Calibrate your headphones. Most headphone curves are imperfect and that will translate to your mix.

I recently tried doing this myself, I found a tool that does it for free: autoeq.app . I spent a few hours and energy troubleshooting and I wanted to share what I found in case anyone has a similar problem.

The basic process (which I won't be covering) and breakdown of the tool is outlined here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM870PBg9gE

That's the convolution method. My understanding is it will get you the closest to the Harmon curve (or whatever your reference is).

Here's another video with some extra info, and how to do it on a typical graphical EQ like Fabfilter Pro-Q: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo_Bpo9ICZA

The problems I ran into:

- I use FL Studio. I tried implementing manually (like on the second video) on Fruity Parametric EQ 2, but failed because that EQ uses a different method for defining the slope instead of the more standard "Q" used by other EQs and filters like Pro-Q, and provided by autoeq.app

- I tried using the convolver on FL to use the convolution method, but the resulting sound was waaay quieter than the input sound. However, you'll notice on the website there's a little sample audiofile that lets you A/B your regular headphone vs. what it would sound like with the correction curve applied. Trying to make the source and corrected sound match manually doesn't really give you consistent results, (see last paragraph for a little more context). I realized that my headphones were just so bad that they needed a huge boost on the low-end, which would result in clipping at a comparable volume to the original sound. and autoeq automatically compensates for that in the impulse response it provides by reducing it to a level where it wouldn't clip. So after you've downloaded the impulse response, what you do to account for this is:

1. ON autoeq.app Look through the "select equalizer app" drop down, click on some of the other options apart from convolution. You'll see that some of them provide a "pre-amp" amount. (Remember I mentioned earlier that the convolution option appears to do this automatically, so it doesn't show a value). It'll be different for each option, but it should be within a 2-3 db range. Note the range
2. Open your convolver, drag in the impulse response. I can only speak to fruity convolver because it's the one I use. Turn any processing values all the way down (envelopes, fitlers, EQs, stereo widening, etc), I think this is the default for fruity convolver. important > turn normalization off (It'll normalize the Impulse response which will get you a louder output, but you'll still need to be tweaking it by ear to match the loudness of the original which, again, is inconsistent). Dry all the way down, wet all the way up.
3. Bring up the output of the convolver by some amount inside the range you noted in set 1. I did this by having the convolver inside a patcher because that's how FL handles this kind of routing, so I put a fruity limiter after it, and applied that gain increase. Put the ceiling all the way up. The sound will likely be clipping by this point.
4. Now put another limiter after the patcher instance, and reduce it by the same amount you increased it inside the patcher.

When you enable/disable the patcher now, you should hear the sounds have a comparable loudness, with the only difference being the Frequency distribution due to the curve.

Congrats, your headphones are calibrated. At least when you're in FL studio, and have this set up on the master.

You might need to bring up your actual out put volume on your computer to account for the overall gain decrease, or add yet another gain increase further along the chain to bring everything up, but that'll vary per project.

I didn't have a lot of time to write this up, and there may be a better way of doing this. I haven't had time to test it out much yet in a new project, but using reference tracks and some of my old projects, to my ears it seems to work. Maybe one of you could experiment or check for errors etc.

In the github there's documentation about how they use 1000 Hz as a reference point for the curves (I remember having to dig for it so maybe someone else can link it). I think that's the way to confirm whether or not you've calibrated correctly; run some white noise through voxengo SPAN (have slope set to 0 in settings, and placed after the curve and limiter described above), make sure it's flat when the EQ curve is turned off, and note the level inside of SPAN. Then apply the correction process (i.e. enable the convolution patcher and the limiter). Visual in SPAN should now match the EQ correction curve, and the area around 1000 Hz should be at the volume level you noted earlier.

What DAW has the most potential for seamless/smooth/efficient automation-heavy workflows?

hey guys, very new to music production and just got my hands on the hs5 and hs8s bundle. i just plugged it up and everything is giving sound, but it has a loud clipping sound and keeps cutting out every few seconds. i have xlrs going from the sub outputs to the monitor inputs and quarter inch speaker cables going from the sub input to the left and right outs of my presonus audiobox. using a macbook air as well, if any of you could give me any clues on what im doing wrong that would be hugely appreciated, ive never owned studio monitors before and this is extremely frustrating.

Specify any genre, other ideas, and when you tend to work on your music. Post your level of experience and what level of experience you're looking to collab with. Post any other details you think are relevant. You don't have to be using the same DAW as the people you collaborate with, unless you specifically want to!

Here is what an example post could look like, but the format here is fairly open-ended:

​

Hi, I'm an intermediate-level producer with a background in chill-glitch-hop hardstyle fusion. I'm open to ideas, but I was thinking I'd like to collab on a deep house cover of an 80s soft rock song. I usually have time on Thu-Sun evening to discuss or work on music (my timezone is GMT+7). PM me if you're interested!

​

For reference, here are some loose rules of thumb for levels of experience:

• Beginner: Still sorting out compression from reverb.
• Intermediate: Still working on skills in some areas of production. You've got tracks that you're proud of.
• Advanced: Released something on a label, or could see yourself shopping your music around for labels soon.
• Pro: You've been regularly paid to produce for a non-trivial period of time.

Feel free to specify how many people you're looking for, but be careful of having too many cooks in the kitchen. All contact details and file transfers should be set up via PM (that is, don't post email addresses, dropboxes, etc. in this thread!). Please update your thread once you're done searching for collaborators. Let the mods know if this format works, or if you have any suggestions. And finally, have fun!

Hi all,

Here's a dub techno chord rack for you, hope you can find use for it in your music... https://www.studiobrootle.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/SB07DubTechno-Wavetable-big-metallic-dub-chord.zip

More info on the whole pack here... https://www.studiobrootle.com/25-dub-techno-chords-racks-ableton-preset-pack/

Here is the original. Here is my attempt. Making the reverbed hits were easy, but recreating that rubbery breakbeatish sound was hard. Everyone else I asked said I should try some flanger or phaser, but I can't really get it to sound exactly the same.

Usually when I finish a song I do a temporary mastering with LANDR and then send the track to the Labels. I do this because I know that the Labels will subsequently ask for the song without a master to make their own, but I'm afraid that the LANDR mastering doesn't have excellent quality and that this could influence the Labels' opinions on my track. Should I continue doing this?

Please post any and all [Feedback] or [Listen] type threads in this thread until the next one is created. Any threads made that should be a comment here will be removed.

Rules:

1. Make an effort to comment on other people's tracks. By doing so, you will find that others will be more likely to help you with your tracks.

2. Be specific when asking for help. Examples of specific questions: "What do you think about this kick sample?" "How's this mix?" "I need some help on this melody, the last measure comes off a little cheesy, any ideas?" etc.

3. Be descriptive when giving feedback. Use timecodes to highlight certain parts.

4. Please link to the feedback comments you've left in your top-level comment. This will show others the feedback you've left, and you're more likely to get feedback yourself! Also, please notice those who are leaving a lot of feedback and give them some, too. This is a cooperative effort! Update: Any comments that do not follow this format will be automatically removed.

For example:

feedback for Esther: "link to feedback"

feedback for Fay: "link to feedback"

feedback for Minerva: "link to feedback"

Here's my track. I'm looking for ___

Wussup, everyone. As the title may suggest, I am incredibly interested in learning how to produce edm music. I've been heavily into edm music for around 14 years - music is one of my greatest joys in life, with the edm genre at the top when it comes to the level of engagement and overall joy I receive when listening. I've been interested in producing it for quite a long time.

The issue is I have ADHD that I struggle with quite a bit, with an emphasis on the learning disability aspect of it. I'm very much a hands-on learner, but not very social and have no one in my life that could teach me. I feel as though I know next to nothing about music, as far as terminology and whatnot. I am also extremely, but not completely, unfamiliar with equipment involved in producing this kind of music.

My hopes for this post is to recieve recommendations on good places to start my learning process, while keeping in mind the learning disability and the fact that I'm broke af. Also, any free software that I could obtain for the actual production of the music so that I can apply the knowledge I gain as I'm learning. Any help is very much appreciated!

TLDR: I really want to learn to produce edm music, but I'm broke af and have a learning disability (ADHD; hands-on learning). I would really appreciate some free sources to learn from, as well as software to use to learn and practice. Thanks a bunch!

How is it so loud?

https://on.soundcloud.com/vRzUtpCx5NGiFxhd8

https://on.soundcloud.com/Ej9di74ZeEJXr4iK8

https://we.tl/t-ublp2m2WUw

I love my HS5s and sub but I really dislike that they don't have an auto detect signal for shutting on and off.

What are people doing to turn these on and off. Are you doing each speaker manually (feels cumbersome), or are you using a second power strip for the monitors (annoying for cable management).

And yes, I know "it's all a matter of opinion," but hear me out. This is mainly partaining to organic and psychedelic house, psychill, psychedelic and organic downtempo. I am fairly immersed in the culture. I go to festivals. I have a "tribe" and all that stuff. Within my circle the consensus is that your typical producer with a five year career will generally have three or four good tracks with the rest bring okay to unlistenable. I can't tell you how many times we've been listening to something that sounds great, heads are bopping and suddenly a sample of some indigenous chanting cuts in, or (as much as I love them) a long sample of a Terrence McKenna, Alan Watts, or lesser spiritual/psychedelic guy comes on to take you out of the vibe. Plastic shamanism is perennialy popular in the scene and man, it's a drag when perfectly good, greasy psychedelic music is ruined by someone singing like they're pretending to be an angel or something, or a pan flute busts in, maybe some overuse of a digeridoo. I hate to sound like a wet blanket here but the appropriation of indigenous cultures does come off a little goofy and tone deaf. Especially given that the bulk of the audience and artists are people with disposable income from rich countries. I love the rich textures and use of musique concrete--nature sounds from field recordings--used on a lot of tracks. Inventing new sounds inspired by nature while applying more field recordings would be way better.

Overall, as an audience member speaking on behalf of other audience members, I would like to politely request letting the track speak for itself. Less appropriating indigenous cultures, more celebration of nature itself, less focus on weird vocals and sampling, more focus on inventive, interesting psychedelic beats and sounds.

I want to start experimenting with fades in and out embedded into my tracks in a creative way (not mastering), right now I started by adding a gain plugin (on Logic Pro) at the end of my mix bus and started drawing some shapes but whatever I do it sounds off, any help?

I've been studying a lot of techno lately, mainly schranz and acid stuff.

Something I've been trying to pick apart is techno's use of the rumble. It's kind of the antithesis of clean mixing, in the sense that rumbles occupy a space we often try to clean up. I'm talking about the <30hz frequency range, mid/side control, etc. These rumbles are a dirty sound occupying a space we're told not to put things in. Yet it obviously works because there are thousands of techno tunes that sound phenomenal on club systems.

So my question is for you high level producers and engineers put there. How are you making these rumbles work in your mix? What are you doing that makes your rumble add to the track rather than subtract from the other elements?

Please post any and all [Feedback] or [Listen] type threads in this thread until the next one is created. Any threads made that should be a comment here will be removed.

Rules:

1. Make an effort to comment on other people's tracks. By doing so, you will find that others will be more likely to help you with your tracks.

2. Be specific when asking for help. Examples of specific questions: "What do you think about this kick sample?" "How's this mix?" "I need some help on this melody, the last measure comes off a little cheesy, any ideas?" etc.

3. Be descriptive when giving feedback. Use timecodes to highlight certain parts.

4. Please link to the feedback comments you've left in your top-level comment. This will show others the feedback you've left, and you're more likely to get feedback yourself! Also, please notice those who are leaving a lot of feedback and give them some, too. This is a cooperative effort! Update: Any comments that do not follow this format will be automatically removed.

For example:

feedback for Esther: "link to feedback"

feedback for Fay: "link to feedback"

feedback for Minerva: "link to feedback"

Here's my track. I'm looking for ___

Someone needs to make a cover of yakusoku (Leon Chang remix)

So I've been trying to step up my mixing game and I'm using FL studio currently. Previously I've just slapped some reverb onto the mixer track of the instrument (Or maybe a bus of several leads for example) and that has been that. Now I know that this type of way of handling reverb can cause problems and a muddy mix, So I've been researching methods of fixing this.

Either 1: Using some kind of peak controller, that ducks the reverb when lot's of instruments are being played.

2: Using reverb and delay-busses, that only plays the wet signals, EQ:ing these and sidechaining the kick for example. Pros: Makes it easier to automate and control individual reverb on each mixer-track by adjusting the strength to that mixer of the reverb.

Question here is however: is 2 reverb busses enough? 1 for big room reverb and one for close reverb, for all of the synths/leads/instruments?

Would appreciate some feedback from you guys. Thank you!

https://twitch.tv/n3ontigerofficial

I have a friend who's into music production. I am not too familiar with music genres but he listens to mostly melodic EDM and I would categorize his music as similar to that. Chill and often vocals-forward. He also sings himself sometimes for some of his music.

Besides the fact that he owns FL studio and maybe owns a MIDI keyboard, I don't really know what he needs/wants, so I figured getting a gift card to a music store would be a good idea. Does anyone here have ideas for a useful gift card to get him? I was thinking somewhere he could use for FL studio plugins, samples, and/or any hardware.

Just curious to see some examples of tracks where people would say the production is top notch. In terms of song writing, sound design, mixing and mastering.

Want to see if anyone else has fallen into this production black hole. It is something to watch out for. I am very aware of this problem yet it has happened with the last three projects that I’ve done.

Basically I’m in a situation where nobody is gonna help me mix or ‘master’ anything. So when I’m done with my mix w/ headroom I go through a ghetto mastering process where I listen to the tracks on every sound source possible, tweak the mix as I begin the process of compression and smoothing out the overall product.

All of a sudden I find myself in a situation where it’s not really sounding better (murkier) and I’ve ended up with some volume issues (too low/too high).

The whole ordeal has a very time consuming and of course, avoidable.

The last windows patch makes it look like your DAC died lol, I almost bought a new one. im just hoping to save someone some money, here's the post

Track is 128bpm which is pretty fast but I think the bassline and hihats give it even faster feel (at least to me). I'm basically interested in the first bar. Could someone tell me how are notes placed for this bassline and how is sound made (oscilators/envelopes/effects)? Also, how does hihat sound so "full" .. is it several of them and/or overdrive..? My point is not to copy but to learn. Ty!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK_6HYOmGo8

Short kick is also probably giving it such a fast feel.

After using Labelradar for a while, I want to issue a warning: there are some "labels" you should avoid.

I've learned that most Brazilian labels on this site are just trying to quickly make money off of you. It seems like they are all connected because whenever they message me, the messages are almost always the same: "This song is fire! 🔥 Is it still available? 👀" – they all send almost identical messages, worded the same way, followed by two more messages:

1. "I’d love to explain more about our terms, deadlines, promo, etc."
2. "Could I get your email?"

(I tested this with three different accounts and songs.)

Here’s what I found: (You pay them)

• Free – They just release music on Spotify and other mainstream streaming services with no promotional effort. It’s basically something you can do yourself with DistroKid. (Sometimes they ask for a 10-50% cut, it seems random.)
• 25$ – They release it on ALL streaming platforms and share your song with their "popular DJs" (who no one has ever heard of). Again, this is something you can easily do yourself with DistroKid. (They may also ask for a 10-50% cut.)
• 50$ to unlimited – They offer release and promotion on their Instagram, SoundCloud, etc. (often using botted accounts with bot views/likes/plays), and add your song to their playlists (which usually get no plays, or are also bot-generated).

Before anyone here accuses me of having something against Brazilians: all of these "labels" that contacted me are listed as being from Brazil according to their homepage, etc.

I don’t want to name them because I’m not interested in wasting my time with random drama.

Just make sure you don’t fall for this kind of thing or pay someone to get bot plays with no real results in return.

When you see that term it sounds just like a normal thing, but It actually temporary/ sometimes permanent damage, the tiny hairs in the ear that sense sound get flattened from too much exposure. so you lose sensitivity. most of the time they get back up and you fully restore sensitivty,

But heres the thing, with repeated temporary damage like that, over months to years, those hairs will not stand back up and stay permanently flattened. we should change the term

Please post any and all [Feedback] or [Listen] type threads in this thread until the next one is created. Any threads made that should be a comment here will be removed.

Rules:

1. Make an effort to comment on other people's tracks. By doing so, you will find that others will be more likely to help you with your tracks.

2. Be specific when asking for help. Examples of specific questions: "What do you think about this kick sample?" "How's this mix?" "I need some help on this melody, the last measure comes off a little cheesy, any ideas?" etc.

3. Be descriptive when giving feedback. Use timecodes to highlight certain parts.

4. Please link to the feedback comments you've left in your top-level comment. This will show others the feedback you've left, and you're more likely to get feedback yourself! Also, please notice those who are leaving a lot of feedback and give them some, too. This is a cooperative effort! Update: Any comments that do not follow this format will be automatically removed.

For example:

feedback for Esther: "link to feedback"

feedback for Fay: "link to feedback"

feedback for Minerva: "link to feedback"

Here's my track. I'm looking for ___

Ok so it's been about 2-3 years since I have started listening albums whole heartedly, and I really enjoy the process of music production it's always been so fascinating to me and I have always wanted to try all of these things as a hobby , now searching on Google I found out that you need DAW and a Laptop/Pc a decent headphone and you can start producing music , but I also saw someone said to have a MIDI keyboard controller, now I am not gonna buy any MIDI keyboard now, cause I am just testing waters, but I do have a Casio so is there anything I can learn on Casio before moving to a MIDI keyboard? And with regards to DAW I am actually building a PC cause of my college work as well so I won't starting on DAW anytime soon (a month or so) basically, the gist of it is that I just have a Casio for now and can I like start learning anything that helps me in music production ? Also some advice regarding DAW would be helpful

Hey,

I've been mixing for a year now and wants to venture into the production side.

Through my digging, I noted that a lot of tracks I like have the same kind of offbeat :

A lot of Polyamor label tracks :

L.zwo - House On Fire

Jim Jonathan - Pushing On

DJ IP - ROCK THE PLACE

WATTO - SHAKE N BAKE

2HOT2PLAY tracks :

Ida Corr, 2HOT2PLAY - Think About It

2HOT2PLAY - Keep The Balance [Hot Meal Brigade Vol.3]

Klubbheads - Bounce 2 Da Beat (Discoschorlee, Nightsub & 2HOT2PLAY Remix)

Hard house (rarer and softer but still present) :

22 Interns – Second Phase [TNT022] around 1:10

Baron Von Trax - Come Back To Me

During this set (or any other set of modern trance DJ) :

https://youtu.be/BG4RoPHzrBg?si=8PeBF6YiefE-ggDw

At 04:32, 13:36, 20:37, etc.., and particularly the banger at 1:07:35

It sounds like a saw wave 2 octave down with a filter, but well, that's basically every offbeat tutorial on youtube, and I can't figure out what to do next haha.
I tried to use vital to recreate this sound, but with no luck for now, it doesn't look that it's the hardest offbeat to produce, as I sounds simple, but I don't know how to progress, as I'm pretty new to this.

I know that a quality mix can be achieved with stock tools, but I got a $100 gift card to sweet water as a present I’d like to use. I’m looking for some plugin recommendations that you feel helped take your mix to the next level. I’m generally open to anything. I don’t really like Ableton’s stock limiter, so I was looking into Pro-L. Also, Ableton’s stock EQ is great! But pro q4 just dropped and also looks pretty sweet. Everyone raves about Soothe 2 and I’m leaning into that as well. Trackspacer looks interesting too! If anyone has any suggestions please let me know! (I have a good delay, reverb, and saturator already so I’m good on that front.)

Hey. I'm producing in Fl and have ozone 11 on my master just to get loudness. Is there any way to get it from -8 lufs to -3 without super distortion of output signal. Thank you< thank you!

UPD: thanks guys for huge feedback. I didn't expect this.