Case Of The Missing Bass.

Off-Topic
1

I have a song. The song has a deep bass. This bass sounds fine in most every situation. But put it in my car and it gets all crazy. The key is C but it sounds like an A# almost an octave higher (It sounds very sickly). All other notes sound fine, but that is the lowest. In other situations, headphones, stereo speakers, everything sounds real good. I’ve never had this problem in my car before.

What’s going on here? Should I have to worry about this happening to other people?

2

If this happens ONLY on your car-stereo… isn’t the EQ of the car-stereo in dire need of some tweaking?

With bass, it’s usually the E, F# and G# that give me problems, which I fix with a simple EQ. You can solo the bass in the song and check what frequency is giving you trouble, single it out on an EQ and drop the volume. My guess is it’s somewhere between 60 and 80Hz? Like a crazy extreme low hummm?

3

Phase problem? My first thought.

4

I’m not even bothering to read the first post, as I know what’s causing your problem: Car amplifiers often mix the right and left channels before sending them to the subwoofer… problem being, your track has the “stereo width” cranked to the max on whichever channel is providing the bass in the song, this putting both the right and left channels out of phase sync. When these channels get added back together, using very simple math, it results in a completely silent waveform.

Moral of the story: Never use cheap stereo widening effects, and always listen to a mono-ized version of your mixdown to make sure it sounds right as part of your mastering stage.

Suggested mono-friendly stereo effects: MDA stereo (will mono the channel before applying effect) and Rescue (widens anything that’s not just mono)

5

http://www.otiumfx.com/basslane.php

6

always always always mono your bass channels! (you can do it with stereo expander, both sliders fully to the left)

and only use stereo widening on individual tracks! i’ve made this mistake before too!

7

You don’t HAVE to mono the bass channel… like I said, there are mono friendly stereo effects out there, and they happen to do wonders on bass. As long as there’s no phase cancellation, you’re good ;)