Hi, I was wondering if I could get any input on this.
So recently I've been doing some A-B comparisons between the music that I make with Mixcraft and professionally made music (specifically the music that I have in my digital music collection/general downloaded music). From several trials I have come to notice a subtle, yet significant difference between the fidelity of the music I made with Mixcraft vs other music.
To begin, the thing here is that the quality of my music sounds good when I listen to it. It just really sounds like there's nothing wrong with it by casual listening and you'd too probably be like "Ooookay, what's the issue??". But it immediately becomes apparent that something is a bit "off" once I test it side by side against other music. It seems that my music sounds "flat" by comparison whereas the other music sounds "fuller" and with more hi-end fidelity. It doesn't matter whether I'm doing the sound comparison on my laptop using my audio player (I usually use Winamp for instance), my DAP/MP3 player, or my home or car stereo - the difference is the same across all medium used, so that's not the issue.
I do understand that professional music is sent off to be mastered, which usually takes care of that by adding polish to the music and other things such as loudness and cohesiveness between tracks, but something just still seems missing here that I don't think that I'm quite understanding....
For a little background information in order to get some understanding of what I do on my end, when I do my mixes in Mixcraft I make the process as simple as possible. I make sure all of the individual tracks are balanced in volume and I use EQ to cut out the lows and some of the mids - I usually only apply this to the instrument/melody tracks to provide clarity in those frequency ranges. I don't even EQ my drums at all, mainly because they are samples from drum machines. I leave the bass alone entirely as I use a synthesizer VST for that, so EQ is not needed here either. Aside from adding the necessary ambient effects, that's pretty much it. The type of music I make is mostly instrumental/dub tracks with no vocals so there is literally nothing else to do.
After I'm satisfied with my mix(es) I mixdown/render them as MP3 320 kbps 44100 Hz Stereo to ensure that they are of the highest quality (for MP3 anyway). By comparison, the music that I have downloaded in my collection are usually at much lower bit rates and qualities being as they come from various sources. But still, I don't think that's the issue here.
For some reason my music just sounds more "flat" overall. The best way I can describe it is that it lacks clarity in the high end and/or maybe stereo width. I know that for the high end issue in itself I could probably resolve that by applying a boost on the Hi frequency band on the Master EQ, but then that brings another sub-question in that I wonder if this is something that all other producers do to their mixes as common practice, perhaps??? That is something I would like to know from other fellow producers here.
Is anyone else here having the same experience and maybe can provide some help? I hope this doesn't sound too confusing. I would also like to state that this isn't a matter of me just simply thinking that my music sounds inferior to professional music and my ears are playing tricks on me so that I will always find something wrong with it, etc. This is not that kind of situation. Just wanted to clarify that.
Thanks in advance.
So recently I've been doing some A-B comparisons between the music that I make with Mixcraft and professionally made music (specifically the music that I have in my digital music collection/general downloaded music). From several trials I have come to notice a subtle, yet significant difference between the fidelity of the music I made with Mixcraft vs other music.
To begin, the thing here is that the quality of my music sounds good when I listen to it. It just really sounds like there's nothing wrong with it by casual listening and you'd too probably be like "Ooookay, what's the issue??". But it immediately becomes apparent that something is a bit "off" once I test it side by side against other music. It seems that my music sounds "flat" by comparison whereas the other music sounds "fuller" and with more hi-end fidelity. It doesn't matter whether I'm doing the sound comparison on my laptop using my audio player (I usually use Winamp for instance), my DAP/MP3 player, or my home or car stereo - the difference is the same across all medium used, so that's not the issue.
I do understand that professional music is sent off to be mastered, which usually takes care of that by adding polish to the music and other things such as loudness and cohesiveness between tracks, but something just still seems missing here that I don't think that I'm quite understanding....
For a little background information in order to get some understanding of what I do on my end, when I do my mixes in Mixcraft I make the process as simple as possible. I make sure all of the individual tracks are balanced in volume and I use EQ to cut out the lows and some of the mids - I usually only apply this to the instrument/melody tracks to provide clarity in those frequency ranges. I don't even EQ my drums at all, mainly because they are samples from drum machines. I leave the bass alone entirely as I use a synthesizer VST for that, so EQ is not needed here either. Aside from adding the necessary ambient effects, that's pretty much it. The type of music I make is mostly instrumental/dub tracks with no vocals so there is literally nothing else to do.
After I'm satisfied with my mix(es) I mixdown/render them as MP3 320 kbps 44100 Hz Stereo to ensure that they are of the highest quality (for MP3 anyway). By comparison, the music that I have downloaded in my collection are usually at much lower bit rates and qualities being as they come from various sources. But still, I don't think that's the issue here.
For some reason my music just sounds more "flat" overall. The best way I can describe it is that it lacks clarity in the high end and/or maybe stereo width. I know that for the high end issue in itself I could probably resolve that by applying a boost on the Hi frequency band on the Master EQ, but then that brings another sub-question in that I wonder if this is something that all other producers do to their mixes as common practice, perhaps??? That is something I would like to know from other fellow producers here.
Is anyone else here having the same experience and maybe can provide some help? I hope this doesn't sound too confusing. I would also like to state that this isn't a matter of me just simply thinking that my music sounds inferior to professional music and my ears are playing tricks on me so that I will always find something wrong with it, etc. This is not that kind of situation. Just wanted to clarify that.
Thanks in advance.
Statistics: Posted by Dee-J — Tue Mar 18, 2025 4:49 am