Low end test - advice needed

[Adee]

As you can know - obtaining good low end is a really HUGE challenge.
At the moment I work on my drums and bass sound and trying glue it together. I have chosen Trivium - Silcence in the snow - simple riff and drums at the beginning to play and mix quickly.
To experienced sound freaks/engineers: what would you suggest to tweak? To low? To loud? To....
Here it is:


Cheers!

 

[BassTard]

Disclaimer: I'm just commenting the lowend here and I'm only listening on a pair of DT770s now, which might blur my "view".

- In overall I like your sounds. The bass is real cool and the kick has some attitude, too.
- The low end seems quite steady. It also fits the tempo of the song and it's not too wide nor too mono.
- The snare seems to have a little more fundamental than needed. Some small masking from the bass. But I'm beeing nitpicky AND subjetive on this. (And it's not really the low end...)
- For my taste, there could be a little less bass, especially in the lower frequencies. (Even though I'm a bass player.)
- My analyzer (cheating here ) tells me there's some stuff going on below 20Hz and even 10Hz, which wouldn't need to be there.
- I'm hearing some pumping on the bass Likely because of ducking (kickdrum on sidechain with about 100ms release)? Or did you compress them on the same bus? Maybe a little less compression, or use a frequency selective ducking, or just a shorter release-time? (Feel free to laugh, if I'm misguessing...)
- Personally I'd turn up the kick by a slight amount. But if you'd do that and if you turn down the bass (just if), the kick might be to dominant <70Hz.

Man, I'm sounding like an ar... here. I think you did quite a good job. Just trying to give even more suggestions. And I'm going to need to listen again with my subwoofers.

 

[Adee]

Hi BassTard

Many thanks for your substantial reply! The drums here are not finished yet. In a couple of days I’ll get access to distressor and outboard compressor. It will help me to do heavy parallel and serial compression. Snare drum sounds not to good - I know that. It definitely needs a lot of work. I have couple of favourite samples and will try to blend them together and use outboard compressor and distressor to serial and parallel compress it. But this will come later

My main problem is low end: kick and bass. You have right that its still to deep to low. I’m still learning how to get good bass tone and sound. I have DT770s as well and I like them a lot. I have DT880pro (semi open) too but my ears are to lame to work with them. I can’t feel the low end at all. I use KRK Rokit8 3 and Adam Audio A7x monitors.

Turning the bass down to obtain more kick domination? Sounds good - will definitely try

Thank you for your helpful reply!

Stay metal!

 

[BassTard]

I'glad you find some of my stuff helpful.

If you're planning on doing much more work, I'd consider to go on with the mix first. It allways worked better for me not to get too "microscopic". To me mixing is like shaping a one-dimensional picture (the dimension being time), so any decision will have an impact on anything else. Changing the snare will impact the guitars -> will impact the bass -> and so on...
You did spend some time on the low end. Try to get rid of the pumping within the bass and then freshen up your view. Maybe it'll help to get the "big picture" right and then return to the low end?

It's just a proposal in view of my workflow. Because I'm allways in danger of getting obsessed with detail. But everyone's different.

Have fun!