How to Mix Bass Better so it Sounds Good Everywhere

Getting bass to sound right in your track can be the hardest part of mixing.

Has this ever happened?

Your song's sounding great in your studio, but then you listen in your car and it's boomy and muddy as.

Or you play it on a laptop or phone speakers and the bass just completely disappears.

Why is that?

There's many reasons, but here are a few:

1) Low frequencies have LONG wavelengths.

For instance, A 60Hz wave has a wavelength of 5.5 metres (18 feet.)

This means that bass waves bounce all around the room creating phase issues, some frequencies are doubled and some partially cancel each other out.

So you have an inaccurate picture of how the bass in your track really sounds.

There's an experiment you can do to hear this:

If you take a sine wave and play chromatically up your keyboard. You should notice some notes sound much louder than others - even if they're played at the same strength. (It may be best to draw them in to your midi editor with equal velocity.)

The reason this happens is due to the phasing in your room created by room modes.

2) Room Modes.

These are natural resonances already present in your room because of your room's shape and size. Think of your room as a giant guitar body.

Some frequencies get boosted, and some get cut by the excitation of room modes. It affects the low frequencies more with large wavelengths more.

Even with a well acoustically treated room you're often fighting physics. Most beginners underestimate the extent their room affects the sound they are hearing. I did for a long time.

3) It's your ears' fault.

Below shows an Equal Loudness Contour or Fletcher Munson Chart.

Fletcher Munson or equal loudness contours

This chart shows how the human ear perceives different frequencies at the same loudness.

If you take one of the phon measurements - let's say 20 phons. At 1Khz, we need 20db of SPL for it to sound like 20 phons. (A phon is a subjective measurement of perceived loudness.)

So if you follow the line from 20 phons at 1Khz to 100 Hz, you should see that to hear 100Hz at the same perceived level we need 50dB of SPL. Therefore, we need more loudness to hear low frequencies as the same volume as mid-range frequencies.

You can also see that as we increase the loudness - say to 100 phons - our hearing gets a flatter frequency response.

Finally, the third important thing worth knowing is that our ear is most sensitive in the 2-5Khz region.

Tips for getting better bass:

1) Check the level of your bass on decent mixing headphones.

I have been using the Sennheiser HD650s for many years and really like them. I noticed my mixes translated better to other playback environments immediately after buying these compared to the Beyerdynamic 770s. (Though I do also like the Beyers a lot and are a good cheaper alternative.)

2) Stand at the back of the room or in the doorway

You can gauge the volume of the bass a lot better when you aren't directly in front of the speakers. Try it! Usually you will find standing at the back of the room there is a lot more bass in your track than you thought.

If you need - to help you balance it, use a reference track - a track you like in a similar style sonically. That way you can compare your bass against the relative level of the bass in that song.

3) Minimize bass-masking frequencies in other instruments.

For example, if you have some pads that are in a similar frequency range, you can clear some space out for the bass - if you want the low end of the bass to cut through more.

Also if you have a lot of instruments or channels with sub frequencies in them that aren't really adding anything useful - eg: rumble from a microphones - then you can cut the sub bass using a low EQ cut.

4) Don't boost the fundamental.

If you want to make the bass louder, the temptation is to boost the fundamental (the lowest note) in your bass, the root note.

However, instead try boosting the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th order harmonics. This will mean that you are boosting more low-mids to midrange.

As we learned earlier - our ear is more sensitive here and we will perceive the change in loudness better.

5) Boost the attack. If you wish to boost with EQ to increase the level, try finding the region where the attack of the bass sits.

This is usually around 1Khz on an electric bass.

By boosting this area, the clickiness of the bass will be boosted and you will perceive the bass as louder without having to touch the low frequencies.

I hope these tips help you get your bass right in your mix and to translate well to other speakers.

If you find mixing confusing or a painful give me a shout and I'd love to help you out. I offer mixing services at a very reasonable rate here.