What has happened to the bass?

[Nicko]

I've noticed recently that the bass on some of my recordings disappears when played through my laptop speakers.  I know it's not going to give a deep booming sound, but it reproduces bass on commercial recordings OK. Bass on my recordings is loud and clear though phones and on my wireless speakers but virtually non existent on the laptop.  I'm assuming it's something to do with either EQ or other instruments fighting the bass on the speakers.  Any ideas?

 

If you want an example this month's competition entry is a case in point.  I'd be grateful if you could have a listen though laptop speakers and phones and see if you get the same thing, as well as any ideas as to how to resolve the issue.

 

Here

 

 

[Dad3353]

43 minutes ago, Nicko said:

I've noticed recently that the bass on some of my recordings disappears when played through my laptop speakers.  I know it's not going to give a deep booming sound, but it reproduces bass on commercial recordings OK. Bass on my recordings is loud and clear though phones and on my wireless speakers but virtually non existent on the laptop.  I'm assuming it's something to do with either EQ or other instruments fighting the bass on the speakers.  Any ideas?

 

If you want an example this month's competition entry is a case in point.  I'd be grateful if you could have a listen though laptop speakers and phones and see if you get the same thing, as well as any ideas as to how to resolve the issue.

 

Here

 

 

 

Is the bass recorded/mixed in stereo..? If so, try making the bass a simple mono track and see what difference that makes. Listening through monitors and headphones, I find the bass (and bass drum...) to be distinctly indistinct, and low in the mix; quite unusually so for a 'reggae' feel. There may be a phase issue here.

[Doctor J]

To me, it sounds like you've got lots of really low lows (say anything below 90Hz) in there and not much in the way of low mids in that song. Phones (and a lot of contemporary domestic audio equipment) don't do low lows. you've got to have a decent representation of the frequencies above them to come across on all kinds of equipment.

[Nicko]

1 hour ago, Dad3353 said:

 

Is the bass recorded/mixed in stereo..? If so, try making the bass a simple mono track and see what difference that makes. Listening through monitors and headphones, I find the bass (and bass drum...) to be distinctly indistinct, and low in the mix; quite unusually so for a 'reggae' feel. There may be a phase issue here.

Yes its a stereo track but pretty much centre balanced.  I think phase issue was what I was getting at but is there a solution?

[Nicko]

18 minutes ago, Doctor J said:

To me, it sounds like you've got lots of really low lows (say anything below 90Hz) in there and not much in the way of low mids in that song. Phones (and a lot of contemporary domestic audio equipment) don't do low lows. you've got to have a decent representation of the frequencies above them to come across on all kinds of equipment.

Hmm.  I wanted a bit of a thuddy bass feel, but pushed up the mids as far as I could before it lost the sound I wanted - at least on phones.  I think that the problem is that the phones may be a bit too good on the bass even though they're the (I assume) cheapish ones that came with the interface.  

[Light Grenade]

It sounds like just one of the perils of mixing, finessing the mids to make them cut-through without being overly honky, and making sure the lows are big without being loose. Good mixes sound good on everything, but obviously, that's easier said than done!

I tend to make bass fuller in the 90-150hz section, and cut everything below that to leave space for the kick drum. It sounds counterproductive, but it makes the entire low-end sound bigger when the bass instruments aren't competing for space. You can also try cutting some low-mids from other instruments (300-500hz ish) to make space for the bass mids to push through. These numbers aren't absolutes but are good starting points. 

Multi-band compression is worth a mess with too, but you can easily destroy things if you're too heavy-handed. 

Edited September 27, 2022 by Light Grenade

[BigRedX]

Have you run the mix through a frequency analyser plug-in to see what is happening?

[Nicko]

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

Have you run the mix through a frequency analyser plug-in to see what is happening?

Not quite.  I'm hopefully moving home shortly and will be updating the computer as part of the move so avoiding downloading any software at the moment just to avoid the ball ache of moving it all across. I have got a Cubase VST equaliser on the master channel which has a visual output - although it has no smoothing or fancy analysis tool on it.  Most of the track is peaking at around 150Hz - even if I solo the bass and/or drums, and there's a bit of a hole around 500Hz on the track in general.

[Bigwan]

I noticed a few months ago on Instagram that Joey Sturges (I think!) recommends running a mix through an IR loader with IRs for various commercially available outputs like laptops, iphone speakers, etc. for mix checking. Maybe worth a shot. I'd imagine the released tracks you mention have more pseudo-bass than REAL bass.

Edited September 28, 2022 by Bigwan

[Nicko]

6 hours ago, Bigwan said:

I noticed a few months ago on Instagram that Joey Sturges (I think!) recommends running a mix through an IR loader with IRs for various commercially available outputs like laptops, iphone speakers, etc. for mix checking. Maybe worth a shot. I'd imagine the released tracks you mention have more pseudo-bass than REAL bass.

I'm struggling to understand what an IR does.  Most seem to be little more than cabinet simulations.  What am I missing?

 

I'm using amplitube which has amp and speaker simulations plus room, mic placement and DI mix.  The track in question has a Squier Precision bass into an Ampeg B15 amp sim, through a  Fender 8 x 10 cabinet sim.  Most of the signal is close simulated mic'd via both dynamic and condenser mics plus a little room mic through two condensers with not too much width. No DI is used.  

[SubsonicSimpleton]

When you listen to commercial recordings on speakers with no meaningful ability to produce bass frequencies but you can still hear the bass, what is happening is you are actually hearing the harmonic content of the bass notes, and your brain is filling in the blanks.

 

Listening to the track posted by @Nicko the bass sounds to me like too much of the top end and mids have been EQ'd away (or were not present in the original BG sound) which means that the harmonic information is no longer represented adequately in the midrange of the mix to allow the brain to reverse engineer the bass when listening on speakers that don't do much actual bass.

 

It's easier to understand this by example than theory so here goes with a practical listening example for anyone interested, apologies if this is teaching granny to suck eggs.

 

There are several short recordings that I made of my double bass back in the days of the noodle challenge that you can find here (double bass is mostly 1st/2nd order harmonics and not much actual fundamental frequency, and the transient is quite complex and distorted)

compare with a sine sweep (other sine sweep files which go higher are also available)which has very little harmonic content - BE CAREFUL WITH THE VOLUME, SINE SWEEPS CAN DAMAGE SPEAKERS

I can hear the sine sweep just fine on phones/proper speakers, but it disapears almost completely on the ipad, whereas the double bass still sounds like a double bass with the sub switched off on the ipad.

 

[Nicko]

37 minutes ago, SubsonicSimpleton said:

I can hear the sine sweep just fine on phones/proper speakers, but it disapears almost completely on the ipad, whereas the double bass still sounds like a double bass with the sub switched off on the ipad.

That's pretty incredible.  The laptop speaker only really plays the last 20% or so.  Room speaker kicks in at around 40% and phones pick up the whole range.