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Author Topic: low end on small speakers  (Read 1939 times)

wildplum

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low end on small speakers
« on: June 22, 2008, 06:02:06 AM »

There is something that I have not been able to achieve and that I am (as the old song goes) in need of some advice.

When mixing rock, folk-rock, country, that sort of thing, how does one get the bass (or low end in general) to sound loud and also good on small speakers- say some 2 inch ones that are part of a portable CD player- while at the same time not have the bass being over whelming on some full range hi-fi system?
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Paul Tumolo

<a href="http://www.wildplum.org" target="_blank">Wildplum Recordings</a>

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Greg Thompson

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Re: low end on small speakers
« Reply #1 on: June 22, 2008, 01:05:03 PM »

there is a psychoacoustic phenomenon where the brain will synthesize a fundamental frequency where none exists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoacoustics#.27Phantom.27_f undamentals

So if you have enough harmonics of the fundamental, even though the speakers aren't producing it, your brain thinks there is.

If your bass or bass drums don't speak well on small speakers, you should work on sculpting your 100-500hz region to fool the ear into believing there are freqs between 50 and 100hz on smaller speaker.  It doesn't take too much to work convincingly.

If you're dealing with pure sine wave type things like 808 bass drums and synth basses, then you have to find some other ways of building in some harmonic content.  A little distortion can help generate that sometimes.

Also, compare your mixes to other professionally mixed stuff in the genre you're working in.  You'd be surprised how much bass there isn't on those records.
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spoon

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Re: low end on small speakers
« Reply #2 on: June 24, 2008, 03:00:19 PM »

wildplum wrote on Sun, 22 June 2008 05:02

There is something that I have not been able to achieve and that I am (as the old song goes) in need of some advice.

When mixing rock, folk-rock, country, that sort of thing, how does one get the bass (or low end in general) to sound loud and also good on small speakers- say some 2 inch ones that are part of a portable CD player- while at the same time not have the bass being over whelming on some full range hi-fi system?




As Greg provided the basis, that is what the "Tranny" mode on the FATSO does...


Cheers,
David
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j.hall

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Re: low end on small speakers
« Reply #3 on: June 24, 2008, 05:02:45 PM »

compression.
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rankus

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Re: low end on small speakers
« Reply #4 on: June 24, 2008, 05:39:02 PM »


Yes, and distortion (mild distortion of course)

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