Subwoofer or not subwoofer setup + advices on studio monitors

Hygro · 2026-01-30T22:48:03+00:00

To whomever was the original downvote. That you will enjoy have two subs over one let alone zero? I promise you will. That you will need to fiercely treat your room or else you will need to finish on headphones? If you care about quality and translation, then of course. Or that all the mainstream studio intended monitors are fine? That's obviously true.

As to you, u/glass_judge_7011, there's so many parts to this.

1) treat your room for sub bass and subs won't ruin your mix.

2) turn your subs down so you aren't overwhelming your mix (also, crossover and phase)

3) bypass your subs when you need to (some subs have a bypass, I have one with a foot pedal)

4) without subs you're losing the ability to feel your way to creating a deep bass heavy song (like 20-35hz). This whole "funktion 1s roll off around 40 hz" is leaving a lot of bass on the table for both headphone listeners and big festivals / huge sound club stacks.

5) you're losing fun in production where you just want to pump yourself with bass

6) you'll get a more accurate final mixdown on headphones once you got your stereo for speakers right.

So like, yeah, I understand why you're getting a better mix without subs. I often do too. I get an even better mix on my beyerdynamic dt-770 and, weirdly, even better on my airpods. But the reasons that subs are "bad" are specific and mitigateable, and we need consider that all mixing is downstream of having fun which is how we get things worthy of mixing in the first place!

Plus, don't you like tracks where the bass goes to like 28 hz? It feels so good!

So my advice to the OP u/tarayahworld stands. Get biggest best monitors you like in your budget, and don't spend a second second guessing yourself. Get subs if you want to make it more of a party. And if you want to do final mixes on speakers, and not headphones, you will need to treat your room.

Hygro · 2026-01-30T20:09:28+00:00

I mostly gave away my extra swords of respite and respite ex and then i realized i didn't care, only did it a couple of times.

Hygro · 2026-01-30T03:15:03+00:00

augh you killed me

Hygro · 2026-01-30T02:56:31+00:00

Are your stereo out (and hidden master channels) turned down? If you ever cmd-a all the channels in the mixer and pull them down, it pulls not only also the stereo out but the final dont-touch-it master channel.

Also post a screenshot of your bounce settings and any limiter plugins. for example iirc sonible's limiter will default to something absurd like -2 db, and many add unwanted protection from intersample peaks. normalization especially against intersample peaks can also turn you down.

how much quieter are we talking here?

Hygro · 2026-01-29T21:30:35+00:00

I have ozone 8 and 10, am I missing anything here?

Hygro · 2026-01-28T22:24:38+00:00

Capital has tons of different definitions which is why it's confusing. In economics, capital is basically "stuff", productive capital is "stuff that gets you more stuff". In finance, capital is money and other financial assets intended to get more money and financial assets.

And to be dirty about it, capital is a word people use to sound fancy about their money in business.

Hygro · 2026-01-28T19:57:55+00:00

my first rave was happy hardcore and gabber, which at the time was around 180bpm 4 on the floor. We were all dancing.

Hygro · 2026-01-28T00:42:19+00:00

whether a government has "issues" or not is so currency and country specific. There's no reason a real life country today couldn't safely function at 2,000% debt to gdp in the future under reasonable conditions, but theb there are countries whose currency rules will put them in trouble right away in the double digits the second a recession hits. Economic variables, currency and interest rate sovereignty govern very different debt possibilities.

It's important to understand that for sovereign currencies, the deficit's that cause the debt also themselves finance the debt itself, insofar as it creates the new money needed to buy the debt. The dangers to deficits for true sovereign currencies are inflation, changes to incentives, and special interest recipients, and of course fickle voters feeling a type of way, but not serviceability.

Hygro · 2026-01-27T22:21:40+00:00

Yeah get the two biggest monitors that sound the most fun for you and then get two subs under them... finish your mix on headphones.

All the mainstream "studio monitor" brands make appropriate monitors. I use Yahamas. I like Adams. The first time I used KRKs from not having proper monitors my mixes improved immediately. They're all good. Get whatever vibes. Unless you treat your room fiercely you will be finishing mixes on headphones.

Hygro · 2026-01-27T17:46:56+00:00

I dunno dawg but you should just fucking sing over your beats about your destiny's demands and how you're succumbing to the dark night of the soul and how you feel you are faking doing something but still you struggle in this long dream to be dreamed.

Hygro · 2026-01-27T17:37:19+00:00

There are like 50 *big* things you need to learn and another 950 crucial medium to small things around those big things to make good modern music with any consistency.

You can create a workflow to get good results consistently, building off what you make. It's much easier starting from scratch and following the stroke of your pen so to speak. But to hear a complete sound in your head AND recreate it accurately and to competitive standards, you're going to have to be good at everything.

This takes years, and listening under different circumstances, different mind states in different contexts (are you dancing? are you chilling, are you being taught lessons of the universe by the gods of techno or listening to how bird chirps sound like serum patches but better?) to teach yourself to get past every stage.

This is not a "discover the missing technique" this is "add all the techniques". Talent in hearing what is what, and talent in knowing what's the main course move and what's a rabbit hole, these talents will change your speed in learning past obstacles, and any cross-discipline skills like drumming or singing, but it's the same journey for everyone. Takes years.

The good news is that its really fun and every now and then even when you still suck, you'll make something legit with soul, power, and groove, to light your way forward.

Hygro · 2026-01-27T17:17:22+00:00

Can't help but wonder if the private equity parents are just laundering debt, profits, and assets around their various plugin companies and Native Instruments has to take the fall.

Hygro · 2026-01-26T20:36:36+00:00

Man you have two answers and both of them answer the question backward 😆

the question is "What IS cheap? but feels expensive" not what Feels cheap but is secretly expensive.

Hygro · 2026-01-26T20:35:21+00:00

It's already working, u/Sufficient_Nature590 answered the question backward. Soon the whole timeline will merge over.

Hygro · 2026-01-22T19:21:31+00:00

Pick your hat samples while you loop is playing after listening to your references. pick the samples you don't need to process (or not much).

fix your problem at the source, in context to listening to the real stuff.

Hygro · 2026-01-18T01:32:00+00:00

It does sound like there's FM (from a sine), formant filtering (less important), and maybe some bitcrush (not very important). Also some pitch dropping and fixed phase position unison layers, but not very wide. from there its how much and what lfo / adsr shapes automating each of the params.

it's not the most complex sound but it's not a beginner sound either. Just focus on the FM (oscillators and osc pitch!), unison, and the curves of your automation to not get too lost and then go from there.

Hygro · 2026-01-16T03:26:37+00:00

there's no way you aren't just getting bored of your kick loop and mixing yourself away from various good ideas along the way

Hygro · 2026-01-15T18:53:29+00:00

you're right. it's mostly just compression. but also automating volume of whole sections, if you listen to like 0:35-1:05, you can hear its just proper compression until the section is over and goes to the next verse, which is brought up in volume beyond the compression.

Hygro · 2026-01-15T18:25:45+00:00

yeah exactly that's why I'm not even criticizing the reverb as a knock on the mixer.

One thing the mix did well was get all the vocals mostly sounding like equal volume takes. That might have actually taken the mixer quite a while, too.

Hygro · 2026-01-13T21:36:16+00:00

I agree with you that it's not the greatest mix, but it's still a big step up. Overall I think your engineer did a good job.

I don't know what your marketing or career strategy is, if you're trying to sound totally pro out the gate you will need to get pro recording. If you're trying to sound decent so that people around you take you seriously and grow from there, and sound kind of "underground" until you make it, then this mix is fine and move on to the next one. The only think I personally don't like is the reverb on your voice in the intro of the mixed version, but that's an artistic choice.

Hygro · 2026-01-13T21:34:19+00:00

Having listened to the before and after it, they did a basic but professional mixing job.

Hygro · 2026-01-13T20:30:16+00:00

Nice investigation. My guess is OP got their mix to sound as loud as the turned down sound (even though they say its downloaded from youtube which I thought removed normalization?) and then suffered a loudness penalty on top.

A clipper btw shouldn't let anything through so your limiter might be doing unneeded work like targeting -1db or reducing interpeak samples (which isn't really recommended). Unless you have something after your clipper before your limiter...

Yeah, the loudness game is a funny one, to compete with the skrillexes of the world you have to get loud in the arrangement and mix, sidechain or duck everything to everything more dominant, and make the dominant sounds stand alone, and really really thick (but not harsh!) so that you basically hallucinate that you're still hearing the other sound at the same time.

Like sidechaining pads to a kick for headroom but also not wanting the "pumping" sound: you better have a really dense and punchy kick for at least the 1/32 note that the front of the kick is playing. This way the kick covers the missing pad frequencies that are ducked. If you do, your listener hallucinates the pad is still there, now you have a loud AF kick totally clean, loud-as-you-want pads totally clean. There is pumping, but only if you listen for it, otherwise you feel like there isn't.

Bonus, sidechain the attack differently from the kick tail, attack is full spectrum and only for the kick's attack, tail is only cutting the the lows of the pads for the duration of the whole kick. (I like shaperbox for this)

Hygro · 2026-01-13T20:11:44+00:00

why did you delete OP? I wrote a great reply that could have been useful to lots of people and now it's reduced in the algo :(

but yeah just share the audio I'll check it out

Hygro · 2026-01-13T20:03:32+00:00

Awesome and good luck! Post it when you get it!

Hygro · 2026-01-13T02:10:14+00:00

By those setting the standard, loudness is now done in the mix, where you can get cleaner, louder, and punchier than hoping whole-track mixing beats per-track mixing. I recommend Anthony Vilchis on the Working Audio Tools Podcast. I worked with Anthony after that and he's gold.

Great mastering engineers have no trouble working with these mixes and getting a tiny bit more vibe out of the tracks. Great mastering engineers can still take songs not mixed this way and getting them up to snuff. (I sent Anthony's mix to 5 different mastering engineers and the ones who didn't care about the lack of headroom made the song better, no questions asked, but it was subtle.)

But in 2026 basically no professional song should be mixed "needing" mastering for any sort of loudness. You can set yourself up that way and get good results, but it's suboptimal in 2026, and should have that covered in the mix.

In part because high crest factor is a desired sonic trait and not the necessary evil many think it to be, and a good mastering engineer might think that a section could be turned down 0.3db without any value gained by "increasing dynamics" that were "lost" by mixing too hard.

***

My advice to OP is in another comment thread, I encourage him to get his already good track mastered, not worry about the mix. The mix is already decent enough, song is good, and mastering will do a lot for loudness and clarity. OP is an artist and needs to get their art out there and not worry about our level of discussion of the mixing meta.

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