What's up with lousy bass on classic rock recordings?

@dmac67

Baba O Riley

I listened in two rooms off same system Cambridge Evo 150 to kef ls50 metas + sub in smaller 12x12 room and in adjacent much larger L shaped room with more full range Ohm F5s, no sub.

In both cases the track starts to roll off steeply below 50-60 hz. When Entwhistle strikes the bass notes during the main riff there is a peak again in the 50-60 hz range, but the same rolloff below that. There is some action down to below 30hz but not much that one would hear. Great tune! Tasteful but limited use of electric bass helps make the main riff hit home and keeps things rolling. That’s about it. No pipe organs……😉

Another thing that helps manage expectations in regards to how recordings sound is to study the frequency range of musical instruments. There are charts on the internet that show this and I have one hanging on my wall.

16-60 hz is considered sub bass. You feel this more than hear it. Bass extends to 250 hz.

Other than synthesizers, no instruments including drums commonly used in rock music do anything below 40hz. Even a tympani drum used in orchestras only goes down to 60hz.

So there is a lot of bass happening actually on Baba O Riley but only between 50 and 250 hz. It’s mixed in with all the rest pretty reasonably I would say. It prevents the recording from sounding “thin”. To the contrary, there is a lot going on there in the bass region up to 250 hz. Just enough! So bravo….the engineers did a nice job!  Very interesting!

@mapman Thanks this is really interesting.

You're tagging someone else though I'm macg19 and your tagging dmac67 

@macg19 thanks.

One correction. Piano is commonly used in some rock music. A good quality standard 88 key piano can pretty much do it all. The lowest notes can reach under 20hz and the highest range up to 16khz

On Tidal you might find my playlist

audiophile bass tracks 01

Just a small selection of nice songs with fine recorded bass.

I will build on this. Like up to a thousand songs. A little for everyone I hope.

Not much classical hard rock though of obvious reasons….