That's how to mix bass on a record!

axisus

Just playing Transatlantic for the first time in ages (the Whirlwind), and the mix has superb clarity for all the instruments. The bass is beautifully clear. If you wanted to learn all the basslines you could pick them out really well. So many bands seem to bury the bass in the mix, I never understand why? Prime example being Dream Theater - you can never hear John Myung at all.

ThePrettyDamned

Totally agree.

Some bands, the bass is so important it needs to stick out a lot more - RHCP is a great example.  But in a lot of rock and metal, it's mixed really low.  

Myung is an incredible player, too, it seems a shame he doesn't get his limelight so much.  I always felt he just adds a bit more body to Petrucci's tone.

Cirrus

A lot of it is in the performance and arrangement - arrangement in particular being a lost art. It's so hard to get a bass sounding good when there's four tracks of guitar with tons of low and low mid energy, playing basically in the same range as most of the notes available to a bassist - sure, you can EQ them out the way but the harmonics are all still telling your ears that there's a huge jumble of notes down in a range where articulation isn't our ear's strong suit.

Then you've got kicks and toms that have to sound massive, snare that wants loads of meat, and pretty soon the only space left for the bass without totally compromising the rest of the mix is a little sub frequency push and the odd spot through the midrange where you can push out some harmonic distortion and pick/finger/fret buzz. Hey presto, a mix where the bass "works" but is purely perfunctory.

It's always a question of performance and arrangement.

Edit;

I also wonder if it's a symptom of modern mixing, which seems to want there to be as much noise as possible, all the time - it's about starting at maximum then shoving as much in as you can while still hearing everything. The mixes that have room for great bass are quite often more dynamic both in terms of overall volume and complexity of the mix at any given point.

guitarfishbay

There is a difference between mixed low, and mixed just for low end.

Sometimes it sounds better when the bass is contained in the low end - it isn't just a rock/metal thing, there is a lot of modern music (hip-hop, pop etc) where the bass (guitar or otherwise) is mostly just reinforcement and it sounds great - providing you listen on a system that reproduces those frequencies.

Often you can't pick out the bass guitar because it is tightly tracked/edited and stylistically mixed to double the guitar part but an octave below, but if you were to remove the bass you'd certainly know about it in many of those types of mixes.

axisus

I'd be interested to hear Dream Theater with the bass removed to see what the difference is. It's quite a common complaint that he is too low in the mix, it used to get aired a fair bit at the Petrucci forum when I used to hang out there.

guitarfishbay

I was more making a general comment than one about Dream Theater.

What albums are we talking about?

I've only got Images and Words, Octavarium, and Train of Thought.  From a quick check (random clicking of certain songs) I can hear Myung fine on my headphones (Audio Technica M50s).

As a random example - the 'Honor Thy Father' intro riff has plenty of bass mixed in, it would be really thin if it was removed.

Just found this, might give some idea (not really clear how much the uploader has done to the track but the bass is removed) -

With bass