To me, Dan is like the David Attenborough of audio engineering. I always get a kick out of seeing him come back to this channel over and over with high quality videos. Thx Dan and Fabfilter!
"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"
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.
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 isn't a tutorial, rather it's a pure bass trip experience with an amazing immersive, ever evolving backing track and a soothing & convincing commentary. Thanks Dan!
"The arrangement is really the first stage of the mix and the better it is the better the mix will be" - this should be framed and hung on the wall of every studio.
I hope fabfilter is aware of how lucky they are to have Dan. Honestly, eversince I found this and his private channel, he has turned into my favourite mixing engineer.
1 more tip I would like to add for getting the bass right (and everything else for that matter) if you simply cannot afford to get big speakers and an amazing room, is to buy the highest quality format of songs by producers which do have those big speakers and great rooms and listen to those songs through your setup that you have at home. Really pay attention to their mixes, and how the bass frequencies are performing, how loud they are, how long/short they are etc, every little nuance and try as best you can to replicate that in your own songs. That's the most cost effective method that I have found for getting close to great low end. Noisia songs are a great place to start!
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
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.
@@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.
Dan is like the Gandalf of audio engineering 🧙🏼 His level of knowledgeability and ability to articulate and explain complex concepts to mere mortals like myself in a soothing way is beyond incredible! So many thanks Dan 🙏🙏🙏
Dan is the only one I've yet found who consistently gets it right without any bullshit hype misinformation. Although this video didn't have anything new to me, it was so fluidly put together with the examples and his music that I found it thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining. Fantastic job!
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 00:11 🤔 The problem with getting bass right in mixes often stems from inaccurate monitoring systems, including speakers and room acoustics. 01:05 🎛️ The size of speaker cabinets affects the high pass filter, more pronounced at low frequencies, impacting bass response. 02:56 📦 Larger speaker cabinets result in a lower high pass filter, necessary for accurate low-frequency reproduction. 03:54 📢 Subwoofers need to be significantly larger than main monitors to reproduce low frequencies accurately. 04:22 🛋️ Acoustic treatment, particularly bass traps in room corners, is essential for improving bass accuracy. 05:47 🎶 Accurate monitoring of bass frequencies makes it easier to achieve a well-balanced low end in mixes. 06:14 🎧 Choosing the right headphones for mixing is crucial, as not all headphones reproduce bass frequencies accurately. 07:38 🎵 Bass in music requires a low fundamental frequency below about 100Hz, but various harmonics can be added to create depth. 08:56 ⚖️ Different approaches to creating bass: "Body Bass" focuses on low fundamental, "Brain Bass" uses harmonics to create depth. 09:53 🥁 Spectral separation or temporal separation can be used to allow the kick and bass to coexist without interference. 11:11 🎛️ Techniques like ducking with plugins like Pro-G or Pro-C2 can help balance kick and bass in the mix. 13:00 📈 Adding higher harmonics to bass parts helps improve compatibility with smaller speakers. 14:41 🔄 Ducking the higher harmonics along with the low fundamental can enhance the perception of bass. 16:29 🔀 Parallel distortion can be used to add clarity and definition to bass parts. 18:40 👂 Psychoacoustic effects can create the illusion of a low fundamental even when it's not present in the audio. 21:01 🎚️ Parallel distortion and EQ techniques can help enhance the bass while maintaining clarity. 23:19 🎛️ Using high pass filters can help keep non-bass elements clear of bass frequencies, improving mix clarity. 23:45 🎵 Using highpass filters, especially at 80-100 Hz, on non-bass channels can help clean up your mix. 24:36 🔄 Applying highpass filters to bass or kick parts can tighten them up and remove unnecessary low frequencies. 25:34 🎛️ Experiment with different filter styles and drive amounts to shape the low end effectively. 27:17 📊 Don't aim for a perfectly flat analyzer response; use it to diagnose issues, but focus on what sounds good. 29:13 🔊 Avoid over-hyping low frequencies, as it can lead to issues on both small and big speaker systems. 30:11 🎛️ Multiband compression on the low end can help keep it tight and punchy without overblowing the mix. 31:58 🎚️ Carefully manage the release and attack settings on multiband compressors for the low frequencies. 32:28 🎵 Pay attention to the timing of note ends for creating a tight and punchy low end
The amount of absolute gold in every one of Dan's single sentence tips in this video is unbelievable. To think a man who spent years learning each of them through experience and no doubt theory study, and now offers them to the world in an easy to understand, fun video, completely free of charge ... that's hard to get my head around. Dan, you're a God. Thanks mate.
Written 07:24: Considerations for monitoring with headphones: *- Monitoring accurately:* sticking to known manufacturers, there are large libraries of pretty accurately measured frequency responses for most makes and models of headphones. With these come impulse responses to basically make any pair of headphones -technically- virtually flat, depending on the accuracy of the measurements. This will make decent listener-headphones honest in the mid-ranges. This will not magically enable shit headphones to have detailed high-end. Most non-studio headphones have a very strong bass response, which usually gets cancelled by this method as well - adjust for that so you don't end up putting a +10dB low shelf on your mix. *- Reference:* if you're mixing on headphones, get familiar with them. Don't just use your studio headphones for studio stuff, it is essential to have a large frame of reference for your monitoring system. You can use EqualizerAPO (open source, quality software) to adjust system audio with equalizers, impulse responses and even VSTs.
6:10 regarding headphones if you search for 'AutoEQ' , you will find that it is a database of headphone and earphone models , with equalization settings to be used in a systemwide equalizer such as Equalizer APO
So amazing! You really make the best videos. I would like to comment on what you said at around 4:10. That a subwoofer that isnt larger than your monitors doesnt do anything. If you set up your monitors to be full range and have you subwoofer too, you can use the idea of basically multiple subs tobassisnt in dealing with room modes in your listening space.
These are the best videos on the internet. You explain and demonstrate things so well, the music is awesome and illustrates what you’re saying and even reflects the emotional energy of what you’re saying. You know the plugins so well and they practically sell themselves. Love fab filter and love Dan Worall
This video is absolutely stunning! Psychoacoustics is the way to make deep bass sounds "hearable" even on low price devices. I knew this already -somehow- but in this video it is pictured in detail! So it helped me a lot. Thank you very much for your efforts.
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!
19:19 this "trickery" is used since ever in the "old" telephony since the bandwidth is from 300Hz to 3kHz. We have not fundamentals so high pitched in our vocal emission, but our brain is able to reconstruct the fundamentals. We are not aware (conscious) about. It works great of course. It's called "missing fundamental" or also "phantom fundamental". Knowing how brain reacts, it's enormously helpful to improve mixes.
It's all about the room. Standing waves, comb filtering etc. I was enormously fortunate to get to go to a full weekend studio design workshop back in the day with Russ Berger (before he was the studio design giant he eventually became) and I have to tell you, room acoustics are everything.
Love it. I see lots of videos titled something like "why your bass sucks" and as a bass player it's pretty annoying to be told I'm neglecting the 120 hz region. This video however, as with all of Dan's vids goes much deeper to explain what goes on in a variety of mixing situations and offers cool tips and tricks that ill be recreating for practice!!
There's also other aspects of why you want to choose the speaker size (physical size) according to criteria most people don't even consider. Further away you are from the speakers, larger they need to be, more cone area you need. This is because now there's more air between you and the speakers and speakers must be able to generate a pressure wave that has proper impedance matching to the air in the room. When pressure wave is travelling through air, when there's high pressure, the air molecules in the wave are trying to escape to the air outside of the wave and when there's a low pressure zone, opposite happens, where air outside of the generated pressure wave is trying to fill in the low pressure region. This strongly attenuates and distorts the generated wave further out of the source you are, and this generates a lot of issues where no matter how much volume you push into the speakers, they cannot deliver the pressure wave all the way to your listening position without it being completely wrong. This is why in concert PA systems you see MULTIPLE speakers arranged into an array that they create a one friking huge "virtual" speaker-cone that pushes a huge wave of air and thus can deliver the fidelity all the way to the listener even several tens of meters away. But because physics, even these systems don't rely purely on VOLUME to deliver that material but after certain distance one needs to have delay lines, additional sets of speakers that are delayed from the main ones (because sound is SLOW) that can re-establish the impedance matching and keep the wave going without too much distortion and attenuation. And this is a thing even in high frequencies, even if people usually notice the huge subwoofer arrays first, the "bananas", as they're affectionately called, do similar job, but since high frequencies are more directional, one can divide the audience into "sectors" such that each individual piece of the banana can cover that particular volume of air, thus reducing the requirements from the speaker itself. And when listening tuned array speakers from up close, they have very, VERY wonky frequency response, but it evens out at a distance. So yeah... select spekaers based on your listening distance and volume of air. :)
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).
Can't recall the last time I have been opening my DAW for how life and available time is changing over years - but those tutorials are always a nice candy while doing stuff that needs to be done which does not need much attention. And they still make me buy/update the Fabfilter stuff 😂. Thx Dan!
The "brain bass" section was gold, I'd love to see a whole video on that, Dan. It is something I've known about for quite some time but haven't seen laid out so elegantly. This seems easy to pull off with synthesizers, but I'm curious how a mixing engineer would approach more harmonically complicated content like from a bass guitar. Does this technique still apply in the same way?
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
@@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.
Sonic genius. An extensive range of knowledge made easily accessible. The whole series maintains thought, clarity and interest. One of the best out there!! Thanks DW.
This vid reminds me of hearing LFO's Shove Piggy Shove on big speakers for the first time where I heard a sine sub with its very own melody that I'd never hear before! Awesome stuff :)
We're all so fortunate to have Dan bring such intelligence, passion and sensitivity to these topics - an invaluable resource - thank you!! (PS. In an interview many years ago, Keith Jarret said that it's the end of the phrase, not the begining that's more important and that you should pay a lot of attention to that - truth echoes).
That was an awesome tutorial on how to mix bass and more. I started to build speakers at the age of 5 and build my first kit 1975. Since then I have built many reference monitors for studios. Good monitors are a very important tool to have for mixing and mastering. If you can't afford reference monitors, get a pair of 2.1 speaker system with a sub. Get yourself a 31 band eq. Take your favorite music and tune the system to the room and roll. It shouldn't cost more than $600. Pre/post production are key when it comes to getting a good mix and mastering. Make sure that your kick and bass have good dynamics. If you find yourself turning up the bass and kick to fit in the mix, the problem is usually dynamic range. When you are in the final stages of mixing and everything is level, the kick should not have to struggle to cut through and you should be able to hear it clearly at -3db.
Hey Dan, you should spend 20 quid on a replacement "hygiene kit" for those DT 250s. That contains new ear pads and some foam disks. Its a treat I get myself once every couple of years. Also the head pad.
This is an INSANELY helpful video. Most times I talk to studio engineers they lock completely up when I start talking about anything below 80-100Hz. I get the feeling most engineers & producers don’t care or want to care about those frequencies unless they’re specifically in hip hop or EDM. Which is sad because even “real” music should pay attention to the entire spectrum in my opinion. Always frustrating when you get a super banging riff that has no low end, yet you have a slappy kick and low bass guitars… but it’s just not coming through any sub frequencies. I naively (and after this video, a bit less naively) choose to believe producers are capable of quality at said frequencies, but don’t capitalize
Exactly what I needed. I'm obsessed with my low end, and most of the times I feel that it's too much and I end it up taming it a lot. Thanks Dan, thanks FabFilter!
Not gonna lie, I have understood maybe a third of the video but I'm certain this would help people familiar with the topic immensely. Quite interesting to see this way more professional side of music production! It demystified the music I listen to a lot.
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!
It's like you've been reading the arguments I've seen on Reddit the past few days. And I've been pondering about my low end for about a week now. This is priceless.
Really excellent content!! I think you have not mentioned a very important element which is the volume at which you are listening. We will perceive things very differently with the same room, same speakers and same mix at different levels. A little anecdote : I was in Kingston (Jamaica) in a session with Sly and Robbie engineered by Fatty (some 30 years ago) and I couldn't believe how loud they were listening on those huge speakers in the control room! I had to walk out as I felt that I was going to suffer hearing loss pretty quickly. As I was standing in the corridor it suddenly struck me that this was probably a very important factor in the sound they were achieving in the end! And those guys have the best low end on the planet! Use this tip at your own risk...
as if listening at a volume that might damage your ears is EVER good idea just cause some guys with "good bass" do it
2 года назад+3
@@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...
I'm just gonna say it: FabFilter needs an Additive synthesizer plugin. I would buy that in a heartbeat. I'm sure it would be excellent. Great stuff on getting the low end to sit right. Cheers Dan and FabFilter
Sound system culture is the ONLY grass roots music culture. Much respect to the fabfilter team your years upon years of great plugins and just as great advise.
Great video. Bass is tough! A lot of people don't realize how much it actually interacts with the room compared to the other frequencies. Also, (rant) I personally *hate* the way ducking sounds in musical mixes, though. It is a sad side effect of excessive dynamic range compression. At least it can be solved at the arrangement level. A great example is the song 'Titanium' featuring Sia, which uses extensive ducking. It sounds OK on a bluetooth speaker because those don't reproduce the bottom octaves, but on anything more capable, the ducking is extremely pronounced, and I think a mix that didn't use ducking like that would likely sound better (more in line with what a live performance would sound like). I understand the reason people use the technique, though. I just think it sounds terrible.
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 would like to expand on mixing with headphones. They are great for checking the transient and detail of the sound, including sub if your headphones can produce it, but you can't rely only on headphones for mixing, due to lack of "full phase" information. For example, I had a scenario where after applying mono phaser/all-pass filter on a mono sub kick (edm) the sub and bass freq sounded really good on headphones, but it was very weird on speakers. The reason for this is that sound also mixes over time in air, and headphones doesn't give you the "time/air travel" factor which means that on headphones you can't hear what will happen with the sub/bass at longer distance, especially when one freq is slightly delayed/out of phase, which cancels some of the freq over time. In my case this was a creative decision for edm production, but this also can happen with real world instruments recordings especially when you mix 2 mics. It would be amazing if someone could do some more detailed video about this issue. At the end, use your main speakers for general mixing, than check the mix on headphones for details and transients, and than return to speakers for final check. This will make your life much easier. :)
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.
@@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!
Can you guys please please make a asymmetrical distortion plug-in that's like the Clip Distortion from Logic Pro or Distroyer Plug-in from Cubase? I always wanted an asymmetrical distortion like this so that I can make hardstyle kicks and other buzzy basses in my projects. I would really like to use a plugin like the Clip Distortion or the Distroyer in my DAW. It would be awesome if you guys made a plugin like this 😊
Dan… the section at 15:40 about how “808” bass sounds are generated is spot on. I own and frequently use an actual 1980 TR-808 “rhythm composer.” I recently had an apprentice working in my studio who was born this millennium, and when he heard what a physical TR-808 can do, he was like, “Great but where is the 808 bass?” 😆
Loved some of the tips n tricks you shared, really helped in sparking some creativity. Always enjoy your videos, thanks a lot for making them. Big salute from Canada!
I remember working in a theatre where our front of house speakers were huge things. Of course they had a lot of space bolted to that proscenium arch. The theatre was acoustically treated, not to mention steeply raked with soft seats or even softer audience. We used to love listening to music on that during changeovers as well - the big room doing things a domestic setup can't hope for. (Also the social aspect of a group of us working together on the changeover listening to the music) Presumably on the live desk the low cut button on non-sub-bass parts achieves that high pass filtering well enough.
Almost a decade ago I got a consuber-grade 2.1 system by Microlab with a 6-inch subwoofer in a HUUUUGE cabinet. It never failed me since. It's actually better than a budget pair of monitors I had, especially since I'm used to its quirks. I mean, it doesn't reproduce anything above 19k, but I can't hear as high anyways, so why bother.
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
Another problem about headphones would be that just about no audio interface actually has a well designed headphone amplifier. There's always some catch to it, especially when using lower impedance headphones and more budget friendly interfaces. But even a lot of higher end interfaces struggle here for some reason. It's just very difficult to get an actually reliable system.
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 RUclips comment section is probably not the right place for that. I hope I could help ;D
Thanks for the breakdown on bass. There's definitely a lot to unpack here in the 30 minutes, and a lot of great tips. There are two things I feel like could have been discussed in this concept of the philosophy of bass. 1) Perceived loudness, aka the Fletcher-Munson curves/equal loudness contours. Subbass and bass tend to be quieter relative to mids and highs to the human ears, so we tend to want to crank up the volume more to hear the bass better. Therefore, it's important to keep that in mind when mixing and leveling our subs and bass. If the subs and bass sound powerful at quiet volumes, imagine how blown out of proportion they will become when played loud, which doubles down on the point made in this video of huge boomy PA and club systems often already being subbass happy in their own mixes. I think it's a good rule of thumb to consider, make sure the subs and bass aren't too hot when listening at quiet volumes. We all want to make music that sounds better when volume is turned up, not the other way around. 2) An overall deeper physics breakdown of sine waves and subwoofers. If you ever look at a video of a subwoofer pushing out air in slow motion, it's pretty obvious it's strongest when it pushes out smooth sine waves. I think there was a good opportunity here to showcase Saturn's multi-band distortion features, so you can leave the sub range of 100Hz and lower undistorted/saturated. If we overdistort the sine waves down that low to the point they are clipping into square waves, it gets to the point it's an unnatural shape for subwoofers to push out, and potentially risks damaging equipment on top of just overall losing a nice clean sub impact. I listen to a lot of bass heavy genres, and I'm often surprised how many when thrown under an analyzer like SPAN show that the sub region isn't hitting as loud proportionally to the rest of the song as you would expect. Maybe it's part of the psycho/brain element of bass in our heads, or maybe it's just the concept that simpler can be better, and a really smooth clean sine wave at the right levels really shines through in a mix at loud volumes. Thanks FabFilter and Dan for the continued content. I've learned a lot over the years thanks to these videos you put out.
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.
This is a real master class. I'm an ignorant on this topic (just got here silly clicking but all this knowledge turned out to be amazing). If I'm ever accused of anything in Mixingland, I want you to be my lawyer.
Any thoughts on mixing with headphones together with SoundID Reference for a flatter frequency response, and CanOpener by Goodhertz for more crossfeed? Would love to hear your opinion on this.
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.
@@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.
Thanks Dan & FabFilter team! Quality information and awesome presentation as always! And one of the key take aways: It's ok to buy big speakers and a huge sub! ;) And Darren plays some pretty groovy bass lines!
13:08 I remember listening to You're On My Mind Baby by Rusko for years as a part of the GT5 soundtrack, but only ever on my 21" Samsung TV's built-in speakers. I appreciated the song, but mostly just as a bit of techy background music. Then one day I plugged my headphones in and oh my goodness, I discovered that I had never actually heard the main feature of that track cause it was too low for the TV speakers & didn't have much as far as higher bass leads/harmonics to make it compatible on small speakers, just a little compression crunch or whatever. Absolutely love that song for that, thanks for a reminder to go listen again.
Every studio needs proper room calibration. Even stuffing your studio with "bass" traps (they never actually help with sub-bass, unless they're literal meters thick) will still leave you in the dark when it comes to being "flat" down there. I've experienced it time and time again. Unless the system was properly calibrated I could never mix anything that translated well. Once you listened to a system like that, you'll also start noticing how "wrong" uncalibrated systems sound. Sadly roomEQ for studios often comes with extreme cost, which is why I recommend headphones calibrated according to Harman research to people on a budget. Ideally you'd have both, mix on speakers and validate your mixes on headphones. I've had Genelec speakers before, which were great, but the room was terrible, which made the system as a whole terrible too. Now I have speakers with integrated dsp, where corrective EQ is dialed in and I couldn't be happier.
One more thing i wanna add is how grateful i am for having at least 1 of the crucial gears needed that was mentioned in order to fulfill this .. it was a gift from a dear friend n ill always remember that
i find you´ll make it easier on yourself the more varied your monitoring system is. so use speakers AND headphones, check in stereo AND mono, listen to reference tracks, listen to reference tracks in mono, go back and forth a lot, etc.
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.
What a sonic trip this video is!!! Apart from the flood of interesting and valuable info - the music chosen to illustrate concepts is amazing! I am going to get myself a drink and repeat just like I would put an album on... Also, I almost am inspired enough to dig out my Electribe2 and try to apply this... (not a musician or producer...)
Sealed enclosures are generally more accurate. A ported sub can generate awesome volumes of low bass, but it's wooly, tuneless and inaccurate. Unless it's a sealed enclosure or isobaric sub, I wouldn't even consider it.
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.
It's so simple. You find a recording that you KNOW has the bass the way you want it. You A/B your mix against it, using whatever speakers you have. Guess what? If you have even a little experience, you'll get a remarkably good mix. Once you know your room & speakers, this will work incredibly well.
Thanks Dan,very helpful👍 For those interested the example he gave in the brain bass section I think is based around the fundamental 55Hz (A1 on piano); he then adds 110Hz (A2 /octave) and then 165Hz (E3). He says its not exactly E3 (octave + fifth) as E3 is actually 164.81Hz on a piano...
A tip to judge bass if you have a sub: Don't just listen to it. Touch the membrane lightly, feel it! Better yet, put your sub on the table and put your hand close to it. Your motor senses will tell you if the bass is tight and dynamic enough.
@@UncleBenjs 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.
Group delay is also influenced by number of sub/woofer drivers. This is why one massive sub is often the way to go where you have a specific listening point as the optimum wave node/listening area is largest and cleanest this way. My first sub was 10" (paired with some DM110s, then floor standing B&W DM604 S2s), the next sub was 21". A 21" sub that can move nearly 10L of air per stroke. You can get down to 8Hz of a 64' pipe organ this way, which in my opinion is 'reference' of range of any possible musical content that you normally encounter. Beyond that (rocket launch reproduction, wind and pressure effects etc), you need a rotary subwoofer and a spare room to act as an infinite baffle. Good luck lol.
To me, Dan is like the David Attenborough of audio engineering. I always get a kick out of seeing him come back to this channel over and over with high quality videos. Thx Dan and Fabfilter!
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
“The arrangement is really the first stage of the mix, and the better it is the better the mix will be.” - pure gold.
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 isn't a tutorial, rather it's a pure bass trip experience with an amazing immersive, ever evolving backing track and a soothing & convincing commentary. Thanks Dan!
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
"The arrangement is really the first stage of the mix and the better it is the better the mix will be" - this should be framed and hung on the wall of every studio.
I hope fabfilter is aware of how lucky they are to have Dan.
Honestly, eversince I found this and his private channel, he has turned into my favourite mixing engineer.
FabFilter has the best tutorial-speaker on earth. Thank you.
1 more tip I would like to add for getting the bass right (and everything else for that matter) if you simply cannot afford to get big speakers and an amazing room, is to buy the highest quality format of songs by producers which do have those big speakers and great rooms and listen to those songs through your setup that you have at home. Really pay attention to their mixes, and how the bass frequencies are performing, how loud they are, how long/short they are etc, every little nuance and try as best you can to replicate that in your own songs. That's the most cost effective method that I have found for getting close to great low end. Noisia songs are a great place to start!
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
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.
Noisia and Spor.
They are both way ahead of almost everyone else.
Dan is like the Gandalf of audio engineering 🧙🏼 His level of knowledgeability and ability to articulate and explain complex concepts to mere mortals like myself in a soothing way is beyond incredible! So many thanks Dan 🙏🙏🙏
I've just barely started watching this video and already I can tell I've been waiting for this video for years.
These are some of the best tutorials on RUclips. They may seem confusing at first but keep watching and re watching. Things will begin to click.
Dan is the only one I've yet found who consistently gets it right without any bullshit hype misinformation. Although this video didn't have anything new to me, it was so fluidly put together with the examples and his music that I found it thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining. Fantastic job!
Have you seen Andrew Zeleno channel? Worral is the King; Zeleno the Prince
@@lucianogm will check out thx!
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:
00:11 🤔 The problem with getting bass right in mixes often stems from inaccurate monitoring systems, including speakers and room acoustics.
01:05 🎛️ The size of speaker cabinets affects the high pass filter, more pronounced at low frequencies, impacting bass response.
02:56 📦 Larger speaker cabinets result in a lower high pass filter, necessary for accurate low-frequency reproduction.
03:54 📢 Subwoofers need to be significantly larger than main monitors to reproduce low frequencies accurately.
04:22 🛋️ Acoustic treatment, particularly bass traps in room corners, is essential for improving bass accuracy.
05:47 🎶 Accurate monitoring of bass frequencies makes it easier to achieve a well-balanced low end in mixes.
06:14 🎧 Choosing the right headphones for mixing is crucial, as not all headphones reproduce bass frequencies accurately.
07:38 🎵 Bass in music requires a low fundamental frequency below about 100Hz, but various harmonics can be added to create depth.
08:56 ⚖️ Different approaches to creating bass: "Body Bass" focuses on low fundamental, "Brain Bass" uses harmonics to create depth.
09:53 🥁 Spectral separation or temporal separation can be used to allow the kick and bass to coexist without interference.
11:11 🎛️ Techniques like ducking with plugins like Pro-G or Pro-C2 can help balance kick and bass in the mix.
13:00 📈 Adding higher harmonics to bass parts helps improve compatibility with smaller speakers.
14:41 🔄 Ducking the higher harmonics along with the low fundamental can enhance the perception of bass.
16:29 🔀 Parallel distortion can be used to add clarity and definition to bass parts.
18:40 👂 Psychoacoustic effects can create the illusion of a low fundamental even when it's not present in the audio.
21:01 🎚️ Parallel distortion and EQ techniques can help enhance the bass while maintaining clarity.
23:19 🎛️ Using high pass filters can help keep non-bass elements clear of bass frequencies, improving mix clarity.
23:45 🎵 Using highpass filters, especially at 80-100 Hz, on non-bass channels can help clean up your mix.
24:36 🔄 Applying highpass filters to bass or kick parts can tighten them up and remove unnecessary low frequencies.
25:34 🎛️ Experiment with different filter styles and drive amounts to shape the low end effectively.
27:17 📊 Don't aim for a perfectly flat analyzer response; use it to diagnose issues, but focus on what sounds good.
29:13 🔊 Avoid over-hyping low frequencies, as it can lead to issues on both small and big speaker systems.
30:11 🎛️ Multiband compression on the low end can help keep it tight and punchy without overblowing the mix.
31:58 🎚️ Carefully manage the release and attack settings on multiband compressors for the low frequencies.
32:28 🎵 Pay attention to the timing of note ends for creating a tight and punchy low end
Hearing Dan's voice outside of his RUclips channel makes me so happy. He really deserves all the praise for his work
What’s his channel?
The amount of absolute gold in every one of Dan's single sentence tips in this video is unbelievable.
To think a man who spent years learning each of them through experience and no doubt theory study, and now offers them to the world in an easy to understand, fun video, completely free of charge ... that's hard to get my head around.
Dan, you're a God. Thanks mate.
Written 07:24:
Considerations for monitoring with headphones:
*- Monitoring accurately:*
sticking to known manufacturers, there are large libraries of pretty accurately measured frequency responses for most makes and models of headphones.
With these come impulse responses to basically make any pair of headphones -technically- virtually flat, depending on the accuracy of the measurements.
This will make decent listener-headphones honest in the mid-ranges.
This will not magically enable shit headphones to have detailed high-end.
Most non-studio headphones have a very strong bass response, which usually gets cancelled by this method as well - adjust for that so you don't end up putting a +10dB low shelf on your mix.
*- Reference:*
if you're mixing on headphones, get familiar with them. Don't just use your studio headphones for studio stuff, it is essential to have a large frame of reference for your monitoring system. You can use EqualizerAPO (open source, quality software) to adjust system audio with equalizers, impulse responses and even VSTs.
Ha! I've got a pair of MDR-1000x :D
6:10 regarding headphones
if you search for 'AutoEQ' , you will find that it is a database of headphone and earphone models , with equalization settings to be used in a systemwide equalizer such as Equalizer APO
Dan with a "once and for all" myth buster. It's a pleasure to learn from you!
So amazing! You really make the best videos.
I would like to comment on what you said at around 4:10. That a subwoofer that isnt larger than your monitors doesnt do anything. If you set up your monitors to be full range and have you subwoofer too, you can use the idea of basically multiple subs tobassisnt in dealing with room modes in your listening space.
These are the best videos on the internet. You explain and demonstrate things so well, the music is awesome and illustrates what you’re saying and even reflects the emotional energy of what you’re saying. You know the plugins so well and they practically sell themselves. Love fab filter and love Dan Worall
What the hell. Absolutely shocked at the level of content, absurdly good, jeeeeeeeeeeeeeez
This video is absolutely stunning! Psychoacoustics is the way to make deep bass sounds "hearable" even on low price devices. I knew this already -somehow- but in this video it is pictured in detail! So it helped me a lot.
Thank you very much for your efforts.
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!
This is the video I've been waiting my whole life for! Also your taste in music is perfect. Thank you for existing
19:19 this "trickery" is used since ever in the "old" telephony since the bandwidth is from 300Hz to 3kHz. We have not fundamentals so high pitched in our vocal emission, but our brain is able to reconstruct the fundamentals. We are not aware (conscious) about. It works great of course. It's called "missing fundamental" or also "phantom fundamental". Knowing how brain reacts, it's enormously helpful to improve mixes.
It's all about the room. Standing waves, comb filtering etc. I was enormously fortunate to get to go to a full weekend studio design workshop back in the day with Russ Berger (before he was the studio design giant he eventually became) and I have to tell you, room acoustics are everything.
Yet another masterclass by Sir Dan. Thanks for posting!
Love it. I see lots of videos titled something like "why your bass sucks" and as a bass player it's pretty annoying to be told I'm neglecting the 120 hz region. This video however, as with all of Dan's vids goes much deeper to explain what goes on in a variety of mixing situations and offers cool tips and tricks that ill be recreating for practice!!
The best tutorial about low frequencies yet! Amazing!
There's also other aspects of why you want to choose the speaker size (physical size) according to criteria most people don't even consider.
Further away you are from the speakers, larger they need to be, more cone area you need. This is because now there's more air between you and the speakers and speakers must be able to generate a pressure wave that has proper impedance matching to the air in the room.
When pressure wave is travelling through air, when there's high pressure, the air molecules in the wave are trying to escape to the air outside of the wave and when there's a low pressure zone, opposite happens, where air outside of the generated pressure wave is trying to fill in the low pressure region.
This strongly attenuates and distorts the generated wave further out of the source you are, and this generates a lot of issues where no matter how much volume you push into the speakers, they cannot deliver the pressure wave all the way to your listening position without it being completely wrong.
This is why in concert PA systems you see MULTIPLE speakers arranged into an array that they create a one friking huge "virtual" speaker-cone that pushes a huge wave of air and thus can deliver the fidelity all the way to the listener even several tens of meters away. But because physics, even these systems don't rely purely on VOLUME to deliver that material but after certain distance one needs to have delay lines, additional sets of speakers that are delayed from the main ones (because sound is SLOW) that can re-establish the impedance matching and keep the wave going without too much distortion and attenuation.
And this is a thing even in high frequencies, even if people usually notice the huge subwoofer arrays first, the "bananas", as they're affectionately called, do similar job, but since high frequencies are more directional, one can divide the audience into "sectors" such that each individual piece of the banana can cover that particular volume of air, thus reducing the requirements from the speaker itself.
And when listening tuned array speakers from up close, they have very, VERY wonky frequency response, but it evens out at a distance.
So yeah... select spekaers based on your listening distance and volume of air. :)
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).
Very fun - I mostly play fretted bass, but I've been adding some sub tracks - thanks for the tips
Can't recall the last time I have been opening my DAW for how life and available time is changing over years - but those tutorials are always a nice candy while doing stuff that needs to be done which does not need much attention. And they still make me buy/update the Fabfilter stuff 😂.
Thx Dan!
Every time I hit a struggle with my music production journey I get the most useful information from you- thanks for all the help!
The "brain bass" section was gold, I'd love to see a whole video on that, Dan. It is something I've known about for quite some time but haven't seen laid out so elegantly. This seems easy to pull off with synthesizers, but I'm curious how a mixing engineer would approach more harmonically complicated content like from a bass guitar. Does this technique still apply in the same way?
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.
Sonic genius. An extensive range of knowledge made easily accessible. The whole series maintains thought, clarity and interest. One of the best out there!! Thanks DW.
What a beautifully put together lesson. Informative and relaxing
Excellent video, most YT creators don't level their spoken audio and music examples well at all, this is perfection!
This vid reminds me of hearing LFO's Shove Piggy Shove on big speakers for the first time where I heard a sine sub with its very own melody that I'd never hear before! Awesome stuff :)
We're all so fortunate to have Dan bring such intelligence, passion and sensitivity to these topics - an invaluable resource - thank you!! (PS. In an interview many years ago, Keith Jarret said that it's the end of the phrase, not the begining that's more important and that you should pay a lot of attention to that - truth echoes).
That “brain bass” explanation actually made sense to me. I’ve known about the phenomenon but never really understood it very well till now. Thank you!
That was an awesome tutorial on how to mix bass and more.
I started to build speakers at the age of 5 and build my first kit 1975.
Since then I have built many reference monitors for studios.
Good monitors are a very important tool to have for mixing and mastering.
If you can't afford reference monitors, get a pair of 2.1 speaker system with a sub.
Get yourself a 31 band eq.
Take your favorite music and tune the system to the room and roll.
It shouldn't cost more than $600.
Pre/post production are key when it comes to getting a good mix and mastering.
Make sure that your kick and bass have good dynamics.
If you find yourself turning up the bass and kick to fit in the mix, the problem is usually dynamic range.
When you are in the final stages of mixing and everything is level, the kick should not have to struggle to cut through and you should be able to hear it clearly at -3db.
Hey Dan, you should spend 20 quid on a replacement "hygiene kit" for those DT 250s. That contains new ear pads and some foam disks. Its a treat I get myself once every couple of years. Also the head pad.
This is an INSANELY helpful video. Most times I talk to studio engineers they lock completely up when I start talking about anything below 80-100Hz. I get the feeling most engineers & producers don’t care or want to care about those frequencies unless they’re specifically in hip hop or EDM. Which is sad because even “real” music should pay attention to the entire spectrum in my opinion. Always frustrating when you get a super banging riff that has no low end, yet you have a slappy kick and low bass guitars… but it’s just not coming through any sub frequencies. I naively (and after this video, a bit less naively) choose to believe producers are capable of quality at said frequencies, but don’t capitalize
Exactly what I needed. I'm obsessed with my low end, and most of the times I feel that it's too much and I end it up taming it a lot.
Thanks Dan, thanks FabFilter!
I hugely enjoyed this. Thank you.
This is an amazing video! I've been making bass-oriented music about 20 years and still learned a few new tricks here. Thanks Dan! 🤩
Helpful video, thanks! A summary at the end would be nice. Looking forward to the next videos
Not gonna lie, I have understood maybe a third of the video but I'm certain this would help people familiar with the topic immensely. Quite interesting to see this way more professional side of music production! It demystified the music I listen to a lot.
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!
These videos are so dense with useful and concise wisdom that I have to bookmark and rewatch a few times for my brain to osmose them fully.
"Only then, when the subwoofer inhales the feline,
the bass adequately fucks."
-Hegel
I want to hang this quote up on my wall LMAO
-Hegel -Michael Scott
It's like you've been reading the arguments I've seen on Reddit the past few days. And I've been pondering about my low end for about a week now. This is priceless.
Really excellent content!! I think you have not mentioned a very important element which is the volume at which you are listening. We will perceive things very differently with the same room, same speakers and same mix at different levels. A little anecdote : I was in Kingston (Jamaica) in a session with Sly and Robbie engineered by Fatty (some 30 years ago) and I couldn't believe how loud they were listening on those huge speakers in the control room! I had to walk out as I felt that I was going to suffer hearing loss pretty quickly. As I was standing in the corridor it suddenly struck me that this was probably a very important factor in the sound they were achieving in the end! And those guys have the best low end on the planet! Use this tip at your own risk...
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
One of the best information videos I’ve ever watched. Thank you Dan!
I'm just gonna say it: FabFilter needs an Additive synthesizer plugin. I would buy that in a heartbeat. I'm sure it would be excellent.
Great stuff on getting the low end to sit right.
Cheers Dan and FabFilter
they could probably come up with a great UI for an FM synth too
Thanks for the name-check Dan as well as well constructed and very informative video. x
Sound system culture is the ONLY grass roots music culture. Much respect to the fabfilter team your years upon years of great plugins and just as great advise.
Great video. Bass is tough! A lot of people don't realize how much it actually interacts with the room compared to the other frequencies.
Also, (rant) I personally *hate* the way ducking sounds in musical mixes, though. It is a sad side effect of excessive dynamic range compression. At least it can be solved at the arrangement level. A great example is the song 'Titanium' featuring Sia, which uses extensive ducking. It sounds OK on a bluetooth speaker because those don't reproduce the bottom octaves, but on anything more capable, the ducking is extremely pronounced, and I think a mix that didn't use ducking like that would likely sound better (more in line with what a live performance would sound like). I understand the reason people use the technique, though. I just think it sounds terrible.
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.
God bless Fabfilter Team and Dan.
32 minutes of Dan Worrall.
Get. In. Me.
I absolutely love Dan's tutorials! So informative, so inspiring, deeply prepared and with huge experience! Thank you!
man I love dan
Thank you, FabFilter, for helping fill the gaps between videos on Dan's channel.
I would like to expand on mixing with headphones. They are great for checking the transient and detail of the sound, including sub if your headphones can produce it, but you can't rely only on headphones for mixing, due to lack of "full phase" information. For example, I had a scenario where after applying mono phaser/all-pass filter on a mono sub kick (edm) the sub and bass freq sounded really good on headphones, but it was very weird on speakers. The reason for this is that sound also mixes over time in air, and headphones doesn't give you the "time/air travel" factor which means that on headphones you can't hear what will happen with the sub/bass at longer distance, especially when one freq is slightly delayed/out of phase, which cancels some of the freq over time. In my case this was a creative decision for edm production, but this also can happen with real world instruments recordings especially when you mix 2 mics. It would be amazing if someone could do some more detailed video about this issue. At the end, use your main speakers for general mixing, than check the mix on headphones for details and transients, and than return to speakers for final check. This will make your life much easier. :)
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!
Can you guys please please make a asymmetrical distortion plug-in that's like the Clip Distortion from Logic Pro or Distroyer Plug-in from Cubase? I always wanted an asymmetrical distortion like this so that I can make hardstyle kicks and other buzzy basses in my projects. I would really like to use a plugin like the Clip Distortion or the Distroyer in my DAW. It would be awesome if you guys made a plugin like this 😊
Dan… the section at 15:40 about how “808” bass sounds are generated is spot on. I own and frequently use an actual 1980 TR-808 “rhythm composer.” I recently had an apprentice working in my studio who was born this millennium, and when he heard what a physical TR-808 can do, he was like, “Great but where is the 808 bass?” 😆
I don't even know what the rest of the content of this channel is, the narration is so good I'm now a loyal viewer to whatever it is I can view here.
Loved some of the tips n tricks you shared, really helped in sparking some creativity. Always enjoy your videos, thanks a lot for making them. Big salute from Canada!
I remember working in a theatre where our front of house speakers were huge things. Of course they had a lot of space bolted to that proscenium arch. The theatre was acoustically treated, not to mention steeply raked with soft seats or even softer audience. We used to love listening to music on that during changeovers as well - the big room doing things a domestic setup can't hope for. (Also the social aspect of a group of us working together on the changeover listening to the music)
Presumably on the live desk the low cut button on non-sub-bass parts achieves that high pass filtering well enough.
10:20 Come for the audio engineering gold, stay for the songwriting/composition platinum.
It really worked for me after I look and try some tutorials, yours is the one that worked. Owe you a lot.
Almost a decade ago I got a consuber-grade 2.1 system by Microlab with a 6-inch subwoofer in a HUUUUGE cabinet. It never failed me since. It's actually better than a budget pair of monitors I had, especially since I'm used to its quirks.
I mean, it doesn't reproduce anything above 19k, but I can't hear as high anyways, so why bother.
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
Dans videos are one of my favourite on RUclips.
Very knowledgeable and informative.
Respect
Another problem about headphones would be that just about no audio interface actually has a well designed headphone amplifier. There's always some catch to it, especially when using lower impedance headphones and more budget friendly interfaces. But even a lot of higher end interfaces struggle here for some reason. It's just very difficult to get an actually reliable system.
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 RUclips comment section is probably not the right place for that. I hope I could help ;D
@@yona9798wow, thanks for amazing piece of information
These tutorials are pure gold. Absolute perfection. Dan is the man!!
Thanks for the breakdown on bass. There's definitely a lot to unpack here in the 30 minutes, and a lot of great tips.
There are two things I feel like could have been discussed in this concept of the philosophy of bass.
1) Perceived loudness, aka the Fletcher-Munson curves/equal loudness contours. Subbass and bass tend to be quieter relative to mids and highs to the human ears, so we tend to want to crank up the volume more to hear the bass better. Therefore, it's important to keep that in mind when mixing and leveling our subs and bass. If the subs and bass sound powerful at quiet volumes, imagine how blown out of proportion they will become when played loud, which doubles down on the point made in this video of huge boomy PA and club systems often already being subbass happy in their own mixes. I think it's a good rule of thumb to consider, make sure the subs and bass aren't too hot when listening at quiet volumes. We all want to make music that sounds better when volume is turned up, not the other way around.
2) An overall deeper physics breakdown of sine waves and subwoofers. If you ever look at a video of a subwoofer pushing out air in slow motion, it's pretty obvious it's strongest when it pushes out smooth sine waves. I think there was a good opportunity here to showcase Saturn's multi-band distortion features, so you can leave the sub range of 100Hz and lower undistorted/saturated. If we overdistort the sine waves down that low to the point they are clipping into square waves, it gets to the point it's an unnatural shape for subwoofers to push out, and potentially risks damaging equipment on top of just overall losing a nice clean sub impact.
I listen to a lot of bass heavy genres, and I'm often surprised how many when thrown under an analyzer like SPAN show that the sub region isn't hitting as loud proportionally to the rest of the song as you would expect. Maybe it's part of the psycho/brain element of bass in our heads, or maybe it's just the concept that simpler can be better, and a really smooth clean sine wave at the right levels really shines through in a mix at loud volumes.
Thanks FabFilter and Dan for the continued content. I've learned a lot over the years thanks to these videos you put out.
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.
This is a real master class. I'm an ignorant on this topic (just got here silly clicking but all this knowledge turned out to be amazing). If I'm ever accused of anything in Mixingland, I want you to be my lawyer.
Any thoughts on mixing with headphones together with SoundID Reference for a flatter frequency response, and CanOpener by Goodhertz for more crossfeed?
Would love to hear your opinion on this.
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.
Amazing series. Thank you to all involved.
Thanks Dan & FabFilter team! Quality information and awesome presentation as always! And one of the key take aways: It's ok to buy big speakers and a huge sub! ;) And Darren plays some pretty groovy bass lines!
13:08 I remember listening to You're On My Mind Baby by Rusko for years as a part of the GT5 soundtrack, but only ever on my 21" Samsung TV's built-in speakers. I appreciated the song, but mostly just as a bit of techy background music. Then one day I plugged my headphones in and oh my goodness, I discovered that I had never actually heard the main feature of that track cause it was too low for the TV speakers & didn't have much as far as higher bass leads/harmonics to make it compatible on small speakers, just a little compression crunch or whatever. Absolutely love that song for that, thanks for a reminder to go listen again.
Every studio needs proper room calibration. Even stuffing your studio with "bass" traps (they never actually help with sub-bass, unless they're literal meters thick) will still leave you in the dark when it comes to being "flat" down there. I've experienced it time and time again. Unless the system was properly calibrated I could never mix anything that translated well. Once you listened to a system like that, you'll also start noticing how "wrong" uncalibrated systems sound.
Sadly roomEQ for studios often comes with extreme cost, which is why I recommend headphones calibrated according to Harman research to people on a budget. Ideally you'd have both, mix on speakers and validate your mixes on headphones.
I've had Genelec speakers before, which were great, but the room was terrible, which made the system as a whole terrible too. Now I have speakers with integrated dsp, where corrective EQ is dialed in and I couldn't be happier.
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
One more thing i wanna add is how grateful i am for having at least 1 of the crucial gears needed that was mentioned in order to fulfill this .. it was a gift from a dear friend n ill always remember that
Super well done 👏👏👏👏
young self promo on the track
i find you´ll make it easier on yourself the more varied your monitoring system is. so use speakers AND headphones, check in stereo AND mono, listen to reference tracks, listen to reference tracks in mono, go back and forth a lot, etc.
PhD in Bass.
Lots of gold here! Thanks for sharing your wisdom and experience.
Hey Dan, Love these tutorials. Absolute gold.
How about eliminating the background music behind these tutorials? It distracts. Please consider.
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.
I'm mesmerized and hypnotized by the quality of this audio.
Lately I've been 21:32
Thank You! Magnificent stuff
What a sonic trip this video is!!! Apart from the flood of interesting and valuable info - the music chosen to illustrate concepts is amazing! I am going to get myself a drink and repeat just like I would put an album on... Also, I almost am inspired enough to dig out my Electribe2 and try to apply this... (not a musician or producer...)
Thanks for your contribution Dan Worral! You have a big Empathy for all that Producing Bros out of there. You go into detail. You are a great guy!
Sealed enclosures are generally more accurate. A ported sub can generate awesome volumes of low bass, but it's wooly, tuneless and inaccurate. Unless it's a sealed enclosure or isobaric sub, I wouldn't even consider it.
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.
Brilliant and invaluable video -Fab Filter products with a Dan Worrall explanation are a match made in heaven!!
nobody gonna point out he remade t2 - heartbroken towards the end lol
I'm in Sheffield: had to drop some bassline! ;)
The bass playing in the musid used for this tutorial is really amazing. Playing a better bass line than guitar part is the real philosophy of bass.
It's so simple. You find a recording that you KNOW has the bass the way you want it. You A/B your mix against it, using whatever speakers you have. Guess what? If you have even a little experience, you'll get a remarkably good mix. Once you know your room & speakers, this will work incredibly well.
Wow thank u that makes a ton of sense. Keep it simple!!! 🔊
Thanks Dan,very helpful👍 For those interested the example he gave in the brain bass section I think is based around the fundamental 55Hz (A1 on piano); he then adds 110Hz (A2 /octave) and then 165Hz (E3). He says its not exactly E3 (octave + fifth) as E3 is actually 164.81Hz on a piano...
*I almost expect Dan to be informing us that we have less than 12yrs to save global phase coherence or face certain doom!* 😁👍
Dan is the Man and Fabfilter is the tool , rewind and come again
A tip to judge bass if you have a sub:
Don't just listen to it. Touch the membrane lightly, feel it! Better yet, put your sub on the table and put your hand close to it. Your motor senses will tell you if the bass is tight and dynamic enough.
Gregory Scott's advice :)
@@UncleBenjs 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.
Group delay is also influenced by number of sub/woofer drivers. This is why one massive sub is often the way to go where you have a specific listening point as the optimum wave node/listening area is largest and cleanest this way. My first sub was 10" (paired with some DM110s, then floor standing B&W DM604 S2s), the next sub was 21". A 21" sub that can move nearly 10L of air per stroke. You can get down to 8Hz of a 64' pipe organ this way, which in my opinion is 'reference' of range of any possible musical content that you normally encounter.
Beyond that (rocket launch reproduction, wind and pressure effects etc), you need a rotary subwoofer and a spare room to act as an infinite baffle. Good luck lol.