How much sub is enough?

[mojobone]

What Owen said, and I'll add that sub-bass has to be there, for certain genres, but if it's mixed loud enough to hear on 5-in woofers, that's gonna be a problem when it's played in the club. Club DJs tend to have their own sub-bass processing; they could reproduce the 'brown sound' if they wanted, but they don't want the cleaning bill.

EDM, Hiphop, maybe an international dance competition or cheerleading championship, that's when I need to know what goes on below 50Hz. Or trailers, obviously, cuz theaters = subs. But mostly, lossy compression schemes don't react well to excess energy in the highest and lowest octaves. You can push those boundaries for CD, DVD and Blu-Ray delivery, but imo, you should prepare accordingly for how it'll eventually be heard.

[Len911]

But mostly, lossy compression schemes don't react well to excess energy in the highest and lowest octaves.

So true!

[RichardCharles]

If you end up going by ear...


I've heard a person on Pensado's place a long time ago say you should get most of your information from your monitors and just bring in the sub to round out the sound. But he said another important thing is to have your monitors at full range.


My audio repairman that repaired my sub said I should try to have a balanced sound. They also said another important thing is to make sure that you are hearing the kick from your monitor and your sub at the same time.

Best of luck!

[mojobone]

Me, personally? I'd put the speakers on stands, operate them at full range, and set the crossover pretty close to where the mains are a decibel down. But phase response trumps frequency response, if we're asking for accuracy, as opposed to what sounds 'best'.

[fuzzbox]

Interesting points!
I have a matched sub and it's on all the time. There are some roll-off and cross-over switches that I needed to set on my original monitors when I included the sub 5 years ago. I always use varying degrees of high pass filtering on all my tracks/groups. So far so good, I think... I got some comments in the early days of too much bass on my mixes but it is getting less and less since I've started to reference tracks and headphone calibration plugin.

To me, or what I have learned over the years and I'm not an expert, it doesn't matter if you have or haven't got good monitors, got or not have a good room or have or have not acoustic treatment. As long as your mix sounds as good your reference tracks on your system (whatever you're set up) you're mix should sound great!