[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

Ross,

Welcome to the Forum!

The monitors have been moved forward a bit and closer in. The mixes do not translate when moved outside of the studio. The bass is incorrectly heard in the mix leading to loss of bass when played away from the monitors.

That’s a familiar situation, I’m afraid. There are a couple of problems that relate to this.

I assume you’re in smallish room? The problem is that most rooms, especially symmetrical rooms (i.e., square or shoebox dimensions) have a null area or “bass hole” in the dead center. From there, the closer you move to any boundary, the more perceived bass intensity increases.

With a small room, you probably have your desk against a wall, or close to it. By the time you add the width of the desk and another few feet to where you’re head is, you’re pretty close to the center of the room – right smack in the middle of that “bass hole.”

To confirm this, do this simple test: Play some music and leave your chair and move towards a wall or a corner. I’ll bet you’ll find the bass level increasing the closer you get to a boundary.

The other problem is that small studio monitors deliver small bass. It’s extremely difficult to take a mix from them to a home system with even a modest subwoofer. Same with a decent car audio system. Your EQ’d response is nice and flat now, and I’ll bet it sounds really thin, if not shrill. I mean, you’ve got something like a 30-dB drop between 70 and 30 Hz! You probably need at least an 8 dB or more rise in response across that range – i.e., a house curve. You might want to check the house curve sticky thread on this forum’s index page.

Bottom line, add a subwoofer and you have a much better chance of getting a mix that will play well outside the studio. That won’t fix the “bass hole” problem – you’ll just have to optimize response for the listening position.

And, I echo brucek’s recommendation not to use the BFD for the mains. Sticking a $100 equalizer on a $1000 set of speakers is just wrong, especially if the problem you’re having is all in the bass region. Get a sub and you can equalize it with the BFD, and keep your mains free of extraneous processing.

Regards,
Wayne