What are some good techniques for getting bass/kick for small mobile devices (phones and tablets) and lo fi players like boomboxes

I'm sure others who have more experience at this than me will offer some pro advice in due course, but at a guess at the bass part of your question, I'd say a healthy amount of compression and perhaps a boost in the low-mids maybe between 400-700Hz. 

Hi guitardad,
Essentially the answer to this question always comes down to "an EQ and a pair of Auratones" (or similar grot boxes). You'll want to make sure that your bass guitar is producing enough information in the low-mids to be heard. For kick or other bass instruments, either do the same thing with low-mids or make sure they have content in another frequency spectrum to imply their existence....e.g. the click part of a kick drum above 2.5K-ish (it differs kick to kick but it's almost always above that...).

Bottom line though, without speakers to simulate the target environment so you can hear if it's translating, it's tough....situations like that are the sole reason grot boxes exist.

Dean

There's a few tricks I know of:

1. Use a Send from the Kick track to a BUSS, and compress the frack out of it, and EQ so that you can get a little bit of pop out of that, then Send that BUSS to your Drum BUSS (i.e. Parallel compression). 

2. Then, I would find a very thin Q on a parametric EQ that you can boost that will allow the low frequency of the kick to cut through which is optimized for smaller speakers. Usually around 80Hz will be OK. But keep the Q tight so that you don't do nasty things to other drums or bass guitar.

3. Find a limiter or compressor release time that allows just a hint of pumping in the final mix. Your ears will perceive this minute pumping as bass on smaller speakers.

4. You may try Maxx-Bass from Waves, which works on some things, such as a kick, but IMO destroys bass guitar by muddying it up. It's not good for me on a full mix. 

Hope that helps!

This is where the VRM Box comes into it's own!

sharke


This is where the VRM Box comes into it's own!

Yes. I also recommend trying to simply (using an EQ) cut all frequencies below 400Hz and work from there, and use only a compressor to get the punch playing with attack/release settings.