Kick drum keeps overpowering every mix

[Uncle E]

Maybe a follow-up question, if their aren't any rules to follow.
Why do I see the same advice scattered online?
Is this just unuseful filter bubble?

If your mix is dominated by bass frequencies, it will sound mono and won't have any spread. Is there a rule saying you're not allowed to sound mono? Nope, but most people don't want that and you should have an understanding that this will be the outcome when making your mix decisions.

Personally, this is what cured me of my propensity to mix the kick and bass too high.

[cron]

There’s no rules. Just do what sounds right to you. If something is too loud then turn it down or change your mix bus etc.

Great, thank you!
I'll try to keep that in mind.

Maybe a follow-up question, if their aren't any rules to follow.
Why do I see the same advice scattered online?
Is this just unuseful filter bubble?

This is probably more relevant to kind of 'bass-music adjacent' genres, but I feel like there is a lot of groupthink in Youtube tutorials. Particularly in that there doesn't seem to be much mind paid to where the music will actually be heard. Everyone seems to be unconsciously mixing their tunes as though they're going to be played at festivals. I see people in tutorials putting OTT on eeeeverything and all I can think is "this will sound like shit in the dingy cramped basements where the majority of dance music culture actually happens." I feel like a lot of the practices in the Youtube tutorial space produce outcomes that only sound good on crap mobile speakers (where Youtube watching happens,) headphones, and forgiving environments like festivals where there are no walls to mess things up.

Presumably these tips originate from huge artists who ARE playing festivals and Las Vegas clubs the size of aircraft hangars, and that context gets lost when those practices are recycled by the rest of us.

[Hedge12]

Still, I use my Yamaha DS 105 monitors and the mix sounds decent through the monitors, but when I switch to my wireless Senheiser (HD350T) the kick and bass seem to disappear (sound low and weak) , while the lead and other higher frequency elements are quite loud. I know the headphones are cheap and for non-audio production use, but it's weird that the mix sounds so different compared to the monitors.

I tried not to adjust too much while using the headphones, but I don't know how to make a good balanced mix that is audible on both headphones and speakers. Any thoughts?

This could be a room treatment thing.

I used to have the opposite problem when my living situation got a bit desperate and all my 'stuff' was in a friend's loft for a time. I'd make a tune on my laptop in (mid-range consumer) headphones thinking my kick and low end sounded pretty great, then I'd take it to a friend's to show what I was working on and my kick and bass were always a boomy mess on speakers.

I wonder if you're seeing the opposite side of the same coin here. If the room you're in has poor acoustics that mangle your bass and lower mids with resonances etc, it makes sense that you'd turn the bass end down to compensate.

I also think my room doesn't have ideal acoustics.
I live in a small studio apartment on the top floor, therefore my room is shaped as the roof (Gable roof / triangle). So, I assume that doesn't make my room a good place to mix and master tracks.

Do you have any tips to improve my mixes in this situation? I can only think of the following things:
- Make the room better acoustic wise (even though that doesn't seem all that easy and affordable)
- Learn to know the room and adjust the mixes based on that
- Invest in some decent studio headphones and use both the headphones and monitors as reference

Thanks

[Hedge12]

There’s no rules. Just do what sounds right to you. If something is too loud then turn it down or change your mix bus etc.

Great, thank you!
I'll try to keep that in mind.

Maybe a follow-up question, if their aren't any rules to follow.
Why do I see the same advice scattered online?
Is this just unuseful filter bubble?

This is probably more relevant to kind of 'bass-music adjacent' genres, but I feel like there is a lot of groupthink in Youtube tutorials. Particularly in that there doesn't seem to be much mind paid to where the music will actually be heard. Everyone seems to be unconsciously mixing their tunes as though they're going to be played at festivals. I see people in tutorials putting OTT on eeeeverything and all I can think is "this will sound like shit in the dingy cramped basements where the majority of dance music culture actually happens." I feel like a lot of the practices in the Youtube tutorial space produce outcomes that only sound good on crap mobile speakers (where Youtube watching happens,) headphones, and forgiving environments like festivals where there are no walls to mess things up.

Presumably these tips originate from huge artists who ARE playing festivals and Las Vegas clubs the size of aircraft hangars, and that context gets lost when those practices are recycled by the rest of us.

I get what you're saying, most guides and tutorials follow the same thinking patterns.
Yet, when you see and hear those guidelines over and over again, it seems logical to follow it.

Do you have any tips regarding basic processing to make my mix sound better?
I avoid putting OTT and/or compression on every track. Second, I try to EQ tracks while listening to the overall mix, and use return/send channels for effects (i.e., reverb and delays) so I don't use them as direct inserts. Overall I try to avoid making things just louder, but rather making them fit better overall.

[andymcbain]

When I mix at a lower volume (i.e., turning down my monitors) it seems that the kick sounds more in balance with the rest of the mix, but once I start upping the volume, the mix turns to mud again. Also, I mostly use Ableton's Simpler for kicks, but it seems that it always sounds louder compared to loading the kick sample directly into an audio track. Could the midi velocity play part in this?

If the mix is turning to mud when you turn up your monitors, that might suggest a problem with your monitoring and your room. Level match a few good reference tracks with your mix and A/B against those, at the same volume (I like Metric AB for doing this)... How do they sound?

In my experience for stuff like house music, a kick that's the correct length is very important. Having a kick that's tuned to the root key of the track can work, but it can also be a disaster if you're writing a track in C or D, for example. It really just depends.

[Hedge12]

When I mix at a lower volume (i.e., turning down my monitors) it seems that the kick sounds more in balance with the rest of the mix, but once I start upping the volume, the mix turns to mud again. Also, I mostly use Ableton's Simpler for kicks, but it seems that it always sounds louder compared to loading the kick sample directly into an audio track. Could the midi velocity play part in this?

If the mix is turning to mud when you turn up your monitors, that might suggest a problem with your monitoring and your room. Level match a few good reference tracks with your mix and A/B against those, at the same volume (I like Metric AB for doing this)... How do they sound?

In my experience for stuff like house music, a kick that's the correct length is very important. Having a kick that's tuned to the root key of the track can work, but it can also be a disaster if you're writing a track in C or D, for example. It really just depends.

Thank you for your insights!

How would you approach mixing in a non ideal room? I live in a small studio apartment, so adjusting the room doesn't seem as an option.

Could I solve the mixing problem by mixing on decent studio headphones and monitors? I don't know if that is a plausible solution because I often read online that you should either mix a project on headphones or monitors, but not both. Any thoughts?

[sqigls]

turn your hats up

[Uncle E]

Could I solve the mixing problem by mixing on decent studio headphones and monitors? I don't know if that is a plausible solution because I often read online that you should either mix a project on headphones or monitors, but not both. Any thoughts?

You can mix levels and frequencies without any problems over headphones. The old logic was that you shouldn't mix reverb or effects over headphones but this has at least somewhat (perhaps even completely) been solved by things like Slate VSX and Waves NX.

[Hedge12]

Could I solve the mixing problem by mixing on decent studio headphones and monitors? I don't know if that is a plausible solution because I often read online that you should either mix a project on headphones or monitors, but not both. Any thoughts?

You can mix levels and frequencies without any problems over headphones. The old logic was that you shouldn't mix reverb or effects over headphones but this has at least somewhat (perhaps even completely) been solved by things like Slate VSX and Waves NX.

So, investing in a decent pair of studio headphones (e.g., Audio Technica ATH 5O) would be a good idea?

My monitors give me such a weird impression, regarding the low end. On my monitors my bass sounds overpowered, but on my headphones (cheap wireless Sennheiser) the low end completely disappears, unless I turn up the volume to clipping levels.

Would this problem be resolved if I mix with professional headphones? So, I can make the track (creative part) on my monitors to spare my ears, and later do the mix with headphones. Any thoughts?

[Uncle E]

So, investing in a decent pair of studio headphones (e.g., Audio Technica ATH 5O) would be a good idea?

Investing in Slate VSX would be a good idea. ATH50's are awesome and will surely be a big step up from your current headphones but they don't do the things Slate VSX does.

[imrae]

Decent headphones would give a useful "second opinion" from monitors as well as making it easier to mix at night without disturbing people!

Be aware though that not all high-quality studio headphones have the same characteristics, some are bassier or brighter than others. (But they are in general more neutral with a smoother frequency spectrum than consumer headphones. This is a good thing.)

The volume-level dependence does sound like a room issue. Probably there are some bass or mids frequencies that are more resonant. Try playing around with frequency sweeps to see if you can find them; moving a bookcase/sofa or changing the distance between speakers and wall could make a difference. You can calculate what distance corresponds to what frequencies using the speed of sound!

The length of a kick sample should be related to how you use it in the arrangement. Long bassy kicks leave less room for other bass instruments.

Re: sidechain compression, the ratio matters less than you'd think because it interacts with the input level of the sidechain. 2:1 and 4:1 could be made to act the same by fiddling with gains and thresholds. (This is not the case with regular compression.) That said, "maximum" is probably too much unless you are going for a choppy, dramatic effect. With a low ratio and deep threshold the compressed signal will follow the dynamics of the key signal in a more detailed way; that might help especially if you have more than one kick of different lengths being used.

[donkey tugger]

Could I solve the mixing problem by mixing on decent studio headphones and monitors? I don't know if that is a plausible solution because I often read online that you should either mix a project on headphones or monitors, but not both. Any thoughts?

You can mix levels and frequencies without any problems over headphones. The old logic was that you shouldn't mix reverb or effects over headphones but this has at least somewhat (perhaps even completely) been solved by things like Slate VSX and Waves NX.

So, investing in a decent pair of studio headphones (e.g., Audio Technica ATH 5O) would be a good idea?

My monitors give me such a weird impression, regarding the low end. On my monitors my bass sounds overpowered, but on my headphones (cheap wireless Sennheiser) the low end completely disappears, unless I turn up the volume to clipping levels.

Would this problem be resolved if I mix with professional headphones? So, I can make the track (creative part) on my monitors to spare my ears, and later do the mix with headphones. Any thoughts?

A lot of it is about 'knowing' your monitors - critically listening to relevant reference tracks so you get used to the speakers' characteristics over time, and can confidently mix on them. Sounds like you're not at that stage now? Takes a while!

[counterparty]

A couple of things that help me:
Start each mixing session by listening to a couple of tracks you know well through the system you'll be monitoring on (to get a feeling for the monitors), and then while you're mixing use reference tracks that are similar to the way you want the track you're mixing to sound. There are good plugins for referencing (which you put on the master bus, so you can quickly switch backwards and forwards between your mix and the reference track). It helps to build up a collection of reference tracks that you know well (I buy them as lossless downloads in FLAC format etc from places like Quobuz).

[Hedge12]

A couple of things that help me:
Start each mixing session by listening to a couple of tracks you know well through the system you'll be monitoring on (to get a feeling for the monitors), and then while you're mixing use reference tracks that are similar to the way you want the track you're mixing to sound. There are good plugins for referencing (which you put on the master bus, so you can quickly switch backwards and forwards between your mix and the reference track). It helps to build up a collection of reference tracks that you know well (I buy them as lossless downloads in FLAC format etc from places like Quobuz).

So, if I use a reference track that is properly mixed and mastered, and I match my kick, bass, lead, etc. to the reference track - eventually the mix should sound good on my regular headphones?

The confusing part to me is that the mix can still sound poor on my monitors, but decent/good on other sound systems. But this can just be my monitors and room not working in my favor, right?

[Hedge12]

Could I solve the mixing problem by mixing on decent studio headphones and monitors? I don't know if that is a plausible solution because I often read online that you should either mix a project on headphones or monitors, but not both. Any thoughts?

You can mix levels and frequencies without any problems over headphones. The old logic was that you shouldn't mix reverb or effects over headphones but this has at least somewhat (perhaps even completely) been solved by things like Slate VSX and Waves NX.

So, investing in a decent pair of studio headphones (e.g., Audio Technica ATH 5O) would be a good idea?

My monitors give me such a weird impression, regarding the low end. On my monitors my bass sounds overpowered, but on my headphones (cheap wireless Sennheiser) the low end completely disappears, unless I turn up the volume to clipping levels.

Would this problem be resolved if I mix with professional headphones? So, I can make the track (creative part) on my monitors to spare my ears, and later do the mix with headphones. Any thoughts?

A lot of it is about 'knowing' your monitors - critically listening to relevant reference tracks so you get used to the speakers' characteristics over time, and can confidently mix on them. Sounds like you're not at that stage now? Takes a while!

I'm definitely not there yet, it will indeed take a while.
But if my room doesn't work in my favor, is it then still possible to develop good mixes?