Bass - how low should you go?

T

toorglick

New member
I'm mixing down a project I recorded on my ghetto-rig. Everything tracked nice and clean and I get nice separation. While my mixes sound pretty good to my ears, when I go to "master" them some tracks are a little boomy on the bottom.

I don't have a sub for my monitors, but I do run the mix through some old Kenwood speakers connected to a Panasonic stereo with "bass enhancement" to get an idea of the low-end load.

Anyway, to the point: what kind of levels on the low end spectrum should I be looking at? The mids and highs sound good, and I'm familiar with the bench-mark descending line for that end of the EQ as a standard, but I haven't run across much info on a "standard" for the low end.
 
Your best bet would be to listen and compare your work to some reference material -- disks that you like and think are well-balanced, particularly in the low end.

That should give you an idea of what to listen for, and what kind of balance to shoot for.
 
Yes, of course. In this instance the band has a pop-y Tool sound, but I don't care for the mixes of their last two albums. I use DSOTM as my general reference, but, again, in this instance I don't think they want that kind of sound. Oh well, back to the drawering board again.
 
$.02

I could be right, I could be wrong.

Being you have a self-described "ghetto-rig" I would guess the low end isn't represented very well. This is due to no monitors, and most likely, bad room acoustics. For a test, play the mix as you normally would, so that it sounds "good" but when you burn it to CDR and try in another system the low end it exagerrated. Now that you are playing it, get up from your chair and stand back about 8 or 10 feet, or the back wall if it's closer than that. Do you hear the low end now? I know I can when I do it.

Unfortunately, this is no real way to mix, even if you stand in the exact same spot every time. But, it's a LOT better than sitting at the mix position, thinking you have it nailed, then getting the CDR in the car and it's muddy as hell. Believe me, I know. Now at this point, you can "learn your room" by adjusting the mix's low end from that point until it sounds good in the car. Also, listen to reference CD's low end from that spot to see if you are close.

An ideal situation, you sit at the mix position, mix it to your liking, and that's it. You KNOW it will sound good in the car, the HI-FI, the boombox, etc. etc. For that, you need to know your room, have good monitors, and good room acoustics. As you are "ghetto-rig"ging it, I imagine this "ideal" monitoring situation does not apply.

Try it out.
 
Toor,

Ibrow nailed it. The real problem is your room, and also not having higher quality loudspeakers. But mostly the room. You can't "master" by looking at meters to tell you how much low end is present. I assure you that real mastering engineers have enough acoustic treatment and bass traps so they can hear what they're doing.

--Ethan
 
Okay, allow me to set things straight. I can see by using the term "ghetto rig" your imaginations have gone wild. Do you suppose I'm recording into an old Sears tape deck held together with duct tape? Using old, wired microphones with 1/8" plugs, to mic a kit in an untreated basement? No, that's not the case. Nor am I brand new at recording and I am not unaware of fundamental procedures.

I know what my room sounds like, although I won't argue about its less than stellar acoustical properties. I do indeed have monitors; re-read the second paragraph of my first post and you'll note I do imply a distinction between the Panasonic stereo and monitors.

Anyway, what I hear on the monitors (and also on the "reference stereo" to make the distinction clear) is bass that is either too much or too little. In both instances the certain portions of the bass end still go over zero, although on the output meters it doesn't register as clipping. We're probably talking in the zone between 60-100hz. Then it dips a little from 100 to say 140hz, then on some tracks it goes up again between 140 and 220hz. Now in the tracks with the excess at 140-220, if I take that down a little, just a little, it helps clean up the lows, but if I do too much it seems to take away definition. If I lower the 60-100hz range to where it's barely or not riding above zero, the mix sounds "vacant". I'll generally roll off the bass starting at 50hz or so with a gradual slope; the roll-off never cuts the signal below 50hz, I just set it until the "rumbles" and mud go away.

Last night I experimented with putting a little multiband compression on the lows and that seemed to help bring back the umph, but the mixes over all still seem a little hollow in the low end.

By contrast, if I'm listening to whatever mix; DSOTM, Tool's Aenima, some Gentle Giant, some Autechre or whatever, I'm hearing a more "developed" low end response but it doesn't get boomy. So, what I'm asking here is if there are any particular standards for low end that in my many years of ghetto-rigging it (as opposed to going into a studio with Neve consoles and an Otari 24 track with racks of ancient compressors, limiters, and other effects; or as opposed to spending money I don't have on a Mackie 8-buss with an Aardvark q10 into a Mac when I don't like the sound of Mackie's and hate Macs) that I have not come across, or if I have come across them in the past I was focused on other things and never committed those standards to memory.
 
You could try this VST plug from 'fat-ass' called edge...

http://www.btinternet.com/~k.euling/fat-ass/product_detail_edge.htm

I've used it a couple of times and it seems to work better than Baxxpander, Xciter, or BBE exciter for certain things. I don't use it so much now that I've been messin with stereo fields and Soniformer2 but it might help to shape your bottom end ('xcuse me !). But if you can't hear this stuff on your rig you just have to go out and hop in your ride and blast it there - not as accurate and more time consuming but it might translate sooner or later.

EDGE : Win PC VST FX

How low can you go? Well, now you can go even lower with EDGE.

EDGE is a subharmonic synth, which in lay man's speak means that if you feed it audio the resulting output will be your audio plus extra low bass.

Unlike most bass enhancers, it doesn't just boost the bass or shape the lower frequencies. What it does is takes the input signal and creates a bass signal one (or even two) octaves lower than the original.

Because not every signal is a simple sine wave, there is input filtering which effectively gives the plugin a more simple waveform to process. It's free, so why not give it a go?
Click to expand...
 
Just be careful, as it's WAY easy to overdo it with "tools" like that, especially when you can't accurately hear what's going on down there anyway. I'm sure you're aware of that, but I learned it the hard way.
 
Yes, it's very easy to over use those tools. I've been trying to upload an example so y'all can hear what it is I'm trying to get across.

FWIW, yes, I do burn a disk after each "mastering session" and listen to it in a variety of systems. In fact, I burned last night's session and was listening to it on my way back to work from lunch and I think I know what I'm doing. I believe I'm overcompensating the mids and highs, so they overtake the lows when I run them through Wavelab's Leveler; meaning I need to cut the mids and highs a little so I can bring up the overall level which should restore the low-end I keep missing.

I'll try that this evening and report back if anyone is interested.
 
Wavelab's Leveler
Click to expand...

arf - your dynamics processor readjusted your EQ for you. How hard are you pushing into that thing ? Like the average rms to average peak ratio, what's that - maybe you're not really done balancing the mix and grabbed the leveler too soon ?
 
Toor,

> yes, I do burn a disk after each "mastering session" and listen to it in a variety of systems. <

This is the crux of the problem. Until you treat your room with sufficient bass trapping so you can hear what you're doing, it's a constant guessing game of tweak / burn / listen / tweak / burn / listen. The root problem is you can't hear what's on the bass track (probably the kick track too) so you can't tell what needs to be changed with EQ or compression.

--Ethan
 
toorglick said:
So, what I'm asking here is if there are any particular standards for low end that in my many years of ghetto-rigging it (as opposed to going into a studio with Neve consoles and an Otari 24 track with racks of ancient compressors, limiters, and other effects; or as opposed to spending money I don't have on a Mackie 8-buss with an Aardvark q10 into a Mac when I don't like the sound of Mackie's and hate Macs) that I have not come across, or if I have come across them in the past I was focused on other things and never committed those standards to memory.
Click to expand...

The simple answer is that no, there aren't any. You just have to learn to develop 1) your ears and 2) your judgement.

Over several years of practicing, learning, testing, and refining . . . you should be able to develop and improve both.

But no, there are no written or unwritten rules or standards, as you are describing. And if there were, the subject matter would be so lengthy and involving that it couldn't possibly be answered in a simple manner, because we're getting in to some complex physics principles of sound waves, and the fundamental ways in which our ears pick up sound, and how our brains perceive and make sense of it all.
 
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