If everything mix engineers do is in the name of maintaining clarity, how can distorting things help your mix work through any system or device?
Some History
Once upon a time, the mix engineer could expect their mixes to be heard on some pretty respectable hi-fi gear as owned by a sizable slice of the record buying public. That isn’t to say that all buyers were listening to every new release in their favourite recliner through exotic gear, as there were plenty of opportunities to hear bad sound through a whole rogue’s gallery of portable tape recorders, radios, and record players. It could be argued, however, that more ‘quality’ listening experiences were there to be had through an industry emphasis on listening quality over convenience or even price. By the 2000s, a new emphasis had emerged prizing portability (both of playback devices and their media) and affordability. This gave way to today’s market which sees audio content distributed primarily for use with mobile devices, standalone smart speakers, and flat panel TVs in the home.
Many Listeners, One Mix
This new audio paradigm presents the mix engineer with new challenges. While an awareness of compromised listening environments must be borne in mind, the mixer must also uphold absolute quality for the few who demand a decent listening experience. While things like audio compression, or lossy digital codecs change the subjective quality, arguably, the most significant casualty of poor playback devices is the loss of audio bandwidth. Top end often is lost, and with device miniaturisation, comes smaller speakers that are simply too small to resolve low frequencies at any kind of useful level. While this robs rhythmic elements of their impact, perhaps the most detrimental effect of low end loss is the disappearance of musical information in basses.
Bass For The Brain
If we add extra harmonics that can be heard on small speakers to low end instruments, the brain has information to hold on to in order to know what is happening under what the speakers can handle. Most of us know what extra harmonics added to mix elements sounds like in the form of saturation, and this can be the secret sauce to give basses the complexity they need to break into the middle of the mix. It turns out that saturation has more uses than just breaking things when used judiciously in this way, and in the video we use multiband saturation not only to transform a bass into something new with the necessary edges, but also to preserve its bottom end to be enjoyed by those who can hear it.
Saturation And Translation
With modern mixes having to navigate anything from laptop speakers (often those of the client who can’t hear the bass…) through smart speakers, to the hyped low extension of car systems, there’s certainly a case for pleasing all of the people all of the time when it comes to low end. While we may have to live with some inevitable compromise on existing sounds, the reality is that it’s better to treat an admittedly superior sound so as to preserve the overall message for all.