Sound & signal
Sub-bass
Sub-bass is the lowest band of a record, roughly below 60 Hz — the part a club feels through the floor rather than hears. It is where most of a track’s physical impact lives.
In practice
Sub is nearly inaudible on headphones and enormous on a rig, so it is the one band you cannot mix by ear alone.
The working assumption is that there is always more down there than you can hear. That is the argument for swapping the low end decisively rather than blending it, for trusting the channel meters as much as the monitors, and for checking a set on something with a real woofer before playing it out. Where our bass-weight reading helps is in flagging which records are carrying most of their mass down here — the catalog median is 88 and the scale is clipped at the top.
< 60 Hz
Roughly where sub sits
88
Median bass weight
443,242
Analysed tracks
Where these come from: The frequency band is a convention; the bass-weight figures are from the live catalog, measured on 11 August 2026 — and bass weight covers the whole low end, not sub alone. For what we can measure, see the full bass-weight distribution.
Why it matters
Sub is almost inaudible on headphones and laptop speakers and enormous on a club rig, which makes it the easiest thing in a mix to get catastrophically wrong while it sounds fine to you. A record that seems balanced in the booth can be a wall of undefined low end on the floor.
It is also the band with the least headroom. Two subs at once will not sound louder — they will sum into something shapeless, or partially cancel, and either way the room stops feeling the beat.
Frequently asked
What frequency is sub-bass?+
Conventionally below about 60 Hz, with the very bottom around 20–30 Hz. Most small speakers cannot reproduce any of it, which is why it disappears on laptops and headphones.
Why does my mix sound different in the club?+
Usually the sub. A big rig reproduces an octave of low end your monitors do not, so anything you could not hear at home arrives at full strength on the floor.
Should you cut sub-bass when mixing?+
Yes — it is the first thing to roll off on an incoming track and the last thing to bring up. Two subs at once produce mud rather than weight, with no upside.
Related terms
Bassline
The bassline is the low melodic part that moves underneath the drums. It carries the track’s harmony as much as its weight, which is why two of them at once clash in a way two melodies do not.
Kick
The kick is the low drum that states the beat — in most dance music, on every one of the four beats in a bar. It carries the pulse and most of the energy a floor actually feels.
Three-band EQ
A three-band EQ splits each channel into low, mid and high and gives you a knob for each. It is the primary tool for deciding which parts of two records are audible at any moment.
Headroom
Headroom is the gap between where your signal is sitting and the point where it distorts. It is the room left for the loud parts, and for whatever you do to the channel next.
Explore: Mixing guides · Bassline · Kill EQ · All DJ terms