making beat cd's.......

i make beat cd's that i shop around. since i've acquired more equipment....i've run into problems. got a behringer mixer and event bas 20/20 powered monitors. the tracks sound hot when i'm home bangin' 'em out. then...i try to make a beat cd and the junk is BASS HEAVY! any solutions on what i should do so i get what i'm hearing at home on cd? a nice clear sound?

have you considered mastering your tracks before burning them to cd's?

it really makes the difference. Your mix sounds hot at home, but not at all the same in your car, your friends etc. Good mixing of the original track and good mastering is the key to get your tracks going. I'm no expert on mastering, I'm sure someone else will tell you all about it

When you're mixing and EQing your track, try to have a second set of speakers set up - not studio monitors- just have some sh*tty home stereo speakers.....then mix and EQ it so that the mix sounds right on both sets of speakers.
Then make a cassette or CD of your mixdown, and take it out to the car (and/or ghetto blaster) and listen.....then go back and adjust your mix with what it needs.

yea thats what i do too..i got some home monitors and some reg speakers...ill get the mix right off the monitors then play it next out the reg speakers and then go into a reg car my truck got some 12 inch speakers and that makes it also hard to get it right so ill use my girl car and take a spin around the block...o yea try playing your fav. cd on the monitors so you can a/b your beats to theres as far as sound wise...try to get it as close to your fav as you can.

thanks yo....i'm gonna do the wack speaker setup.

famekeyz is right on. (although everyone has their own personal mixing techniques) actually everyone in here is right on, good tips. i personally mix with a cd i feel is full and punchy and switch to the cd and back to my mix. it doesnt sound like the cd at all and might not even be hip hop or even a song that sounds nearly similar either. but this EQing method makes the track sound better i personally think. i also use the crap speaker "trick" and run down to the accord and take notes while i listen...

WHAT I DO IS I LEAVE ROOM FOR STUFF LIKE THAT.....WATCH THE LEVEL METERS CLOSE...YOU CAN GET IT RIGHT WITH TRIAL AND ERROR I SAY USE ALL POSSIBLE METHODS.....EVEN THE CD WALKMAN....THESE HEADPHONES HELP WITH THE HIGHS...PANS AND EQ'S EVEN!.....ALSO HAVE SOMEONE EARS YOU TRUST TO LISTEN TO IT.....HONEST OPINIONS HELP...BUT DON'T DEPEND ON THEM USE ALL OPTIONS AVAILABLE....THE CD BOOM BOX IN THE BATHROOM TOO

I gotta co-sign the crappy speaker method. A while back , I read an article about Aerosmith and they said that they burn a cd in their home studio , go out to the car and listen to the mix and keep burning em until it sounds right in the car. I mean , you gotta remember , everyone aint listening to the beats you make outta high quality stuff so you really should check em on wack speakers too. Well , not wack speakers but maybe regular house speakers. Personally , I use my reliable Fishers. They sound straight , they last a while and cost wise , they're cheap as hooker in Dayton.

Yeah, I gotta say this, I was in a studio for recording back in NYC, with a buddy who had been signed just sittin around watching the engineers and the producer work on his ish and they had a room where there were 2 car seats and a car stereo set up in it, bass box, amp and all, when they mixed a track they'd go in there and listen to it, then come out and make changes, I agree with this idea I got a crappy aiwa system, that i copped for 30 bux that i use just for this.

Allot of people rush to complete a track or CD before really getting into the feel of it. I'm guilty of this allot, sometimes I just loose the feel on a few sounds or beats and just leave it kind of half-mastered.

Setup a strict policy on yourself. I will listen to my beats for days on lots of platforms and then come back and make changes.

First my beats start and stop in my headphones.
After recording my beat I will listen to it through my studio monitors (which are ghetto ragged. Any BASS sound on the left channel over -90db sounds like tin foil being wadded up) I will then loop the beat for a few hours as I’m doing other things around the house. I do this to make sure I can feel the bass and to see how far I can go where only the bass sounds are heard. Sometimes I even get in the shower and try to see if I can still hear the important parts of the track.

Then I will normalize it, and burn it to CD. I then listen to it on as many CD players I can find. Friend’s cars, work pc's, alarm clock cd players, DVD players.

Then sometimes I might go to Fry's or a somewhere you know has a booming car audio setup (Cartoys) and then listen to your CD on those setups. 10 times out of 10 I will know what needs to be changed by the time I get back home for the mastering process.

Usually after that, I will take my chances with the beat. (Laziness)

egokilla wrote:Then sometimes I might go to Fry's or a somewhere you know has a booming car audio setup (Cartoys) and then listen to your CD on those setups. 10 times out of 10 I will know what needs to be changed by the time I get back home for the mastering process.

*lightbulb*

I'm of to Best Buy my ni'uhhs.

egokilla wrote:Then sometimes I might go to Fry's or a somewhere you know has a booming car audio setup (Cartoys) and then listen to your CD on those setups. 10 times out of 10 I will know what needs to be changed by the time I get back home for the mastering process.

*lightbulb*

I'm of to Best Buy my ni'uhhs.

Find a professional song that has a similar arrangement to yours. Compare level, eq, panning, and effects.

Without a reference cd a person's mind can get carried away. Bass always seems to work in extremes. If you want a bass heavy song, it will sound muddy in a car. If you want a sparkly type thing , it will sound weak. People usually know how they want their mixes to sound. The problem is when we visualize we can do it in extremes.

A reference cd can put you on track. Also you said you want to control bass. You should add a subwoofer to your monitor. It helps a lot on getting a feel of mixing bass.

Mastering is also essential on getting that in your face professional sound. Just find someone in your area that can do a good job for cheap.