bass frequencies for small speakers

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firefly
Posts: 120
Joined: Sat Aug 06, 2005 9:53 pm

bass frequencies for small speakers

Post by firefly »

Questions for you MTS users: specifically referring to bass guitar - when mixing, do any of you mix the bass guitar specifically for small speakers (like laptops) or do you simply mix the song and hope that the bass translates well over small speakers?

And if you do mix for small speakers, how do you go about it? What frequency areas do you look at? 800 Hz? 1K?

Thanks
renatuscartesius
Posts: 31
Joined: Wed Aug 20, 2014 5:19 pm

Re: bass frequencies for small speakers

Post by renatuscartesius »

I don't do any special mixes for special playback devices like small speakers, mp3 players or high end audio gear. In my opinion the mix should sound good on all devices - more or less. After the first rough mix on my Yamaha HS80M and Beyerdynamic DT880, I put the song usally on my mobile to listen to the song in the car via the cheap car hifi or with in ears at the bus. Additional I send my rough mix to some friends to tell me their opinion. After fixing some issues with the rough mix I do refine the mix several times until I think, it's good on the most playback devices. Sometimes it's hard to find a compromise.

By the way, for a clear and assertiveness bass guitar - especially on Rock/Metal tracks - I push the low-mids and mids of the bass:
https://soundcloud.com/rc_piano_tunes/u ... al/s-gskga

This track was made complete with MTStudio, Studio Drummer Plugin of Native Instruments, BIAS_FX and some other VSTs/VSTis for EQ, compression, strings, piano...

EDIT: Changed link to SoundCloud :)
sinbad
Posts: 594
Joined: Mon Jan 30, 2006 9:01 pm

Re: bass frequencies for small speakers

Post by sinbad »

I mix on headphones as I can't make much noise due to the neighbours and th erest of the family. I have a pair of Grados (the cheap ones $99) which are nice and linear. I then play over the car audio or send it to someone for an oppinion. Seems to work ok.
Bass is a very fickle thing. If your speakers are bass heavy, then your mix will have too little bass, and vice versa. Laptops and sub woofers are not easy to mix on unless you have good reference cds.

By the way renatuscartesius, I couldn't open your track, I got the message "Hoppla! Beim Abspielen der Audiodatei ist ein Problem aufgetreten."
renatuscartesius
Posts: 31
Joined: Wed Aug 20, 2014 5:19 pm

Re: bass frequencies for small speakers

Post by renatuscartesius »

sinbad wrote:By the way renatuscartesius, I couldn't open your track, I got the message "Hoppla! Beim Abspielen der Audiodatei ist ein Problem aufgetreten."
Hey sinbad! :) Thanks for the information, I've changed the link to a private soundcloud link :)
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