Where to cut bass

[gruberman]

I was listening to some of my favourite bands and I realized that they are not as bass heavy as I thought,

The genres range from EBM to futurepop. First I thought it was youtube, but then I listened to the spotify version and it wasn't that big of a difference. And these are songs that I love.

I usually cut the low end at 30hz and I only cut the low-mid frequency - no boost.

My songs have a lot more bass than most of the music I listen to.

Any pointers or tips? How do you handle bass?

[enroe]

It depends on what song and what bass you actually use.

Mostly kick is around 40-80 hz, bass around 100 hz (rock, pop),
and I adjust the highpass accordingly. I guess for EDM you
would place the pass deeper, sharing frequencies with the
kick.

[Robmobius]

Depends on how you processing your bass... If you find you bass too heavy you should try frequency splitting.

That way you can tame the low end and open up just the higher frequencies (which will have no low end of course). And the low end won't intrude into the mids and uppers.

[digitalboytn]

Cut it at the 5th fret...

That'll sort it out and keep the bass player on his toes

[Googly Smythe]

...
My songs have a lot more bass than most of the music I listen to.

1) This is not a reason to cut bass levels.
2) The logical place to cut bass would be before the signal enters a compressor/limiter, to prevent a too aggressive compression effect. Unless that's the goal.
3) I wouldn't use any online music service as a reference for sound quality.

[Forgotten]

There’s no single rule that will cover this; just use your ears.

[Distorted Horizon]

Short answer: Where you need to cut it. I know musicians who make genre where "you need to cut the bass from X to make real X" and they don't cut the bass at all

[djboomstick]

http://www.contrabass.com/pages/frequency.html#Db1

I have this bookmarked for when i’m doing live sound and some instrument ive never seen before comes up .

As a general rule if it’s not headed to the sub woofer its cut at 80hz or higher .

Maybe it helps some one in some way

[gruberman]

Thank you all for your answers.

[lwj]

You simply can have a lot more bass now. So where 60hz was kind of the lower limit before.. it's kind of 30-40hz now. With the huge caveat that you really have to consider whether you need to go that low. In a live setting, with a big enough system you're really turning people's insides upside down with frequencies like that! A lot of music doesn't need that and sounds worse with heavy bass because bass is always massively distracting. That's just how our ears are wired.

[donkey tugger]

Depends on your drums as well of course. If you've got a (god forbid...) 'clicky' kick drum you can get away with having more low end on your bass as the kick will cut through. A more meaty kick will need a bit more attention to the bass to get the balance between them correct.

[4damind]

Most people cut the sub-frequency from the bass and lower the gain where the kick overlaps with the bass.
I would always be careful with boosting the bass. In most cases it is too much, sometimes it is exactly what the bass was missing
There are still the usual tools like MaxxBass/RenBass that can be helpful sometimes.
If you look at how some known musicians work, they like to layer several basses.

Like so often there are different things...

[Distorted Horizon]

Most people cut the sub-frequency from the bass

Depends on what you're after.. In rock you cut bass that kick is more pronounced, in dnb you cut kick that bass is more pronounced and in trance... Bit more balanced but kick still leads.

[yehno]

I had this same discovery with my own music. I think this is a typical mistake with us bedroom producers!

I'm not an expert on psychoacoustics but if you look into it in regards to the low end, you'll find some very interesting stuff. Our ears can be tricked into thinking there's more low end than there actually is. One way this can be done is by boosting relative harmonics which are higher in the spectrum. This is how people can get clean, yet, bassy mixes. Your monitoring setup is likely causing you to overcompensate with bass too. I find that some good headphones can help me hone that in.

Anyway, as for where to cut the low end.. My default template has a linear EQ chopping out everything below 20Hz (and above 20KHz for that matter). I'll adjust the cutoff point depending on what sounds right with the song. I don't think about the numbers too much on that. One thing I have realised though is that a low end reduction with a low shelf often works out good for me rather than cutting really high up.

[ramseysounds]

You are probably getting bass build up from the room you are mixing and listening in.

Listen to his very first point. Mixing gold.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOexEz0bOG8

The man is a genius.