Kick/Bass Scope: see whether kick and bass cancel, for free
Kick/Bass Scope is a free VST3 analyzer that draws your kick and your bass on top of each other, locked to your DAW's beat, and shows whether they add up or cancel each other. Tim Borchert built it under his Code Chaos Audio label for fast electronic music. The problem it shows is the same in a death metal or metalcore mix: two low-end sources fighting over the same moment.
Why kick/bass phase matters before mastering
Kick and bass share the lowest octave of a metal mix. Where they overlap, their waves either add up or partly cancel, and both cases change what the master can do:
- Cancelling: the low end loses energy exactly on the beat. Mastering EQ can only raise kick and bass together, which also raises everything that was already fine. The fix belongs in the mix: flip the bass polarity, shift the bass notes or adjust the kick sample. The scope's warning text suggests exactly that.
- Adding up: the sum gets louder than either part, and in mastering the limiter grabs those moments first. The scope shows the peak of kick, bass and sum per window in dBFS against an adjustable clip line, so you see how much headroom the low end really takes.
In metal the relationship changes every time the chain changes: a new kick sample, a different bass amp or cab, an extra filter. Check again after each of those, not only once at the start of the mix.
Routing in two minutes
- Put the scope on the bass track.
- Send the kick to its sidechain input.
- If your DAW cannot feed a sidechain into an effect, switch Input to Single input: route the kick panned hard left and the bass hard right to one bus and put the scope there.
- Pick a window of 1/4, 1/2, 1 bar or 2 bars. It follows the host tempo and bar position, and keeps running freely when the transport is stopped.
Your audio passes through untouched: the output is bit-for-bit identical to the input. That is why there is no audio demo on this page, there is nothing to hear. The two screenshots show what it measures.
At a glance
| Detail | Kick/Bass Scope |
|---|---|
| Price | Free on Gumroad, pay what you want |
| Format | VST3 + Standalone |
| Windows | Windows 10/11: VST3 + Standalone |
| macOS | Apple Silicon (arm64) only, no Intel build. VST3 + Standalone, not signed or notarized: macOS blocks it at first, allow it under System Settings → Privacy & Security. |
| AU / Logic Pro | No AU version, so Logic Pro is not supported. |
| Copy protection | No licence server, no login, no online check. |
| Display | Kick and bass in two colours, optional sum curve, ghost of the previous window, zoom up to +24 dB |
| Readouts | Peak per window in dBFS for kick, bass and sum, overlap time in ms |
| Clip line | Adjustable from -12 to 0 dBFS, default -0.3 dBFS |
| Correlation | -1 to +1, measured where both actually play, with a plain warning when they are out of phase |
| Presets | 13 factory presets (named for psytrance tempos, the windows work at any tempo your DAW sends) |
| Audio path | Bit-for-bit pass-through, checked in automated tests |
Checkout, payment and any applicable taxes are handled by Gumroad. Polished only links to it.
Tool, mix or master?
The scope tells you whether kick and bass work together. It does not tell you how the whole mix translates to earbuds, car speakers and streaming normalisation. That is what the written audio audit at Polished covers, including phase between kick, bass and guitars. See death metal mastering and metalcore and djent mastering.
Mastering at Polished starts at €79 per track, all prices incl. 19% VAT, pay after delivery if you like. Request an audio audit.
Kick/Bass Scope FAQ
Is Kick/Bass Scope really free?
Does it run on a Mac?
My DAW cannot route a sidechain into an effect. Can I still use it?
More tools
Get Kick/Bass Scope free.
Pay what you want, including nothing. The download happens on Gumroad, under Code Chaos Audio.