Problems with mixing bass correctly

[Insomnimatic]

Hey everyone, I've got an issue where I can't seem to mix the Bass correctly on any of my music.

I have a decent headset that has great bass (SkullCandy Plyr1 to be exact) and I use them while mixing.
The bass, mids and highs sound great on the headset but when I jump into my car and play my songs they seem to be lacking in that department. I'll play some sort of metalcore and listen to the song then right after listen to mine and my bass doesn't even compare to the song I've just listened to.

Best example I have is the latest song I've created: http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/672049

I'm not sure if I should buy some monitor speakers to do this job right. What do you guys think?

[Sequenced]

omg

don't ever mix with skull candy wtf

[Insomnimatic]

At 2/29/16 02:20 AM, Sequenced wrote: omg

don't ever mix with skull candy wtf

I had no idea they were that horrible for mixing to be honest.

What do you suggest I try out? I am able to buy some sort of speakers or headset specifically for mixing.
Range for this would be about $250

[Sequenced]

At 2/29/16 02:21 AM, daredevil424 wrote:

At 2/29/16 02:20 AM, Sequenced wrote: omg

don't ever mix with skull candy wtf

I had no idea they were that horrible for mixing to be honest.

What do you suggest I try out? I am able to buy some sort of speakers or headset specifically for mixing.
Range for this would be about $250

m-audio for monitors are good

avoid anything that "boosts the bass" or isn't flat line

[9Tailed]

Skullcandy's headphones/earphones, are made with some extra bass in mind, so...whatever youre istening too, there will always be some bass in it
It happens that i have a pair of Skullcandy's too, but only for listening, not producing/mixing :P

If youd like a pair of good but in the budget headphones, i would recommend Audio Technica's M20x, it goes around 50 Euro's, i have some experience with them, and their just awesome, if not, their are plenty of options like Sennheiser, AKG, KRK that ive got some good reviews on them too.

Dont you ever make music on cheap, generic headphones because they tend to have their own response frequency to suit the consumer and they are made just for listening only, professional/production grade headphones (even the cheap ones) on the other hand are made with flat frequency response so the producer might hear what the sound "really sounds" like, and not how "it should sound" like, in other words, you can hear something more (maybe unpleasant) that in consumers grade you cant detect

[sleepFacingWest]

Always reference your track at VERY low volume. When it's so quiet you can barely hear it, you'll start to hear what pops out of the texture and what gets lost. When you mix at loud volumes, your ear starts to balance things and your perception of what you hear may not actually be a very accurate representation of the mix. There are tutorials out there on how to mix using pink noise to mask everything, but the principle is basically the same. Just crank the volume down from time to time and see if your bass gets swallowed up.

The bass response in your car may also not be great. There are a lot of tricks that are likely used in these other recordings you listen to which make it seem like the bass is kicking over ANY system, though. One trick for beefing up the perception of bass in a track is to add distortion. This will increase the upper partials of the sound which give the listener the impression that the bass is louder (or present) even when speakers aren't capable of reproducing those frequencies.

When doing post production or mastering, drop one of these other metal tracks you're talking about into the daw so you can A B the two against each other. This will help give you a frame of reference and you can see how your mix stands up to something you know you already like. Spend time watching tracks on a spectrogram too. You'll learn a lot about various eq tricks this way.

Flat response headphones or monitors definitely help. I use Adam A7's. While good flat response monitors will make things easier, you can learn to get pretty good mixes on almost anything. I spent many years mixing on crappy $20 headphones, and scored a whole documentary series for a college textbook on them. It's a matter of spending tons of time listening to a lot of music on whatever you're using to learn how they respond to various frequencies, then adjusting your mixes to emulate your favorites.

[Virginia-Slimm]

i like to use a plugin called The Bass Lane sometimes to tame basses. It sums a track's low frequencies to mono pretty well. Having too much sub information in stereo can really make mixing difficult. Seems like a tonnof good advice here already so i thought i would share one solution i use When basses or synths get wonky or lack clarity. Sometimes it can be mixef more quietly if the bas waveform is mono Or close to mono.

[Insomnimatic]

Thanks a ton for all of this info, guys. This will definitely help out a lot and I'll be using it in my next song. This is a great community!