Ableton vs. Modular
Assuming that you are working in the same sonic environment (room & speakers & your location in the room) - I’d attribute the difference to the mental stance you have when working with Ableton vs. modular. In Ableton you are able to constant tweak the Eq, constantly “listen for the mix”, and forever alter the tone, not just the music.
As you listen to a work over an over, you become accustomed to the way it sounds, and your mind starts treating it’s tonal balance as a neutral reference. If you’re aim is a strong bass, you’ll boost it at this point. 30 min. later, you’ll hear the mix as even, and decide to boost again… Two days later you listen and it is a bass hog.
This is a clear example of why “head space” is such a crucial factor in mastering, and why common wisdom¹ is to treat creation, mixing, and mastering as separate phases. In your case, the advice would be to not try to fix the tonal balance while you’re creating. Leave it for the last step.
Of course, if my assumption is wrong: You have two different studios, or are just standing in a wholly different place (w.r.t. to the speakers) when using your modular, there may be other direct causes as well.
Headphones vs. Car
You should drop the expectation that your music will sound the same in these two environments:
Headphones can be flat or not. If they are the “consumer” headphones - those worn in a non-music making environment, they may very well have a large bass boost. The curve on these will be skewed to work with popular styles, and often pump mid-lows because “it sounds better than the competition”. If they are studio headphones, they are probably flat or very nearly so. If you are not using studio headphones, I’d strongly suggest you get a pair for when you create music. Even a $100 investment here will be a significant benefit overall.
Cars traditionally have terrible sound. I know the high end auto makers all tout their high fidelity audio systems… but there is only so much you can do with small speakers in a sonically very challenging space, and noisy road environment. Unless you have your trunk filled with sub-woofers, you should expect the low end to be lacking.
If you look at pictures of professional mixing suites, you’ll often see a small pair of cube speakers, about 6" on a side, perched on either end of the mixing console. These are “Auratones”, or some equivalent. They have two benefits: 1) They are single cone, and so have linear phase to the ear. 2) They have an eq curve that is anything but flat. Here’s the curve from my Toa equivalents.
This is often used as a stand in for “when the listener has this on the car radio”. And the assumption is, if you can make it sound good on both these, and the larger studio monitors… then you’re doing it right.
Of course, you have to accept that it is impossible to get something to sound the same in both cases. At the very least, the low end will sound very different. So, to do this, you generally need to do two things:
-
Think beyond EQ: Because the low end is lacking in the car (or other common listening environments), rather than just EQ the low end up in the music - you need to look for ways to have the low end parts have a presence in the low-mid and mid areas, so that they are contributing musically, if not spectrally - because there is just nothing you can do get that end of the spectrum filled without destroying the mix in better listening situations.
-
Find the compromise: Turn on the Auratones (or punch in a parametric EQ that simulates it - which is what I do - you can download my Ableton rack for this in post #191 above). Then put the track on loop, play it, and do something else for 5 or 10 min. on your computer. Now go back to Ableton, and pay attention. Surprisingly, the track won’t sound so thin anymore… and you can mix it so it sounds reasonable under this EQ. Then turn the EQ off and again, a few minutes not directly paying attention to let ears adjust and back to editing. Round and round, finding a happy medium. It’s there… really…
Of course, some music is created for primarily one environment. If you are writing techno thumpers for Berghain and Tresor, you probably won’t go this route - because that stuff sounds great on those systems, and really not so much in a car! Similarly, if your target is music for YouTube videos, again, you’ll skew to making it sound great on sub-one-inch phone speakers!
Whew - that was a lot - hope it helps some!
¹ And like all musical wisdom, there are times and people for whom this is not the right approach. Be open, and do what works for you and the situation at hand.
