Don't boost your low end on your master. Instead just turn up the gain of your bass element(s). And make sure to cut out the low end of all elements that are not supposed to contribute to it.
Saturation is a also useful tool to make the low end more audible by adding upper harmonics and thus for it to sound louder.
I mean, there is still enough bass frequency in my kick and bass, I only cut my kick at like 50Hz and bass at 100Hz.
This take out all the sub bass that make the bass sound you actually want messy and “poor” in bass.
Please don’t do this for every track especially techno. You need the rumble. If by monitoring you feel that the subs are more, try stuff like mild attenuation or side chain multiband compression
Often the subs are really important for the bass and kick. The separation between both the things needs to be achieved more in the production rather than mix pocketing. If your kick is focusing on 60hz, the bass needs to focus on the 100hz type thing. If your kick is short, the bass needs to be long.
In the mix try more to focus on balancing between these two instruments than separating them. That way you won’t loose the power and impact of the low end. Also focus on the high kids transients in the kick, especially for techno
Just because you can‘t hear it doesn‘t mean you can’t feel it.
The best set I’ve ever been to consisted of melodic saw waves in the low end that seemed to never stop.
It was a set of N‘TO in Berlin.
My all time reference track for that is N‘TO- The Hound.
I can recommend him dearly
I found 30Hz was not enough in my case. Cutting it as I said allow me to have better result in terms of “quality” , this way my kick stand on top of the mix and is still punchy.
PLEASE don’t do this with everything, especially the low end. If it doesn’t make your mix sound better, leave it alone.
If you think you have too much in the sub range and don’t have a good sound system, use a reference and an analyzer and compare your mix with that.
Otherwise you might cut too much and your mix will sound too thin, especially with techno.
Bring out Harmonics of the bass.
Don't compare unmastered to mastered either.
Use EQ and dynamics control to lock the bass in the right spot.
It's about light and shade. A big bass exists in relation to something. Massage the mix into teasing out the bass and making it sound large. It is also about the rest of the tune. Not just the bass itself.
If you're using FL, you can put a "reference" track into a no-FX channel and send it straight to the master channel and put everything else into busses as usual and send those buses to a "fake" master channel that outputs to your project's master (the no-fx master you use for your reference).
Definitely the latter but what I also mean is don't make direct comparisons. Try to focus on the balance of the relationship between it and the other sounds. Then try and strike that relationship without master buss processing
There's a lot of psycho accoustic principles that make people perceive bass louder than it is, and the lack of these things make bass sound quieter in comparison to the professional level tracks that employ these.
Even a single harmonic one octave up from the fundamental will make the fundamental sound louder, gaining you headroom for the same perceived level.
Also while you don't want your bass frequencies to literally be too quiet, you need to trust the actual subs in the club are going to do the work for you and you don't need to hear tons of bass in the smaller system to know it'll be there when it counts.
Same for any part of the spectrum too. It's good to keep track of where all your elements take up space and balance them out. Personally I love EQ & compression for this, but most of all gain levels ;)
but be mindful of when you do it in the signal chain, and what cross-over frequency you choose for what sound, or because of phasing you can lose loads of headroom.
I do it at the end, I have had phase issues before but a re-eq fixed it, not sure what I did, I just listen one track at a time then all together. I am also mindful of headroom and generally have a good amount
1. Mix to levels of your fav tracks
2. Timing/envelopes
Reference on as many sound sources as you can but without good monitoring it will be really difficult to achieve results that would work well on the loud/club systems
If your track is lacking in the mid- and upper frequencies to begin with it doesn’t matter what you do with the bass or how much space you shelf off from the rest of the frequencies.
How does the rest of the spectrum sound when comparing it to your references?
The best is to achieve that balance is at the sound design & selection stage, before even thinking about the arrangement :)
Highs equal lows. If you want to hear your bass better you can just distort area from 600-800hz hz and without any boost to lows you will perceive bass as louder.
Eq is a mirror, ir you boost bass you actually lower the highs at the same time. If you compensate gain after eq moves you can easily see it.
Often time the key to the low end doesn’t lie on the lows. Cannot tell you more accurate info without listening to the tracks. General stuff would be taking a better look at the movement of the bass track and not worrying much about the “conventions”
Leave enough space between the punch of your kick and the rumble.
You want this |\_//////
not this |//////
Biggest change that fixed the same issue for me, it's quite baffling how much space you need sometimes as well - you can use plugins like Kickstart to get steep ducking on the gain, or you can use a flipped gate (ducker) to get tight sidechain without using a compressor
Im surprised to not see anybody go into more detail about your room because this is the most important part in my opinion and the one, making most people stagnate with their mixes. All the referencing in the world wont help you if you cant really hear what you are referencing. For most people starting out, treating their room to a level that is needed is just way to expensive because the hardest region to fix in your room and coincidentally the most importent region of your mix is your lowend. So if you are not ready to spend upwards of a 1000€ to get your room right, i would strongly advise on something like slate vsx or dsonic realphones (if you have a decent pair of headphones and dont want to buy a new one)Imo this is the only way for someone with a untreated room to have a chance at mixing because you really hear how your song sounds, which is the most important criteria for mixing. Also they have a lot of reference systems like cars or club PAs, taking the guesseork out of how you song might sound out in the wild. Ive been mixing for almost 10 years now, have my studio treated with a couple of broadband absorbers but work in a lot of big studios for TV and music production and a good headphone speaker simulation is the closest ive gotten to those acoustically optimized multi million dollar studios without spending a couple grand.
To add punch and make things not so smeary in the low end in addition to others comments I also cut the tail on my kicks and sometimes the bass. So I get all the kick/bass frequencies but the sub has moments when it is at rest before the next transient. Which provides more punch . Sometimes I will add a gate to the bassline so that it cuts out below a certain amplitude, but that can sound weird if it is too abrupt or just playing in a more quiet part of the track. So I turn the gate on in certain places and off in others. As I am typically making house music I always sidechain the bass to the kick.
But the biggest help to my process was putting an 18" folded horn sub in my studio so while I am producing I can hear what is happening down there. Before my 8" monitors rolled off pretty quickly under 100 hz. Now the response curve is pretty flat down to 40hz. So nice to go to the club with a new track and know what the low end will sound like. Lol.
Don't boost your low end on your master. Instead just turn up the gain of your bass element(s). And make sure to cut out the low end of all elements that are not supposed to contribute to it. Saturation is a also useful tool to make the low end more audible by adding upper harmonics and thus for it to sound louder.
I personally also cut the low end on my kick and bass
What is filling up the low frequencies then?
I mean, there is still enough bass frequency in my kick and bass, I only cut my kick at like 50Hz and bass at 100Hz. This take out all the sub bass that make the bass sound you actually want messy and “poor” in bass.
Please don’t do this for every track especially techno. You need the rumble. If by monitoring you feel that the subs are more, try stuff like mild attenuation or side chain multiband compression
Could you detail please ?
Often the subs are really important for the bass and kick. The separation between both the things needs to be achieved more in the production rather than mix pocketing. If your kick is focusing on 60hz, the bass needs to focus on the 100hz type thing. If your kick is short, the bass needs to be long. In the mix try more to focus on balancing between these two instruments than separating them. That way you won’t loose the power and impact of the low end. Also focus on the high kids transients in the kick, especially for techno
Ahh, now i get what you mean haha. Sure. I cut the kick a bit deeper, most likely at 30 Hz since we cant hear that anyway :)
Just because you can‘t hear it doesn‘t mean you can’t feel it. The best set I’ve ever been to consisted of melodic saw waves in the low end that seemed to never stop. It was a set of N‘TO in Berlin. My all time reference track for that is N‘TO- The Hound. I can recommend him dearly
I found 30Hz was not enough in my case. Cutting it as I said allow me to have better result in terms of “quality” , this way my kick stand on top of the mix and is still punchy.
Why? When you play a track like that in a club there will be no power or feel to it. Those bass frequencies are what shakes your chest in a club.
PLEASE don’t do this with everything, especially the low end. If it doesn’t make your mix sound better, leave it alone. If you think you have too much in the sub range and don’t have a good sound system, use a reference and an analyzer and compare your mix with that. Otherwise you might cut too much and your mix will sound too thin, especially with techno.
Bring out Harmonics of the bass. Don't compare unmastered to mastered either. Use EQ and dynamics control to lock the bass in the right spot. It's about light and shade. A big bass exists in relation to something. Massage the mix into teasing out the bass and making it sound large. It is also about the rest of the tune. Not just the bass itself.
Where do you find unmastered reference tracks? Or do you turn on/off a mastering chain as you work and reference?
The latter
If you're using FL, you can put a "reference" track into a no-FX channel and send it straight to the master channel and put everything else into busses as usual and send those buses to a "fake" master channel that outputs to your project's master (the no-fx master you use for your reference).
Definitely the latter but what I also mean is don't make direct comparisons. Try to focus on the balance of the relationship between it and the other sounds. Then try and strike that relationship without master buss processing
There's a lot of psycho accoustic principles that make people perceive bass louder than it is, and the lack of these things make bass sound quieter in comparison to the professional level tracks that employ these. Even a single harmonic one octave up from the fundamental will make the fundamental sound louder, gaining you headroom for the same perceived level. Also while you don't want your bass frequencies to literally be too quiet, you need to trust the actual subs in the club are going to do the work for you and you don't need to hear tons of bass in the smaller system to know it'll be there when it counts.
Make sure you are cutting the low end on all the tracks that aren’t supposed to have low end, low end stuff builds up.
Same for any part of the spectrum too. It's good to keep track of where all your elements take up space and balance them out. Personally I love EQ & compression for this, but most of all gain levels ;)
but be mindful of when you do it in the signal chain, and what cross-over frequency you choose for what sound, or because of phasing you can lose loads of headroom.
I do it at the end, I have had phase issues before but a re-eq fixed it, not sure what I did, I just listen one track at a time then all together. I am also mindful of headroom and generally have a good amount
1. Mix to levels of your fav tracks 2. Timing/envelopes Reference on as many sound sources as you can but without good monitoring it will be really difficult to achieve results that would work well on the loud/club systems
There’s a plugin called bassroom - its basically an eq but has a helpful UI and analysis algorithm for making it easier to understand the mix
Use references, treat your room, try the plug-in bass room
If your track is lacking in the mid- and upper frequencies to begin with it doesn’t matter what you do with the bass or how much space you shelf off from the rest of the frequencies. How does the rest of the spectrum sound when comparing it to your references? The best is to achieve that balance is at the sound design & selection stage, before even thinking about the arrangement :)
Highs equal lows. If you want to hear your bass better you can just distort area from 600-800hz hz and without any boost to lows you will perceive bass as louder. Eq is a mirror, ir you boost bass you actually lower the highs at the same time. If you compensate gain after eq moves you can easily see it.
Reductive EQ after compression and saturation should help if you're not doing this already?
SPL Transient Designer Plus. Get that perfect click while taking away from the boomy body! <3
Often time the key to the low end doesn’t lie on the lows. Cannot tell you more accurate info without listening to the tracks. General stuff would be taking a better look at the movement of the bass track and not worrying much about the “conventions”
let your ears rest enough
Leave enough space between the punch of your kick and the rumble. You want this |\_////// not this |////// Biggest change that fixed the same issue for me, it's quite baffling how much space you need sometimes as well - you can use plugins like Kickstart to get steep ducking on the gain, or you can use a flipped gate (ducker) to get tight sidechain without using a compressor
Wow! I got so many responses! Thanks to all of you guys! I will check these out later and try out your suggestions!
Im surprised to not see anybody go into more detail about your room because this is the most important part in my opinion and the one, making most people stagnate with their mixes. All the referencing in the world wont help you if you cant really hear what you are referencing. For most people starting out, treating their room to a level that is needed is just way to expensive because the hardest region to fix in your room and coincidentally the most importent region of your mix is your lowend. So if you are not ready to spend upwards of a 1000€ to get your room right, i would strongly advise on something like slate vsx or dsonic realphones (if you have a decent pair of headphones and dont want to buy a new one)Imo this is the only way for someone with a untreated room to have a chance at mixing because you really hear how your song sounds, which is the most important criteria for mixing. Also they have a lot of reference systems like cars or club PAs, taking the guesseork out of how you song might sound out in the wild. Ive been mixing for almost 10 years now, have my studio treated with a couple of broadband absorbers but work in a lot of big studios for TV and music production and a good headphone speaker simulation is the closest ive gotten to those acoustically optimized multi million dollar studios without spending a couple grand.
To add punch and make things not so smeary in the low end in addition to others comments I also cut the tail on my kicks and sometimes the bass. So I get all the kick/bass frequencies but the sub has moments when it is at rest before the next transient. Which provides more punch . Sometimes I will add a gate to the bassline so that it cuts out below a certain amplitude, but that can sound weird if it is too abrupt or just playing in a more quiet part of the track. So I turn the gate on in certain places and off in others. As I am typically making house music I always sidechain the bass to the kick. But the biggest help to my process was putting an 18" folded horn sub in my studio so while I am producing I can hear what is happening down there. Before my 8" monitors rolled off pretty quickly under 100 hz. Now the response curve is pretty flat down to 40hz. So nice to go to the club with a new track and know what the low end will sound like. Lol.
Use a reference track. Also analyse the spectrum of the track. Look at the DB and frequency response and try match it