That one critique about my bass levels totally changed my mixes

Last month after I dropped my 'D11-04' album, a producer from San Salvador I really respect DM'd me and said my kick drum was burying everything in the low end. He said it sounded like I was mixing on broken headphones. At first I was annoyed, but I went back and A/B'd my track against a reference from Four Tet and he was right. I started using a spectrum analyzer on every mix to check my sub frequencies around 60Hz. Now I cut unnecessary low end on pads and keep the kick clean. It made my tracks hit way harder without that muddy rumble. Has anyone else had a single line of feedback that completely changed their production workflow?

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barbarab5627d ago

Yeah, "hit way harder" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there." I dunno, man. I've heard people obsess over cutting low end on pads for years and their tracks still sound like garbage because the arrangement is a mess or the kick sample itself is just bad. You can clean up sub frequencies all day but if your kick doesn't have a good transient or your bassline is playing the wrong notes it's not gonna help much. Feels like people blame "muddiness" for everything when half the time it's just a boring mix with no space.