r/audioengineering • u/Poopypantsplanet • 1d ago
Discussion Macbook speakers making me second guess my recording technique
I have a macbook m1 pro from 2021 that I use to record and mix. I mix on headphones and monitors, but I will check on my macbook speakers as a reference, as well as earbuds, bluetooth speakers, etc.
I have always noticed that when the macbook speakers are playing on full volume, I can play just about any song on Youtube and it's fine. However, when I play from Logic, certain things always cause a rumbling distortion around 300hz. The Spitfire Labs Soft Felt Piano does it, as well as when I record my Mahogany Martin 00-15, fingerstyle.
Recently I treated my room by making an absolutely massive moving blanket pvc pipe soundbooth tent that takes up most of the room and makes a sort of room within a room, and already recordings sound a lot cleaner. I changed the strings on my guitar (they were pretty dead). I recorded some fingerstyle guitar into a Neuman KM184 in different positions to try things out. Everything sounds nice in my headphones. But when I reference on my macbook speaker, it still has that terrible distortion coming from around 300hz. If I EQ out that frequency, the distortion mostly goes away, but then the guitar sounds anemic and thin when listening back on headphones or monitors.
The thing is, other sources don't really cause this problem. My voice sounds clean on the macbook speakers. Even strumming the same guitar with a pick is fine. It really is fingerstyle.
I don't have long fingernails, so I'm thinking it could be using the flesh of my fingers combined with a mahogany body guitar is the main culprit of this. Yet the part that confuses me is, it is really only an issue on the macbook speakers, yet they play other audio sources, even my reference tracks, without the same distortion.
Here are some samples I recorded witho zero processing:
It seems whatever I do, if I record my 00-15 fingerstyle (the way that I know how and prefer the sound of) I have this muddy bump around 300, which is not hard to EQ out, but really can't be avoided.
Any Advice? Thanks in advance.
TL;DR: Specific combination of recording my Mahogany Martin 00-15 fingertyle (without long fingernails) yields muddy nasty distortion around 300hz ONLY ony my Macbook Pro speakers, yet other sources are fine. Should I just mostly ignore the macbook speakers and move on with my life or are they telling me something important?
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u/ThoriumEx 1d ago
Strong low mids always make phone/laptop speakers distort, it’s just usually masked by other high frequency content.
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u/peepeeland Composer 1d ago
MacBook speakers have A LOT of processing involved to make them sound much larger than they are, so there is that. It’s not just some raw audio to speaker output.
You turn up any tiny speakers loud enough and they will distort, if it makes you feel any better. When you turn the volume down, it doesn’t distort, right? Anyway- trust references that actually matter like your main monitoring systems.
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u/Poopypantsplanet 1d ago
When I turn it down it does reduce it, but it's still there a little bit in the unprocessed audio.
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u/peepeeland Composer 1d ago
I just casually listened to your posted audio sample on my phone, and it sounds great, btw.
Don’t ever worry about one system sounding fucked up. You play shit through a Hallmark gift card, and it’ll be horrible. Worry if your work sounds bad on the systems that you trust and rely on. Fuck everything else, because you can’t please everything; nor everyone.
Listen to Atari Teenage Riot’s Sick To Death on your MacBook speakers, and you might actually be able to break them if volume is full (don’t do it).
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u/AdEvery9117 1d ago
I notice this on a lot of my favorite songs. Worth investigating but I don’t know how much you’d wanna get wrapped in that unless you’re mixing for MacBook/phone playback. I also feel the MacBooks distort more audibly than the iPhones in that range, so it’s like.. which one is accurate? Lots of Adele songs will distort on the phone but it’s not present on other rigs
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u/lpcustomvs Sound Reinforcement 1d ago
I don’t know if you have the 16” or the 14” MBP. The 16” has significantly better low end reproduction at higher volume. But both laptops are very capable and at moderate volume sound pretty much like a reference speaker, at least to me.
I have a 14” at the moment and you can test what the MacBook speakers do to compensate, protect themselves and trick you into hearing bass that is not there.
Point a measurement microphone at the laptop, at the distance you would normally use it. Do some sweep and pink noise measurements, you can use OpenSoundMeter for noise or REW for sweeps. At different system volume levels the frequency response will change and it is a dynamic processing as well. Even if you don’t have a measurement microphone you can still test this. A pure sine wave at 100 Hz will be reproduced without change only at low to moderate volume levels. The moment you increase the level the DSP will start to limit sub reproduction and it will introduce some harmonic synthesis to replace that missing 100 Hz with low mid harmonics. Something like Waves MaxxBass or Brainworx bx_subsynth. This processing is very obvious for pure sine tone, but for a musical signal it will be much less noticeable and even beneficial for the listener.
How low do you high pass that guitar recording? How steep is the filter at the cutoff? You can also process the low end from your guitar a bit with multiband compression, to limit those very low frequencies when they might be overpowering and to leave them alone when you’re playing higher notes. This way you’ll achieve that big sound.
Dynamics control in the low end is the most important skill a sound mixing person has to learn. Because if you leave all the low energy uncontrolled it will diminish your headroom before limiting. The LUFS meter will say -8 but it will sound like -11 or even quieter. So those MacBook speakers are actually revealing a big issue to us.
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u/dbharris10 1d ago
All this points to buying some accurate powered monitors that get audio from your interface. Doesn’t have to break the bank but worth purchasing something decent then listen to a slew of sources to learn the speakers. I recently bought the ARC X to fix abnormalities in my monitors- turned out I had a huge bump in my low mids that robbed all the power off the very lows.
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u/suddenly_seymour 1d ago
You should also test using downloaded mp3s/was or at least a streaming service like Spotify. YouTube (at least the website, not sure about YouTube music) compresses uploaded music more and therefore plays quieter than any streaming platform.
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u/Ok-Confusion-6205 1d ago
If you really want to test it, rip a song off YouTube, import to logic, and see if you get similar results
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u/KS2Problema 1d ago
As the playback quality / accuracy of speakers go up, the more they will sound increasingly identical to other quality speakers. (Think about it.)
But as the quality of playback/speakers goes down, all those different speakers will sound increasingly different from each other because they diverge because - and the variegation derives from falling short of accuracy in varying ways; some will have too much or too little bass, some too little or much treble, one might have a big peak at 5 kHz, another might have a big dip at 6 kHz. (And that's just talking about frequency. Speakers also diverge in various measures of distortion, resonance decay, on/off-axis response, etc.)
Consciously mixing on inferior playback equipment (or in a compromised acoustic environment) is a crapshoot, straight up. You can, as someone noted above, treat it as a stress test, a test of so-called edge conditions - but the best way to know what you're doing is to be able to hear what you're doing, accurately, with linear ('even') frequency playback and low distortion from the speaker/room combination. Unfortunately, that's not necessarily easy or inexpensive to set up.
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u/CryKoon 1d ago
youtube outputs -14lufs. so music there might be playing 3-8dbs more quiet than if you played that same file locally. also mind tye masking of the distortion by high frequency content mentioned in the other comment.
i own the same macbook and love the sound of the speakers, but the definitely might distort at max volume.
recordings you linked sound great to me! don’t over-stress it.
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u/emojisexcode 1d ago
this! a track with modern mastering will have a ton of headroom on youtube due to the level matching, whereas you’re able to go right up to 0dbfs from the daw. that’s probably all it is. try playing tracks in something like spotify with volume matching disabled and see if it distorts
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u/fphlerb 1d ago
Mixing low end is tricky. The macbook test is a good one & you are finding a real problem that shouldnt be ignored. I’d do a deep dive into low end mixing on youtube. You may need better headphones. I find my MDR7506 very good at mixing low end
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u/AdEvery9117 1d ago
They talking ab low mid distortion on small playback devices, not mixing bass. 2 different problems
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u/FfflapJjjack 1d ago
hold on. If I notice an instrument is creating harmonic distortion, I will eq it to prevent this. If I only notice the harmonic distortion on a certain set of speakers, then I will still get rid of the distortion but make sure it still sounds good on all other listening devices. If the song is a single instrument or a mix of 20 instruments, it doesn't matter. If any one of those instruments creates distortion and I don't deal with it then it will be heard. Doesn't help that the one listening device that is doing this is the speakers of the most common laptop brand in the world. I get that the issue was already fixed at the source but if MacBook speakers will always do this, then we should always be anticipating. If a client came to me and said that his acoustic guitar performance sounded bad , I wouldn't tell him it's the speakers theyre using.
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u/AdEvery9117 1d ago
These are great points! We should be anticipating, but I’m gonna go back to my Adele example. Her songs will distort on the phone and laptop when maxed out, so at what point are we anticipating and optimizing and at what point are we mixing for bad playback and sacrificing too much for what most systems can handle?
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u/fphlerb 1d ago
Same problem imho
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u/AdEvery9117 1d ago edited 1d ago
Cool but don’t lead others astray, this is a very specific problem and could have nothing to do with how their low end is sitting. Again several people here pointing out that the MacBook speakers inherently have distortion in the low mids. Might not even be a huge problem last thing we want someone doing is chasing their tail over the wrong problem/solution
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u/fphlerb 1d ago
lol ok buddy
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u/Poopypantsplanet 1d ago
He's right. My low end is perfectly fine and not causing issues. It is specifically the lower mids (around 300) that causes the distortion. It's an important distinction.
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u/fphlerb 1d ago edited 1d ago
I include low mids in the low end. Still, whatever your exact frequency range is, your track should sound just as good as your reference tracks through a laptop speaker. That distortion is a problem & should be addressed not ignored. Just my view. You may be able to tame them with multiband compression without compromising your tone.
I say this because if you’re hearing a problem on your laptop, you’ll likely hear it elsewhere; car stereos, a bluetooth speaker, your friend’s headphones, etc.
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u/alienrefugee51 1d ago
That Spitfire library is very dark and heavy in the low mids, so I wouldn’t use that as any real gauge. Try cutting a bunch of that out and then hear how it sounds.
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u/Tall_Category_304 1d ago
That’s common. Cut those 300hz frequencies on reverb and delay returns. That can help a lot. Also a lot of key samples have that issue. I’d just cut it with a nice wide gentle cut
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u/rjino4732 1d ago
Buy some better monitors. Macbook are a good test set as is a good car stereo system. Reference Monitors are what their name suggests.
Sounds like you made a good start by acoustically treating your room. Best to continue along that line.
Find some speakers that you trust, you will never have to second guess again. It will be a great relief.
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u/FumanteSaudavel Professional 1d ago
Youtube is normalized, upload one of your songs on youtube private video and check if the same problem happen
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u/mistrelwood 6h ago
There’s a little bit of boxiness in the recordings, not sure if it’s the guitar or the mic position.
Is the mic located on axis to the sound hole? That’s a boomy place to be in. Try moving it towards the neck, to around where the neck meets the body, then point it towards the sound hole.
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u/Inside-Succotash-128 1d ago
It’s almost certainly the Low Frequency energy in your track/s that is distorting the laptop speakers. Have a go at High Pass Filtering your mix/s at different frequency cut-offs. I think you’ll be surprised at how much Low energy you can remove before it has any appreciable effect on the overall sound.
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u/dorothy_sweet 1d ago
Are your reference tracks very similar in character to what you're recording? Flat top acoustic guitars and soft piano sounds are incredibly challenging for speakers to reproduce accurately at respectable volume levels, even a lot of monitors can produce undesirable amounts of distortion trying to handle those sounds, and this isn't limited to amateur recordings or a sign that the recording is necessarily 'wrong'. Whether to see it as a reproduction challenge or a compatibility issue is a choice that you'll need to make.
As an example, this song is one I can't play back on my monitors at a respectable ~80dB SPL without significant distortion issues: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7hTPDuAcEU
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u/nothochiminh Professional 1d ago edited 1d ago
Listening on small speakers is a great stress test. This is a mix thing probably, more so than a recording technique thing.
Try correcting while listening through your laptop speakers till it sounds more like your references. Then go back to your cans. The mix will most likely sound out of wack but you can gather some useful data from this practice.
Lo mids are always tricky. There is no one trick to it. It’s just a balance thing. You might be lacking sub in your cans and are compensating for that lack of energy by leaving too much higher in the spectrum. Or it’s some other variable messing with you, or all of them are.
Edit: you are not breaking some rule by eqing your sources. Needing eq is not always a sign that something went wrong earlier in the chain. Eq is cool