18-10-2018, 11:29 AM
I understand what you are looking for with the bass placement here. Unfortunately, bass below about 100Hz, is supposed to be non-directional.
Another problem with it, is that it puts a huge amount of energy in one speaker, meaning the mix will clip far sooner for a given loudness. You need to spread the bass load between the woofers. There’s no reason why you can’t make the harmonics directional though, because in life they would be and it’s those harmonics that give the information necessary for the brain to localise the source.
Besides being technically incorrect, it also skews the balance of the frequency response in a fatiguing way in headphones.
However, it appears that Patrick may have low passed everything far more than he should have (the upper mids, 1-5kHz are completely missing to my ears). The bass, if devoid of harmonics, will put up a fight when it comes to localisation. Furthermore, the mix will sound muddy and congested unless you can find some harmonics on everything else. If you add gain, the chorusing comes up, and of course, everything is saturated in the stuff, so we can’t balance it properly. Most tracks are in stereo too, which adds to the “over abundance” crisis.
I totally agree about the drums being busy. I’d suggest compressing the dynamics out of them completely. It would enable them to be pulled forwards in the mix, but at a low amplitude without things disappearing. Depending on your compression approach, you could also use it to smooth out the abrupt attacks which I think would help blend them into the groove in a way that’s more to your liking.
You must fix the vocal though, one way or another.
Another problem with it, is that it puts a huge amount of energy in one speaker, meaning the mix will clip far sooner for a given loudness. You need to spread the bass load between the woofers. There’s no reason why you can’t make the harmonics directional though, because in life they would be and it’s those harmonics that give the information necessary for the brain to localise the source.
Besides being technically incorrect, it also skews the balance of the frequency response in a fatiguing way in headphones.
However, it appears that Patrick may have low passed everything far more than he should have (the upper mids, 1-5kHz are completely missing to my ears). The bass, if devoid of harmonics, will put up a fight when it comes to localisation. Furthermore, the mix will sound muddy and congested unless you can find some harmonics on everything else. If you add gain, the chorusing comes up, and of course, everything is saturated in the stuff, so we can’t balance it properly. Most tracks are in stereo too, which adds to the “over abundance” crisis.
I totally agree about the drums being busy. I’d suggest compressing the dynamics out of them completely. It would enable them to be pulled forwards in the mix, but at a low amplitude without things disappearing. Depending on your compression approach, you could also use it to smooth out the abrupt attacks which I think would help blend them into the groove in a way that’s more to your liking.
You must fix the vocal though, one way or another.
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