencies that we’re most sensitive to. This example really highlights why it’s important to think about how these upper-midrange frequencies will translate on smaller speakers.
Now, your instinct after hearing that may tell you that you need to cut some of the highs, or even boost some of the lows to create a better balance, but that won’t fix the problem.
Most small speakers have a hard time replicating the low end anyway, and cutting the highs can just suck the life out of your mix and make it sound dull.
Instead, we need a different approach.
- Stop It Before It Starts
As you start to add more sounds that occupy space in the pain zone (distorted sounds, aggressive synths and guitar tones, vocals, brass, the crack of the snare), be proactive about using your EQ to cut back some of these frequencies to prevent buildups that contribute to harshness and ear fatigue.
- Create a Hierarchy
In the upper-midrange, establish a hierarchy of focus. Pick one element that needs to dominate this zone, and make it a priority by cutting upper-midrange from the other elements that occupy the same space. Everything can’t exist here all at once. By creating a focus and strategically tapering off everything else, we can create a mix with definition and clarity without taking it to the extremes of harsh, brittle, and fatiguing. Cutting everything in this zone dulls the mix while cutting elements that aren’t the priority places the focus where it matters most.
- Make sure it translates
Before committing your final mix or master, check to see how your song translates on popular listening mediums like earbuds, phone speakers, laptops, and Bluetooth speakers.
Do your moves hold up?
How does the pain-zone feel?
Do you hear any harshness, or does it feel just right for the medium?
Remember, we’re not aiming for perfection here. We’re just considering how our mix is going to land with listeners. If your track still feels a little harsh, go back to your upper-midrange hierarchy and cut back what’s poking out 1.5 to 2 dB. In a mastering scenario, a broad cut between 2k and 5k can help settle the edges, but it’s almost always better to get granular and fix that problem at the source, where you have the most control.
I’ve seen upper-midrange translation issues completely demoralize new engineers, but you now have some practical steps to make sure they aren’t a problem for you. Once these become habits, you’ll no longer have to worry that your final bounce will need a serious rework, and you can relax knowing that your mix will sound just as smooth as it did on your own setup.
