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I recorded a band with my Yamaha Digital 16 Track (AW16G). The original mix sounds great on headphones, great in a decent stereo, but sounded kind of distant and thin in my little boom box (which has a nice bass boost that was turned on at the time). I did a final master using Adobe Audition. It sounds fine on the computer speakers, in my portable CD player, even played through my TV which has only one mono speaker (!). This final master still sounds very odd on that boom box. Has anyone had this happen to them? One CD player they own just hates one of their mixes?

Any input is appreciated.

If it only sounds weird on one of half a dozen playback devices then I think your doing pretty good.

How do other recordings sound on that box?

Getting mixes to translate is one very challenging part of mixing. If you don't have a tuned room to mix in then you just have to learn the quirks of the room and adjust your mixing acordingly.

otisroom wrote:How do other recordings sound on that box?

This was the first thing I thought of. Have you played a CD or tape of a recording youre familiar with through the boom box to compare?

Yeah, I've listened to other recordings I've done on that lil boom box and they sound fine. I think its just this particular mix that doesn't sound right.

Anyway, I gave the band their master copies, so if they complain, I'll know I fucked up in some way.

The bass boost on the boom box might be the problem. I'm assuming the tiny boom box only has one speaker (even a lot of boom boxes that give the appearance of having a tweeter don't actually have one). Let's say the mix is a little bass heavy and maybe not as tight as other reference cds, and then you go and try to boost those frequencies and then try to replicate all of the frequencies through one speaker, you're probably going to get some weirdness from inter modulation distortion.

Your computer speakers and tv speakers probably aren't designed to even think about low frequencies, so they're just ignoring all that stuff. I wouldn't discount what the boombox is telling you, maybe try a version with reduced low frequencies, but boost the attack on the kick and bass to bring it back up to the same perceived volume.