A question about bass.

[BillyBenson]

I've been searching all over the great lands of google, and have yet to find an answer for this question. I've been mixing a lot lately, and a lot of people say I shouldn't mix with my bass loud. This confuses me, because I listen to a lot of today's rap (for mixing purposes, I listen to the old stuff for the feel) and they seem to have their bass CRANKED.
At first I thought theyy're just pushing it into the mix and mastering handles the rest, but I've read that as mix engineers we should make our mixes sound just as good as our reference which are all masteredm, so I figure there's no problem with eqing and compressing a bassline and pushing it right on the ass of the main vocal, sometimes I'd even put it in front because it rarely ever seems to interfere with the clarity of my vocal.
I mix at a low volume. My kickdrums have never topped -10 dB, and they never will. My lowesst background instrument will probably be around -30 through -40, so tell me is it so wrong to have the bass sitting at -25 though -22 with the vocal at -20 through -17? My background instruments tend to be clear and right where I want them, but I can't ever shake the feeling that I'm just doing it wrong.

 

[gecko zzed]

I've been mixing a lot lately, and a lot of people say I shouldn't mix with my bass loud.

It really doesn't matter what "a lot of people say". What matters is whether the results you achieve are what you wanted to achieve. Mix the bass according to how you want the bass represented in the mix.

 

[BillyBenson]

Thank you so much. I don;t have any real engineering friends, so it's pretty hard to ask around if something sounds right or not. I'll just trust my ears from now on.

 

[Robus]

You said you were using reference tracks? If your mix sounds good alongside the one's your aiming for, what's wrong?

 

[BillyBenson]

Right now I don't really have access to monitors, and the only weapons I wield are a mono Logitech speaker, a pair of earbuds, my computer speakers, and some behringer monitor headphones. I can never really tell if the bsss is too much, but I can always tell when I don't have enough. So my past few mixes I've been placing the bass in the middle, but I've got old mixes with super loud bass that were still clear, even with my sorry use of eq. So I figure I can only keep pushing until it's obvious that it's actually squashing things.
My latest mix has some really loud bass, and I love Gore it sounds. I just really need some monitors.

 

[mjbphotos]

Well, there you've got the problem: monitoring. You're not hearing the low frequencies at all with those options, just the higher harmonics.