Bass causes clipping overload!

[Mm1066]

I've been using the method of splitting my bass DI track into a lo pass and a highpass, but whatever I do I can't achieve a decent RMS for the master track without some occasional clipping because of the bass. I thought of automating but I couldn't find a level which didn't sound obviously dipped. Any suggestions?

And by decent RMS I mean -10dB.

 

[Empathy]

Is it audibly clipping, or are you just getting all the meters up in your grills?

 

[Ascendant]

Are you compressing (and/or limiting) the lows? You'll probably have to EQ the lows of the bass as well or there will be horrible build-ups in the low end along with the kick.

 

[Mm1066]

Fixed. It was the guitars that were clipping mainly I realised, but for some reason I couldn't tell when they were solo'd.

 

[RedDog]

seriously, hp some of that deep low. That build up is mostly rumble you won't hear that just eats up headroom and kills your limiter.

 

[Sonic75]

Bass is surely one of the hardest thing to get right and how to do on it depends first of all on the player/instrument really, however the first thing is that the bass (and bass in general) has to be really tight!
Try to compress or limit hard (if needed) the track and then apply some eq if you need to recover some frequency.
Before compressing cut the offending frequencies (if there are). Cutting/Attenuating the low end under 30/35hz can often really help!

 

[Mm1066]

Cheers for everything so far! For some reason I didn't think to do the freq sweep on bass before but I will from now on!