16/03/2023
One of the issues artists encounter a lot when mixing tracks is how to properly mix the low end when using smaller monitors or headphones.
Over the years as producers and mastering engineers we have found workarounds that help give us a bit more insight into mixing low end on a restricted monitoring setup.
Here's some feedback we recently gave to one of our clients which they found helpful, so we're sharing it here too:
"Club toilet test", cut off everything above 80hz or so, listen on headphones. That way you can hear what's going on in the sub without everything else in the mix distracting you.
Metering. This is so useful, and also underutilised, as all those frequencies you can't hear so well, you can see them instead. The more you listen and look the more you learn how tracks should look.
For low end what I generally do is use the multiband compressor on Ozone. Set the low band to 20 - 120hz or so. Then pull the threshold down until the kick triggers the compressor, then pull it further down until the bass also starts triggering it.
If the bass triggers it before the kick, your bass is too loud. If you can't tell which is which, the bass is too loud.
There's no hard and fast rule but the kick peaking 3db above the bass works pretty well and gives me headroom to work with in the master.
The kick should be deeper than the bass, if it isn't then your low end could sound off balance on a big system, like the bass is the kick and vice versa.
You can see this on a decent spectrum analyser, the ones in Cubase are great and so are the ones in Ozone.
With the band on Ozone, you can move it up and down, so if you have a kick with a really strong transient in the low mids (120hz say) but you want to hear your sub, then adjust the band so it's 20 - 80hz. This will give you a better idea of what's happening.
