Bass Check Approach

Hi all,

Haven't been around in a while...nice to be back.

Do any of you mix with no sub and just check the deep bass on headphones?  I'm almost at the point of ditching my sub...my rig has had a few moves recently, so positioning, dealing with peaks and nulls, etc is just a PITA.

Thanks!

Donny

+1. 

 I would never mix without my sub and ARC. I trust my monitoring setup so much now, I rarely check my mixes on other systems, because I just know they're going to translate beautifully. 

It is important to be thinking in a calibration frame of mind as well. It is easy to get the level of the sub wrong and it many cases it can be too loud. The way it crosses over (freq and slope) to your main speakers is important too. You need to spend some time there sorting that out.

You need to be thinking about putting pink noise and assigning it to left and right speakers and the sub and measuring sound pressure levels, adjusting accordingly. Bob Katz has useful information about aligning sub woofers. He says two are better than one as well. But now we are starting to get into other territory.

I don't believe you need them to get a well balanced mix either. You can get a great set of main speakers to go well down there and cover that area very well. I like the main speakers doing it. When the main speakers are on concrete stands too the bottom end is fantastic. (It is more transparent and less coloured and extends down lower for some reason) The need for the sub goes away the better you can get your main bottom end sounding. Then you don't need to switch it off to check mixes. I do think it is fat and effective for parties, watching movies while listening in 5.1 and annoying the neighbours!