to much bass in the Master

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dantell

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I don't understand.................I use Sonar. After I normalize my stereo track mix, equalize down any overbearing sounds, normalize again, then I run it through a Hard limiter to max the levels out. The song doesn't redline at all, but I get this droning bass sound out of some stereos. Through my boom box, home stereo, and computer they sound great. Car stereos they sound way too bassy. I have re mastered some of them and solved the car stereo problem, but now it sounds too thin on the other systems. Now I play anything mixed by Andy Wallace and it sounds good through all these systems. Puzzling. Has anyone experienced this? Some people think I'm way too anal. Recording low end is a beeeaaaach. I compress and limit the hell out of these sounds and still have problems in some of the songs. I have tried recording bass in mono instead of stereo and this has helped a bit, but it's still no major label sounding and that is what I want.
Thanks and any suggestions will help,
Danny Antell
 
Danny,

> Through my boom box, home stereo, and computer they sound great. Car stereos they sound way too bassy. <

This is a very common problem, and is caused by standing waves in your room causing severe peaks and dips in the low frequency response. If your mixing room is typical, you probably have a big hole in the response at around 80 Hz. So when you mix you add too much bass to compensate. But then the mix is way too bassy even though it sounds fine in your particular room.

One solution is to mix, burn a CD, listen in your car, go back and make changes, listen again, and so forth. The other solution is to build or buy bass traps to fix the real problem, which is the room acoustics.

--Ethan
 
dantell said:
After I normalize my stereo track mix, equalize down any overbearing sounds, normalize again, then I run it through a Hard limiter to max the levels out.
Click to expand...

hmmm.......
 
that's what I thought too Gidge.

hey dantell, don't normalize twice. and since you have a loudness maximizer there's no reason to normalize at all.

try to fix any eq issues in the individual tracks.

are you using studio monitors so you can accurately hear your mix?

do you have a spectrum analyzer so you can 'see' how loud those low frequencies are?

If you have a bunch of bass in the subs that your boom box can't reproduce but other systems can, you'll hear all that boominess on those other systems.

you have to get real careful with sound that is below 80hz because many systems don't reproduce that sound well.

Mix, apply any necessary EQ to the mix, apply any necessary multiband compression, apply any necessary peak limiting (ie.. loudness maximizer).

Maybe someone will read this and speak about the stereo widener stuff, I have one by DSP-FX and one by Waves, but I've never actually used them. I played around with the DSP-FX one a little. I don't like that overly stereo sound.
 
Thanks, Cross

I've noticed that when I normalize, then EQ, but only pull the "too loud" frequencies down and not add to them, it does help the problem, but it doesn't necessarily fix it. But since my last post I experimented by replaying the bassline one octave lower and as clean as possible. This actually solved the problem. Out of all the instruments to record, the bass has always been the hardest to master. I took your advice though. I skipped the normalizer and EQ'd first, then ran it through my Peak Limiter. Bingo, it works good and it's faster.
Thanks a million,
Danny
 
Whew! Yet another convert to the anti-normalization movement...

We are growing in strength and numbers...
 
littledog said:
Whew! Yet another convert to the anti-normalization movement...

We are growing in strength and numbers...
Click to expand...
Count me in too! ;)
 
What monitors are you using??

AND... I know this is not a universal thing.. but I cut all info under, say 40hz. Maybe a low cut would work for you.

It definately sounds as if you aren't hearing the bass well enough while mixing/"mastering"... whether that be room acoustics, monitors, or ears.. I dont know.;)

xoxo
 
Sorry to H.J. this one,
Crosstudio ,
Your suggested order below , should this be used while tracking. On each track that will need compressing and limiting. ie. Vox

crosstudio said:
that's what I thought too Gidge.



Mix, apply any necessary EQ to the mix, apply any necessary multiband compression, apply any necessary peak limiting (ie.. loudness maximizer).
Click to expand...
 
Dude,

Consider me a "wanna-be mastering engineer." I have NEVER seen any pro engineer use a normalize function.....EVER!

Yes normalize for non-critical voice work, but music? If it needs to be normalized that means you need to record the track again and get the levels right! Sure there are times when you cant do that and that is when you have to resort to normalization. Unfortunately this function has made home recording people lazy.
 
When you compress or limit a mix, your master meter with peak hold will show how much you can bring the mix up. Isn't adding just a bit less than that amount on the make-up gain exactly like normalizing?

Why be Normalized.

Read the book.
See the movie.
Buy the toy. :D
 
Bullyhill

first I said:
try to fix any eq issues in the individual tracks.
Click to expand...

then I said:
Mix, apply any necessary EQ to the mix, apply any necessary multiband compression, apply any necessary peak limiting (ie.. loudness maximizer).
Click to expand...

EQing the mix is necesarry if you are in a situation where you don't have access to the original tracks. I'm starting to get good enough to feel comfortable having groups bring me mixes that they want improved. I'm getting better at that aspect of the recording/mixing/mastering artistry.

If you have the original tracks then you want to apply the EQ to the offending track(s) rather than the whole mix.

I prefer not to do any peak limiting until the mastering step and definitely no maximizing because I don't want to cut off the transients unless its absolutely necessary. having said that, there have been occassions where I have put a peak limiter on a bass track because it was so poorly recorded (spikes all over the place) that the loudness level was so low that I had to turn all the other instruments and vocals way down. of course, the real answer to that problem was to re-record the bass part.

80% of what I do is in-house, meaning I write, compose, and perform for singer/rappers who come in here and lay the tracks. Since I have autonomy most of the time I don't have to deal with the adversity and poor musicians that other on this board deal with.
 
Thanks,

I didn't quite understand at first and am just frustrated with my damb vox tracks. I end up compressing then using the L1 on each vox track, just can't get it where I want.
:confused:
 
I think I have it licked

I took Cross studio's advice. I went ahead and posted some of the results on my website. Of course they are shrunk down to mp3s and this hurts the quality a little. It seems to bring out a little treble, but it still sounds pretty good.
www.balloonhed.com and click on MUSIC
Tell me what you think....
Thanks,
Dantell
 
Yes,

I've got a newer thread on this subject. Bass is a bitch and I'm a bass player....go figure.

I cut below 40hz in mastering use low shelf before that and I can still crap out a discman!

What's the trick?

Rusty K
 
Are there really people who normalize single tracks? What would it be good for?

That seems to be one of the advantages of the vs and the strange RDAC - you really think about anything you do to your tracks :D (So I found one advantage...)

If I assemble the songs for a CD, I sometimes used to normalize to be sure to have the maximum volume reached, but then I compared and went back from the original with less gain... But it was without ever thinking about it... What I don't like too much either is the 'use a limiter to get the gain up' mentality. Though I'm a compression addict, I do it cause I like the sound of overcompression. If I compressed my sound again, it would KILL me (even me! :D)

aXel
 
volltreffer said:
Are there really people who normalize single tracks? What would it be good for?

That seems to be one of the advantages of the vs and the strange RDAC - you really think about anything you do to your tracks :D (So I found one advantage...)

If I assemble the songs for a CD, I sometimes used to normalize to be sure to have the maximum volume reached, but then I compared and went back from the original with less gain... But it was without ever thinking about it... What I don't like too much either is the 'use a limiter to get the gain up' mentality. Though I'm a compression addict, I do it cause I like the sound of overcompression. If I compressed my sound again, it would KILL me (even me! :D)

aXel
Click to expand...

If the track has music,, dont normalize.
Try something else.

Malcolm
 
Used Ozone last night...

Whew.... The CD was blasting my old mixes on Sonar....

I think the sepaeration is the first thing I noticed from the gate using the Izotope plugin.. I tried to incorporate all the functions from the stereo widener to the loudness maximizer...

Any tips for a Izotope user...

40< Rolloff.
 
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