Questions for young producers
It sounds right in your headphones. Then it doesn’t.
For anyone in the first year or two of making music on a computer.
You exported the song, played it in the car or on your phone, and it fell apart. Or it is quiet next to real songs. Or there is mud in it and you cannot find where. These are the questions typed into forums by people a year or two in, counted, and answered.
Each answer says what to do first, what it will and will not fix, and how we know. Where a free tool can show you the problem, the button is right there.
It sounds fine in my headphones. Why does it sound bad in the car, or on my phone?
Headphones tell you one story about your mix; a car, a phone speaker and a room each tell a different one. Engineers call it translation. The usual causes are low end that only the headphones can show you, and a mix that leans on being loud.
- AudioVibes measures the mix: loudness, true peak, how the two sides relate, and what happens when the mix is folded to one speaker.
- ABA Compare plays two versions at the same loudness, so you hear the mix and not the volume.
How we know: the tool pages say what each one measures. Asked 9 times by beginners and 9 times by home producers, the most-asked mixing question found (sources below).
Why is my song so quiet next to songs on Spotify?
Because the released song was mastered to a loudness, and yours has not been. The catch is that louder also sounds better to almost everyone, for a few seconds, which is why a louder mix usually wins a comparison it did not deserve.
Read the number first. AudioVibes reports your song’s loudness and true peak, so you know where it stands before you push anything. Then compare at the same loudness in ABA Compare and see whether the louder version still wins.
How we know: AudioVibes and ABA Compare describe what they measure; what the score is and is not is on its own page. Asked 6 times by beginners and 7 by home producers (sources below).
My kick and bass fight each other. How do I get a clean low end?
They are sharing the same space: the same frequencies at the same moments. Neither one is wrong on its own, which is why it only shows up together.
ABA Pocket Check shows where two to four performances sit in frequency and in time: where each one owns its space, and where they share it. Shared space is where one performance can hide the other. Your ears decide whether it does.
How we know: the claim sentence on the Pocket Check page, and rulebook statement S18 for where the audio goes. Asked 6 times by beginners and 6 by home producers (sources below).
Why does my mix sound thin, or fall apart when it plays in mono?
Usually because two recordings of the same sound are slightly out of step. Each one sounds right alone. Added together, parts of them cancel, and the low end is the first thing to go. Phones and small speakers play in mono, so that is where you hear it.
- ABA Phaze Check measures how two pickups of the same sound line up in time and polarity.
- AudioVibes shows what the whole mix does when it is folded to one speaker.
How we know: the tool pages. Asked 7 times by beginners; home producers asked it 12 times as drum mics fighting and parts vanishing in mono (sources below).
Can someone just listen to my track and tell me what’s wrong?
A tool cannot listen. It can measure, and tell you which measurements are out of the range a well-made record in your genre tends to sit in. AudioVibes does that and names the findings. For the worst ones, the free pages of the Repair Book say what to do about them.
The ranges are declared rules of thumb, written down from experience, and the site says so. The measurement is a measurement. The score is an opinion with the reasoning shown.
How we know: What the score is, and what it isn’t; the free pages at the Repair Book. Asked 11 times (sources below).
Not you?
The other three sets of questions.
Where the questions came from
Gathered from public forums, not written by us.
On 9 October 2026, four AI scout agents read public recording and parenting forums and collected the questions people had actually typed, grouped them by meaning and counted them. No usernames and no quotes were kept. Reddit and two other large sites refused the scouts, so the count leans on older forums and is a guide, not a measure.
A question that is not here yet has not been answered with something we can back up. It is added when it can be.