3 Common Low End Mixing Mistakes That Are Ruining Your Mixes

3 Common Low End Mixing Mistakes

It’s one of the most asked questions when mixing music:

“Why does my low end sound so muddy?”

There are tons of tips and techniques you can use to mix a tight low end and I’m going to touch on 3 common low end mixing mistakes in this article so you can move away from the dreaded muddy low end mix and more towards a cleaner, tighter low end in all of your future mixes.

Low End Mixing Frustrations

I know it’s frustrating when you can’t seem to get a clear distinction between all of the low-end elements in a mix despite watching countless videos on YouTube on the topic and through your own trial and error, nothing seems to work.

So what are you doing wrong?

To be honest, you probably only need to make a few small changes to your low end mixing workflow and you’ll improve things massively.

The main contributors to a muddy low end mix

Well, in rock music, we are usually dealing with the:

  • kick drum
  • bass guitar
  • lower frequencies of the electric guitars

Drums, bass and guitars are the lifeblood of a rock mix and if we get them wrong, rather than a flabby mix, we can go the other way and end up with a thin mix that sounds a bit, well… anaemic for the want of a better expression.

A few easy, small changes add up to massive low end improvement.

3 Common Low End Mixing Mistakes

#1 Not using high pass filters

mixing low end with eq high pass filters

There’s a common area where overlapping frequencies tend to build up in a typical rock mix and that is around 110Hz, give or take.

The drums, bass and guitars all overlap in this range so, by using high pass filters we can make space for these elements to sit and play together nicely…rather like small children playing with Stickle Bricks!

It’s common in rock music to mix the kick drum to have the lowest audible frequencies in the mix, followed by the bass guitar sitting slightly higher in the frequency spectrum. There are always exceptions of course, but more often than not, this is how a rock or indie mix tends to be.

Kick

Place a high pass filter on the kick drum at around 25-30Hz, just to get rid of any sub frequencies that might be taking up headroom down there and to tighten up the sub frequencies.

Bass

Next, do the same on the bass guitar. I find myself high passing in the range of 50-80Hz which instantly makes a hole for the fundamental of the kick to slot into and blend nicely with the bass for a powerful and controlled low end.

Guitars

Finally, do the same with the rhythm guitars. Whilst playing the whole track, where the rhythm guitars are at their fullest, slowly start to take your high pass filter higher and higher up the frequency spectrum whilst listening to how it interacts with the drums and bass.

Keep moving up the freq range until the guitars sound a little thin, then pull the filter back again and listen for where the bass guitar and electric guitars blend together, complimenting each other and sound big and full but not tubby.

Typically, I tend to settle somewhere in the 80-120Hz range for guitars.

Create Frequency Slots

So you can imagine, by high passing like this, you create “slots” for each element to fit into, yet in a complimentary way without too much overlap. A little frequency overlap works well to blend all three elements seamlessly together and the overlapping points should be chosen by ear and not by eye!

#2 The bass guitar is masking the kick drum

Screenshot 2019 11 21 at 13.49.03 e1574352108841

A great trick in low end mixing that helps the kick and bass guitar play nicely together is to use a technique called “side-chaining”.

This is placing a compressor on the bass guitar and rather than the compressor reacting to the bass guitar signal as normal, it reacts to the incoming kick drum signal instead.

Each time the kick drum hits, the compressor pulls the bass guitar down by a pre-determined amount, very quickly, to make the bass “duck” to allow the kick to come through, then it returns the bass signal back to its normal level, all in a matter of milliseconds.

Side Chaining Kick and Bass

The side-chain is a separate listening part of the compressor that we send the kick drum signal to using an aux send.

Set up the compressors gain reduction so that it reduces the bass in level by a couple of dB’s in a natural, transparent way.

In rock or indie music this needs to sound natural, although there are no rules to say you can’t go for a more extreme effect like that found in EDM or dance music!

#3 Your monitors are lying to you

focal home studio monitors

Even if you’ve got super-duper, Carlos Fandango, go faster striped, top of the range studio monitors they’ll still lie to you – if your room isn’t acoustically treated that is.

Now, this might not be such a simple or quick fix but your room has a massive impact on the low end of your mixes so it shouldn’t be ignored.

Gaining a better understanding of room acoustics could possibly have the greatest impact for your low end mixing and be a total game-changer.

Even before buying new monitors!!

There’s an inherent problem when mixing in small rooms, which a lot of us do these days thanks to the magic of DAW’s and plugins.

Small Room Acoustics

Smaller rooms tend not to allow bass frequencies to develop fully, yet instead, the bass frequencies bounce off the walls back into the room and in some spots reinforce (get louder) and in other spots cancel themselves out and are quieter or missing altogether. All this can result in a low end that doesn’t translate across music systems or devices.

Get Treated

The first approach is to get some acoustic panels up at the first reflection points (sidewalls and ceiling), then, secondly, to get some bass traps in the corners, floor to ceiling.

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The bass traps can be made following some excellent guides on YouTube if you are the DIY type (not me!) or, they can be bought online whilst not breaking the bank.

Do not buy foam bass traps! They don’t work because they don’t have the density needed to absorb massive bass frequencies.

Having some acoustic treatment is a great start and can be built on by using room correction software like Sonarworks to dial in an EQ curve that’s unique to your room following a sweep of test tones that will show up any misrepresented frequencies at your seating position.

I can’t stress enough how this can be a complete game-changer for your low end mixing.

If you can’t hear the low end properly, how can you hope to get that solid, full low end you’ve been chasing?

There is a little investment involved here but it doesn’t need to £1000’s, some people won’t think twice about spending the cash on new, larger monitors only to be disappointed when they get them home and hear the same problems or even some new ones, especially if the monitors are too big for the room. Bigger isn’t always the answer to hearing more bass.

There are many more tips for low end mixing and this post only looks at three so be sure to subscribe to get more tips for mixing low end in my weekly newsletter.

Final Thoughts

It’s the difference between an amateur mix and a professional mix, and the giveaway to a mix that has come out of a back bedroom rather than a pro studio.

There’s tremendous satisfaction in having a tight low end mix that sounds just right and a certain confidence that comes along with it too.

It takes some practice but once you find a method that works for you, it can bring your self-belief up in leaps and bounds.

Everything else is icing on the cake…well, except for maybe finally hearing compression properly, that’s a game-changer too and also a topic for another blog post!


If you are interested in having me mix your music and are wondering how to prepare your mix, then check out my blog post- how-to-prepare-your-track-for-professional-mixing

If you want to know more about my online mixing service, then you can learn more on my mixing page or contact me here.

Have any questions about the blog post? Drop them in the comments below and then don’t forget to sign up to get free mixing guides and helpful resources direct to your inbox every week!

10 thoughts on “3 Common Low End Mixing Mistakes”

  1. Here is one that’s always mystified me and I’m not sure I can even explain it properly.
    I always battle to get that special delayed reverb sound, especially on vocals. I call it a ‘behind the head’ reverb. It’s definitely not in your face and one could be forgiven for not even noticing it on a mix. It’s kind of a ‘behind the speakers’ presence, not a definitive delay or echo, almost like a smooth delayed sustain of the vocal or instrument that it’s being applied to. not just a big swooshy reverb.
    Examples might be ‘the backstreet boys’ from the nineties who where one of the first to use this technique in the mainstream. Then there’s masses of quincy Jones’s productions from the eighties onwards, [ I think he often used the AMS RMX 16….a beautiful piece of hardware ].
    Also Trevor Horn was a dab hand with reverbs, [Slave to the rhythm was killer].
    I have often come close to achieving this effect but never quite got there. I am finalizing a Gospel EP mix at the moment which is crying out for this effect. I have to have it mixed by early next week. I wish someone could just send me a miracle plugin that would just tick the box for ever more.

  2. Hey Graham, I wonder if it’s the pre-delay setting you’re referring to? This is in any reverb plugin and it prevents the reverb from activating for a few milliseconds (depending on how you set it). This has the effect of “pushing back” the reverb and letting the vocal sit up front still. So, you can still have a long reverb but pre-delay stops the vocal from becoming distant and mushy. Hope that makes sense! Good luck with it!

  3. Wow that was odd. I just wrote an incredibly long comment but after I clicked submit my comment didn’t
    appear. Grrrr… well I’m not writing all that over again. Anyway, just wanted
    to say excellent blog!

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