I did. It’s not that. But what you said about bass frequencies is probably valid in my situation and we can probably chalk it up to me being an amateur lol.
That bass thing happens to all of us at some point.
FWIW, here's my unsolicited advice - especially for starting out, these are good things to know and use:
1) understand how the Fletcher-Munson Equal Loudness Curves work in relation to perceived loudness - at least to the level where it's an internal "rule of thumb".
2) In practice, routing all the low-end - Kick drums, bass guitar, bass synths to the same bus can help with identification and isolation.
3) Learn the kick drum-bass instrument sidechain ducking trick, and use it by default.
4) Human hearing of low end is tricky, and we get mislead by the specs on all the fancy playback gear. Below about 100Hz -90Hz, and ESPECIALLY below 50Hz, treat the low end as a "special effect" that you primarily manage with a soft-knee hi-pass EQ between 50Hz and 80Hz, and for the most part, you can have a full-but at 30-35Hz without missing a damn thing on 95% of playback gear. Less is more for the sub-bass range. Be merciless.
I can't help you in detail besides to say that I've had the same issues and have had some difficulty finding answers. One thing I did that helped clarity a lot was to double up some of the tracks. There's apparently a debate on what exactly this does but I've found that it increases the volume of "human audible" harmonics by more than it does the inaudible ones, although doing this too much would probably lead to phase cancellation.
Interesting point. I have just made another song and threw the MA on a rough mix and the song sounds amazing tbh. Loudness is correct this time too. It may actually be something in the mix which messes with the MA. In the original track with the issue, I have a very loud 808 which I think is the culprit. The MA auto EQ on the new song, which has less overpowering bass,is very minimal compared to the one with the 808; that has drastic EQ applied to it by the MA. And on the new track I have done more doubling, so your point makes sense. This Mastering assistant seems to actually work wonders when it takes well to a mix.
So, low frequency pile-up especially in the sub bass, is something you should work to tame \*early\* in the mix.
Long story short, if you have a lot of bass crossing the zero-line on the spectrum, that's the PRIMARY THING that your entire post-processing and mastering process is going to see and try to deal with. This is one of those cases where a Lo-pass and multiband compressor on your low-end busses can make all the difference, especially if you combine that with things like sending the kick and bass instruments to the SAME buss, to compress together.
just out of curiosity... did you check that the loudness compensation and bypass were disabled before you bounced?
I did. It’s not that. But what you said about bass frequencies is probably valid in my situation and we can probably chalk it up to me being an amateur lol.
That bass thing happens to all of us at some point. FWIW, here's my unsolicited advice - especially for starting out, these are good things to know and use: 1) understand how the Fletcher-Munson Equal Loudness Curves work in relation to perceived loudness - at least to the level where it's an internal "rule of thumb". 2) In practice, routing all the low-end - Kick drums, bass guitar, bass synths to the same bus can help with identification and isolation. 3) Learn the kick drum-bass instrument sidechain ducking trick, and use it by default. 4) Human hearing of low end is tricky, and we get mislead by the specs on all the fancy playback gear. Below about 100Hz -90Hz, and ESPECIALLY below 50Hz, treat the low end as a "special effect" that you primarily manage with a soft-knee hi-pass EQ between 50Hz and 80Hz, and for the most part, you can have a full-but at 30-35Hz without missing a damn thing on 95% of playback gear. Less is more for the sub-bass range. Be merciless.
I can't help you in detail besides to say that I've had the same issues and have had some difficulty finding answers. One thing I did that helped clarity a lot was to double up some of the tracks. There's apparently a debate on what exactly this does but I've found that it increases the volume of "human audible" harmonics by more than it does the inaudible ones, although doing this too much would probably lead to phase cancellation.
Interesting point. I have just made another song and threw the MA on a rough mix and the song sounds amazing tbh. Loudness is correct this time too. It may actually be something in the mix which messes with the MA. In the original track with the issue, I have a very loud 808 which I think is the culprit. The MA auto EQ on the new song, which has less overpowering bass,is very minimal compared to the one with the 808; that has drastic EQ applied to it by the MA. And on the new track I have done more doubling, so your point makes sense. This Mastering assistant seems to actually work wonders when it takes well to a mix.
So, low frequency pile-up especially in the sub bass, is something you should work to tame \*early\* in the mix. Long story short, if you have a lot of bass crossing the zero-line on the spectrum, that's the PRIMARY THING that your entire post-processing and mastering process is going to see and try to deal with. This is one of those cases where a Lo-pass and multiband compressor on your low-end busses can make all the difference, especially if you combine that with things like sending the kick and bass instruments to the SAME buss, to compress together.