Bottom end flab - finally made some progress!

J

Jeppo

Member
I run a part-time recording business. Nothing fancy, I go out to record bands, choirs, orchestras etc... every month. It's great experience, makes a bit of money & gets me a decent tax break on my gear lust. I have some reasonable gear for a project studio - couple of Neumanns, AKG, Sennheiser, & shure mics. Joemeek & Dbx preamps & compressors + wackie VLZ 'pro' mixer all going into an Akai DPS 16 & 'mastering' through a Dbx Quantum.

Having got my brief job/gear description out of the way i'll get to the point: I've always had problems with the bottom end of the mix. My attempts have generally been flabby, boomy & undefined. That's an exaggeration, of course, but not too far removed from the truth. Despite following the usual advice of EQ ing the bass & bass drum at different frequencies & despite becoming more proficient at using compressors to hold the flab in, some of my mixes remain 'muddy' & lacking in definition at the bottom end.

I always thought the solution to this problem was to buy more expensive gear, but I put the brakes on any more purchases a year ago & became determined to work with what I had. In the last two weeks I've had a breakthrough experience - I recorded a bass guitar using a microphone & preamp instead of going through the usual D.I. socket. Why? Because last Saturday one guy didn't actually have a D.I. output on his bass amp & yesterday the bass player (of a different band) had a D.I. socket that was dead. I ALWAYS D.I. the bass!!! Why? Because it's easy & I have to work fast & it sounds great - usually. I also read somewhere that it's the method of choice for many engineers. Why bother to mic up a bass amp when there's a socket that does it all for you? I never considered an alternative way of doing things.

On both occasions I was 'forced' to set up the bass amps with an AKG D112 going into a Joemeek VCQ1cs with some compression. Instead of using the D112 on the bass drum I had to use an MD 421. This was no big deal, but when I pulled up the faders I couldn't get over how well the two sounds worked together. In my opinion I prefer the D112 on bass drum, it goes deeper than a 421, but in the context of a mix i'm starting to change my mind.

Oh dear, this is becoming a long post but just thought I'd share my experiences with the rest of you. What sounds well on it's own - like a D.I.'d bass - doesn't necessarily sound great in the mix. I've always found it easier to mix real mic'd up guitars than Pods/V-amps, maybe this is why??

Anybody else care to share a eureka moment that involved working differently with the equipment they already had?
 
What's the sound of your room in this mix? I have a room that is boomy with elevated low f stuff below 250Hz, and it is difficult to get a good bass sound. I routinely do a highpass cleanup of non-bass tracks to get rid of the grunge but playback is still muddy. Next up will be bass traps.
 
Most of the rooms I work in are not designed for recording & that's not a bad thing. I know absolutely nothing about room treatment, except that it's fairly costly to do properly. Did they have bass traps at Abbey Road when the Beatles were there? I don't know what the perfect recording environment might look or sound like, but I do know when people listen to our music it sure as hell won't be in a perfect listening environment.

The room I mention is one I have recorded in several times - it's fairly large n' live. I keep the curtains shut to cut down the reflections. It has a hard floor & sloping wooden ceiling - 8 ft rising to 15ft ish. Unless you are using loads of ambient mics the room sound should be less of a variable than the mic/preamp and the source being recorded. That's not to say the room doesn't count.

In my limited experience most rooms rarely 'suck'. It's about getting the room to work in your favour.
 
By micing the amp, you're essentially limiting the amount of extreme low end you're capturing. Basically everything below 100 hz starts to roll off, and depending on the amp's speaker, most anything below 40-50 hz won't even make it on your track.

Plus you just get more of the midrange with most amps.

The prefered method for most engineers is to combine a DI with a mic'ed amp. Use the DI track for the extreme lows, and use the amp for the mids/highs.

Your room doesn't necessarily have to be stellar for that, because you're probably rolling off most of the low, low end on the mic'ed track anyway.

It sounds like the reason mic'ed amps work well for you is because of the natural bass rolloff. You could achieve much of the same thing just by EQ'ing your DI tracks differently -- try gently rolling off everything bellow 100 hz using a fairly steep slope. Chop off everything below 50, and do a 4-5 db boost at 800 hz for more midrange..
 
IMHO Chessrock has nailed it exactly. Put in other words, tons of low end is not necessarily the ticket. Shelving down a d/i is often called for. Your mic did some of that and brought in a large amount of mid eq from both the mic and the speaker. i.e. Midrange push! :D
'Complementary eq' is a nice trimming tool, but on it's own, addresses nothing about where or what 'eq' might actually need to be.
:)
Wayne
(from the early formative years of Phil Lesh/Jack Cassady school'n.:D
 
Huh?? I hope not.;)
Sometimes I stick my neck out as if 'I know for sure' but in reality, I'm just not afraid of being shown I'm wrong. If fact, that's often the whole point of coming around here -to find out I might be full of it and have it wrong!:D
Let's get it ON!
Wayne
 
I don't dispute that there's probably more midrange (from the amp + speaker) getting onto the bass track when it's mic'ed rather than D.I.'d. (and yes I have used compression on D.I.'d tracks & I have done the old 800hz boost, which can help). Stuff below 50-60hz is not very helpful anyway so to lose the deep lows isn't an issue, but the bass I've recorded still sounds deep enough to my ears. Also the use of a different mic on the bass drum (MD 421) helped the bottom end sit better.

Having now heard the difference between the D.I. socket on a bass amp & the recorded sound of the amp/speaker I can understand why engineers might want to blend both sounds. Unfortunately I don't always have the luxury of time and/or an available track to do this. I don't believe these differences can be simulated adequately with EQ. Which means I'd rather mic a bass amp & get a sound that's good to go than mess around EQ ing a D.I.'d bass track that still won't sit in the mix properly.
 
There's also a certain amount of natural compression going on when you mic an amp.

That's probably another thing that makes it work well for you.
 
Actually, I suspect the lack of room treatment is, in fact, the source of the flabbiness. No amount of Westlake monitors or dedicated tube amps can fix this.

You should visit the acoustics newsgroup at www.recording.org. That's the most comprehensive source of info. Contrary to popular belief, you don't need a lot of money. However, time and carpentry skills are the usual substitute.

Lastly, I beg to differ with folks who espouse a full-range recording approach to insturments such as the guitar. One of the secrets of good recording is to ensure each instrument has its own sonic space, including frequency range. You don't want guitar low end competing with the bass guitar. Similarly, you don't want keyboards with thick low end. A common pitfall is to maximize the "hugeness" of each track, only to find the sum of these parts is a mucky mess with lots of collisions in the low end.

Try notching each instrument into its own frequency range and see if that doesn't help. Also fix your room.

Good Luck,.

-Todzilla
 
I'm not as experienced as many others on the this board, but I have found bass guitar to be the most difficult instrument to track and get to sit properly in the mix. Unlike most instruments, I find that the bass guitar tone that sits best in the mix is almost always something that sounds like absolute crap soloed. And because bass is usually the second instrument tracked it is very difficult to predict how its going to sit once the whole mix is rolling. It also seems to be the instrument that takes the most compression tweeking, and on top of that most bassists have horrible tone start with and then get upset if you try to change it too much. All this adds up and creates a mess in the low end if its not dealt with early on. I think I've had to spend more time screwing with bass sounds than I have with all other instruments combined, including drums. Yet, many people feel that it's okay to just DI the bass and eq it later.
 
noiseportrait said:
most bassists have horrible tone start with and then get upset if you try to change it too much.
Click to expand...

Originally posted by noiseportrait
I'm not as experienced as many others on the this board
Click to expand...


From your first statement, it sure sounds like you are to me. :D
 
Wrong end of the stick

Actually, I suspect the lack of room treatment is, in fact, the source of the flabbiness. No amount of Westlake monitors or dedicated tube amps can fix this.


Todzilla - a polite notice: please read the actual posts before chiming in with something that is irrelevant.

Love,

Jeppo
 
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