Kick and sub bass mixing problem

Kicevski

New member
Hi to all,

I have a problem with kick and sub bass levels in my mixes. When I try to get this level how in my reference track, I visually follow on Voxengo Span, my kick and sub bass sounds very loud. Sub bass starts to choke the mix/master. I uploaded my master to SC and I compare with other songs and always my track has louder kick and sub bass, but visually on Span they are identical or my kick and sub bass are lower.

I know the basic things about mixing, kick and sub bass in mono, cut freq. under 30hz and similar. I tried with and without saturator on the kick and sub bass, MB compressor on the bus with kick and sub bass, gain staging and who knows what else...

Is anyone have idea what could be a problem?
 
The problem I would guess is with your room and monitors you are mixing on.

No frequency analyzer is going to be on much help. I personally have never used a MB compressor. Just looking for trouble there IMO.

Use a quality 'brick wall' limiter and the end of your chain. That will at least let you know when the lows or whatever are hitting too hard.

It is kind of a 'feel' thing, but if you don't have acoustic treatment in a good room/good monitors, you are just guessing how mixes translate.

Let me just guess; KRK monitors or headphones you are listening on?

Feel free to PM me a mix. I can at least give an opinion. :)

This shit is not easy, until it is... Then we are still guessing, but with experience. lol
 
The problem I would guess is with your room and monitors you are mixing on.

No frequency analyzer is going to be on much help. I personally have never used a MB compressor. Just looking for trouble there IMO.

Use a quality 'brick wall' limiter and the end of your chain. That will at least let you know when the lows or whatever are hitting too hard.

It is kind of a 'feel' thing, but if you don't have acoustic treatment in a good room/good monitors, you are just guessing how mixes translate.

Let me just guess; KRK monitors or headphones you are listening on?

Feel free to PM me a mix. I can at least give an opinion. :)

This shit is not easy, until it is... Then we are still guessing, but with experience. lol


No, I have some MicroLab 2.1 speakers. Also I'm listening sub bass in corners and in various places in the room and I feel that something is wrong.

I'll send you the track to PM :)

Thanks
 
Focus more on what it sounds like, instead of what it looks like on an analyzer. There are way too many variables to be able to mix your song to another songs frequency curve.
 
I got the messages man. Sorry, been in recording sessions all weekend.

The links did work now. I am actually not hearing any huge issues in my studio. My subwoofer is not freaking out at least.

Sounds like a good club mix to me. :)
 
Sounds like a good club mix to me.

That would logically lead to the question for the OP;
What do you hear when you play a known commercial reference track in/on that same setup?
 
You can share those links here. Others may have different opinions.

The original mix was kind of weak in comparison to V10. I did hear a bit of pumping (compression) in the V10 version, but that is kind of typical for the genre.

And to be clear, that really isn't my forte so not sure I am giving the best advice there. I am more of a rock live band guy.
 
That would logically lead to the question for the OP;
What do you hear when you play a known commercial reference track in/on that same setup?

That is a great question. He did send the reference track to me.

Issue may be IMO, it is quite a different animal in instruments that are taking up low end space..

You should post those tracks here. I would do for you but I noticed your soundcloud links were sent to private.
 
That would logically lead to the question for the OP;
What do you hear when you play a known commercial reference track in/on that same setup?

Exactly... I want to my song on my speakers sound as the reference track (or approximately)... and of course I'm always listening to the track on multiple devices, speakers, etc...
 
That is a great question. He did send the reference track to me.

Issue may be IMO, it is quite a different animal in instruments that are taking up low end space..

You should post those tracks here. I would do for you but I noticed your soundcloud links were sent to private.

These are my attempts:

soundcloud.com/kicevski/one-of-those-v10-proba/s-bXsbH
soundcloud.com/kicevski/one-of-those-original-mix-5/s-qOBaC

I want to get something like this:

soundcloud.com/merkandkremont/turn-it-around

and on spectrum analyzer like this:
snag.gy/tXb0gK.jpg

When I made this on analyzer my sub bass choke the track...
 
Make sure there's absolutely nothing else down there adding volume. I know you said you know how to shelf everything but you'd be surprised at how another instrument can creep down into the sub zone. There's a lot of things that can cause the difference in your track and their track. From the look on the analyzer your boosting the subs way to much which is going to give you a very unbalanced master. Are you using any Sub plug-ins ?
 
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