What is the bandwidth of earbuds?
Could it be that we are not mastering music for the right crowd and the right product?
What is the most popular way to listen to music today? Maybe there is a deeper reason why we need to remove the transients and smash the master?
What does dynamic music sound like on ear buds, anyone know?

Maybe we need to get a forth pair of monitors and mix our music through earbuds.

UE Reference Monitors

Some added reading:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/02/mastered-for-itunes-how-audio-engineers-tweak-tunes-for-the-ipod-age.ars/2

Excerpt:

Jason Ward at [[url=http://[/URL]="http://www.chicagom…"]Chicago Mastering Service[/]="http://www.chicagom…"]Chicago Mastering Service[/] agreed it's a bad idea to try and create masters for specific listening environments. "Most modern hits these days are sounding pretty fatiguing and less than ideal on any system to my ears," Ward told Ars. "Though that probably says much more about what is considered to sound good than the skills of the relevant engineers."

"I just try to make things sound as good as feasible for as wide a range of possible playback environments as possible," Ward said. "The only real tragedy would be to make decisions which would penalize listeners with good playback systems by making decisions to allegedly enhance enjoyment on inferior playback systems."
Creating iTunes-specific masters for Rush's albums required a more nuanced approach than just boosting the bass. "The delicate mix balances of a Rush album dictated that I could only 'nudge' the bottom, not really boost it," VanDette explained. "For iTunes mastering I focused on making up for the losses created by the iTunes AAC algorithm. Generally, I heard changes in level, bottom, top, punch, and imaging."

Attached files

Mastered for iTunes

[[url=http://[/URL]="http://www.apple.co…"]Apple - iTunes - Mastered for iTunes[/]="http://www.apple.co…"]Apple - iTunes - Mastered for iTunes[/]

mastering specifically for the most popular consumer format

Albums Have Been Mastered Specifically for iTunes To Optimize Sound Quality
[[url=http://[/URL]="http://www.prnewswi…"]Music from Madonna, Paul McCartney, Kaori Muraji, U2, John Coltrane and... -- SANTA MONICA, Calif., Feb. 21, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --[/]="http://www.prnewswi…"]Music from Madonna, Paul McCartney, Kaori Muraji, U2, John Coltrane and... -- SANTA MONICA, Calif., Feb. 21, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --[/]

Mastered for iTunes 'sounds closer to CD' - I'm calling BS

Loudness War: Peace is Almost Here!

Bob Katz

Step into my Time Machine. This 20 minute video takes you from the quiet beginnings of the Compact Disc in 1980 through to Loudness Peace by the year 2020. It includes demonstrations of the loudest master I have ever had to make and paints a picture of what the art of audio mastering will be like once the loudness war has been settled. View the movie below or [="http://www.digido.com/index.php?option=com_phocadownload&view=category&id=1:general&download=99:loudness-war-and-peace&Itemid=83"]download the high resolution version.[/]="http://www.digido.c…"]download the high resolution version.[/] If you wish to download, it takes between 4 and 10 minutes to download on a fast (15 mbps) Cable connection, so please have patience for the download transfer.

[[url=http://="http://www.digido.c…"]Loudness War: Peace is Almost Here![/]="http://www.digido.c…"]Loudness War: Peace is Almost Here![/]

Nowadays hi-fi is hi-WHAT? With portability, this concept is has been lost. Now we need to mix for AN ITOUCH SPEAKER! Or, on the high end, a walmart desktop computer speaker! It makes no sense really, how we lost the quality of music with these devices, and most have horrible d/a converters... So now you layer a kick 8 times on different tracks, each having it's own freq notch and a couple that are way higher than the "kick range" so that the "bass" will psychoacoustically play through on your i touch speaker and sound "amazing". Repeat similar for synths, vocals, etc... Not to mention all the ducking and parallel compressors you have to run the signal through. EVERYTHING IS COMPRESSED AND RECOMPRESSED! In the end, in dance music at least, you end up with all this squarish-wave sounding stuff and I mean it sounds good, brilliantly engineered (I do it too)... BUT... Try play some of this new stuff through your Hi-fi tube amp system with good LARGE 3 way drivers with a proper crossover and listen.... CLIPPING!!!! DISTORTION!!! Is that insane? But Alas, it is the way of things I guess...

I was just thinking about all this today.

I own a Neos which has good bandwidth but I have to say, what a challenge in both self control and technical knowledge to mix / master a track that translates on tiny speakers or online music. This week I have been mixing and testing through an iphone and you appear to be exactly correct> Or this appears to be correct because there is no way I can master a song with big bass and have it sound acceptable for an iphone.

But after a lot of testing, getting it to sound pretty good on the iphone, I'm thinking my mix sounds pretty good on full range. So, I'm not at the point where I am second guessing myself on this once again. Does a great master translate on all systems?

low A string on a bass guitar is what? 220Hz? low E is about 140Hz the mistake is trying to get big bass on small speakers by boosting below 100Hz where the fundamentals are an octave higher. try a narrow 2 dB notch boost at 225 for the bass .. it will play with great definition on small speaker systems.

Thanks for your suggestion, Kurt.

I have a Pultec style/ Passive EQ on my master bus and while experimenting unthinkable things, I've had good results from pulling out a wide HP curve starting from 800 1.5 db. Then a simple boost around 220 like you suggest sounds pretty good.
Its a nightmare trying to get all these media's to translate well.

Kurt Foster, post: 404299 wrote: low A string on a bass guitar is what? 220Hz? low E is about 140Hz the mistake is trying to get big bass on small speakers by boosting below 100Hz where the fundamentals are an octave higher. try a narrow 2 dB notch boost at 225 for the bass .. it will play with great definition on small speaker systems.

Low E on a bass is 41hz and low A is 55hz. Your best bet is to try an get the overtones singing because you will not get the fundamental from those little speakers.

Please forgive me for nit picking the frequencies

Archie