new to mixing.. too much low-end bass!

If you have any bassboost EQ or bass enhancer anywhere, turn that down first. If not, turn down the Bass track and the kick (track). Yes, it is that simple and obvious...

You have to realise that the monitors you listen to, differ from +any other+ soundsystem you could play it on. Car stereo's tend to be bassheavy anyway (not to mention all sorts of bassboosting and/or equalizing features).

Take any number of headphones and your mix will sound different on all of them. Take any number of speaker sets, amplifiers etc and every configuration will sound different. A well mixed/mastered track will sound good to excellent on most configs.

You need to develop a "feel" for the right mixing balance. That is why one standard tip keeps coming back to this sort of question: listen to your bounced mix on +as many different configurations+ as you can AND, inversely, listen to professionally mixed and mastered music on +your own monitors+, all to get a feel for how your mix will 'translate' on different systems.

Last but not least, put a Gain plugin on your Stereo Out channelstrip and use its' MONO button to check if the mix is still balanced and doesn't suffer (too much) from phasing issues when played in mono.

O, and don't loose your patience. You will probably still need it. A lot. 🙂

Know your gear and its weaknesses.

Know your room and its acoustics. If you can't trust them, improve them or counter-check in different environments.

If you find that listening in your car gives you a good counterbalance in mixing, then do that.

pcesarz wrote:
Trying to finalize my first recording project on Logic by doing the mixing on my own. I've got most of the mix sounding good, but whenever I burn out a cd to lisnten in car, the low frequency on the bass guitar is TOO LOUD and makes the inside of car rattle. Any suggestions on how to get the right mix? I have been at this all weekend and slowly loosing patience. Thanks!

Losing patience...??? Mixing is an Art, there are no quick fixes.

Too much bass is common with students learning mixing, if you have too many low frequencies in the bass you probably have too many low frequencies in a few other tracks as well, keys and guitar are the usual suspects.

This will take some experimentation on your part.

Take a commercial CD that you like and import a representive track into Logic, listen using a plain stereo audio track, set it at as close as possible to the same volume as the mix you're working on. Listen to how the instruments lay in the mix. This will give you a rough starting point as each song will require it's own mix levels.

I'm not a big fan of chopping off the low end as a mastering process, you will lose some depth on other instruments.

pancenter-

Pancenter wrote:
Take a commercial CD that you like and import a representive track into Logic, listen using a plain stereo audio track, set it at as close as possible to the same volume as the mix you're working on. Listen to how the instruments lay in the mix. This will give you a rough starting point as each song will require it's own mix levels.

A-Bing with a commercial release you are familiar with will be the quickest way for you to get a feel for how much low end should be in your mixes. You'll gain a lot of knowledge in other areas too, such as instrument placement in the stereo field, effects, sense of depth, etc...

I can't stress doing this enough....

One thing I like to do is to take my macbook around to different systems and tweek the mix based on them.

If your car has a tape deck, go to the dollar store and get yourself one of those crappy cassette adapters. Plug it into your headphone out, pull up logic and mix the bass down.

Then take it back in side and split the difference.

I also like to plug in to my cheapie "home theater" speakers on the TV ... that usually brings a different perspective as well.

One time I even convinced the sales dude at Guitar Center to let me sit in their little monitor testing room and remix for a while (helps that I ended up buying some monitors there).

Anyhow ... yeah ... you should of course get some foam for the walls in the room where you mix and stuff ... but in my opinion, nothing beats taking your mix around to a bunch of different systems and changing it on the fly ... then bringing it back to your known system at home and splitting the difference.

Commercial releases are already mastered so some caution is advised regarding levels in particular. Lower the level a few db before "A-B"ing.

Listen in your car at the same settings you would listen to anything else with. What you are used to hearing is the best way to check things out.

Getting a subwoofer can be helpful to hear what's actually going on at the bottom of your mix. Sub-frequency slop can overdo the low end without you even hearing it in your studio. If your room is a cube and you can't treat it acoustically, turning down the volume may help diminish the effect of uneven bass due the the "room modes" of your mixing space.

The analyzer on logic's channel eq is very helpful if and ONLY if you set it to high resolution. Things should be rolling off (slanting downhill to the left) below about 30hz. Look for low end slop on all drum tracks (it travels through the floor and mic stands from the kick). On vocals (from "room-tone"etc). Oh heck....just look everywhere.

Data Stream Studio wrote:
The analyzer on logic's channel eq is very helpful if and ONLY if you set it to high resolution.

awesome advice, did not know about that- curious when people would opt to use low resolution

it is a relic leftover from when cpu power was much more limited. It was a cool new feature at the time it appeared and I guess the wanted it to be available to some extent even though the lower resolutions are so bad as to be counter productive and misleading. I used to have to go back and turn all the analyzers OFF or bouncing would take FOREVER on an old G4.

"Foam on the walls" won't help much with low end problems. In order to tame the bass you need about 6" of compressed fiberglass; like Corning 703 2" three layers thick. Search "acoustic treatment" and "bass traps" on utube and you'll find diy videos that are very helpful.

I use ARC from IK Multimedia - its a room fixer that works pretty well for me.

Data Stream Studio wrote:
"Foam on the walls" won't help much with low end problems. In order to tame the bass you need about 6" of compressed fiberglass; like Corning 703 2" three layers thick. Search "acoustic treatment" and "bass traps" on utube and you'll find diy videos that are very helpful.

A large, plush sofa against the back wall makes a wonderful bass trap, as well as a great place to rest your ears (nap).

pancenter-

especially if you stuff the space under the sofa with 703!

..and I was almost prying open the GUI of the Multimeter to find that @#!@#$ resolution setting, until it hit me you meant the one integrated in the *Channel EQ*...
!http://th747.photobucket.com/albums/xx113/monsterblab/Emoticons/th smiley_emoticonsdoh.gif!

I use ARC also. For about 3 months so far. My room was already pretty well treated with corner bass traps ("super chunks" as we found on youtube) and some panels across the wall/ceiling corner. ARC has helped with the rest. Between the two my room modes are about 80% tamed. I like it a lot. I just keep forgetting to turn it off.