Mastering Bass with Low End Focus
New to Ozone 9, Low End Focus is an industry-first bass shaping tool to help minimize muddiness, increase clarity and address common low end issues, and more.
Low End Focus is a new module in Ozone 9 Advanced designed to take the low end of your track and minimize muddiness, increase clarity, and address common low end issues that may not be easily mitigated with traditional tools, such as EQ or Dynamics. Learn more about the new module in the video below.
We designed Low End Focus to provide you with a simple, surgical tool that enables you to address content within your chosen low end frequency range (between 20Hz–300Hz). The signal in this range can be complex: the growl of saxophones, the weight of a bass guitar, the body of an acoustic guitar, and the punch of a kick drum all compete in this territory.
With Low End Focus, you can control what’s in focus by either preserving the most prominent spectral content and lowering the less prominent content, or by bringing both extremes closer together for your low end. Low End Focus can operate both in stereo, and mid/side mode, offering more flexibility when you might need it.
The Contrast Slider
Adjust the slider to set the amount of contrast processing applied to your audio. The Contrast Slider processing can behave in two ways: adjusting the slider higher means more processing (you will increase the contrast), while adjusting lower means less processing (you will decrease the contrast).
Punchy and Smooth Modes
Low End Focus offers two modes, Punchy and Smooth.
The Smooth mode offers a more subtle effect that helps to preserve the integrity of the original recording. It’s great for clarifying elements like 808s and bass synths. In the example below, hear a bass guitar in a pop track before and after Low End Focus’ Smooth mode was applied. This gives it more body and presence than it had before, lifting it from the back and adding warmth to the whole track.
The Punchy mode offers an aggressive and exaggerated effect that emphasizes the contrast Low End Focus applies. You’ll want to choose Punchy to accentuate the more percussive transient elements of the low end, like kicks and the bottom of snares.
Conclusion
Low End Focus is a first-of-its-kind tool, capable of imparting clarity, presence, and contrast into the toughest of mixes. It helps tackle challenging low end moments that EQ and compression just can’t handle. Learn more about what else is new in Ozone 9.
