The Art of Listening - Bass

Bruce B

WBF Founding Member, Pro Audio Production Member
Apr 25, 2010
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Most of the mastering jobs I have received lately have issues with the bass. As you are well aware, the bass is the hardest part to get "right" in a room. We're talking anything below 125Hz.
With all the financial cutbacks at the labels and the recession hitting a lot of studios, musicians have to resort to cutting costs somewhere. Usually these days, if you're not a mainstream act, you're stuck with either recording/mixing your own tracks, or finding a decent studio that won't charge an arm and a leg. Doing it yourself requires you to set up somewhere in your home and putting up blankets or foam eggcrate on the wall to knock down the reverberation. But what about eveyrthing below 125Hz? All the foam and blankets in the world are not going to trap bass nodes. Those bass nodes are going to creep into your recording. If you're sitting in a null, you're going to crank up that frequency. If you're sitting in a boomy spot, you're going to try and notch that freq out. In the end, you're only going to have a file that will be playable only in YOUR room, sitting in that SAME SPOT! That's where a good listener comes in. A good listener will know the room inside and out and be familiar with the room's idiosyncracies. Most of the time if you fix bass problems, all the other frequency anomalies will right themselves as well.
So the things to listen for in the bass are boominess, resonances, distortion and suckout or lack of bass in a certain frequency. In mastering, I never boost frequencies because of suckouts, but I always cut frequencies for boominess/resonances. When you try to boost frequencies, most of the time you have issues with harmonics.
Transient and decay of bass frequencies are the next problems. The snap of a bass string is called the transient. You can give the transient more snap by using a Transient modulator in the digital domain, or use a fast setting on your attack times on a compressor or try to cut the 2nd harmonic frequency. I've tried all of these at varying degrees of success.
The decay of a bass note can be so long where it will muddy the upper bass and mids. You can also adjust this by using the compressor attack time and make it longer, or you can use the release setting for a longer time.
Tonal character of bass can be altered by EQ changes but also be changed by running the signal through a transformer. The older Neve consoles and our new mastering console has what they called "Glow" setting for bass. This gives the bass added harmonics and more body by running it through their transformer and circuits.
So listening to bass, you have 3 parts, overall amplitude of frequencies (frequency domain), transient and decay (time domain) and overall tonal quality.
Hopefully I've shed some light on how I deal with bass issues when they come in.
 
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jazdoc

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Bruce -

Thanks for the terrific explanations. Folks like you are the link between the musicians and listener and your insights are enlightening. Please keep 'em coming!
 

JackD201

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Apr 20, 2010
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Ah the old Neve VR brings back lots of memories. I always liked it better than the 9000j.

Bruce, thanks for sharing the knowledge. Not many pros are willing to do that, not even with their own interns. Ride Fast but Ride Safe man!
 

Scott Borduin

WBF Technical Expert (Software)
Jan 22, 2011
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Bruce,

Thanks for doing this specialty forum. Getting a perspective on what happens in recording/mastering is very important, considering that most of the sound we get out of our systems is predetermined in the studio, and not by the size of the checks we write for playback gear. Not to say that I haven't written some very big checks :)

It seems to me that there are three superimposed room problems to worry about in the bass: the room in which the bass was recorded, and the room in which it was mastered, and the room in which it is played back. I would think that pop bass is largely recorded straight to the mixer, but not acoustic jazz or classical. Do you try to isolate and correct for the recording venue effects in the latter cases? And do you have a model in mind of the typical playback environment (car, home, iPod phones, etc) when you master? Or are you shooting for a "neutral" environment?

I'm interested in how you EQ when necessary. As I understand it, there is some theoretical underpinning to your decision to EQ peaks but not notches - peaks tend to be minimum phase phenomena, and therefore more easily correctable with analog EQ or the digital equivalent. Do you tend use minimum phase EQ, or linear phase? Do you have a preferred EQ plugin?

Sorry for all the questions, but some of this is quite directly relevant to those of us, like me, who have the capability of using digital EQ to solve bass problems in the playback environment ...
 

Bruce B

WBF Founding Member, Pro Audio Production Member
Apr 25, 2010
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Bruce,

Thanks for doing this specialty forum.Do you try to isolate and correct for the recording venue effects in the latter cases? And do you have a model in mind of the typical playback environment (car, home, iPod phones, etc) when you master? Or are you shooting for a "neutral" environment?

Lately a lot of artists have been asking for multiple mastering versions, one for download, one for their MySpace page and then a good one for vinyl. There are 3 systems that I check my masters on. The mastering room, the car and my wife's iPod. The car is a brutal environment for CD playback. You can catch problems in there that you can't catch anywhere else. If you convert a hot file to mp3, you can have all kinds of problems, mainly distortion.

I'm interested in how you EQ when necessary. As I understand it, there is some theoretical underpinning to your decision to EQ peaks but not notches - peaks tend to be minimum phase phenomena, and therefore more easily correctable with analog EQ or the digital equivalent. Do you tend use minimum phase EQ, or linear phase? Do you have a preferred EQ plugin?

I always try to EQ first in the analog domain with either our Neve console, modified Millennia NSEQ-2 or Crane Song IBIS. The only time I use digital EQ is for serious correction when we use the Algorithmix linear phase Red/Orange EQ. I never EQ more than 2-3dB at a time. Doing more than that causes phase issues. What I like to do if more than 3dB of correction is necessary is to use 2 EQ's, one with a narrow Q and the other a wider Q.
 

flez007

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The time will come when an active EQ device will resolve - in real time and in digital domain - recording/room/gear interactions to produce a flat and other user selectable curve/frequency responses for home use. In the meantime we use cables, speaker setup and electronics intrinsic colorations to tame that "flaw". IMHO.
 

Nevillekapadia

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Aug 30, 2010
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Bruce your description is so easy to follow and understand.
I recently visited a studio and was appalled by so much gear for the signal path to travel through. Thinking more as an audiophile here on wanting simplicity and the shortest path to the recorder to avoid any loss.
But now as you explained it, I understand the need for it.
Thanks for sharing.
Best, Neville
 

DonH50

Member Sponsor & WBF Technical Expert
Jun 22, 2010
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Most audiophiles would be shocked at the amount of processing most recordings go through.

Room modes in recording are a royal PITA; there's a reason some of the best studios invest tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in a room. Most small studios close-mic (and/or just go direct on everything possible) and then add reverb and fix the EQ during mastering, with headphones.

Different listening venues has always been an issue. Making a recording that sounds good in a car, a Walkman/iPod, average home system, and "audiophile" system is near impossible. The good thing about the digital age is that it should be easier to do mixes for different environments, but time will tell if studios are willing to take a chance and customers are willing to pay. I suspect it will end up much as in the Olden Days, when there was often a release for the masses, and "special editions" for the golden-eared, well-heeled crowd. Think standard LPs vs. remastered Telarc or Mobile Fidelity etc. Now, going down is "easy" since most masters are hi-res, so I'd think it would be easy to release a nice 24-bit, 96 ksps (or whatever) version, a CD version, and an MP3. The catch is redoing to EQ etc. for different environments, not dropping bits. Aside: I do recognize that the algorithms to conmpress the data without audible corruption are not "easy" to develop, but should be faiirly easy to run.

Nice thread, Bruce!
 

Orb

New Member
Sep 8, 2010
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Most audiophiles would be shocked at the amount of processing most recordings go through.

Room modes in recording are a royal PITA; there's a reason some of the best studios invest tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in a room. Most small studios close-mic (and/or just go direct on everything possible) and then add reverb and fix the EQ during mastering, with headphones.....

There was a nice article not long ago in one of the UK magazines on Ken Ishiwata (Marantz fame) about his listening room and his thoughts on good listening.
His room I think he said cost around £100,000, looks nice though :)
Interesting at the time they visited him he had the new budget Boston speakers in for listening analysis, a room can go a long way to make well designed budget speakers sound amazing was the conclusion of the magazine team.

Cheers
Orb
 

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