Quote Originally Posted by Basil Rush
Ok, I've got another theory, perhaps is the proliferation of 'bass boost' on home and car systems that's made the average mix require far less bottom end for the same end result...?

Club mixes for radio you'll notice tend to have less bottom than some of the more banging stuff for clubs ... if you go to a night where they play a lot of commerical stuff a lot of it is hopeless inadequate at the bottom end compared to the more underground club orientated stuff.
Radio mixes have less bottom because bass removes headroom. You simply can't fit as many high frequencies in to your mix if your bass is big... If you look at a waveform of just a big bass sound and a hi-hat, you'll see why! (Make the bass bigger, and the hi-hat gets cut in half... The small, sharp hi-hat 'rides' the big bass wave like a surf dude shootin' the tube. As the bass gts bigger, the hi-hat clips first).

As there is a very limited bandwidth in a radio broadcast, more detail is put into the midrange and top end... The bass is sacrificed to fit it in. It'd get EQd out anyway! Then extreme compression is applied. This brings up the detail, so you can hear it through the low quality signal... And feel the 'power' of the top frequencies of the bass sound. Pop bass always has as many mid range and high end harmonics as possible.

As most of the money in the pop/commercial market is spun from sales based on radio and TV playlists, commercial mixes are assembled for radio and not much thought is given to the home listening experience. (Why bother? They've already purchased the product!) Thus you get the bass-light, heavily compressed, 'IN YOUR F*CKING FACE' production style we all know and despise.

Of course you could argue that most dance music uses *bass*-heavy, heavily compressed 'IN YOUR F*CKING FACE' production... But at least the thought, care and attention has gone into making it sound good where it'll be heard most. (I guess this is the same for radio mixes after all... I doubt people really listen much to singles after they buy them).

Maybe peole making dance music now are learning traditional techniques first? Or maybe all the top-heavy stuff is written by people who want to make money from the commercial market.

The previous mail about project studios is telling. It's almost impossible to get the sub bass region right in a home/project set-up - you need a BIG room and properly set up monitors. AND good sound damping, reflection management and sound isolation. Otherwise the bass waves don't have room to develop! Or they opverlap themselves and cancel out in odd ways, giving you a false impression of the sound. Don't get sub speakers in small rooms guys! ;) Simply leave the bass area you can't hear (anything below 40Hz, give or take) for the mastering stage in a big studio. And do a hi-pass filter on all sounds you don't want in there. Like hats and vocals.

T*