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6. Advanced bass EQing for a killer low-end

1 Getting a fat, consistent bass mix is key when working on weighty styles such as UK bassline. Let’s run through some advanced EQing techniques to tidy up a bloated bass-house mix. Start by importing the files beginning “House…” into a new 130bpm project. The sub bass is really oversaturated, so we’ll deal with that using DDMF’s IIEQPro CM EQ… 2 Add IIEQPro CM to the Bass Sub channel, then apply a LPF24 filter at 150Hz with a Q of 0.71. This’ll remove all the unwanted noise from the signal, leaving us with a warm, rugged-sounding sub. Next, to give the kick more room to maneuver, let’s use a sidechain-triggered EQ to carve room in the sub… 3 After placing MeldaProduction’s MAutoDynamicEQ on the Bass Sub channel, send the Kick channel to it as a sidechain trigger. Next, add a new band in MAutoDynamicEQ at 80Hz, then rightclick it to open the Settings page. Set the Dynamics mode to Sidechain, then pull the Dynamics amount down to -13dB. Narrowing the Q to 3 will focus the EQ cut. 4 Our dynamic EQ has made loads more room in the bass end of the mix without making the whole mix sound thin, or giving the sub an obviously ‘ducked’ sound. Let’s now turn our attention to the two bass sounds – we can give the flabby sounding Bass 2 a more similar tone to Bass 1 by using a matching EQ… 5 We call up iZotope’s Ozone 7 Equalizer onto the Bass 1 channel, then open the Matching panel. Hitting Record in the Reference Audio tab will capture the frequency spectrum of Bass 1 ready for use later. After this, we drag Ozone Equalizer onto the Bass 2 channel and hit Record in the Target Audio tab to commence the EQ matching. 6 Tweaking the Smoothing and Amount controls lets us tune the amount of EQ shift applied: we found a Smoothing setting of 55 and Amount of 60 matched the sound of the other bass closely, without sounding too boxy. Finally, for a smoother finish, we use Sonimus Satson CM over the Hi Bass channel to gently roll off excessive high frequencies.