Submitted by thewhippinpost on Wed, 29/11/2006 - 17:06.

Simple and quick one today: If you want a thumping bass, keep it centre-stage, together with the kick-drum.

Bass Central

By setting the panning of bass and kick-drum to the centre, you utilise the power of both right and left speakers equally, giving you more punch for your buck.

Of course, as with everything suggested in the world of mixing, creativity plays a part. This "rule" has seemingly become touted as golden (in the music-making press). I would argue certain differences (which may be visited upon another day), but if its face-thumping modern dance-type music you're creating, stick with it - it makes life much easier anyway (you don't really want to be fighting the bass for instrument space in the right channel for example).


I find if I put the bass

I find if I put the bass slight off centre and have the kick on zero panning works well. Sometimes I do the opposite and pan the kick drum slightly and have the bass on zero panning. I have experimented with the bass and I even tried two duplicate versions of the bass one panned to extreme left and the other panned extreme right with a 2ms delay on one side. It sounds okayish, but I would stick to using a pan value of zero to be safe as a general rule.