Muddy sound

[60bass]

As a bassist since 1969 all I can say is never pay attention to what any guitar player tells you about your tone. If he tells you your tone is muddy, it's because he runs far too much lowend on his gear and thinks it's you that's turning everything to mud. If he tells you your tone is great, well... be afraid, be very afraid. Move away slowly!

 

[wiscoaster]

It's "tinnitus"; I have it, and there's nothing to do about it; it just gets worse with age. Usual cause is long-term exposure to loud sounds, but could also be caused by some medical conditions and by some medical treatments.

Sound in the ambient background is the best antidote.

What Is Tinnitus? — Causes and Treatment

 

[Killing Floor]

It’s perfectly natural for people to want SVT amps turned up.

 

[Wasnex]

There is no simple answer. What causes muddy tone in one room my sound great in the next. The same is true for different positions in the room. Move your amp and it will change the tone. Change the listening position and it will sound different.

IMHO bass is one of the most difficult instruments to get a good sound from. I like a very clear and focused sound, like in most recordings. Lot's of different tone choices that sound great in recordings. Reliably reproducing any of them live ranges from difficult to impossible. I personally find that brighter sounds tend to translate better to a live setting, but this is IMHO and YMMV.

My advice: Learn as much as you can about the various causes. Learn how to setup, aim, and adjust your gear to mitigate the problem as well as you can. After setup, dial in a sound. Once the band starts playing, make quick adjustments to get the sound as good as you can. Then forget about the sound and focus on making music.

If you remain focused on the sound, you will tend to constantly fiddle with your controls. Usually it's impossible to get exactly the sound you want, and fiddling with the controls just moves the problem around without making any significant progress. Also if you remain focused on the sound, you will be distracted from making good music and entertaining the crowd.

A very relevant factor. Most players want to hear themself about 6-10dB louder than other sound sources. Getting this much headroom can be especially challenging with bass.

Direct sound is clear and focused. Indirect sound is what you get when the direct sound bounces around the room and comes back to you from multiple directions. Some indirect sound can improve the listening experience, but with bass you typically get more indirect sound than is ideal. So your indirect sound can actually wind up masking elements of your tone that you like.

Since I like a very clear and focused tone, my solution is to elevate my cab and aim it at my ears. This ensures I hear the full range my cab produces and it also changes the ratio between direct and indirect sound. The idea with this approach is to hear as well as possible at the lowest possible volume.

Not everyone likes to hear this much detail; also raising your cab does not typically give you the perception of big pillowy lows that some players like. So I suggest trying it; if you like it, adopt it for your own uses. If you don't like it, then put your cab on the floor--and accept the limitations that result from this approach. You may still be able to tilt your cab to aim at your ears.

This post may give you the idea that your choice of gear does not matter. This is not true or intended. Gear definitely matters and you should choose gear that is capable of producing the type of tone and feel you like. Consider your amp, speakers, bass, strings, setup, pedals, etc.

My point is in real life performance situations, the acoustics will tend to degrade your listening experience more often than not. Although you should strive to produce good tone, you need to learn to recognize when you have gotten your tone as good as you reasonably can and then move on to making music.

Regarding your guitar player: Sounds like his level of self-importance is a bit exaggerated. Making live music requires some degree of compromise--meaning it's not reasonable for him to expect your bass to sound exactly the way he wants.

IMHO, if your amp is expected to push the room (no PA support) IMHO, this is the priority of what your amp is supposed to achieve: 1. Deliver good sound to the audience, 2. Deliver good sound to you, 3. Deliver good sound to the rest of the band.

Note, delivering good sound to the guitar player is at the bottom of the list, meaning priority 1. and 2. take precedence. Some degree of compromise may be reasonable, but 3. should never take priority over 1. and 2. Also, an acceptable compromise sometimes requires the guitar player to make adjustments to his/here own volume, tone, setup, etc.

If the PA delivers your sound to the audience and other band members, your rig's priority is: 1. Deliver good sound to you. The caveat here, is ideally your rig achieves this goal without significantly degrading the sound to the audience or your bandmates. This often means that you cannot play as loud as you want, especially if you preference is big fat lows.

When your amp serves solely as your personal monitor, if another band member needs more bass, they typically have a discussion with the audio tech.

 

[Wasnex]

I agree. I used to play with a guitarist who loved his low end (Les Paul into Marshall or Mesa Boogie heads and a 4x12 Marshall cabinet). He also took a lot of responsibility for working on the overall stage sound. He always told me that I sounded best with my mids cut way back and highs boosted. Looking back now, I'm convinced that he was simply trying to carve out space for his low end.
Your taste and orientation matter a lot. He was coming from an AC/DC or Metallica frame of mind, and I was coming from Motown/Stax.

As implied: This approach is typical of and works fairly well with certain heavy styles of music. The intent of the bass is to integrate with and extend the guitar sound rather than stand on it's on. So the bass is functioning more like a guitar effect than a distinct instrument.

As bass player, I want my instrument to stand out with it's own voice. So I would not find this acceptable. As an audio tech, my opinion could support this approach as long as it's consistent with the style and sounds good.

 

[Rib 13]

my experience, mud comes from:

1) Pickup position
2) Using old strings
3) Plucking too neckward
4) Relying Too Much on EQ

So if your guitarist's experience is playing with bass players that use Peavey amps through just a 15" or 18" speaker with the lows even minimally cranked on the amp and using an EB-0 with strings old enough to vote then, yeah, to him: all Peaveys are going to be muddy

 

[agedhorse]

"And another question I have is are 15’s known to have a muddy sound?" YES!!!

However, before we sound the death alarm, on single 15's, it truly does come down to the enclosure.

Best advice: 4X10, minimum. Happy sound. Happy Life.

No, 15’s don’t have to be muddy.

 

[themickster]

My guitarist and I got into a discussion the other day about muddy sounds. He claims peavey was notorious for causing a muddy sound. I used to play out of a peavey 115 combo and he said that nothing I did could dial the mud out. 20 years later I got a fender rumble 800 stage and he loved the tone out of that amp. I also have an ampeg SVT vr with the 410 HLF heritage cabinet he likes and a fender bassman 800 he likes. He says that mids on a bass amp turned up cause the sound to be muddier and I always thought mids helped you cut through. It’s weird. He always told me to turn down with the peavey when I could barely hear myself. With the ampeg I think I’m way too loud and he tells me to turn up. What are your thoughts on this? Is his argument valid? I had used 4 and 5 strings with the peavey.

What's his hearing like? He might have wrecked it, starting with the highs

 

[Cheez]

If the guitar player says it, it must be true.

 

[Dust2Dust]

I'll let you borrow my Jaguar H. After you give him a ration of mud sound playing with the humbucker on that thing he'll never complain about your gear again

 

[bigdaddybass12]

What kind of bass?

 

[bigdaddybass12]

I'll let you borrow my Jaguar H. After you give him a ration of mud sound playing with the humbucker on that thing he'll never complain about your gear again

Haaa! You can borrow any of my 3 passive fender p basses, even the heavily modified one! He won’t complain either !

 

[Rip Van Dan]

Muddy tones are a result of the EQ controls, your bass, your playing style, your rig, your strings, and so on. The way you play and what you play with will influence the final tone and if it is muddy sounding to YOU.

I think you are missing exactly what mid frequencies are causing mud and what frequencies are clashing with his. "Mids" are a broad term thrown around A LOT on Talkbass and it's not always clear what many of us are talking about.

This is how I view it:

• 200hz to 400hz is thick low midrange (Mud zone, typically)
• 500hz to 700hz is the nasal range (good for fullness of a bass tone)
• 800hz to 1khz is the upper midrange (string growl, pick growl starts here)
• 2khz to 4khz is the treble range. (Finger and pick style high end clarity)
• 5khz to 10khz is the ultra high range (fingerboard clarity, great for slapping, awful for distortion)

My experience has been exactly the opposite. The low-mids between 250Hz and 550Hz are were the bass lives. That's the sonic space in between kick drum and the guitars and keys and a slight boost in that range gives the bass presence and definition when playing in a group. Guitar and keys own the 2KHz and above range and the drums own the bottom end. The 30Hz to 40Hz is where the mud happens. I run my passive Jazz through either my Eden amps and cabs, or my DNA amp and cabs with a slight boost in the low-mids and never have a problem with mud. The hallmark of both Eden and DNA gear is clean and clear sound.

With the Eden amps (bass EQ is shelved at 30Hz) I run all my EQ flat EXCEPT for the low-mids. I boost the low mids up to 1:30 on a +/- 15db control at ~250Hz through my Eden and DNA cabs. There is absolutely no mud to be found. On my DNA amp the Bass is shelved at 35Hz and the low-mid is centered at 500Hz. I again boost my low mids (at 500Hz) to 1:30. I also boost the bass to 1 o'clock because it is 35Hz instead of 30Hz and it needs that slight bump. Still no trouble at all with mud. In my experience if you boost the low-mids too much, either at 350Hz or 500Hz, your sound will honk at you. Then you just keep backing off the boost until the honk goes away. With my Eden and DNA amps, 1:30 at either 250Hz or 500Hz does the trick beautifully

I had a GK115bpx cab that I bought back in 2006 and it was the boomiest muddiest cab I've ever had to EQ around. I was playing it with an acoustic B410 which really needed the bass EQ, but I had to drop the Bass EQ to 10:30 at first to get rid of the mud. That worked OK but was not really ideal. Then in 2010 I bought an Eden WT500/800 amp that is a dual powerblock amp. I plugged the GK into one power bank and the acoustic B410 into the other power bank. Then I used the balance knob to adjust the mix of power sent to each side and turned it to about 10:30 towards the 410.

That sent more power to the 410 and less to the 115 and I was able to leave the bass EQ at flat, which made the acoustic cab much happier and had less sound from the GK115. That sounded a LOT better and was happy with that until 2015 when I got my DNS-410 cab, which was cleaner, clearer, more articulate, had a very tight bottom end, and was easily twice as loud as my stack using the same gain and master setting.

I also have an Eden WTDI (stompbox DI with built-in Eden WT preamp) which has a choice of either 500Hz or 2KHz for the mids (one control). I use that when forced to play through a backline or forced to go direct to a soundboard. I select the 500Hz for the mids setting and leave all the other EQ off with the Enhance and compressor off too....no mud. Played a 3-hour recording session at a pro-studio in Seattle in 2019 and had to go direct to the board because they got too much crosstalk between bass and drums in the same room. Pulled out my WTDI, bumped the 500Hz mids up to 1:30 and left everything else flat. They objected to me using it and wanted me to use their DI box, but I insisted on using my WTDI

At the end of the session, both the owner of the studio and the sound engineer came out of the sound booth to see what I was using. They told me they didn't touch the EQ or add any compression to the track. All they did was adjust the level to fit in the mix. They said it sounded great and had to see what I was using. The played back their raw tape for me into some hi-end headphones and they were really right. It sounded GREAT!

Here's a video from an iPhone recording that was done at one of our gigs back in 2018. iphone recordings aren't the best but not too bad. The song it Somebody to Love by Jefferson Airplane. The girl singing it is located on the opposite end of our stage playing keys. You'll get a glimpse of her head from time to time in between my head and the guitarist on that side the stage. We are a 5-piece group here with 2-guitars, keys, bass, and drums and this was the second time we had played the song.

I'm running my passive Jazz (has maple neck and 70's era pickup spacing) through my Eden WT500/800 amp into two Eden EX-112 cabs. EQ is flat except for the slight boost to 1:30 at 250Hz. Notice that you can hear my bass distinctly without me being turned up so loud as to drown out everyone else. You can hear every note I play, AND, there is no mud. My experience has been mud at the lower frequencies, not the low-mids. AND, what cabs you are using has a huge influence on what you hear.

 

[Thebiggestjerk]

My guitarist and I got into a discussion the other day about muddy sounds. He claims peavey was notorious for causing a muddy sound. I used to play out of a peavey 115 combo and he said that nothing I did could dial the mud out. 20 years later I got a fender rumble 800 stage and he loved the tone out of that amp. I also have an ampeg SVT vr with the 410 HLF heritage cabinet he likes and a fender bassman 800 he likes. He says that mids on a bass amp turned up cause the sound to be muddier and I always thought mids helped you cut through. It’s weird. He always told me to turn down with the peavey when I could barely hear myself. With the ampeg I think I’m way too loud and he tells me to turn up. What are your thoughts on this? Is his argument valid? I had used 4 and 5 strings with the peavey.

I too had a B115 combo about 30y ago. I blew it up. If I recall it had a lot of bells and whistles including an onboard compressor and 5 band EQ?

 

[Chris Chong]

It also depends on the room acoustic and where the person is standing in the room with respect to the speaker position and height. Try standing at diff spots, raise the speaker up to ear level.

 

[ardgedee]

And another question I have is are 15’s known to have a muddy sound?

You can get mud from any size of speaker. You can get clarity from any size of speaker.

 

[micguy]

Among pro sound folks (I am one of those), "mud" is usually associated with excessive acoustical signal around 300 Hz - 200 to 400 Hz is a good territory to go cutting if something sounds muddy. Depending on your definition of midrange, 300 Hz may or may not be considered midrange - it's either upper bass or lower midrange.

You can have too much 300 Hz-ish stuff in a couple of ways :

1) First off, EQ. Bass guitars are, when you look at the spectrum that comes out of them, often heavy in that area - some cut in that part of the spectrum is often part of creating a good sound. A lot of bass amps, when set with all knobs at noon (what a lot of people think is "flat) cut mid range - maybe not exactly 300 Hz, but probably not far from it. Don't trust you amp to be flat with al the knobs at noon - use your ears to eq, not your eyes.

2) Overdriving a speaker. Speakers distort when pushed hard. Bass guitar cabinets (because we have a crazy idea that we want to be able to transport them in cars) are made to be small and loud. The Physics doesn't allow this to go without punishment - what suffers is that bass guitar cabinets can't handle high power low frequency signals without creating harmonics. The lower harmonics (at 2 and 3 times the input signal) generally sound "musical". The 6th sounds OK, too. But the 5th, and especially the 7th can get ugly. 7 times 41 Hz (your low E) is 280 Hz (7 times an "F"'s fundamental is 300 Hz) - the lowest fundamentals on your bass (which sound glorious if well reproduced) won't go through a typical bass rig at high power without creating harmonics that are in the mud region. Folks on this forum use high pass filters, which solves the problem - it isn't the fundamentals themselves that sound like mud, but the byproduct of pushing them hard through a bass rig that creates "mud".

It isn't about the speaker diameter - it's something a bit more involved than that.

 

[Cory rich40]

And back when I got that peavey I was under the impression that a 15 inch speaker was the only thing that could handle a low B string. I’ve found out that a fender rumble 210 can handle it too.

 

[Carl Hillman]

My guitarist and I got into a discussion the other day about muddy sounds. He claims peavey was notorious for causing a muddy sound. I used to play out of a peavey 115 combo and he said that nothing I did could dial the mud out. 20 years later I got a fender rumble 800 stage and he loved the tone out of that amp. I also have an ampeg SVT vr with the 410 HLF heritage cabinet he likes and a fender bassman 800 he likes. He says that mids on a bass amp turned up cause the sound to be muddier and I always thought mids helped you cut through. It’s weird. He always told me to turn down with the peavey when I could barely hear myself. With the ampeg I think I’m way too loud and he tells me to turn up. What are your thoughts on this? Is his argument valid? I had used 4 and 5 strings with the peavey.

Never take your car to a mechanic named Trevor...and never heed opinions about your sound from guitar players.

 

[Super Bass]

Sounds like you need a new guitar player...