Ableton Forum

Hi,

Just finished a track - http://soundcloud.com/substance_g/h30bm - but realised that the warm, lush bassline that comes in just before the minute mark disappears completely when listening to it on my Macbook Pro speakers. It was mixed on Genelec 8030s and Sennheiser HD-25CII and the bass sounds fine. Thing is that there's a nice melodic component from the bassline that's no longer there on the tiny laptop speakers.

Is there a cheap trick to get round this, like some octave higher tracking, some compression or something? I didn't want to make the bassline itself any louder as it would completely swamp the track on the headphones.

Or should I just put a sticker on it, saying "don't listen on tiny little speakers..."

Cheers for any advice... also about the track itself...

Maybe if you eq a little bit the low-mid frequencies of the bassline, you would be able to listen to it. Try it first on your laptop, then listen to that mix on your genelecs, and see if you changed too much. Good luck

Thanks - yes, looking at the eq on the bass track already, I've got it low pass eq'd with pretty much nothing above 2kHz, I did this deliberately to take a slightly harsh, reedy overtone out of the bass, but maybe some of it needs to go back into the mix... Think I'll try your suggestion out.. cheers!

macbook pro speakers should never be used for reference. ESPECIALLY for bass. they don't have much of a response below 200 Hz.

i've ruined bass's trying to get them to work on macbook speakers...

you could try adding a slight sine an octave up. just a tiny bit, to hint the melody in.

Add a TINY bit of overdrive to the bassline, it'l bring out the harmonics more and make it more audible on cheap speakers.

Tarekith wrote:Add a TINY bit of overdrive to the bassline, it'l bring out the harmonics more and make it more audible on cheap speakers.

im a fan of saturator, with a soft sine, and BARELY touch the drive. you can also use the coulor to pin out the harmonics.

Loved the track. Needs development - screw the lappy speakerstbh but as has been mentioned chuck a saturator on it . I see the chain eq, compression and sat and then another eq (sweep away to get the balance you like) The bass is nice but does lack the mid range (i suffer too from this so feel free to ignore me haha)
please keep me posted

Cheers for listening and commenting, Rave...

Yeah, the original bass patch has a harsh mid/top, so might be better to do what's suggested here: keep the soft eq -> saturator -> eq again.

i listened to it in the headphones. sounded nice. but i didn't like that the bassline was not centered. it was very loud on the right ear, but not hearable much on the left one. was quite a bit distracting to me.

davepermen wrote:i listened to it in the headphones. sounded nice. but i didn't like that the bassline was not centered. it was very loud on the right ear, but not hearable much on the left one. was quite a bit distracting to me.

Strange - in Live the bassline track meter is exactly centred - maybe something happened on soundcloud conversion... There's lots of panning in the track but exactly zero applied to the bass.

Edit: just checked on soundcloud - bass sounds centred to me.

hm.. maybe my headphones are finally damages?

i'll check at home but believe you (and i bet someone else would have noted it earlier)

Actually, I listened to it again on Soundcloud and it does sound a bit to the right after all. I swapped round the headphones to see if it's my ears and then it did sound a bit to the left. Strange... in Live it sounds fine and indeed it's a mono operator synth with Eq8 in stereo mode (same curve to both channels), no sends or returns and just a limiter on the master. So the whole bass signal chain is centred mono.

And I think it's also ok on the rendered wav, so pointing at Soundcloud conversion... if you're bored and got nothing else to do, I think the track is downloadable as a wav, so see if it sounds better then...

8O wrote:Actually, I listened to it again on Soundcloud and it does sound a bit to the right after all. I swapped round the headphones to see if it's my ears and then it did sound a bit to the left. Strange... in Live it sounds fine and indeed it's a mono operator synth with Eq8 in stereo mode (same curve to both channels), no sends or returns and just a limiter on the master. So the whole bass signal chain is centred mono.

And I think it's also ok on the rendered wav, so pointing at Soundcloud conversion... if you're bored and got nothing else to do, I think the track is downloadable as a wav, so see if it sounds better then...

soundcloud conversion is quite terrible sometimes indeed. yeah, i'll grab the wav. hope that's the untouched one from you

jup better.

maybe there's some phase issues with the bass causing it to appear and disappear. maybe try a phase meter on it or just flip the phase of left of right with the Utility plug in. or as Tarekith wrote, a little Saturator to warm it up might also skew the phase enough to clear up phase issues (my guess.)

trippy track! I'd add a nice deep kick under all that. fun track, I like the way the intro and outro have cohesion and the overall soundscape is nice too.

imagine trying to get clearance for a Sinatra sample.