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Ways to keep bass adequate at low levels?
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DjStephenWiley
I've been monitoring a lot of my own stuff lately along with other productions and have been trying to pinpoint the differences and most importantly the attention paid to details. I believe that is the key of making "professional" music, but anyway....

On almost all tracks that I think are "professional" you can hear the bass much, much better when the track is being played very softly.

On tracks, such as my own (and 95% of what you buy lately), I find that when the volume is very soft, the bass pretty much disappears. It's a quite noticeable difference too. I'm sure EQ and compression are the culprit here but I can't figure it out.
beamrider
I have noticed the same.

Someone told me to try multiband compression during the mastering, but I still couldn't reach the desired results.

Maybe eq is involved too.


ps: for mulitband compression I have tried Ozone Izotope
Waza
when mixing i always try to mix at low volumes - but sometimes it does not work like that.

I think it's alot to do with Eq and compression
Beatflux
More mid frequency content.
evo8
quote:
Originally posted by Beatflux
More mid frequency content.


yep, that could be it

try high-passing your track on the master and see can you still hear if anything of the bass is coming through at all
Zombie0729
multiband compression is indeed the trick here... you have two options do it on your master and isolate the kick & bass together or bus them ahead of time and again compress together.

so A.) your kick & bass need to sit together naturally, if you're not getting them sounding right as is, change the kick or change the tone of hte bass
b.) once kick & bass sound good (before sidechain, eq, compression, etc) find out where in frequency they over lap & notch the bass
c.) apply compression to bass
d.) run bass & kick to a buss and put multiband on it if it still doesn't sound cohesive.

:)
david.michael
Excellent thread, I have trouble with this as well. It's not so bad if you're trying to produce electro house or something, where you can get away with a lot of high-frequency buzzing and such in your basslines. But, when you're trying to produce deeper, more "brooding" basslines like I have been, it seems to become more difficult.
evo8
quote:
Originally posted by david.michael
Excellent thread, I have trouble with this as well. It's not so bad if you're trying to produce electro house or something, where you can get away with a lot of high-frequency buzzing and such in your basslines. But, when you're trying to produce deeper, more "brooding" basslines like I have been, it seems to become more difficult.


yeah ive listened to a lot of stuff on speakers without much bass, but, i never say to myself "jesus i cant hear any bass in this at all"
its almost like the groove just keeps it going or something - hard to explain

also i dont really see how Multi Band Compression can help with this?
Zombie0729
quote:
Originally posted by evo8

also i dont really see how Multi Band Compression can help with this?


it's most likely a volume/pumping issue if you can't hear the bass correctly at low volumes. EQ will help but most likely its a compression issue if you can't get it to sit right.
palm
analog

msz
sidechain
PutBoy
If you really want to get freaky with it send your bass content, kick+sub, to a send channel, add an LP at about 160 hz, an HP at 40 hz, add some distortion and boost some sub freqs at 60 hz. Compress it hard, and voila.

Lots of bass.
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