Tighter/cleaner low end

[Jaosix]

I was wondering what other techniques besides stereo imaging do you guys use to really clean up your low end? I realize tight playing and editing is the majority of the way to get a tighter low end, but is there anything else you do besides stereo imaging?

 

[Nimvi]

Multiband compression on the lows and lowmids can really tighten up stuff. Also, give the kick and the bass their own low frequency to sit at. If the kick sits on 60hz, make a sharp cut on the bass there, and vice versa. Use of hipass filters all over the mix probably goes without saying.

Btw, I'm all for experimenting, but I can't think of a reason why stereo-imaging would tighten up low end. As a matter of fact, I usually keep my low end as mono as possible, since it's not very directional anyway. Care to elaborate on what you are doing?

 

[Jaosix]

Well from my experience with it, it has helped clean up a ton of mud in the bottom end. Say if I high pass my guitars at 100hz, i'll set my low end band on my stereo imaging to that and anything below, and make sure all the low end like the kick/bass is dead center mono

 

[mairomaster]

One thing that comes to my mind is to be careful not to distort the lows. Like if you want to have a heavily distorted bass, making the trick with the parallel distorted bass track with heavy high pass and having the lows from the clean track only.
And as Nimvi said - high pass filters all over the mix, especially on FX (reverb, delay etc.) tracks.

 

[TheDustbowl]

All the above and I'll often collapse the bottom end to mono - there are a number of freeware VSTs to do this or you can use a MS setting on an EQ and roll off all the low on the sides.

Nugen Monofilter does the mono collapse in a slightly different way, it attempts to phase correlate the sides of the stereo signal and add them; I've tried it and didn't hear much additional benefit.

I also occasionally use Maxxbass to drop the actual bass a little and add correleated higher frequency information, but you need to be careful with this, 9 times out of 10 I'll try it, think I like it then remove it again.

Filter any reverb or spatial delays to leave the bottom dry unless you want a specific effect (this also helps with the stereo/mono correlation).

I frequently end-up with so little real bass that you almost can't hear where the meat is until you mute it, the click of the beater and the higher end (dump the low mids) of the bass instruments drive the music without all the flub.

Unless it's for a club mix of course in which case boost 30 - 40 Hz into the red and you're done :Smokedev: