totally baffled by this

[permanent hearing damage]

okay, in doing an unpaid ITB mastering job for a friend, the client is insisting i'm doing some serious high pass filtering - that the low subs are getting cut significantly. but i am doing no such thing. i have some small EQ bumps (1-2dB) at 75Hz, 3kHz, 5kHz and a 1dB shelf around 10kHz. it's also going through an LA2A with 2-3dB gain reduction on the loud sections and not touching on the quiet sections. there is an L3 limiter just touching after all of this as well. my ears and the inspector are telling me the the lows are not getting lost.

can anyone think of any reason why this could/would cause a low cut? the strange thing is, i received the same response regarding the low freq on the first pass - where i used no EQ whatsoever, only compression (with a heavier hand that time around).

i'm about to throw in the towel on this one and am starting to wonder if what i was provided was in fact the unprocessed original.

any ideas?

[jgimbel]

My first question, maybe obvious though, would be what is the client listening on? The issue could be on his end if you're not hearing it and you're monitoring it well.

[permanent hearing damage]

okay, by "client" i am referring to the tracking engineer for the project. he definitely has a far nicer monitoring setup than i. very fancy studio, designed by acoustician, etc.

i trust his ears, it just doesn't make sense to me

[Marc Alan Goodman]

Doesn't make sense to me either. It's either the source is screwed up or he's playing it back through something weird. If you're working entirely ITB and you don't have a highpass filter on it there's no reason it should lose lowend. It's not like you're running it out through some piece of gear that's eating up part of the sound.

As a side note: Why is the band mastering it with someone with a ITB setup without great monitoring when they recorded it somewhere shmancy? Doesn't that seem a little silly? No offense intended of course.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

doesn't make sense to me either. maybe the compression is pulling in the bass (more than everything else) and he's perceiving it as a high pass?

[jgimbel]

doesn't make sense to me either. maybe the compression is pulling in the bass (more than everything else) and he's perceiving it as a high pass?

That definitely sounds possible. In talking about compression people around here often bring up taking some lows out before hitting the compressor. If you have your threshold pretty high it might still be compressing a lot, since the built up lows are triggering it but not always as audible. Though if some unheard lows are making the compression overdo it then you'd most likely be hearing that in the rest of the frequency spectrum, so that might not be too helpful. It would be a reason that lows would be compressed a lot more than mids/highs, which could result in, as MoreSpaceEcho said, a perceived high pass. Just a thought.

[ThePitz]

doesn't make sense to me either. maybe the compression is pulling in the bass (more than everything else) and he's perceiving it as a high pass?

That definitely sounds possible. In talking about compression people around here often bring up taking some lows out before hitting the compressor. If you have your threshold pretty high it might still be compressing a lot, since the built up lows are triggering it but not always as audible. Though if some unheard lows are making the compression overdo it then you'd most likely be hearing that in the rest of the frequency spectrum, so that might not be too helpful. It would be a reason that lows would be compressed a lot more than mids/highs, which could result in, as MoreSpaceEcho said, a perceived high pass. Just a thought.

Yeah - i'm feeling this, too. And if your monitors are small and his are big and fat in a well treated room - he might be talking about frequencies you can't even hear.

[Snarl 12/8]

Could you be fucking up the phase somehow?

[permanent hearing damage]

okay, so checking with a fancier spectrum analyzer - sure enough, 100Hz and under is down about 2-2.5dB with the LA2A in there. gonna toy around with that analyzer some more and see if maybe i'm losing more than that further down. gonna use a different comp and pay close attention to those frequencies. maybe give it a bump down there if necessary. probably backing off the EQ overall anyway.

time to get a sub.

as for why i am the one doing this and not someone with nicer stuff - it's the label, not the band. vinyl was done by Golden. no CD release, they just wanted me to do this for itunes. with few exceptions, i usually find myself mastering stuff that was recorded either with worse gear or less experience than i. i normally would have suggested they use someone else, but this was just supposed to be a favor for a friend and i did kinda liked the challenge in it. but i seem to have fallen on my face.

[drumsound]

Don't forget to run your analyzer on the source also. IF dude's room has a big bump there may be less there then he thinks is there.

[permanent hearing damage]

yeah, the original is what i was comparing it to for the loss of 2.5dB or so. just kept turning off plugs until i was getting the same level on the sub 100Hz stuff for the whole track.

[DupleMeter]

Yeah - as you're discovering, the low end that you don't hear on your system can build up pretty significantly and cause the comp to kick in and squash them. Not only that, but those extreme low frequencies produce more energy than than the higher frequencies...robbing you of headroom.

As backwards as this may sound, to get a smoother & stronger bass response, slap an EQ before the comp and roll off the extreme lows. Keep these in mind: lowest note on a standard tuned guitar is about 82Hz, lowest note on a standard tuned bass guitar is 41Hz, lowest key (A) on an 88 key piano is 27Hz. Kick drum is usually centered around 50-60Hz, sometimes as low as 40Hz but usually not.

Basically, find your low extension and roll off below that.

Then, if you still need a little 'oomph' in the low end, throw a nice EQ after the comp and give yourself a little extra bump in an area that's musical & relevant to the song's tonal center...and that will change from tune to tune.

HTH