How can you tell when you have too much bass?

Question

I have a fairly decent pair of ears, but not quite trained enough to recognize when I have turned up the bass too loud or too quiet while playing back songs on my awesome surround sound system on my PC. How can I tell?

I wish there was a program or something that tells you when you have too much of a certain frequency. As you can tell; I have ZERO mixing experience, so please be kind towards my ignorance. lol

Answer 1

haha...Opk.

Well, if your computer is vibrating, you probably have too much. It's more about what sounds good to you....so crank it up or down how you like it.

Answer 2

Home theater systems have adjustments. You buy a Radio Shack SPL meter and adjust things like this:

- Get the main speakers to produce 75 db with test noise

- Get the subwoofer to produce 83 db with test noise

Once you do this - the bass and other sounds now track up/down with the main volume, but produce the correct mix of volumes to compensate for your room size, seating distance, etc.

To learn more, buy/netflix a copy of "Avia" or "Digital Video Essentials". These DVD's have the test tones you need and a tutorial on how to use them to calibrate your speakers.

The instructions are for a generic AV receiver  - you will have to find the control panel for sound in your PC that lets you add/subtract volume to the center, left-rear, right-rear, subwoofer.  Then fire the test tones and adjust things with the sound meter.

Answer 3

All your bass are belong to us.

Answer 4

I too have an awesome surround system for my computer. z-5500 speaker system and 10 inch woofer.

I know what you're saying when you say that you havent got a trained ear so you cant really tell when you have too much bass. But, in saying that, i'm sure you know what you like in terms of bass so try this.I reckon you should turn the bass up to max and then use your speakers for a number of different things (such as gaming, computer movie's, dvd movies and all types of music). Then, if you like your current level of bass leave the setting at max.

If you think things would sound better with less bass then turn the setting down a bit and again, listen to how it sounds when you run different things.

Repeat this process till you have a bass setting to your liking. Different people prefer different levels of bass so you just need to find YOUR favourite level, not some level determined by a sound expert who knows nothing about your taste in bass.

Answer 5

If your walls are cracking and your house is beginning to decay, it might be a little to high.

Best way to dial it in is with a sound pressure level meter. You can get a cheap one at Radio Shack. (40 bucks I think)

Next get a pink noise generator. There are several free ones, or at least free trials, available for download:

http://www.mymusictools.com/download/pin...

Play the pink noise and use the meter to equalize your speakers to each other and then your bass to your speakers.

The same meter will work in your living room if you have surround in there.