I’ve gain staged the drum group to -12 db and did the same with the bass.
But the bass is much too loud and to get it to the correct listening level the meter is showing -25db with the bass soloed. I must be doing something wrong somewhere but what?
Why do you think everything at -12 would make a balanced mix?
That’s not what gain staging is about.
Yes, I agree with @Grim. What exactly do you want to achieve? Do you want to use an emulation of an analogue effect on the drum bus and bass? Maybe you just want to have a reasonable starting point for mixing. Or do you want to level balance kick and drum?
How do you measure -12dB?
There are many different reasons. Don’t take it bad, these questions help to understand how things work and you will benefit from them 
I don’t “think everything at -12 would make a balanced mix” I’m just getting the starting levels on this particular track and making sure I have enough headroom for later.
Usually there is no issue but the bass appears massively louder for whatever reason on this project even though the master buss meter is telling me the level is around the -25db mark. I have no compression anywhere on any tracks at the moment.
Different frequencies can affect meters differently to ears. I just wouldn’t worry about it unless it causes you some actual problem when the mix starts coming together.
Grim, of course, and the first thing I did was to roll some bass off which didn’t appear to affect the meter readings, hence my thinking that I’ve set the track up in an unusual way for whatever reason. I may just reset the project as a test and see what happens but I was hoping there was an obvious error I’ve made that could be easily rectified.
Sorry, I thought you were a rookie…
Did you check the routings? Any sends/busses involved? Tried to disable all plugins? Might be a plugin involved with output gain control. Doesn’t have to be something with compression.
I thought I’d gone through everything Reco but I guess I’ll just reset and see what happens. If the volume issue is still there I’ll investigate the actual clip/track settings, if it’s resolved I’ll have to go through the settings bit by bit. Thanks anyway.
FFS, I’d left an envelope shaper on the drum group, duh.
All good now.
Glad you found it. More often than not it is something so simple that one is most likely to miss.