Mastering <20Hz cut: Yay or Nay?

With subs and bass and kicks, try and cut frequencies below 40Hz with the channel EQ, because some subs or bass only produced alot of air below 40Hz,

So cutting will only make your mix sounds tight and less muddy, then again for everything you do help it by boosting something, meaning if you cut 40hz boost around 60-120 for more punch

you'll also get alot out of your bass with less low frequency, its hard to hear frequencies below 40Hz on normal radios or in cars unless you got sub woofer, which will make your sound more muddy

stash

Use the Linear Phase EQ (say-24 HPF@15Hz) and put any Dynamics you may use afterwards. It will free up alot of room on some mixes. You really just need good experience using it-it will not apply to every mix-it will degrade some it will free some up. Here's a starting point ** you really need to get familiar with it-like distortion sounds good sometimes but not on everything. It is something that would hopefully not have a huge impact on your mix (it depends on what you do as well), so you shouldn't really expect a huge difference-because you will not likely have 14.3 Hz out of control by the time your mix hits the Master Fader-normally you'd cut it alot earlier on.

Don't master in Logic, if you don't have to. I get much better results in other programs.

I do hiphop, so YMMV, but I tend to cut either the kik or bass at between 40-59 hz and boost at 60 and 120. Your RMS will be higher if you boost at lower freqs, but your distortion and headroom will be lost. I have never gotten good results with trying to master on the busses in Logic.

I wouldn't cut the overall mix at all. BTW, for the newbies out there, don't ever put a limiter on your mix buss. It will kill the punch of your song!

BaseJase

Depending on the track, I record a lot of 808 type drums, I will do a high pass eq (more soft than hard on the channel eq) on the bassline if there's an 808 there and then boost the bassline in the upper freqs, so you can hear it more. It will make your kiks come out a lot more. If I eq something I will generally cut something else out instead of boosting that track. Overall I just wouldn't do it on the master bus.

I recently read an article where BT said something like, cut everything but the kik and bass at 120 (maybe he said 140), but it's funny because for rap music it sounds pretty good that way, and I think he's a techno guy.

I've noticed that if I don't carve off the bass, especially in mastering, then my stuff is lower on the radio.

BaseJase

I haven't actually produced anything yet.... but I am a budding audiophile.

If a track doesn't have SOMETHING below 40hz, I get aggravated. Also, depending on your application (example: making a dance track), your track might be played back at a different tempo than the one you mastered it at.

What I plan on doing is picking the kick, the bass, and other instruments that sound good, and then going from there. If a boombox can't play my song, I don't really mind at all. Also, if you do have a nice setup, the pluck from an acoustical guitar can sound REALLY nice, along with other instruments.

If your doing dance music and your still trying to go to vinyl, then your bass is very important. It will make playing time shorter and it could possibly make the needle jump.

Most speakers don't reproduce under 60hz very well anyways, but you can still tell if it's not there. There's no right answer, but most music is heard more than felt, unless it's at the club. Do two different mixes, one more like a radio with the freqs cut and one without for your typical car stereo and club.

BaseJase

When I open any EQ in Logic, the lowest frequency is 20Hz.
I don't know how to cut below that.
Also I think most hardware components are cutting below 20Hz and above
20kHz depending on the sample rate.

I was recording a lot acoustic jazz the last 5 years and the most problematic
instrument in the mix and in the mastering stage, was the upright bass.
When you record it with a condenser mic, close, to avoid too much leakage,
you'll get a lot of problems with bass around < 120Hz.
For me, most of the time, I have to judge how much bass (frequency) I may allow, to sound natural on a fullrange system (HiFi with subwoofer)
and how much lower mids (around 800Hz) do I have to boost in the bass track, that the listener can hear what the bass player actually was playing.
(That also depends on the style and the abilities of the player)
I always try to fix this before mastering.
When I master ,I have to pay attention that the frequencies below 120Hz are not compressed, in the multiband compressor plugin.

I think frequencies below 40Hz (normally) don't sound natural in accoustic music and most of the time are not generated by the instruments themselves.

It was originally one of the mastering engineers at Abbey Road who showed me how a HPF at 40Hz could clean things up immensely without compromising the apparent bass content of a track - and this was on a tune with an Akai sine-wave holding down the bass alone in some sections. Many club systems bottom out around 30Hz too, as far as I'm aware, so I think there's rarely any need to set the filter below that 30-40Hz range..