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...When the bass of your mix can be heard on laptop or mobile device speakers (it CAN be done!).

 

Yes, and we're lucky that psycho-acoustics is on our side when we want to do that. I also think it's important to get the kick in there as well, but that's easier.

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I've always loved to dink around with the tactic of having two bass parts in the electronic music I create. One way down there for the subs or larger speakers, and a second bass part up in the 150k-250k range. The 2nd bass having more of an attack so that if that's the only bass range a playback system can handle, the bass is still heard as "played" rather than just "felt". I don't mean both parts being the same notes - that might happen at times, but I particularly love a sort of counterpoint between the two ranges of bass notes where they dance apart, then together for a few steps.

 

But trying to give laptop speaker listeners the illusion that they hear bass is not one of my goals. If you listen to music on laptop speakers, you get what you pay for IMHO.

 

nat

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But trying to give laptop speaker listeners the illusion that they hear bass is not one of my goals. If you listen to music on laptop speakers, you get what you pay for IMHO.

 

They won't hear bass, because the laws of physics means the speakers can't move enough air...however, if listeners can hear the bass's upper frequencies, their ear/brain combination will fill in the lower frequencies. That's what I meant by having psycho-acoustics on our side. So even if they can't hear the bass frequencies, they can at least hear some or most of the bass part.

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But trying to give laptop speaker listeners the illusion that they hear bass is not one of my goals. If you listen to music on laptop speakers, you get what you pay for IMHO.

 

They won't hear bass, because the laws of physics means the speakers can't move enough air...however, if listeners can hear the bass's upper frequencies, their ear/brain combination will fill in the lower frequencies. That's what I meant by having psycho-acoustics on our side. So even if they can't hear the bass frequencies, they can at least hear some or most of the bass part.

 

That's a good point. I vaguely recall an article or two on techniques to maximize the effect - Electronic Musician? Sound on Sound? Maybe an Anderton article??

 

Still - if it's too much trouble to pull off, or if the upper bass frequencies get in the way of other parts I want to ring out clearly, it's not for me.

 

But I would like to skim those old articles if I could only remember who published them...

 

nat

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I've written about that kind of thing before, but can't remember a specific article...basically, EQ can help bring up pick transients, which are of such short duration that they don't mask much, or require a broad peak - when mastering, you can usually find it and zero in on it. But making those kind of corrections during the mastering process is always going to be fraught compared to fixing the sound at the source. For that, saturation can generate harmonics to put a little more energy above the bass range. This can help with a dense mix, even without the "laptop speakers" factor. Like compression or limiting, saturation also narrows the dynamic range a bit.

 

I've been doing my mastering in Studio One, which as you may know, makes it possible to flip back to the song being mastered, make a change, and then "re-compile" the mix on the mastering page. This is great if you hear that one song where you mixed something just a little too high or low compared to a different song.

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But trying to give laptop speaker listeners the illusion that they hear bass is not one of my goals. If you listen to music on laptop speakers, you get what you pay for IMHO.

 

They won't hear bass, because the laws of physics means the speakers can't move enough air...however, if listeners can hear the bass's upper frequencies, their ear/brain combination will fill in the lower frequencies. That's what I meant by having psycho-acoustics on our side. So even if they can't hear the bass frequencies, they can at least hear some or most of the bass part.

 

That's a good point. I vaguely recall an article or two on techniques to maximize the effect - Electronic Musician? Sound on Sound? Maybe an Anderton article??

 

Back in the MIDI days, one trick was to copy the bass track, shift it up an octave or two (simulating second and third harmonics), and mix it with the original track. That usually worked well. I wonder if it still does. Today the trend seems to be to apply some sort of distortion plug-in that creates the harmonics.

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