Q: do you ever feel like youve got a mix down pat but then you listen to the result over a phone speaker and it sounds awful? im working with making purposefully lobit music and theres a couple of tunes that sound lovely through headphones and proper speakers but absolutely dire through phone speakers, like theres this horrible harsh scraping sound made whenever a mid/high frequency tone plays. have you any tips on this stage of the mixing process? any compromises i should consider?
A: just be aware that nothing in the low frequency range will exist on the phone. also another thing to help put it in perspective, if someone mostly listens to music through a pancake speaker (phone speaker, tablet speaker, something flat like a pancake, with no bass, etc), they might be used to that sort of sound. so while you might be shocked, a certain amount of that is just you being shocked about the sound of the speaker. but that being said, you should also try to avoid any situations where the only significant thing happening is a low frequency thing. Another approach, which i used to swear by before i actually tried it, is starting your entire arrangement on a pancake soundsystem. or just make an EQ pancake simulation, like