Bass is deep... Too deep.

[HMayoral]

In most of my more "popular style music" pieces, (specifically I'm talking about a ambientishy ethnic hip hop beat) I put a nice deep electric bass down there, which sounds wonderful comin' out of my monitors, but when I play it out of a system with less bass capability (say out of a macbook or an iphone without headphones) the bass completely disappears, and the only thing that's heard in verses, where I normally cut everything but the percussion and the bass, well all you hear is the percussion which isn't common in professional grade songs that are sold on the market. How do you guys deal with this? Do you add more mid to the bass? Should I have separate instrument creating more area in the mids?

[camillo jr]

Adding some mids might be a good idea. But how much bass do you hear when you play a commercial release on your laptop speakers?

[Eriksimon]

Should one ever listen to laptop speakers as a reference? At best they stop at 150 Hz, which is above most bass fundamentals. So you'll have to "cheat" in bass, via the upper harmonics. A (predominantly) pure sine bass will never work on laptop "speakers".

 

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much-gear-so-little-time/416265-how-make-bass-translate-through-laptop-speakers.html

[camillo jr]

Erik that is a great thread over at gearslutz and very timely as I've got three projects with (sometimes soft sounding) standup bass going on now. One of my clients keeps saying how she can't hear the bass on her laptop and I keep saying it ain't gonna happen.

 

But there's some interesting suggestions at GS that I'm gonna have to try out. Thanks for the link!

[HMayoral]

Yeah that's an interesting article!

 

"I strongly recommend buying the worst computer speakers imaginable to check against your studio monitors."

 

I have a quick question though, Glenn Taylor offered a solution:

 

"Try cheating by boosting 1h octave up around 160 hz to 240hz."

 

What on earth does the h mean? Did he for get to put the z meaning 1hz octave (which I don't understand either, I know what an octave is of course)

[Simon Morrison]

"Try cheating by boosting 1h octave up around 160 hz to 240hz."

 

What on earth does the h mean? Did he for get to put the z meaning 1hz octave (which I don't understand either, I know what an octave is of course)

 

1h = first harmonic

 

One of the better tools for adding harmonics is Waves MaxxBass - works well on all material.