The easy fix is to play the set list through your PA.....or actually any good speaker system. Even your studio speakers are good for this assuming they are good quality speakers and you can actually hear all the frequencies with them.

Bass heavy final mixes tend to come from folks using small sized cones and not having a sub. You turn up the bass to compensate and in a system capable of reproducing the low notes, it is overpowering.

If you are mixing for the PA, and only have small studio speakers (5' or less) then by all means mix using the PA speakers as reference.

In a similar way, folks who have nice 5" or 8" cone sized reference monitors and also use a sub in their studio can go in the other direction.... hearing lots of bottom and mixing the project "bass lite" as a result.

so, for now....

Listen and make notes in a note book as to what might be too low or too loud. After you play them all, go back to the ones that stick out and use gain reduction or increase to resolve the volume issue. EQ issues to remove too much bass will need to be fixed in the mix.


The differing volume levels come from inexperience and are caused by a number of factors. Having a good monitor system in your studio is critical and learning how to mix and what compression settings to use will play a major part in getting consistent levels.

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