Bass too boomy in recording

[Crystalman85]

There isn't any distortion in the recorded file. It's coming from his laptop speakers.

Oh so the distortion is coming from the speakers. the speakers might be damaged. either replace the speakers with speakers from parts express or save some cash for a new speaker monitor.

 

[Grumry]

I bet your iTunes or whatever media player has a crappy limiter on it and there's a frequency it's grabbing that is causing it to smash the rest of the track around it.

 

[Lonnybass]

Hey guys, just so it's clear, I was not monitoring with the laptop speakers. I was monitoring with studio headphones. Then, when I unplugged the headphones and played through my laptop's speakers, it sounded muddy and awful. So I cut out some of the sub-bass, and it helped, but it still was super boomy and it was a bit thin sounding too when the headphones were put back on.

Now that I have all this super useful advice and input, I was able to put it to use and it was very useful.

@BasementWarrior suggested not boosting in the 200-300 HZ range. So I isolated frequences in that range, and sure enough there were some REALLY weird overtones happening in the 200 Hz range which was causing the boominess. There was also a really weird boominess right around the 100 Hz range too, so as @Lonnybass suggested I did a narrower boost around the 150 Hz mark and that did the trick.

That helped the boominess problem a lot. Now I have to solve the thin sound.

I think I may need to re-record with the tone rolled off on this one. It's played fingerstyle up by the neck, but I think that because I just put some newer strings on my bass (that are steel roundwounds) it sounds a bit too bright for what I'm looking for.

I'll put it all together in a mix and report back. Thanks everyone!

Happy to help. When I was evaluating preamp options for my custom instruments I remember reading an interview with Roger Sadowsky in which he outlined the philosophy behind the two-band Sadowsky preamp and why it has become a go-to for a lot of studio players.

Essentially, the boost of the bass and the treble curve is designed to put the "cut" in the midrange somewhere in the range of 300 Hz (if I remember correctly), keeping all the fundamentals without that particular problem frequency, when matched to the rest of his pickup and design package. Good stuff in terms of frequency impacts and mix slotting.

Also - just made the connection regarding the Transtints discussion in the Luthier thread! (Forehead slap!)


Lonnybass

 

[JMacBass65]

Mixing is hard and stuff.........

 

[JonathanAlvarez]

I don't know if some one already told you , but a compressor may help.
Those compressors soften peaks and avoid distortion if you set them up properly.

 

[MPL]

Are you able to Invalid Link Removedefernce Invalid Link Removed inside of your session? I find that helps a lot.