Get fatter bass when mixing and mastering using Kotelnikov GE

This is a trick for Kotelnikov GE that you can use for both mixing and mastering. It is especially useful for music where the kick drum is important and you want the compressor to bounce along with the kick. A common problem when doing this with a normal compressor is that the low end gets too compressed and the mix gets thinner. This trick will let you use compression on the full mix to get that bounce and stability while also keeping the low-end alive.

We’re going to use Kotelnikov GE from TDR to do this. This is because we need a feature called Frequency Dependent Ratio. Note that you need the GE version of Kotelnikov since the FDR feature is not available in the free version.

Setting up Kotelnikov GE

1. Set up the compressor for compressing the full mix. You would normally have something like up to 1 dB of gain reduction in a mastering situation, but it’s often good to exaggerate the settings initially to hear the effect and the artifacts.
2. Enable the FDR feature and press the Edit button to show the view where you can adjust it.
3. Set the shape to Shelf B, the frequency (FREQ) to 150 Hz and the amount (AMT) to 100%.

That’s the trick! You have now set up Kotelnikov GE to remove the compression completely for the lowest frequencies, and then gradually restore the original ratio for higher frequencies. The compressor will now react to the full signal as usual, but the lowest bass will not be affected at all by the compression.

Now you can let the compressor bounce along with the kick drum, while also letting the low end pass through uncompressed.

If you want to learn more details about this and also hear some examples of this trick in action then I recommend watching the video below!