Them damn bass lines

Jayhell

Hi, I have been recording my own tracks for a while now, and I'm getting quite good (if I have to say so myself). The problem is that everything sounds so good except the DAMN BASS! For my guitars i send them through my Joe Meek Q6's line input into Amplitube and they sound great from the start, I don't have to fiddle around to much with anything and it works great every time. If I try to do the same with the bass it just sounds horrible. I have tried every thing I know; Line in, DI Box, Eq, compression and it still sounds crap. Is there any other way that you can think of that I can try. The other thing it might be is, that the bass (schecter custom extreme) just has a bad sound. Help

AlanRatcliffe

If your bass sounds OK in isolation, you should be able to make it work in a mix.

Are you clearing the bass from your other tracks using hipass filters, etc.? The rest of your mix should sound lacking without the bass guitar - if it sounds full before the bass is added, there is too much going on in the low end and you need to make space in the mix to fit the bass into.

Jayhell

Alan Ratcliffe wrote If your bass sounds OK in isolation, you should be able to make it work in a mix.

Are you clearing the bass from your other tracks using hipass filters, etc.? The rest of your mix should sound lacking without the bass guitar - if it sounds full before the bass is added, there is too much going on in the low end and you need to make space in the mix to fit the bass into.

Thanks. I do the Hipass thing but to no avail, I have come to the conclusion the the bass just has a bad sound, with a lot of eq tweaking etc it is barely ok. Even Isolated it sounds so muddy. My next step is to play around with micing the amp, if it sounds fine on the amp it should be able to sound fine on the pc. I think I should borrow a bass from a friend and see if it has the same problem.

Warren

Alan Ratcliffe wrote If your bass sounds OK in isolation, you should be able to make it work in a mix.

Are you clearing the bass from your other tracks using hipass filters, etc.? The rest of your mix should sound lacking without the bass guitar - if it sounds full before the bass is added, there is too much going on in the low end and you need to make space in the mix to fit the bass into.

I have a similar problem, also blaming my bass (and the player) ?

Is there a rule of thumb frequency to set the high-pass filter at? Or must I just experiment?

AlanRatcliffe

Warren wrote Is there a rule of thumb frequency to set the high-pass filter at? Or must I just experiment?

It does vary. Most consoles with fixed filters use 75-80Hz as a "safe" highpass filter cutoff point, but you will find that most sources work best between 100 - 160 Hz. Sometimes higher if you have a vocalist who likes to eat the mic so he is getting a lot of proximity effect. I don't think I've ever had to go above 200 Hz - usually problems in the lower mids are best sorted out with bandpass filters instead of highpass.

Warren

Alan Ratcliffe wrote
Warren wrote Is there a rule of thumb frequency to set the high-pass filter at? Or must I just experiment?
It does vary. Most consoles with fixed filters use 75-80Hz as a "safe" highpass filter cutoff point, but you will find that most sources work best between 100 - 160 Hz. Sometimes higher if you have a vocalist who likes to eat the mic so he is getting a lot of proximity effect. I don't think I've ever had to go above 200 Hz - usually problems in the lower mids are best sorted out with bandpass filters instead of highpass.

Cheers, gonna give this a shot and see how it goes.

Jack-Flash-Jr

Quick reference to the other recording thread... what are you using as studio monitors? The bass is always going to sound bad even if it's recorded fine if you're listening back on pc speakers or anything that doesn't cover the low end. Don't shoot me if this is obvious and it was the first box you ticked ?

Jayhell

Jack Flash Jr wrote Quick reference to the other recording thread... what are you using as studio monitors? The bass is always going to sound bad even if it's recorded fine if you're listening back on pc speakers or anything that doesn't cover the low end. Don't shoot me if this is obvious and it was the first box you ticked ?

I have a pair of Behringer MS 20's Monitors (They are not super good, but they cover the low ends) and I tried different head phones as well. But thanks anyway.

Jayhell

cool, I have been playing around with a multiband compressor and compressing the frequencies around 200Hz helps a lot.

Thanks