Hip-hop lives or dies in two zones: the sub-bass where your 808s and kick sit (30–80 Hz), and the vocal presence band (2–5 kHz). Get either wrong and the track collapses. Muddy low end makes the beat weak on phones. A buried vocal makes the lyrics unintelligible. MixDiagnose tells you where these regions stand relative to genre benchmarks, so you fix the real problem instead of guessing.
30–60 Hz: The fundamental of most 808s. Too much and your mix falls apart on laptops; too little and the beat loses weight. We flag sub-bass buildup and tell you if you're in the sweet spot or mud.
60–150 Hz: Where kick and bass interact. Phase issues between kick and 808 create comb filtering that hollows out the low end — we catch these cancellations before they wreck your master.
2–5 kHz: Vocal intelligibility. The lead must cut through hats, snares, and samples. If it dips below the instrumental here, it vanishes on small speakers. We flag when it's losing.
8–12 kHz: Air and sheen. Too little sounds dull; too much fatigues. We measure your high-end shelf tilt so you know if you're in range.
808s with no EQ carve: Kick and 808 mask each other, and your low end turns to mush in a car. We identify masking in 40–120 Hz and report the overlap.
Vocals behind the beat: The vocal feels right soloed but gets swallowed by the full instrumental. We flag when it's 2+ dB below where hip-hop references sit.
Over-limiting: Smashing to -8 LUFS creates pumping and kills transient punch. We measure LUFS, true-peak, and dynamic range — you'll know if you're in the modern zone (-9 to -7) or crushing transients.
Blind widening: Widening the 808 kills mono compatibility — most hip-hop is heard on phones in mono. We flag elements that'll phase-cancel when collapsed.
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Diagnosis in under 60 seconds: loudness, spectral balance, masking, mono compatibility, and genre recommendations. Plain-English per-band explanations — "Your 808 at 55 Hz is 4.2 dB above the hip-hop reference." Not graphs you interpret yourself.