Davy Posted Friday at 23:04 Posted Friday at 23:04 (edited) I have the classic issue of my bass isn't cutting through the mix very well at gigs. I have no backline so I rely on my PA completely. The problem I have is that I really like the 2 pickup mid-mid scoop type sound and while it sounds great in isolation, it's gets lost in the mix. I also know that I should be pushing the mids to cut through and while I don't like the isolated sound, I'm sure it will cut through the band mix better. So my question is which frequencies should I be cutting/pushing on my mixing desk(Behringer XR18). For reference my pa speaker set up is 2x18 in bins and 2x12 tops. Thanks in advance. Edited Friday at 23:46 by Davy Quote
David Morison Posted yesterday at 07:18 Posted yesterday at 07:18 If you have the time during soundcheck, the best way of finding out what works for your particular band, taking account of the sound of the rest of the instruments, is to dial in a moderate mid boost, say 6dB, and sweep it upwards from say, 150Hz all the way to ~1500Hz. You'll hear pretty clearly what works & what doesn't that way. 2 Quote
ezbass Posted yesterday at 08:05 Posted yesterday at 08:05 If you have the ability to blend your pickups, rather than just toggle switch, just favour the bridge a bit more, that will get you most of the way there. However, some sort of humped EQ curve from 250-750Hz should get the job done too. 1 Quote
Downunderwonder Posted yesterday at 08:15 Posted yesterday at 08:15 Easiest thing to do is cut some bass and treble. Voila mids. 1 Quote
spyder Posted yesterday at 09:10 Posted yesterday at 09:10 (edited) I have a similar problem with my passive two pickup bass and a Midas M18 with a Presonus PA. My solution is to use only 2- 3 db of bass boost around 50 hz and 3 dB treble boost around 1 khz to compensate for flat wound strings. Leave the mids alone or use a small boost around 500hz. Do not cut the mids. This solution is essentially a flat eq. It will sound very week in the bass and bright on its own but in my situation it cuts through the band mix. Edited yesterday at 09:19 by spyder 1 Quote
SimonK Posted yesterday at 09:15 Posted yesterday at 09:15 I tend to forget that my Bass itself has pretty good EQ options that can be adjusted on the fly. If not cutting through I would just fiddle with the onboard EQ while playing with the band to find something that works. Once you know what that is just dial it back should you ever be playing bass on your own! 1 Quote
mep Posted yesterday at 09:23 Posted yesterday at 09:23 A bit of boost for the low mids, which works great for me. Keep the low frequencies in check though. Make sure you go out front during the sound check and are happy with your sound. 1 Quote
Pinball Posted yesterday at 10:05 Posted yesterday at 10:05 Some thoughts You can only adjust what is there in the first place in terms of power and tone. A passive or active bass makes no difference, provided the tone and punch is there, a good preamp peddle should do the trick. Abandon you attachment to the sound of yourself in isolation and focus on what it sounds like in the mix. e.g. I love the sound of a Stingray in the mix but don't like the tone when solo'd. GL 2 Quote
Davy Posted 23 hours ago Author Posted 23 hours ago Thanks guys, I'll give those suggestions a try tonight. Particularly in relation to Pinball's comment above, I do realise that I need to put the sound of the band before my own personal tastes. I'll just leave it for the guitarists to be the selfish ones...🤣 1 Quote
Phil Starr Posted 23 hours ago Posted 23 hours ago Ironically bass here is your enemy. almost anything below 80Hz (the 2nd harmonic of bottom E) should be left for the drums and even up to 160Hz you are in an area where you will be fighting with the drums to be heard. I use a 35Hz 24db/octave filter to remove all subsonics and shelve the bass response through the PA below 160Hz or thereabouts. Please don't take these frequencies as gospel for your eq though you still need to get 'your' tone but remember you are trying to get the balance right between bass and mid/treble. Turning the bass down and maybe edging the volume up is as valid a way of making the mids shine through as boosting mids. It's not a bad principle to start with everything set flat and then cut bass. The idea of using a decent pre amp isn't a bad one either, using a SansAmp transformed my sound with almost no effort from me. One thing you should also be aware of is the equal loudness contours which I'll put in below. It's the opposite of the loudness curve you are deliberately putting in when you use your mid scoop. We are hyper sensitive to mids at low volumes but almost totally insensitive to bass frequencies until they get loud. We aren't great with low level high frequencies either. Turning up you volume control boosts the bass and treble contrasted to the mids which is why a mid scoop sounds good at home but not at gig levels. Going from 80db average levels at home to 100db in the PA might mean you need to cut 5db from the bass to get the same subjective sound. You can read that off on the graph but the message generally is don't be scared to cut bass knowing that you genuinely sound bassier simply by being louder. One thing that worries me is that you say you have no back line (which is brilliant) and you describe your PA but don't mention monitors. You are using monitors aren't you? You simply won't hear the mid/tops from your PA just a wooly bass sound. You absolutely need some sort of monitoring Anyway loudness curves 1 Quote
Davy Posted 20 hours ago Author Posted 20 hours ago @Phil StarrWe use in ear monitors which sound sooo different to the main PA sound, i.e. very toppy and they pick up every string click which can be a bit off-putting. However I'm more concerned with the front of house sound as I'm often told that the audience can't hear the bass very well so I will try your suggestions at the gig tonight. 1 Quote
Bill Fitzmaurice Posted 18 hours ago Posted 18 hours ago 1 hour ago, Davy said: @Phil StarrWe use in ear monitors which sound sooo different to the main PA sound They shouldn't. The room affects the PA of course, but standing close enough to the PA to take the room out of the equation your in-ears should sound very close to the same. 2 Quote
Al Krow Posted 18 hours ago Posted 18 hours ago 4 hours ago, Phil Starr said: Ironically bass here is your enemy. almost anything below 80Hz (the 2nd harmonic of bottom E) should be left for the drums and even up to 160Hz you are in an area where you will be fighting with the drums to be heard. I use a 35Hz 24db/octave filter to remove all subsonics and shelve the bass response through the PA below 160Hz or thereabouts. Please don't take these frequencies as gospel for your eq though you still need to get 'your' tone but remember you are trying to get the balance right between bass and mid/treble. Turning the bass down and maybe edging the volume up is as valid a way of making the mids shine through as boosting mids. It's not a bad principle to start with everything set flat and then cut bass. The idea of using a decent pre amp isn't a bad one either, using a SansAmp transformed my sound with almost no effort from me. One thing you should also be aware of is the equal loudness contours which I'll put in below. It's the opposite of the loudness curve you are deliberately putting in when you use your mid scoop. We are hyper sensitive to mids at low volumes but almost totally insensitive to bass frequencies until they get loud. We aren't great with low level high frequencies either. Turning up you volume control boosts the bass and treble contrasted to the mids which is why a mid scoop sounds good at home but not at gig levels. Going from 80db average levels at home to 100db in the PA might mean you need to cut 5db from the bass to get the same subjective sound. You can read that off on the graph but the message generally is don't be scared to cut bass knowing that you genuinely sound bassier simply by being louder. One thing that worries me is that you say you have no back line (which is brilliant) and you describe your PA but don't mention monitors. You are using monitors aren't you? You simply won't hear the mid/tops from your PA just a wooly bass sound. You absolutely need some sort of monitoring Anyway loudness curves I normally would agree with most of what Phil says! But the "weight" of the bass IMO comes particularly from the 120Hz to 150Hz region so I would, if anything, boost that by +3db or so. I think if you are agressively cutting bass below 160Hz that feels too high a cut off, and you'll risk ending up with quite a thin sound. I'd personally recommend cutting from 80Hz to 100Hz to get rid of low end crud, and leave your mids flat rather than cutting them; and as you've already shared mid scoop can sound sweet solo'd but it's where you're losing yourself in the mix. 1 Quote
Phil Starr Posted 11 hours ago Posted 11 hours ago 6 hours ago, Al Krow said: I normally would agree with most of what Phil says! But the "weight" of the bass IMO comes particularly from the 120Hz to 150Hz region so I would, if anything, boost that by +3db or so. I probably didn't explain very well. I use a shelving response rather than the more usual bass tone control which rolls off the bass increasingly as the frequency drops. A shelving response acts like a volume control for bass cutting it all by a set amount. Like this but I only cut by a couple of db not 6db as in this example. I chose the 160 point as that was what was on my mixer at the end of the last gig. I ws surprised it was so high myself but it sounded good on the night. It wouldn't suit every bass or every bassist and Al makes a good point about weight. I suppose what I wanted to say ws don't be scared of equalising around a higher frequency and if you have a shelving response available on your mixer then explore using it. I find it quite a pleasing way of removing some of the boom whilst keeping a little deep bass and way better than using the conventional bass control on my active bass or the bass amp. You have to use your ears and of course we are all aiming for different sounds. Perhaps the other advice would be to make small changes and go back to a flat response from time to time whilst adjusting so you can be sure the changes are genuinley improvements. more here 2 Quote
SimonK Posted 2 hours ago Posted 2 hours ago (edited) 8 hours ago, Phil Starr said: I probably didn't explain very well. I use a shelving response rather than the more usual bass tone control which rolls off the bass increasingly as the frequency drops. A shelving response acts like a volume control for bass cutting it all by a set amount. Like this but I only cut by a couple of db not 6db as in this example. I chose the 160 point as that was what was on my mixer at the end of the last gig. I ws surprised it was so high myself but it sounded good on the night. It wouldn't suit every bass or every bassist and Al makes a good point about weight. I suppose what I wanted to say ws don't be scared of equalising around a higher frequency and if you have a shelving response available on your mixer then explore using it. I find it quite a pleasing way of removing some of the boom whilst keeping a little deep bass and way better than using the conventional bass control on my active bass or the bass amp. You have to use your ears and of course we are all aiming for different sounds. Perhaps the other advice would be to make small changes and go back to a flat response from time to time whilst adjusting so you can be sure the changes are genuinley improvements. more here I think there is a distinction between the bass player being able to hear themselves, and the bass sitting well in the mix. When I play I like to hear a lot of bass so that I can hear what I am playing, and thus am often disappointed when I wander out to FOH to hear that the overall mix doesn't have as much of me in it as I like to hear. But that just reflects that the FOH mix is trying to achieve a different thing compared to my monitor/where I'm standing mix. Looking at some of the above there seems to be some people answering "how to get the bass sitting well in the overall mix" question and others the "how do I cut through enough to hear myself" question. Edited 2 hours ago by SimonK Quote
Phil Starr Posted 1 hour ago Posted 1 hour ago 1 hour ago, SimonK said: Looking at some of the above there seems to be some people answering "how to get the bass sitting well in the overall mix" question and others the "how do I cut through enough to hear myself" question. Spot on Quote
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