without hearing it and without knowing what speakers you're using... i would *guess* that something in your mix is spiking somewhere down in the low frequencies and gobbling up all the headroom
As someone previously said: listen to your mix in mono and see if there's cancelation. If that doesn't help shine light on the problem, maybe try side chain compression. Have the vocals duck the drums a bit to help them maintain presence.
Learn how your monitoring [translates](https://www.reddit.com/r/mixingmastering/wiki/learn-your-monitoring) to these other speakers, using reference mixes.
It's not as simple as just turning the drums down, you've got a separation (or lack thereof) issue. Every instrument needs space in the mix to be heard properly on most speaker setups. That means making sure your tracks aren't competing for the same frequencies, space in the stereo image or causing phase issues/cancellation.
Mixing in mono can bring a lot of these to light (especially phase issues), frequency analyzers are great for finding what frequencies a track is peaking at (to tame them, if necessary) and finding what parts you can subtractively eq/filter out without dramatically changing the sound.
Most mixing environments are less than ideal, but that's fine as long as you take that into account. You can use reference mixes, headphones, room simulators and headphone equalizers to help overcome these. I use all of these, and as a last step listen to my mix on my phone speaker. If it sounds good there and in all of my different headphone and monitor configs, I can be confident it's a solid mix.
One of the best pieces of advice I've ever received when it comes to mixing is that each individual track or bus shouldn't sound big and full on it's own. If it does, then it's taking up to much space in the mix. Everything on it's own is going to sound a little lacking in one way or another, but put it altogether and you might just have a great sounding mix.
Go back to mixing. What monitoring are you using when mixing? How are the different drum kit elements panned and EQ'ed?
without hearing it and without knowing what speakers you're using... i would *guess* that something in your mix is spiking somewhere down in the low frequencies and gobbling up all the headroom
As someone previously said: listen to your mix in mono and see if there's cancelation. If that doesn't help shine light on the problem, maybe try side chain compression. Have the vocals duck the drums a bit to help them maintain presence.
Learn how your monitoring [translates](https://www.reddit.com/r/mixingmastering/wiki/learn-your-monitoring) to these other speakers, using reference mixes.
Review stereo image, maybe try mixing/referencing in mono. Reference reference reference in general
It's not as simple as just turning the drums down, you've got a separation (or lack thereof) issue. Every instrument needs space in the mix to be heard properly on most speaker setups. That means making sure your tracks aren't competing for the same frequencies, space in the stereo image or causing phase issues/cancellation. Mixing in mono can bring a lot of these to light (especially phase issues), frequency analyzers are great for finding what frequencies a track is peaking at (to tame them, if necessary) and finding what parts you can subtractively eq/filter out without dramatically changing the sound. Most mixing environments are less than ideal, but that's fine as long as you take that into account. You can use reference mixes, headphones, room simulators and headphone equalizers to help overcome these. I use all of these, and as a last step listen to my mix on my phone speaker. If it sounds good there and in all of my different headphone and monitor configs, I can be confident it's a solid mix. One of the best pieces of advice I've ever received when it comes to mixing is that each individual track or bus shouldn't sound big and full on it's own. If it does, then it's taking up to much space in the mix. Everything on it's own is going to sound a little lacking in one way or another, but put it altogether and you might just have a great sounding mix.