Music producers spend countless hours trying to find that perfect balance between the low, mid and high frequencies. While lower spectrum frequencies can sound warm and appealing, they can easily swallow other elements in the mix and make the overall mix sound muddy. There are many tools that can help you balance frequencies in the mix. However, recently, we are presented with some exciting new options. In the next tutorial, we will show you an alternative way that can help you take control of your low frequencies.
As you can see from the picture below, we have a project open in the SoundBridge: DAW. It contains all the essential elements of a full mix. Let us hear how it sounds.
~Full MIx – Unprocessed
Bassroom by Mastering the Mix
We could say that the mix sounds decent, but it lacks some clarity and strength in the low frequencies. We will fix that by using something new that we have recently come across. While there are some other alternatives available, we have decided to guide you through a plugin called Bassroom designed by MasteringTheMix. Let’s talk more about it. In its essence, BASSROOM is a final mix and mastering EQ that helps the user to control low-end. It does this by delivering the exceptional sound quality and suggesting genre-specific EQ adjustments, a great audio engineer in a world-class studio would make. Let’s drop a fresh instance of the Bassroom onto the master channel of our project to get to know its interface and features.
The Master Channel
BASSROOM uses complex algorithms that accurately identifies how the human ear perceives low-frequencies relative to the balance of the whole mix. For that reason, it should be loaded on your master channel. Like this, you can analyze and apply it to the entire mix. As you can see from the picture above, its interface looks a bit like a room with colored boxes. Each box represents one frequency range of the low-frequency spectrum.
Edit the boxes
On the sides of the boxes, you can see the number that are representing the ranges, starting from 0 all the way to 320 Hz. The boxes can be pulled up or back individually. When you station your mouse cursor on one of them, you will be able to see the dB value, ranging from -4 to +4, as well as Q value which can be set from 0.5 to 5. On the top right corner, you can see a small speaker icon which can be used for bypassing the plugin, as well as setting the makeup gain.
Utilize the presets
To get the most out of BASSROOM, start by selecting a preset that best suits the material you’re working on. You can do that by clicking on the lower left part of the interface.
Bassroom suggestions
By playing the part of your mix with most of the elements, the Bassroom will suggest the low-end value balance by automatically moving the block to different positions. To dial in the suggested value simply drag the boxes one by one on the places pointed by the small vertical lines on the side of every box.
Lastly, by clicking the speaker icon, you can set the makeup gain. This is important because lowering the low end of the original mix will decrease the peak and RMS value of the overall signal.
Audio Example
After a brief explanation of the Bassrom and its features, let’s hear how it sounds. First, we will listen to the unprocessed and then the full mix processed with BASSROOM.
~Full MIx – Unprocessed
~Full MIx – Processed with Bassroom
Feel free to download the project files here.
