Too Much Bass. Not Enough Space.

Equal Loudness Curves from 20dB - 90dB

It’s remarkable how far mix engineers have progressed in just the past few years. Thanks to the wealth of knowledge available online—from audio-engineering forums to YouTube tutorials—nearly every music production concept is now accessible to anyone with an internet connection.

However, in the pursuit of the “cool” techniques and tricks, many engineers neglect foundational concepts. For instance, I’d argue that most mix engineers don’t delve into phase relationships beyond inverting a snare’s bottom microphone—which is perfectly understandable. That’s why specialists like me exist in the first place.

That said, there are certain fundamental ideas that can be invaluable to even the most mainstream mix engineer. Throughout my career, I’ve observed a few recurring issues in many of the mixes I’ve encountered. In this piece, I’ll focus on one especially common problem: mixing the kick drum and bass guitar (or synth) too loud relative to the rest of the instrumentation.

Scott Craggs of Old Colony Mastering addressed this very issue—what he calls a “Crime Against Speakers”—in a 2016 SonicScoop article:

“I get a fair number of mixes where the low end is dramatically out of proportion to everything else. It sounds like a 40-foot tall bass drum surrounded by a team of midgets playing microscopic instruments. This is almost always the result of mixing on small speakers that don’t reproduce the bottom octaves well, if at all. And this is nothing new—people have been mixing on NS10’s forever.”

Craggs highlights the importance of knowing your speakers. I would add that knowing your room is just as crucial: air behaves differently in every space, and issues such as reflection points, low-frequency buildup, and phase coherence can wreak havoc on your perception of the low end. If you aren’t intimately familiar with how commercial releases sound in your particular listening environment, you’re likely to overcompensate with bass in your own mixes.

Why Is This a Problem?

Bass frequencies take up a significant portion of your available headroom. When the low end is disproportionately loud, it can “weigh down” the entire mix, making everything else sound quieter. In other words, an overly bass-heavy mix generally appears less loud and dynamic than a mix with a well-balanced low end.

Furthermore, as mastering engineer Joe Lambert explained in his 2017 Music Mastering Masterclass, too much low end relative to the midrange and high end can make a track feel more compressed—or less dynamic—than it actually is. This can lead to poor handling of microdynamics:

“Because the song had too much bottom end, it probably felt more compressed than it really was, especially to them. When you have too much bottom, it gives this sense of glue. So now that there’s 3dB less bottom end, that stuff just needs a little bit more glue.”

Though rebalancing the low end at the mastering stage is often possible—spectral balancing is a central part of mastering—it sometimes requires more aggressive cuts than you’d expect (4–5dB, as opposed to the typical 0.5dB increments up to around 2.5dB). Additionally, if the mix itself was built around an overly bass-heavy foundation, microdynamics may have been handled poorly, necessitating further compression or dynamic adjustments.

Low-Ratio Compression

I’ve always believed a mastering engineer’s job is to do whatever it takes to deliver an immersive, dynamic, larger-than-life experience. However, many mastering engineers argue that making “drastic” changes—such as a 5dB cut in the low end along with added microdynamic control—goes against current standards. Some claim that a mastering engineer should minimally alter the mix. I’ll explore that debate in a future post, but for now, remember: a balanced low end is crucial to preserving headroom, clarity, and dynamics.

Choose your speakers wisely. Choose your room wisely. Choose your mastering engineer wisely. 

Craggs, S. (2018, August 18). Avoiding Crimes Against Speakers: 3 Tips from a Mastering Engineer. Retrieved from https://sonicscoop.com/2016/08/18/avoiding-crimes-against-speakers-3-tips-from-a-mastering-engineer/

Lambert, J. (Director). (2017, September 28). Music Mastering Masterclass with Joe Lambert [Video
file]. Retrieved 2020, from youtube.com/watch?v=eQF8ORNJYbk