Can we talk about how every modern demo has the bass mixed way too clean?

I was digging through a box of old cassette demos from 1998 last night and realized none of them had that polished low end people keep chasing now, which just makes me wonder why everyone is so afraid of letting the bass sound a little rough when that's what gave those old recordings their character in the first place.

2 comments

2 Comments

nora_barnes17d ago

My neighbor just spent 400 bucks on a new smart fridge that tells him when his milk is expired, and I think that's the same energy as chasing these ultra clean bass sounds. We're sanding all the rough edges off everything and losing what made stuff feel alive. Those old 98 demos had bass that would crackle and breathe because nobody was afraid of a little tape hiss or a slight distortion. Same with how people digitally clean up every room in their house for Instagram until it looks like nobody actually lives there. Sometimes a little grit is what tells you something was real.

linda_mason8213d ago

Just roll your high pass filter down to like 60hz and let the sub frequencies do whatever they want, that's what gives it that raw push. Tape saturation plugins are fine but nothing beats the way real tape compression makes everything sit together loosely. You want clean low end, check your phase relationships first before touching any EQ.