Your living room system is a fairly high-end system, not necessarily intended for rock-and-roll control monitoring but should be used as a reference source to better understand what you are listening to on your small controller monitors. You may want to consider purchasing an aftermarket sub woofer for your control room?? It would be a logical alternative for you. You would still have your living room system as a second reference source which is a good idea when you are an audio engineering to have more than a single reference source. I don't know any engineer that relies on a single monitoring source for all of their work. We use large and small speakers alike to make sure that our mixes translate to a variety of playback systems. Listen to some excellent commercial CDs on both of your systems. Try to listen into the mix so as to be able to identify the tonal differences between your two systems. This is called ear training and is part of your ongoing education in audio. I have been doing this for over 36 years and will never stop my ear training. It sort of like being an alcoholic in recovery. No alcoholic is ever recovered, they are always in recovery.

I think I will have another beer before my next session???
Mzzz RembleyAnnnnnnn........Daaavhic

RemyRAD, Thanks for the reply. I'm not trained at all in recording. This is all trial and error. I appreciate a pro's advise. It just seemed logical to me that if I like the way commercial CD's sound on my system that I would want to try to emulate that using my home system. Of course, I understand what you are saying. I've listened to my master through all of my vehicles and they all sound totally different. I know. It was just a thought. This mastering thing is kicking my butt. My main problem is getting the bass to set right. Ironic, I'm a bass player. But i'm not giving up. I figure there are plenty of people that can help me out and you were the first. Thanks again.

After reading this, the first thing that I would do, (if I was keepitdeep) would be to load up my favorite CD or two into that Roland VS2000 and have a litsten through those monitors. Try and learn how the systems differ. Start that life long education of your ears right now.

It's amazing how we take for granted how fantastic our hearing can be.

Pardon me for stickin' my nose in over here in Masteringland...

To me, it sounds like the age old deal-e-o about room acoustics being the primary issue, with your monitors being the secondary.

If your room is not reasonably flat in response, you can hardly ever get close on the first or even 3rd or 4th mix!

VonRock's got a good starting point, but if you ain't hearing the low end, you ain't hearing the low end! e.g. If you can't hear it, how can you mix it!?!?

Your monitors are probably going to struggle with the low frequencies no matter what. But, you need to at least give them a fighting chance to give you as much as they've got, right? Adding a sub sounds like a reasonably good idea, but not unless/until you know what the problem frequencies are in your room. (and conversely, what your room's frequency response is.) You might be sitting in a null, suffering from combfiltering, or any number of anomolies.

So, the first thing to do is to generate a frequency response chart of your room and make what acoustical treatment changes you can afford to do, then see what your mixes do... and if appropriate, then add the sub.

Just a generalization, but you probably need to add some bass trapping in the corners and/or some absorbtion and/or diffusion, but where and how much is going to be determined by the physical dimensions of the room, and the layout you have chosen for your gear.

I would suggest dropping in a couple of floors down, to the Acoustics forum and see if anyone there can give you some more accurate advise on the best approach to taming your low frequency issues.

Max