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.
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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