How can I get my bass to come through?

Question

Bass loses volume:

Mackie sr32-4 board, Crown xls2500 amp and a Jbl monitor. The bass comes through the amp but literally the volume drops to nearly nothing once all the other instruments start playing. Then even with everyone not playing it's hardly comming through. The monitor is on Aux Send Master 1. I know next to nothing. Someone said it's common for the bass to disappear because of the amount of power it takes? the bass comes through the mains better but still loses volume.

Let me know if you need more info to help

Answer 1

Here are some possible causes:

• You hear the effect of a limiting device (no mention of that in your setup though).
• You hear the lack of headroom in the amplifier because it working too hard and internal "limiting" start to occur. If this is the case, you should be hearing increased distortion as well.
• You hear a speaker working on too much: when the bass is soloed the speaker can replicate the signal much better than if it also has to do kick drum, toms, boomy guitars etc. (anything that roughly share the same end of the frequency scale). Find a good spot for the bass and make sure no other instrument is too active in this region.

Answer 2

there's a great chance there's phase cancellation involved , Bass frequencies are very sensitive to phasing issues.

So your dominant/fundamental bass frequency in this instance might be the one that your room actually cancels , try moving the speakers around , or another room, or take the bass track and listen to it with headphones and such just to be sure the bass is there and there's no problem before you play the track.

Another thing to consider when we talk about phase is the number of microphones or recording mediums used to track the bass(is it 1 mic + 1 DI box?).

If for some reason your bass track is a combined recording (2 mics in 1 track) it's possible you have phase issues and it's really hard to fix.

The most possible solution to the problem you have concerning phase issues once more is that your guitars or synths are canceling the bass, try adding 1 track after the other and see which one causes the trouble.

Try going away from the speakers, very low frequencies need actual space to develop and be heard in complete amplitude , give it 3meters away from the speaker and try to see if the bass is there.!

SPEAKER PHASE: your speaker cables might be in the wrong order and again phase canceling bass!

Remember flipping the phase will fix a cancelled phase issue. So if for example you have 2 tracks canceling each other, flip ones phase !

Good luck.