Tips for Making Sub and Kick Pop Even on Laptop Speakers

R

Rei Music

New member
Anyone got any tips for mixing sub and kick so that they really pop through on laptop speakers? I think that's something that really separates the top line stuff from the amateur. I remember reading somewhere that 40 mixed Drake's 'Headlines' solely for laptop speakers. They broke some rules but I thought it sounded dope, even if the vocals did lose some shine.

We used some sidechaining between sub and kick on our mix here, and kept a lot of the highs on the kick. What else could we do?

 
What you are after is how to mix & master.
Equalizers & correct effects as well as arrangement and instrument separation.
 
Quick tip: layer your low-end heavy kick drum with a click sound (not lowend heavy at all). That way, when the kick hits, the click will cut through as well to make it cut through
 
Harmonic boosting and/or harmonic saturation will help your low end presence on smaller speakers like laptops and smartphones.

One way to do it:

First, find the mid-point frequency of your bass. You can then multiply that frequency by 2, as a rough estimate on what the harmonic tone is.

Then, using a multi-band compressor, raise the dB on that harmonic tone.

If you don't mind a little saturation, you can really crank up the compression on that band.

Alternatively, Waves has a plugin called "MaxxBass". It's a plug-in made specifically for making low end more audible on multiple platforms.
 
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