Too much Low End - Suggestions?

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Phuturistic

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Hey Everyone,

I have recently become quite satisfied with how my mixes are sounding and translating to my car stereo, etc. However, I'm noticing that I'm mixing with too much low freqency information in the mix. The bass and kick (I'm doing hip hop instrumentation) are working well together, and not fighting either other frequency-wise or anything like that, but the low frequencies are overpowering the mids and highs. I came to this conclusion because when I stick the mixes in my Bose stereo in my car, bring the bass level of the car stereo down from -1 (where it usually sits and where I've found that commercial cd's I listen to sound their best at this level) to -3, and bring up the volume of the stereo, the mix sounds perfect, or damn close to it, to me.

This is telling me that my monitors aren't representing enough bass in my mixes. I use a pair of Mackie HR824's, and my mixing room is not treated in any way, so obviously there could a number of reasons why the low frequency in my mixes isn't being represented correctly. I've consistently had too much low frequency in several mixes I've done over the last few months. I've also noticed that my mixes as of recent have been a little quieter than in the past, and I believe this to be a direct result of my first problem, because I think the excessive low frequency information is eating up lots of headroom in my final mixdown and thus causing the whole mix to sit lower. I try hard not to smash my mixes and attempt to keep dynamics, so when I notice more than a single decibel of limiting on my mix buss limiter I usually back off (although I know every situation is unique, and I'm using my ears way more than numbers).

I was hoping maybe some of you guys could help me find ways of mixing with less low frequency content to balance out my mixes better. Maybe I've already answered my own questions, as far as not having any room treatment, or maybe I need to adjust settings on the back of my Mackie's to push more bass out of the speakers. Just looking for some tips or opinions on my issue.

Thanks for reading.
 
You can do two things, either learn your room and cut the lows more than you are now or, and this will probably work the best, BASSTRAPS!!! Treat your room properly and all the sudden you'll start hearing what you weren't before. Go the Ethan Winer's site RealTraps.com and read up.
 
I agree, treat the room / bass traps. Made a big difference to my mixes.

Now, My dilemma is clearing up the last of the mid-mud that I'm still hearing. :(
 
Alot of moniters have bass adjustments in the back... I don't know if yours do or not... check it out
 
boogieman481 said:
Alot of moniters have bass adjustments in the back... I don't know if yours do or not... check it out
Click to expand...
The 824s have three multi-position swicthes on the back, none of which will help that much in this situation, probably.

The one which may help the most - if at all - is the "Acoustic Space" switch which has three positions depending upon the speaker placement in the room (e.g. against wall, in the center, etc.) there are simple diagrams on the back of the speaker that readily explain this.

The other two are for setting the threshold frequency for a low-cut filter, and a switch for auto boosting/cutting high frequencies by 2dB, respectively. Both of those are really best left in their "normal" positions. IMHO. Any high passing or EQing of HF should be left to the board or the box, not the monitor. And besides, neither one of those will probably put much of a dent into the problem he describes, unfortunately.

G.
 
Yeah,


Feels like it's a combination of two things: your room and your mixing technique. The root of the problem. Also, the way you may be EQing the low end in the mix may come in close second.

When it comes to acoustics, I can't really explain it like Ethan can, so I feel a bit half ass when I say that you have to feel out a good position in the room to mix.

That would mean keeping your monitors as far away from walls as possible. Plus like a few people mentioned before me, the 824s give you the option to adjust for the room via the switches on the power supplys on the back (which you probably know already).

I personally like to shoot pink noise throughout the room to listen to what's going on. Silly things like shouting & clapping aren't out of the picture either. Then spot treatments accordingly.

However, mixwise, it's a good idea to pop in a reference mix of your choice to A-B your mixes. I was reading an article in mix the other day on the producer for the last Hawthorne Heights album. He expresses what I think is true in the short commings of the mixes he gets from homemixers.

He states that 9 times out of 10, it's the low end that falls short. A big part of that behind that they fail to understand how important referencing your mixes to other commercial mixes really becomes.

Unfortunately, the other reason being that bass frequencies are a complete and total retard to work with. Your mids to highs are more likely to reach you directly from the speakers without too much of the room comming in.

But that depends on how far you are from the speakers and what type of room we are talking about. Once your start getting into the mid-lo to lows, the room starts becoming a bigger problem. And if you can't effectively monitor the low end of your mix (more importantly for hip hop), then it starts becoming a shot in the dark. Like peeing with a blindfold.

So desicions like effectively layering your low end instruments starts becoming a headphone issue, simply because you can't trust the room.

Another approach is to mix relatively low. And when I mean low, I mean whisper soft. You cut out more of the room by doing this which in turn may start giving you better grasp on the mix. Of course, occasionally you turn it up to see where you are at.

So I really think it's a combination of both the acoustics in the room and how you are mixing, more than the speakers themselves. I'd be a bit suprised to hear that 824s aren't giving enough bass. :eek:
 
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jonnyc said:
You can do two things, either learn your room and cut the lows more than you are now or, and this will probably work the best, BASSTRAPS!!! Treat your room properly and all the sudden you'll start hearing what you weren't before. Go the Ethan Winer's site RealTraps.com and read up.
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If he isn't hearing enough of bass out of his monitors, how are bass traps going to help that? Wouldn't that make him need to use even more bass out of the monitor and make the mix even more bass heavy? Wouldn't treatment that would help absorb the mid and higher frequencies be the solution he needs?
 
NYMorningstar said:
...Wouldn't that make him need to use even more bass out of the monitor and make the mix even more bass heavy? ...
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It depends if there is a bass peak or bass null at the mix position. According to the poster he feels he's mixing the bass in too heavy so he's got a bit of a null at his mixing position.

I've got the same problem myself right now but it's a bit more of a problem to fix than just adding bass traps. If the room is too small and the speakers are forced up against the wall and you're in a 3-4 foot triangle but the bass can't develop...argh. I'm getting into a larger studio soon so the nightmare is almost over but the room size makes a hell of a difference - we already knew that! :D
 
Thanks for the tips guys - all good points.

SouthSide and LeeRosario - It's funny you mentioned in particular the acoustic space switches on the back of the 824's because a few minutes after I wrote the initial post on this thread, I went back to my room and switched these from "half-space" to "whole space", which did provide a slight, but noticeable, increase in the bass level. But every little bit helps as far as I'm concerned. I mean, its not like my low frequency level in my mixes is WAY off in my mixes, just a little more than it should be when comparing commercial material. My common practice is to bounce my mixes from 88.2/24 to 44.1/16, import into I-Tunes, and compare with commercial rap material that I've already brought into I-Tunes. I think this has done a good job of helping me compare my mixes bass-wise to what I think it should sound like.

I'm not good at doing diagrams but as far as my room is concerned, I'm sitting roughly 4 feet from my 824's which are roughly 4 feet apart from each other in an equilateral triangle position with my head as they should be. The monitors are about 2 feet away from the rear wall behind them, but only the right monitor is about another foot and a half from the wall adjacent to the rear wall, so it's sort of in a cornered position, although not right up next to the corner as I just described. This could most certainly be contributing largely to my problem.

Also, I have considered mixing quieter as you suggested Lee, to help take the room acoustics out of the equation, and I believe that might help out as well. I do not mix loud, I do check it at loud volumes periodically.

I also, as NYMorningstar mentioned, thought that bass traps would only absorb more bass and just cause me to mix more bass heavy, which is obviously what I'm trying to avoid here, but if bass traps will help represent my monitors bass response more accurately or take more of the room reverberation out, then that may be what I need.
 
NYMorningstar said:
If he isn't hearing enough of bass out of his monitors, how are bass traps going to help that? Wouldn't that make him need to use even more bass out of the monitor and make the mix even more bass heavy? Wouldn't treatment that would help absorb the mid and higher frequencies be the solution he needs?
Click to expand...


As someone else said - bass issues cause peaks and nulls - If you sit in a null, you wont't hear the extra bass you are adding. Bass traps will help even out the bass response.

Room Treatment! It ain't glamorous. It ain't got no cool blinking lights. But, it's will make trhe biggest difference in your mixing. :D
 
Go to Ethan Winer's site. Both his personal site (www.ethanwiner.com) and company (www.realtraps.com) and read up. On his company site he provides a download for you to find out where your peaks and troughs are in the low end. Ethan knows his stuff. I went to his house last month and we spent a good portion of the day talking about how important room treatment is (he has more acoustic panels in his living room than I think my school does in the entire recording division).

For basics in bass treatment, just throw a dense material (that pink insulation works well) into the corners of the room. A good survey of the peaks and troughs in your room will change how you mix entirely. You'll know exactly what to adjust in your para EQ at just the right frequencies to make it sound good anywhere.

A well treated room is better than any equipment you can buy. How can you expect to make a good mix when you're not hearing everything the right way?
 
kylen said:
If the room is too small and the speakers are forced up against the wall and you're in a 3-4 foot triangle but the bass can't develop...
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"There is a common myth that small rooms cannot reproduce low frequencies because they are not large enough for the waves to "develop" properly. While it is true that low frequencies have very long wavelengths - for example, a 30 Hz wave is nearly 38 feet long - there is no physical reason such long waves cannot exist within a room that is much smaller than that. What defines the dimensions of a room are the wall spacing and floor-to-ceiling height. Sound waves generated within a room either pass through the room boundaries, bounce off them, or are absorbed. In fact, all three of these often apply. That is, when a sound wave strikes a wall some of its energy may be reflected, some may be absorbed, and some may pass through to the outside."
-Ethan Winer


In short, it's a myth. Small rooms CAN develop bass response. Remember, the sounds bounce off the walls...so it's got plenty of reflectiveness and time to develope.
Another myth is that putting bass traps in a room that is already making you mix bass heavy...will suck up more bass just making you add more lower frequencies to your mix. It sounds weird, but actually bass traps help even out the bass in the room. It absorbs more bass making the rest of the room sound more uniform, so by the time it gets to your mix position the decay time of the lower frequencies is where it should be. And the cancelation and additive properties of reflective waves is avoided.
 
I agree with NYmorningstar that if you have too much bass, then adding bass traps to your mixing room would actually be the opposite way to go.
MY suggestion:

Get a SUB!

I used to have uncontrolled bass on my mixes, then I read that most big time producers have started mixing with subwoofers (because now that we have CD's we can actually hear whats going on below 80hz) and I started mixing with a subwoofer on. My mixes have gotten a million times better and I rarely have to worry about too much or too little bass in my mixes. I actually started tracking with the sub on also, think about it, almost every stereo that someone will be listening to your CD on will have some kind of subwoofer these days. Why not cater towards that by actually recording the songs with those low end frequencies in mind from the get-go?

I hope this helps!
 
Hollowdan said:
I agree with NYmorningstar that if you have too much bass, then adding bass traps to your mixing room would actually be the opposite way to go.
MY suggestion:

Get a SUB!
Click to expand...

I think you were writing the sametime I was...but check my above post. Again, bass traps help even out the bass response of the entire room. So by the time the frequencies get to your ears they have all been "corrected."

Remember, bass frequencies don't start and stop where you are sitting. They go through several reflections which adds and subtracts from itself throughout the room. So if you add a bass trap that takes away from a peak at one point, it's going to change the way the null appears at a different point in the room.
 
Someones going to neg me for saying this but...

Eq the speakers to be flat. I use a Driverack PA in conjunction with two bass traps I built.

First I set the speakers up to make the equilateral triangle at the mix position. Then I took a mirror and ran it along the walls to the sides of the mix position. When I could see the speakers in the mirror that's where I put the bass traps.

Then with the driverack I shot pink noise into the room and eq'ed the response flat. Now someones going to come in and say but moving your head 1 inch will alter the sound. Well I don't hear it. All I hear is improvements in my mixes.

This can also be done without the driverack all you really need is a spectrum analyzer, an eq, and a reference mic. I got pretty creative with DAW plugins before purchasing a driverack. What kind of sold me on the driverack was the new JBL monitors that "tune" to the room.

The new JBL's use the same type up setup I believe.

YMMV

will
 
Phuturistic said:
The monitors are about 2 feet away from the rear wall behind them, but only the right monitor is about another foot and a half from the wall adjacent to the rear wall, so it's sort of in a cornered position, although not right up next to the corner as I just described. This could most certainly be contributing largely to my problem.
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This is probably a major contributer to your problem; one of the most notorious setups for causing bass problems is to mix in or near a room corner.

It sounds like perhaps the best first step you can take is to get your desk out of the corner, if possible. It's a LOT cheaper than acoustic treatemet :) and can have a HUGE effect on the bass response of your system. As everybody says, see Ethan's work for details on this, but basically you're looking to set up in the middle of the long wall, if possible. Then go ahead and trap.

But I'd also like to point out that you could do a little mix translation yourself in the meantime. Listen to your mixes and figure out how much and at what bass frequencies your mixes seem to be overmixed. Then, create the "perfect sounding mix" at your desk, followed by a cut in the bass by the amount you have figured. It won't sound right at your desk, but this is one of those rare exceptions where you have to trust the numbers more than your ears - because your monitoring environment is messing with your ears. That's called "translation", learning how sound A at your desk sounds like sound B in "the real world" and planning for it ahead of time. Translate the bass in your mixes by the numbers a few times and before you knwo it, you'll know how it "should" sound at your desk in order to sound right on the outside.

But all that translation will be a LOT easier once you move you desk and then treat your room somewhat.

G.
 
Phuturistic said:
I also, as NYMorningstar mentioned, thought that bass traps would only absorb more bass and just cause me to mix more bass heavy, which is obviously what I'm trying to avoid here, but if bass traps will help represent my monitors bass response more accurately or take more of the room reverberation out, then that may be what I need.
Click to expand...

Bass traps will prevent bass frequencies from bouncing off the walls and cancelling the bass that comes out of the speakers when they meet again. In some places in my room I have -30 db peaks at 60 and 120 HZ. Only bass traps solve this. Or some serious remodeling of your room walls....
 
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Hollowdan said:
I agree with NYmorningstar that if you have too much bass, then adding bass traps to your mixing room would actually be the opposite way to go.
MY suggestion:

Get a SUB!
...
Click to expand...

I agree.. chances are, if you're listening to hiphop in a car you have a sub. If you don't mix with a sub, then you can't hear those frequences. Try turning the sub amp off in the car and see what you have. (just a test) :)
 
Hollowdan said:
I agree with NYmorningstar that if you have too much bass, then adding bass traps to your mixing room would actually be the opposite way to go.
MY suggestion:

Get a SUB!
Click to expand...


As pointed out by several people here, this is simply untrue - if you understand how sound waves interact, you would realize how your solution will do NOTHING to help the problem.

To the OP- what height are your monitors at? I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this. It will make a HUGE difference if you have them sitting in a null. I moved mine by about six inches, and it made a HUGE difference. Combine that with bass traps, and non-parralell walls, and I have nearly flat bass response now.

Along with Ethans site, I highly suggest going to John Sayers Forum.
 
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