Too much Bass - Master EQ?

[legendCNCD]

But with spectrum analyzer I've ofter freq <40Hz, and I think that's not good. When I want to take them away without any influence on the other freq. I need a steep High pass. Or how do you solve this problem?

You can use highpass, maybe it doesnt need to be 72dB/oct.. but I would not use it for every track. Use your ears more instead of looking the analyzer

[DJ Warmonger]

But with spectrum analyzer I've ofter freq <40Hz, and I think that's not good. When I want to take them away without any influence on the other freq. I need a steep High pass. Or how do you solve this problem?

You can use highpass, maybe it doesnt need to be 72dB/oct.. but I would not use it for every track. Use your ears more instead of looking the analyzer

Good luck using your ears below 40 Hz. It's difficult to even find monitors that reach this range.

[JordonP]

Do not ever assume for the master to fix your bass issues. These are mix issues.

Mixing the bass is probably what I spend most time on apart from FX channels but the objective is always the same thing: form a relationship with the kick drum. What I look (listen) for is a sound where it sounds like the bass is an extension of the kick, not a separate entity. It almost sounds as if the kick is punching the bass into action.

Balance:

First port of call is balance. Aim for the effect of kick and bass being the same thing with the faders alone before doing any kind of special processing. Normally the bass peaks lower than the kick. For me, anyway.

EQ:

To do that I start by making selective cuts in important areas (60, 100 and 250 hz). You can only determine where to make the cuts by ear. So use your ears. Every time I make an EQ change, I ask myself whether it's bringing me to my end goal which is to form that relationship.

More often than not, the bass will have far more small precise EQ cuts than the kick.

Sat/Dist:

I don't like adding a single distortion over all frequencies. That's what I like plug-ins like Quadrafuzz and FF Saturn. Basically, too much drive in the sub frequencies will cause mud. So I like to increase drive with frequencies. Tape emulations normally do the trick. It's important to gain stage here. You will notice your bass will sound louder at the same peak-RMS. This is because of the additional harmonics being generated.

Compression - My bass compression is near enough always the same so I've saved presets for it in PRO MB which I can tweak. Low frequencies tend to need a faster attack, you can choose to open up mid/high frequencies of bass by easing back on the attack (that's a creative choice).

Multiband Compression:

On bass buss I use MB compression with the same principle as above (quick attack for sub, faster for mid/high).

Sub filter:

After spending about 40mins mixing the bass I then ruin everything! (jk) by adding a sub - filter. For me it just gives me the tight sound that I like. With everything in balance before hand, you can really get a nice/tight loud bass sound here if you can find the sweet spot. My fav sub filters are Dual Filter (Cubase) and bx_subfilter (free from Plugin Alliance). Waves has one also - Rbass. Again, I always gain stage (if anything, it reassures me that the mix is balanced).

Tape on bus:

Slate VTM is the perfect tape emulation for me to thrown on the bass bus, making it sound even fatter. I don't play with the settings much bar setting the switch to low (which I believe adds harmonics an octave below - emphasising what the sub filter is doing).

I can't stress how important is to get out of the 'master will fix it' way of thinking. That way of thinking held me back for such a long time.

[legendCNCD]

I can't stress how important is to get out of the 'master will fix it' way of thinking. That way of thinking held me back for such a long time.

This. +1, bump, you know it.