How to mix bass correctly?

Discussion in 'Mixing and Mastering' started by wellos, May 4, 2024.

  1. clone

    clone Audiosexual

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    The biggest obstacle to mixing bass in EDM is your kick drum. With no kick, you could get away with a lot of shoddy work. Just like the sub bass tips above, another very common technique is to duplicate your kick drum track as audio and split it to 2 frequency ranges. You can use something as simple as your DAW's stock channel EQ to do it, maybe you like to use highpass/lowpass filters.
    No other elements should really be down there under 100hz to fight with one another.

    The biggest and easiest "quick wins" to be had with EDM bass mixing using plugins, to me anyway; is Ducking. Sidechain compression, Envelopers, are the two most common ways people do this. My favorite compressor for this is Fabfilter Pro-C2, but it is my "workhorse" compressor anyway. You put an instance of it on the channel you want to duck (your bassline), go to the Sidechain Selection dropdown menu at top right of the plugin and select the channel with your kick. Click the Advanced button on Pro-C2, and then EXT button. The EXT button is short for "External" sidechain source. That will determine what incoming sidechain source the compressor will react to, in time; but it will be effecting the channel with the compressor on it instead of the one it is reacting to.

    Sometimes you will run into an issue, where you would really like to use Lookahead parameter; but in most situations you will find that a sidechained compressor cannot lookahead to the other audio track you want it to react to. The reason you would do that, is because your compressor is not fast enough to get it to react the way you want it to. The old school work around for this is to increase the ratio of the compressor to infinity, or as high a ratio it will go. Because you cannot change when the compressor starts working, you can alter how much it is going to try to clamp down over the same period of time. Then you make a judgement call how much you want to back off the compression ratio while still maintaining the effect you want.

    Now we have specific plugins to do this by enveloping to duck; with no compression used to do it. But you should really know how to do both.
     
  2. Legotron

    Legotron Audiosexual

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    This was just released -> BassRift | UnitedPlugins
    Haven´t tried it, but it could ease up mixing and routing.. It´s also on sis-site
     
  3. Funkydude

    Funkydude Newbie

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  4. Obineg

    Obineg Platinum Record

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    there is no such thing as a "correct" mix. a good mix is when it sounds good. or when it sounds like you want it to sound.
     
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