Vocal problems on mastered work in one listening environment

[richard]

Firstly, Earle and Paavo, thanks both for developing such a useful and user-friendly piece of software, and for your support following my initial purchase back in November. I am very happy with the product and the effect it’s had on the tracks I’ve prepared for CD release.

There has been one niggly point with the effects of my remastering process, though, and I wonder if Earle, Paavo or any other Har-Bal users could shed some light.

My tracks are largely parodies of songs from the last 40 years, for which I have in the main been using EQs from the eras I’m parodying as a starting point, and refining certain frequencies after playbacks on several systems in vastly different environments. The idea hasn’t been to give the individual tracks a perfect 2006 feel; rather to get them to sound a bit more 1965 or 1973 or whatever, then master the whole CD like a modern compilation of music from throughout the years. On the whole, this approach has been very successful - much more successful than I could ever have hoped.

This is the point at which most of you will probably shriek. My recordings were made over a period of seven years in my living room, which, although untreated, has a remarkably low reverb time if the thick curtains are closed and my vocal takes are recorded with them right behind me. The material was recorded onto an eight-track cassette Portastudio and originally mixed to MiniDisc (too high, admittedly) using headphones (DT100s), with reference to my speakers in the same room before a mix was considered final.

I’ve used Adobe Audition 1.5 to reduce hum, hiss and other noise successfully, then applied Har-Bal 1.51 accordingly before going back to Audition to apply an exciter, paragraphic EQ and multi-band compression, plus stereo imaging correction and further limiting where necessary.

Again, partially because of the extraneous noise around my flat and partially to understand the sometimes subtle changes that come into play during stages of the remastering process, I’ve used a decent pair of monitoring headphones (ATH-M30s) to do this work. At all stages of the process, I’ve compared the sound through my PC speakers and my hi-fi speakers, and refined things as I've gone along. I’ve also listened to the finished CD on a number of different hi-fi systems at friends’ houses and even had people try the finished product out on their car stereos, and the reaction has been very positive, both when it’s been judged on its own merits and against an unmastered copy of the CD.

However, I have one friend who listens to his music off a very high-spec PC (with a THX-compatible soundcard, no less) in an extension to his house that has no soft furnishings. The room has that horrid natural “breeze block” reverb, and my only reason for listening to the CD in that room was that if it sounded good there, then it would probably sound good anywhere.

We haven’t had any problems listening to professionally mastered CDs in the same room on the same equipment over the last few months, but for some reason the vocals on some of the tracks on my CD sound like they were recorded in a tiled toilet cubicle when played back in this room, and this room only. Looking back at my notes, some of these tracks didn’t have a huge amount of reverb on the original mix, and I’ve added none during the mastering process.

I’m just wondering: would it ever be proper for a mastering engineer to just throw up their hands and assume that some listeners to a CD will be listening in a far from conducive environment, and, if so, at what point?

Also, given that this problem has only occured in one room, and that I have been happy with my CD in all other environments in which I’ve listened to it, is there a way I can judge the room to discover the offending frequency in order to use a notch filter or something on the final mixes? Or is there a particular “catch-all” EQ trick that could be tried as a starting point?

I’ve read various things about vocal resonance, but they all seem to be geared more to the recording environment rather than the playback environment. The remastering process has convinced me that I need to do some acoustic treatment in my recording environment for future recordings - in fact, I really need to move - but I’d prefer not to have to re-record or remix tracks, as those buying my CD are already familiar with the existing versions in an unmastered form from having been available to stream on the web, via podcasts etc.

I expected there to be some differences in the sound of my CD from system to system, but there really haven’t been. It’s just this one room, and the difference is so noticeable - and I have started to wonder how many other purchasers of my CD may find themselves listening to it in similarly bad rooms and being as unhappy with the sound as I am.

Any help will be gratefully taken on board. I'm not a pro, so go easy with me - but I would like to get better!

[HarBal]

Hi Richard,

It's impossible to get a perfect master for all environments. The best one is usually the one that suites most and by the sounds of it you seem to be there.

Overly reverberant are always likely to through up odd situations for certain tracks and using that room as a reject or accept criterion may be a bad idea. It is really hard to say if it is a problem in your tracks or a problem with the room. However, you should ask yourself what sort of processing you applied to your tracks and whether they may be responsible.

You mentioned that you used and exciter and multi-band compression ot your tracks. I'm not sure what an exciter does in signal processing terms but I'd be tempted to take that and the muli-band out of the process and see if the results are the same in that room. Also, check thet your vocal is too loud in the overall mix.

Maybe Earle will have some other suggestions?

Cheers,


Paavo.

[har-bal]

Hi Richard,

It's impossible to get a perfect master for all environments. The best one is usually the one that suites most and by the sounds of it you seem to be there.

Overly reverberant are always likely to through up odd situations for certain tracks and using that room as a reject or accept criterion may be a bad idea. It is really hard to say if it is a problem in your tracks or a problem with the room. However, you should ask yourself what sort of processing you applied to your tracks and whether they may be responsible.

You mentioned that you used and exciter and multi-band compression ot your tracks. I'm not sure what an exciter does in signal processing terms but I'd be tempted to take that and the muli-band out of the process and see if the results are the same in that room. Also, check thet your vocal is too loud in the overall mix.

Maybe Earle will have some other suggestions?

Cheers,


Paavo.

Richard

Paavo is correct. The problem you are experiencing may be arising from a mixture of both the exciter and the reverb on the track. As you probably already know adding an exciter introduces additional harmonics and to top it off with reverb???

Here is something you can try. Unprocess the addition of the exciter in the original mix and it may be easier to listen to in that room. You should also narrow the stereo field just a bit.

You also stated that this room has no furnishing. That is not a normal listening environment at all. I agree with Paavo. If it sounds good on the majority of rooms you have played it in with this one being the only exception. I wouldn't worry about it one bit

Earle

[richard]

Thanks to you both.

Just to clarify that the reverb is on the original mix and the exciter was only used during mastering to add a bit of "fairy dust" to replenish anything that might have been lost during the noise reduction process. I probably wouldn't have used it if my recordings had been in the digital domain.

I don't think the vocals are too loud - in fact, people are always complaining they're not loud enough! I personally think they're just right and if they're not, the mastering process has put them right.

I'll perform some tests at the weekend, taking your comments into account, and report back.

[richard]

I did nine different masters of the same section of the same piece, dropping out combinations of the exciter, the compressor and the stereo enhancer. Whilst there were differences to the overall sound from master to master, none of them was as good as the master that contained all three - and all of those masters still suffered from the "toilet" effect. So it's either the reverb on the original mix or the listening room - and, as the "toilet" effect isn't a problem in other listening environments, I'm going with the master I already had done.

Thanks for the advice.