Dynamic Processing and the bass

It has recently been troubling my mind that the bass was always muddy on my mixes. In this case, I do not think of the bass as the total amount of bass of all the instruments, but simply the bassfill of the single instrument - the bass guitar.

It was quite enigmatic to ensure a clean, smooth volume that stood clear and bright in the mix, without problems with muddyness at the bottom. Before I was able to let the bass guitar play back on a regular volume, I compressed it with a deep threshold (-30 dB, was not quite rarely seen), and with a ratio between 3 and 4. In addition, it should also be the instrument that put the largest amount of bass in the mix. As a matter of fact, it should be the only instrument playing around in the deepest frequencies, together with the kickdrum.

I quickly realized that it was easier said than done. As described earlier, it was one hell of unmastered transients, and you could clearly feel the bass hanging over all elements in the music - rather than under.

I switched between a wide range of compressors in my quest to find one that did find the sweet spot between keeping tight tone, but also dynamics and punch, but no clicks and crackle. I had fine results with API or SSL compressors. Waves Rcomp or C1 Comp also did a good job, but as soon as I started to fill in the bass and treble, the problems were back again.

Suddenly it dawned on me. If I had fine results with the compressors, but the problems first appeared when I added or decreased decibels to some frequencies - why did I not compress some bands more than others?

I thought quickly upon the idea of a multi-band compressor. If you do not know what this one does, here goes first a little explanation of what a normal compressor does. A compressor limits the dynamics, by squeezing the highest and lowest peaks together, so that the sound level becomes more even. This can be done by degrees, and you can use it as a little addition, or you can make it so tight, that even the weakest impact on the sound level is on volume with the hardest.

A multi-band compressor, however, is pretty much the same. The only difference is that more compressors than one are active, spread out over different spectrums of frequencies. A typical multi-band compressor of the higher class usually has 4 bands, all of which may be set individually and completely different from each other.

Like I wrote in the last article about Limiting, many of the same tendencies exist on this market too - there are many bad and few good software-based plugins. Since I typically work in software, and has no special outboard to speak of, I have been looking for a great multi-band compressor.

And finally I found something that absolutely cured all my problems!
This time it's a plug from the Waves series. C4 is it's name. It compresses like Waves own Rennaisance Compressor, which I also have had fine results with on Bass, Toms and other instruments in the low frequency spectrum. RComp is not a punchy compressor, and goes to great lengths with smoothing out the dynamics, without turning the instrument "Clicky" (like you would see from a lot of cheap compressors - it's not a bad thing at all, clicky compressors are used in large scale on snare drums, kick drums, and everything else that need a transient boost). And the built-in EQ is the same technology as in their Equalizer series "Q", which simply put is my favorite Equalizer, along with Flux Epure.

I placed the C4 on the bass bus, and loaded a preset that was optimized for bass, which also functioned as a Deesser. It had a tight release on the topfrequencies.
The result was a surprisingly smooth bass with no mud at all - and then I could go back in my plugin chain and raise the high mid / high frequencies for more clarity, without the "click" - it did both function as a great Deesser and as RComp limiter-like compression.

Recommended for bass instruments, pianos and synths, or generally any instrument acting in the spectrum between 30 and 4000 hz.