Paul, do you have a different music reference? That YouTube video has a pretty off-center mix to the left channel. It makes it kind of hard to listen to.

For a list of reference recordings that aren't too crazy from a loudness standpoint, Bob Katz keeps a nice list on his website here: http://www.digido.com/media/honor-roll.html

I have a couple of those CDs - I have Lyle Lovett's Joshua Judges Ruth, Brand New Day by Sting.

On Sting's album, you get an opening earth-shattering low frequency effect, and then later in the opening track there's really great bass extension on the the bass that is emphasized with what might be a Djembe drum. Later in the CD, there's a country/western track, and all throughout a nice open mix of a wide variety of instruments.

On Lyle Lovett's CD - there's one track that just gives me chills - She's Already Made Up Her Mind. The ride cymbals in that track are probably the best single shot ride cymbals I've heard on a recording. The track also has plenty of bottom coming from several sources - but again, a very 'open' mix. The very next track "North Dakota" again has a very 'open' sound, but tons of stage depth, with the main vocal and acoustic guitar right in your face, some of the ride/bells on the cymbals very far 'back' in the mix, with just a perfect mix of the bass added in. This whole album is one of my favorite to listen to on my Westone ES5 in-ear monitors - sheer heaven in the ears - and I really don't like Lyle Lovett's voice all that much! It's a great album to listen to the artistry/mastery of George Massenburg, who was the engineer on the album.

If I was you I would make a list of reference recordings - taking some of them from Bob Katz's list that I linked above wouldn't hurt - there are examples there from nearly all styles.

Read Bob's reasons for posting the honor roll.

Mixing over headphones in a corner is not nearly as big of a deal as putting a sub in a corner and then mixing using the sub. You can over-emphasize the room modes and end up with quite weak sounding bass when you take the recording somewhere else for playback. If you place the sub in the corner (recommended for home theatre use) there's good and bad to that practice. If you can set the sub level while it's in the corner, with a bunch of reference recordings, you can probably do fine with your own mixes.

Just don't automatically assume that a subwoofer is going to fix the issue of weak bass in a mix.

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