The Philosophy of Bass 

Yep, you can't do much in the mixing stage if there is too much or not enough dynamics in the song. Also the better the arrangement the easier it is to come up with creative mixing ideas.

Garbage in, garbage out.

fax

This is what i mean when i say mixing and mastering going hand in hand

Historically, arranging _was_ mixing. It's all you had in a live setting with acoustic instruments, other than putting the quiet instruments in front and the loud ones in back. Modern mixing is just an enhancement of that, so yeah, it has to start with the arrangement otherwise mixing is lipstick on a pig.

This is spot on

A nice bassy kick, if you will ;)

"Here we see two waveforms in their native environment, embarking on one of the most unique mating rituals in the audio kingdom, known as the null test"

HA! Just made the same comment. I agree on every level.

well said

i had pretty much no idea the whole time what he was talking about exactly but its by far the best video i have watched in a long time.

Yeah, I guess if you are comfortable with that oversimplification.

@@blablablablabittybla561 shut up

That's a really good idea. IIRC Pro Q3 has a way to get the 'signature' (or something) of a track. So you could run the analysis on those reference tracks and apply it to yours. Probably only keep the corrections for

Yep, referencing is key!

It has been said that this was the secret of the NS-10s referenced here in the video. Their frequency response wasn't great, but engineers knew it by heart, and what a good mix should sound like on them. You can compensate for a lot of sins through experience.

to much mind games and guessing but if u can work that way u r a genius with a good ear

@@starkid9736 I don't think the mind games and guessing is an issue really because you are not trying to make a perfect true copy between your reference song and your song. You are simply using a really well produced track in your genre of choice and using it to guide you towards a great low end (or full spectrum) mix. The difference is quite big and obvious when you are quickly soloing between your full mix and the finished reference song, so even for newer people with less trained ears, I think its obvious enough for them to get enough information to make positive mixing decisions.

I want to hang this quote up on my wall LMAO

-Hegel -Michael Scott

Have you seen Andrew Zeleno channel? Worral is the King; Zeleno the Prince

@@lucianogm will check out thx!

I'm sorry, but most of what you wrote up there is misleading, misinterpreted or incorrect. I'd suggest reading up on 'acoustic impedance matching' properly. What you're describing is an attempt at countering the inverse square law. This is mostly achieved through means of higher SPL. That's achieved with stronger and more efficient drivers (and more drivers). More cone area just means more SPL, mostly. And what we're after in subwoofer drivers is not cone area, it's displacement. Couple high displacement with high efficiency nets you high SPL within your given power budget. And forget about transmission medium non-linearities (air causing distortion). That only occurs above some 150dBSPL. Yea you lose SPL, especially in high frequencies with distance, but that can be compensated with EQ (which is why the 'bananas' exist, the top most speakers have a strong HF boost to compensate for the distance loss, because they're aimed at the audience furthest away from the stage). The resulting increase in distortion has a very simple cause: the loudspeaker has to work harder because it needs to produce higher SPL. And you're making it sound that high frequencies are more directional by chance. That's not the case, you can build a speaker with 360° HF radiation just like a subwoofer happens to do with bass. Line array elements are specifically designed to have an exact and controlled radiation pattern (5° beam width for the larger systems for example).

What’s his channel?

This was my number one takeaway, as well. For decades, I've worked so hard on the fundamental tones, then wondered why cheap, small speakers would "puke" on each hit! And you *still* couldn't hear the bass fundamental! (Duh!) Muchas gracias, Dan, for your tips. I subscribed!

Ha! I've got a pair of MDR-1000x :D

Actually, this is the fast track to learning mixing even for beginners. Don't waste years going in circles before being able to produce good mixes. Everything he talks about here ties to the understanding of fundamentals of sound and when you get that fundamental understanding going you will understand (and hear) everything he's talking about. And you will have a good basis for coming up with solutions, because you're not following pre-cooked recipes but instead understand the problem and can produce your own solutions. There are many, many ways to get it good. This video was just a selection of ways. So watch the video many times if needed. Try out his tips and techniques and try to understand why he chose them. And of course, as stated in the beginning of the video; work on your monitoring/room so you can actually hear what you're doing!

I would imagine so, I typically high pass my bass guitar, sometimes as high as 100Hz, and let the kick sit below it. I believe that can kill the fundamentals of some notes, leaving only harmonics, but almost always the fundamental is still perceived, without masking the kick

+1 to that. The EDM/Psytrance producers do it well. I'd love to see a "brain bass" tutorial aimed more at bass players

@@raptor_guy2327 you're taking about an octave and a half away from your bass. That means you're taking away the fundamental AND a lot of the second harmonic from the lowest notes. But hey if it works for your music.

Bass Guitars as accoustic instruments get a *lot* more complicated in the tutorial. Honestly, I've gotten a lot of good value from just side-chaining the compression via the kick drum to keep bass from smushing the bass drums transients, and weirdly it actually can make the bass guitar soud clearer too, because I think the brain just adds the kicks transient to the bass guitar perception..

@@kelainefes Acoustic bass guitars don't produce anything substantial below about 200 Hz (the air resonance of the body is typically below all the resonances of the soundboard, and even for a dreadnought style body that's only about 190 Hz) and they still sound like a bass. They are admittedly hard to mix because of it, but they're usually only used in very sparse arrangements anyhow.

I'm in Sheffield: had to drop some bassline! ;)

they could probably come up with a great UI for an FM synth too

as if listening at a volume that might damage your ears is EVER good idea just cause some guys with "good bass" do it

@@grapheme2696 Yes, that is why I walked out pretty quickly, but I used this anecdote to exemplify the fact that the loudness of monitoring also changes dramatically the way you perceive bass levels and the sound of your mixes. No need to get stroppy about it, chill out man...

Maybe they wanted to feel the bass. You could try that with ear plugs

young self promo on the track

You can go much extremer by flipping the phase of one master channel (for example the right channel). It'll sound perfectly fine on headphones (edit: it will sound wierd still, but on speakers the entire bass region will disappear, at least when you're sitting in a symmetrical room OR have a sub) but absolutely not fine on speakers. Take it even further and play that mix back on a boombox (with both channels summed) and you're left without drums, bass and vocals all of a sudden!

Yes you can rely on headphones for mixing. You just have to know how to use your tools. And you don't have to trust me. Andrew Scheps has told in interviews that he has done mixes with only headphones, sent them to mastering and have the mastering engineer return the mix having done nothing to it except limiting, because the mix was perfect as is.

@@peniku8 If you flip the phase of one of the channels on headphones, it sounds like you flipped the phase of one of the channels. It's not difficult to hear phase problems on headphones. Learn how to use your tools.

I really like mixing on Headphones. On my master I narrow the stereo field by 50%, that helps me to detect mono cacelation issues.

@@ejmikk Yeah, you can hear the cancellation if one channel is flipped phase on headphones. Just the cancellation happens in your brain rather than in the air. I can definitely hear that on such an extreme example as the entire R channel flipped 180. For more subtle cases of phase cancellation - surely the mono button is your friend? I'm constantly flicking that to make sure my mix sounds ok in mono as well as stereo - both on 'phones and on monitors. And I always test my headphone mixes through several stereo speaker systems at some point in the process. Learn how to use your tools is exactly right!

Square waves won't arrive at the subwoofer, since the sub is low-passed (I hope!). Square waves are just superimposed sine waves (a fundamental and its odd ordered harmonics). Play back a 50Hz square wave in your DAW and put a 60Hz 24dB/octave low-pass on it and listen. That's what arrives at your sub (if it's crossed over at 60Hz), which is basically just a 50Hz sine wave again. If square waves arrive at your sub, that's because the sub's amp is clipping. Voice coils need constant movement for cooling, which square waves don't provide much of, hence they overheat and die.

I don't do ducking unless it's as a special effect, similar to how you might use the "telephone bandpass" effect to make something sound deliberately shitty so that you can then drop it on the listener again, correctly. This has twice led to me just flat saying "no" when asked to use the effect in a collaboration. In one case, the other party agreed it wouldn't have accomplished what he thought it would and therefore wasn't worth it. In the other case, it ended the collaboration and the song never got released. I'm fine with both results.

I always love Dan's background music, and in a vid like this, it's an intrinsic part of the information presented because it's demonstrating what's being discussed.

It was a good system for sure! Until it broke xD (mightve been my fault, the box didnt receive the left audio channel anymore) but yes I do recommend that thing

What speakers do you have now with EQ I thought genelec were the best

@@jackc8120 It's a full custom system with Hypex amplification and dsp

@@peniku8 Nice, any chance you could share some info/links. I'd like to look into it for my studio. Thx

Can you elaborate on these problems, is there something to look for from a strict objective perspective? There's so much snake oil in the hi-fi system/DAC-AMP world that I find it hard to look for systems where the goal is accurate representation, not some subjective "warmth" or whatever.

@@samuliauno8163 I absolutely agree, the whole snake oil thing is kind of a huge problem. loads of people really do not know how their equippment works and believe in just about anything they want to. I'm no expert either, I just happen to be quite interested in the topic and looked up waayyy too much about impedance and the whole ordeal. I'm going to try and explain it, but there is also an amazing video by Julian Krause on the topic (Amplifier Impedance matters!) which I'd highly recommend you watch. Basically, every component in an AC device (most audio hardware for instance) has an a spedific impedance, similarly to the way every component has a specific resistance in a DC circuit. This impedance is usually stated as a single number, but is actually different for different frequencies, so ideally you'd want it to be stated as an impedance response. Now, headphones and headphone amps aren't really two entirely seperate devices that just work independently of one another, but rather one complete system, once they are connected. This also goes for all other kinds of audio equippment of course, but in most cases, there are standards for what the impedance might look like (Take guitar speakers for instance. Those usually have an impedance of 4 or 8 ohms). This is not the case for headphones. Neither amps nor headphones themselves have common impedances in the professional audio market, which can cause a couple of problems. The largest and usually most detrimental one is the effect of connecting low impedance headphones to a high impedance amplifier. Since the impedance response of the headphones changes *a lot* across the audible spectrum, so will the frequency response in t his scenario, since certain frequencies require more current, that obviously isn't being delivered by the amplifier, since amplifiers aren't usually made with spedific headphones in mind. There are a couple of other measurements that are affected by mismatching amp and headphones, like distortion, noise, damping factor, etc. but I'm realising this comment is getting quite long, so I'll try to wrap it up. TL;DR bascially, you want an amp with the lowest output impedance you can get and headphones, with an impedance that is at least 8 times greater than that. This won't guarantee ideal performance, but you can absolutely bet on there being problems if you don't ensure this "rule of eights" applies. I have been searching for more or less affordable audio interfaces that have a low headphone output impedance (and good performance otherwise) for a while and so far the only ones I could find were the following: Bascially all MOTU interfaces, the Focusrite Clarette(+) series and RME interfaces. I'd assume UAD to be quite good as well, but I haven't found measurements since I find they are quite overpriced. If you don't have an interface with low output impedance (or don't know) you'd honestly best be advised to buy high impedance headphones. They are not without their downsides and some amps even work worse with them, but with the current state of the intrface maket you're running relatively safely if you do that. There is honestly waaaay more to say about this topic, but the RU-vid comment section is probably not the right place for that. I hope I could help ;D

​@@yona9798wow, thanks for amazing piece of information

Wow thank u that makes a ton of sense. Keep it simple!!! 🔊

I would love Dan's take on this as well. I use this setup but corrective EQ can get pretty phasey really quick. I mostly use Sonarworks for reference. Mixmode and dial it back to ~80%. I leave CanOpener on through out since I only use it to add crossfeed

@@_allcap What do you mean with corrective EQ getting phasey? Does it happen with Sonarworks as well for you? I can't say that I hear any artefact with Sonaroworks on.

i use both, n they are a great help.

@@kelainefes Yes it happens to every eq unless you run it in Linear Phase mode...which has it's own drawbacks. The phase shift in Zero Latency is unpleasant for me. Mixed mode is a decent balance between the two

@@_allcap humans can't hear phase, you know that right? You'd need to mix the dry signal with the corrected signal to get the phasey effect you're talking about, but that's not what the mix knob does. You just don't like how your headphones sound when corrected.

You haven't heard a properly ported subwoofer, then. I agree, most of the commercial subs are trash. Also, sealed box designs roll off at about the same rate at room gain so, it makes it sound flatter in response. The ported boxes are already flat down deep so the room adds a big boost down low. But, you can design ported boxes to work with the room by tuning it lower and use a bigger box.

Gregory Scott's advice :)

@@1337murk Yes, he made that advice not so long ago, but it's quite intuitive actually. I was surprised people don't think of it that way all that often. Then again, I have my subwoofer on the table for 14 years now.