I love low end and I try to mix with a lot of power coming from that range. This is tough when your monitors and room start to lose clarity and tightness below 100 Hz. I have to consciously spend a little extra time working on my kick and bass tracks to hit the way I’d like because of the shortcomings in my monitoring and room setup. My mastering engineer is very aware of, and helpful with this too! I’ll often use EQ to de-clutter the kick around 100 or 200 Hz so I can make room for the bass, but then my kick sounds weak. Or vice versa. Additionally, using compression and limiting to control your sub frequencies can be a slippery slope that I don’t always have the right shoes for.

Now that I’m hip to and use the soothe2 dynamic resonance suppressor plug-in by oeksound, I have peace of mind knowing that my low end will not blow out on me or suffer from too much EQ surgery. I now use soothe2 to help tame and clear out resonance from overly tonal kick drums and woofy bass tracks. The same technique works beautifully on tracks recorded with too much proximity effect, such as vocals and acoustic guitar. I’m sure I’m not alone when I say I spend too much time trying to harness the irregularities of proximity effect. soothe2 does this effortlessly, and in a sense, more precisely than I ever could with a series of other plug-ins. There is a slight learning curve to using soothe2, but the plug-in includes a built-in interactive tutorial with audio fed from the instantiated channel so you can learn to use it without even needing your own source material. It’s very well executed and helpful. soothe2 also excels at controlling sibilance and obnoxious resonance across the frequency spectrum, but I’m very excited about having a new tool to help me control low end in a way that doesn’t require sacrificing punch or power.

Tape Op is a bi-monthly magazine devoted to the art of record making.

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