Subgenre really appreciate that specific freq tip right there. I will try tracks there and see how it sounds and play with it from that point on once I have monitors. And Tekno that seems like exactly the answer I was looking for in the moment, if you dont mind elaborating why mono under 150? I can see in my head why it makes sense but if you could break it down that would be amazing. Feed a man vs teach a man and all that jazz for fishing ;D Thanks guys.

 

150 is a mid mark really. Let me explain. When I used to work in a DAW, I had a pair of closed back sony MDR's, there were an absolute nightmare for working with bass, so I was never sure what was going on down there.
At the time I was doing Dance music, so it's important to have the low end driving up the middle. Bass has a lot of resonant harmonics, which tend to interfere with each other. So, because I couldn't hear what was going on, I would play safe and mono everthing below a certain range. I would then send it to my friend in Australia, who's an audiophile and get him to check it on his system. Which did the trick for me.
Sorry but I can't remember the exact VST I used, but I think it was Tone Projects Basslane. Now I'm purely hardware and I don't cut anything, which is why I sing the praises of the Samson SR850's. When my Sonys died, I was tight for cash, so took a chance on them, and was immediately blown away by them, and the were 5 times cheaper.

 

Perfect man, spot on for what I was looking for. Seems to me I am in a close spot to where you where, with the no idea what is going on down there aspect. Going to give this a run and will report back in a week or so. Thanks a bunch everyone.

 

Try the plugin called monofilter from nugen

 

OKay thanks fuckload on that man. Seems like you are watching me right now.... or something.

So I did this wrong I assume, but heres what I just did.

1. Copied my bass track into a sub150 and 150+ track.
2. On the sub150 I put a high cut filter at 150 so only 150 and under was going through that track. Also did a lowcut at 50 on it to keep the lowend clean and out.
3. On the 150+ track Did a lowcut at 150, so only the 150+ range went through.
4. Bounced both tracks to their own audio tracks.
5. On the Sub150 track I used the Mono setting inside abeltons Utility effects.
6. Bounced everything else to audio and mastered it from there, then recorded the master into its own audio track.
7. Exported audio to wav then converted wav to mp3 with audacity.

Now knowing about the plugin monofilter I will check that out and it will probably help me out a bit in terms of workflow. I am sure what i just listed is wrong, or done in some back ass way, so please elaborate if you can, anyone on how to do what I did better. I claim no knowledge in the sonic world and am humbled in the presence of years and 100's of thousands of hours of research and work.

 

The 150hz mono rule comes from vinyl recording times when bass-stereo frequencies from the grooves would cause the needle to jump out of the groove.

You can achieve that by mono-ing all the bass elements from your tracks, or use a monofying plug like suggested.

Check subfilter from plugin alliance, its free.

 

I was a bit more rough and ready. Put Basslane on the master and dail it in to the frequency i wanted.

 

This looks a lot more, shall we say tweekable. Basslane is free and it did the job at the time.

 

There's a lot easier ways to split frequencies in Ableton. I would have made a rack with only 2 multiband dynamics in it like this. He spits it into 3

 

Whew cutting the bass at 50hz seems kind of high especially for EDM and hip hop. I don't see how this will translate well on loud PAs with music with lots of low sub frequencies. One thing I learned is that electronic sub bass is better felt through vibrations rather than being audible. Lets say you make a song and the root note is between c and d#. A lot of that sub frequency will be felt between 30-60hz. Cutting at 50hz seems like you'd be sucking the life out of your song, that is unless you're playing all your sub bass notes in higher octaves. Which would probably be cool for jazz or rock using acoustic and electric bass instruments. Yet with edm and hip hop I think 808s constantly thudding in such high tones would become annoying after awhile.

 

Sometimes it's better to do a low slope roll off then a clean cut off when rolling off the subs. I might roll my subs off at 30hz yet the lowest point of the roll off might be at -6db. I know it's a rule of thumb, but I hate cutting that low rumble out of my mix..lol

 

You can go with different "fly by the number" work-arounds and get kinda sorta good results by emulating the bass response & dynamics you see in reference tracks using a spectrum analyzer (won't be disgusting in the car any more), but really you need something that lets you hear those bass tones.

Because it's an acrobat balancing act with every new track. You realize a lot of the time you really don't give a shit if the bass is exactly the same amplitude/RMS as in a Deadmouse track you're referencing. What actually matters is the relative balance of the bass and the rest of the higher instruments in your actual track, you want to get a little bit artsy and balance it so that it's feeling good, instead of being merely correct. Gotta be able to hear, the GF's hair salon can spare the $35 :D

 

Yeah 50hz is definitely too low for final production, but this is for nobodys ears but my own until a later date. I can go back and master stuff properly later on. This is for "Hey hows this idea sound not on my headphones inside my room at 6am, but hows it sound while driving"

Not trying to do anything more than delve deeper into audio production looking at things from all angles if I can to further my understanding of all the intricacies at play. This was just a quick question about a rough hack job approach to making something sound good between my pair of Sennheiser PC350's and my cars stereo.

Any spare money I am spending as of now Satai is going towards furthering her goals, which are not the hair salon you so envisioned. I just dropped 3800$ on my new PC and not trying to get more for myself, not that greedy. Think its sensible to wait for monitors in 6 months, when I have about 4k worth of items I will be purchasing, and in the mean time work with what I have.

Furthermore, this discussion has taught me more about sound than I knew before, minus the few comments out of place I gained insight from folks into their views and opinions on music production and audio mastering. Learned of a few new plugins and am overall happy with where I can go from here.

Was not approaching here "YO DAWG MAH EDM NEEDS LESS BOOM BOOM POW YA FEEL" I think if anything people could learn about not having everything compressed to hell limited to the max and mastered at 0DB. Also, the track in particular is not EDM so there is that.

Once again really appreciate everyones time, fuck ya to this community.

 

Sorry I should have pointed out a flat 12, which has a slope, and not a brickwall. I've always prefered the 909 for EDM. A tad to much boom in the 808.

 

I was meaning to ask about that. What genre is it? Although it makes no difference to the tips.

 

Genre wise I have no fucking clue, I'm a person who likes cheese pizza and anything else is added on stuff. I got no clue how the kids these days classify music, but I wouldn't imagine 18 year old drugged out kids to be fist banging to what I am producing in the sense of EDM electronic dance music, 4 on the floor, umph umph umph umph. No hate on the genre I fucking love electronic. Just this is not that, and not sure how to classify it. Just some I guess you would say experimental.

 

I know just how you feel. I bounce around 2 styles. 1 is dance music, but more old skool Techno/House sometimes ChillOut. Then my synth stuff, that I actually write lyrics and sing on. It's kind of like synthpop, but it's to dark, but it isn't darkwave, or industrial, but it has some of their dark elements, and it's not goth, but the vocals can be similar. I'd hate to think how much time I've spent trying to place it in a genre.

 

I suspect you need to be very good/very experienced to use headphones and expect it to sound decent on anything else (even different headphones, probably). My efforts on headphones always sound awful when played elsewhere (mind you, they don't sound great anywhere ha)

Better to sit in the car and do it, if you can, imo. Or get some cheap speakers as interim. Otherwise you're playing darts using a mirror. IME tracks done on headphones are next to impossible to bring back to what they were supposed to be (though maybe that says more about me than it does about using headphones). A car would be easier to mix inside than cans, imo, and easier to straighten out. But I am happy to confess to limited skill/ability. :D

 

I used my headphones for years exclusivly to check the bass. in my opinion there is nothing better to check/mix the bass than headphones lol.
But today where you have plugins like morphit and waves nx i can get a quite good full mix on headphones only.
Get some decent headphones and use morphit ("morphit - toneboosters" check the sister site buy it if you like it- really cheap and worth every single buck) + nx till you get monitors again.

I can hear a difference (more flat - like my monitors), with morphit on my akg k812 headphones. Which are allready quite flat.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Apr 18, 2017

Most PAs surprisingly don't go lower than around 60-70Hz which is also around the lowest harmonic of a kick drum so you shouldn't be worried about cutting the kick at 50Hz, but it does depend on the slope of the HPF you use. Cutting too much into >50Hz can be a no-no, unless it is too loud in that region anyway.

It really is the best if you can check it with good headphones and compare it to some reference tracks. <-- this is the key. The bass on the other hand is a bit tricky to HPF that high. More like at 30Hz and again it depends on the slope of the HPF. For dance music, in a mix, kick should cut through the bass a little, or use a sidechain ducking/compression trick to make them "dance together".

Regarding "monoizing" that's a really good practice as most of the people listen to the music through all kinds of dodgy equipment and human ears can't perceive width in bass anyway. If bass is too wide your mix will sound a bit more "flabby", not focused - not so tight and strong. For PC speakers you can "monoize" even higher, around 200 Hz. Most of the width comes from mids and mid-highs anyway.

 

Last edited: Apr 26, 2017