Bass is the easiest thing in a mix to get wrong, because most people cannot hear what they are doing. Laptop speakers do not reproduce it. Headphones exaggerate it. Untreated rooms lie about it constantly.
So you end up with a mix that sounds fine to you and boomy or completely empty to everyone else.
Bass and Kick Are One Problem
They occupy the same frequency range and they will fight unless you make a decision about who gets what.
The standard approach: give the kick the very low weight around 60 Hz and let the bass own the range just above it, around 80 to 100 Hz. Or flip it — bass takes the sub, kick takes the punch higher up. Either works. What does not work is both instruments boosted at the same frequency, which produces a low end that is loud but undefined.
"Boost the kick where you cut the bass. Cut the bass where you boost the kick."
The Moves That Matter
High-pass the bass around 30 Hz. There is nothing musical below that, just energy that eats headroom and makes your limiter work for no reason.
Boost around 80 Hz for weight, and around 700 Hz for string definition — that second one is what lets people hear the notes rather than just feeling a rumble. If it sounds muddy, dip around 250 Hz.
Compress it more firmly than most instruments: around 4:1 for 4 to 6 dB of gain reduction, attack around 15 to 20 ms so the pluck survives, release around 140 ms and steady. Bass needs to sit still. A bass that moves around in level makes the whole mix feel unstable.
Keep It Mono
Low frequencies should be centred. Stereo widening on bass causes phase problems that make the low end vanish on club systems, phone speakers and anything that sums to mono — which is a lot of real-world listening.
If your bass sounds huge in headphones and disappears on a speaker, this is almost always why. Check your mix in mono regularly.
Making It Audible on Small Speakers
A phone speaker physically cannot reproduce 80 Hz. So how do records still have audible bass on a phone?
Harmonics. Light saturation on the bass generates content in the upper range that your ear interprets as the fundamental even when the fundamental is not there. A little saturation is the difference between a bass that exists on laptops and one that does not.
Keep it subtle. You are not going for distortion, just enough harmonic content that the note is implied higher up the spectrum.
Free: the one-page quick reference
Compression starting points for every instrument plus the frequency map, on a single page you can keep open while you mix. Free — just tell me where to send it.
Get the Free Sheet →Want the actual numbers for every instrument?
I put together a cheat sheet with the full chain for each instrument — the exact EQ moves, compression ratio, attack, release and gain reduction, plus effects and a complete mastering chain. It is the reference I use every day at Darkstorm Studios. Works with any DAW and any plugins.
See the Cheat Sheet →How to Check Without Good Monitors
Listen on as many things as you can — car, phone, cheap earbuds, laptop. If the bass is right on all of them it is right. Reference a commercial track you know well in the same session and match roughly how much low end it has. Your room is lying to you, but a reference track is not.