How do you get sub bass on subs to work?

[daeMTHAFKNkim]

I followed tutorials & junk. Sine Square on massive. -12.00 for the pitch. I've tried to test it on my friends subs so many times and nothing bumps. Do I have to get the track mastered? What's going on? And if I get it mastered will the track sound amazing? And boost the subs too? Song below - I didn't put any sub/bass at all till the drop.
l
V
Check out this song I'm working on.
Soundcloud
No one checks out "Dub Tunes & Feedback" I swear.
P.S the intro is aight. I'm working on it still. The thing going into the drop is kind of bad. The tom hits into that voice "UH" by the end I'm probably gonna change....unless yoou guys like it

Feedback on the sub question please! And My song .

[JBE]

Has nothing to do with mastering and everything to do with mixing. Read the moneyshot thread at the top of this forum.

[Refuzed]

sine -12 should hit fine on a sub. maybe you've been listening on shit subs. try knockin it down to -24 .

[daeMTHAFKNkim]

sine -12 should hit fine on a sub. maybe you've been listening on shit subs. try knockin it down to -24 .

Does it depend which octave the notes are hitting? Do you put any compressors/filters/distortions on your subs?

[Refuzed]

if you play a sine wave at a high octave you're gonna have no bass, so yes it does matter. on my sub i normally put tape compression and lp at 100hz

[dynamat]

Maybe try freeing some space down he bottom end....tune your kicks to your sub bass with an analyser...or your ears if you can....make some frequency space in the lower ends aswell....because if you solo your bass...does it sound good...if so the problem might not be whats wrong with the bass, but whats killing it.

[elyhess]

these are all valid points, sub bass is pretty simple. definitely read the moneyshot thread and there are loads of tuts for sub bass

[hudson]

It's really up to the notes you're playing. Try to stay between c1 and c2 with your sub. It's also generally bad practice to process subs.

[bassinine]

octaves are almost meaningless when it comes to subs, because it really just depends on your synth/sampler.

basically, open a spectrum analyzer and look and see if your sub is hitting between 40-90hz. that's the range you want to be in normally.

[coogcoo]

It's really up to the notes you're playing. Try to stay between c1 and c2 with your sub. It's also generally bad practice to process subs.

y? compression and distortion make subs much fuller

[jrisreal]

play a clean sine wave at around 45 Hz without any other elements at all, just the sine. If that doesn't sound good, then the subwoofer sucks balls.

[JBE]

It's really up to the notes you're playing. Try to stay between c1 and c2 with your sub. It's also generally bad practice to process subs.

y? compression and distortion make subs much fuller

This, for the most part is false. Distortion does not make a sub fuller if what you want is just a sub. Distortion will cause harmonics at frequency ranges beyond that of the sub bass frequencies. It sounds fuller simply because it's using more frequencies. If what you want is sub bass, distorting it will do nothing to help you there. Compression however can be used. But as far as actual effects, it's better to just leave the subs alone. Reverbs, chorus, stereo shapers, delays, all of these, for the most part are bad ideas on subs. All of them can cause phasing which will destroy any power your sub might have had.

First thing you need to do is make sure you have the sub in the right spot. It was mentioned earlier, check to make sure the sub is peaking between 40-90hz. 90hz really is a little more on the higher side of that though. I would say try to make sure most of the power is between 40-70. If it trails off into the 90s it's not going to kill you, but your kicks will probably also have frequencies around the 90hz range as well so analyze them seperately to be more accurate.

Again, it's all about mixing. Even if you do end up having your sub peaking in the proper frequencies you could completely destroy it by having other instruments/samples also using those same frequencies. In most cases this is probably the main culprit.