Need advice on Sub Bass

[Nevs]

I am having difficulty getting my sub to balance well in the mix. It tends to overpower my mid range bass, or it's too quiet. Do most of you guys (Ableton users) stack your sub bass in the same instrument rack with your main bass patch, or do you add the sub bass in as a separate entity within the group but playing the same notes, maybe an octave lower? Also, should the sub be louder or quieter than the mid range bass?

Also for re-sampling a bass hit that I like, should I include sub bass in this recording or should I add that in afterwards?

Some advice in general on working with sub bass would be helpful as it seems to be the hardest part for me at the moment in getting a decent mix-down.

[Phatscout]

My Sub is usually just a separate channel away from all the other bass parts, so it's not even in the same group (nor the same rack.) 90% of the time it's usually just a sine wave playing the same notes as my mid/high bass (usually an octave lower but again, that's personal choice) lightly sidechained to the kick (though not as much as my midrange.) The actual volume of the sub relative to the mid-range is, again your choice, though frankly I'd just load up a song I think has a good mixdown and mix using the song as a reference. Based on me peeking through your SoundCloud though, I'd say you should raise the Sub volume up a bit, but again that's just me so take that with a grain of salt.

[Nevs]

My Sub is usually just a separate channel away from all the other bass parts, so it's not even in the same group (nor the same rack.) 90% of the time it's usually just a sine wave playing the same notes as my mid/high bass (usually an octave lower but again, that's personal choice) lightly sidechained to the kick (though not as much as my midrange.) The actual volume of the sub relative to the mid-range is, again your choice, though frankly I'd just load up a song I think has a good mixdown and mix using the song as a reference. Based on me peeking through your SoundCloud though, I'd say you should raise the Sub volume up a bit, but again that's just me so take that with a grain of salt.

Thanks! There isn't much sub in the song in my signature, although my monitors don't have great sub response either, so it may be getting near time to upgrade them. I believe the sub bass was about 3 or 4 db louder than the mid-range for that tune.

[peaka]

My Sub is usually just a separate channel away from all the other bass parts, so it's not even in the same group (nor the same rack.) 90% of the time it's usually just a sine wave playing the same notes as my mid/high bass (usually an octave lower but again, that's personal choice) lightly sidechained to the kick (though not as much as my midrange.) The actual volume of the sub relative to the mid-range is, again your choice, though frankly I'd just load up a song I think has a good mixdown and mix using the song as a reference. Based on me peeking through your SoundCloud though, I'd say you should raise the Sub volume up a bit, but again that's just me so take that with a grain of salt.

In addition to FatScout's recommendation, you may want to cut some of the other frequencies out. Sometimes when sounds are fighting for space, it can make the mix sound less than perfect.

For Sub bass - Cut everything below 40 or 50 hz and also anything above 100- 120 hz. Keep 50-100 hz
For Mid - Cut everything below 100-150 hz. Frequencies from 300 and above you can cut to taste depending on what bass you're using. The money frequency is just over 200 hz

Just my practice and I'm sure many will argue with the figures I've mentioned above.

Maybe this will help as well http://cdn.mos.musicradar.com/images/le ... _dsktp.jpg

[SunkLo]

It tends to overpower my mid range bass

You're right on track then

Usually my bass will come from one instance of FM8 and then have a pre-fader send to another track for saturation and highpassing. I just play with the levels of the two tracks to get them to sit right and then buss both of them to another bass track for some extra compression and EQ.

[Triphosphate]

My Sub is usually just a separate channel away from all the other bass parts, so it's not even in the same group (nor the same rack.) 90% of the time it's usually just a sine wave playing the same notes as my mid/high bass (usually an octave lower but again, that's personal choice) lightly sidechained to the kick (though not as much as my midrange.) The actual volume of the sub relative to the mid-range is, again your choice, though frankly I'd just load up a song I think has a good mixdown and mix using the song as a reference. Based on me peeking through your SoundCloud though, I'd say you should raise the Sub volume up a bit, but again that's just me so take that with a grain of salt.

In addition to FatScout's recommendation, you may want to cut some of the other frequencies out. Sometimes when sounds are fighting for space, it can make the mix sound less than perfect.

For Sub bass - Cut everything below 40 or 50 hz and also anything above 100- 120 hz. Keep 50-100 hz
For Mid - Cut everything below 100-150 hz. Frequencies from 300 and above you can cut to taste depending on what bass you're using. The money frequency is just over 200 hz

Just my practice and I'm sure many will argue with the figures I've mentioned above.

Maybe this will help as well http://cdn.mos.musicradar.com/images/le ... _dsktp.jpg

I'm not really looking to argue. If that's the way you want to do it fine, but you're advocating that he cut at 50hz and then proceed to show him a chart that shows that a sub in a club system goes as low as 20hz. 50hz is too high, IMO. Especially considering you need more power for lower frequencies to be percieved at the same volume.

[peaka]

My Sub is usually just a separate channel away from all the other bass parts, so it's not even in the same group (nor the same rack.) 90% of the time it's usually just a sine wave playing the same notes as my mid/high bass (usually an octave lower but again, that's personal choice) lightly sidechained to the kick (though not as much as my midrange.) The actual volume of the sub relative to the mid-range is, again your choice, though frankly I'd just load up a song I think has a good mixdown and mix using the song as a reference. Based on me peeking through your SoundCloud though, I'd say you should raise the Sub volume up a bit, but again that's just me so take that with a grain of salt.

In addition to FatScout's recommendation, you may want to cut some of the other frequencies out. Sometimes when sounds are fighting for space, it can make the mix sound less than perfect.

For Sub bass - Cut everything below 40 or 50 hz and also anything above 100- 120 hz. Keep 50-100 hz
For Mid - Cut everything below 100-150 hz. Frequencies from 300 and above you can cut to taste depending on what bass you're using. The money frequency is just over 200 hz

Just my practice and I'm sure many will argue with the figures I've mentioned above.

Maybe this will help as well http://cdn.mos.musicradar.com/images/le ... _dsktp.jpg

I'm not really looking to argue. If that's the way you want to do it fine, but you're advocating that he cut at 50hz and then proceed to show him a chart that shows that a sub in a club system goes as low as 20hz. 50hz is too high, IMO. Especially considering you need more power for lower frequencies to be percieved at the same volume.

Oh wow, I didn't even notice and valid point Trip.

The chart is a launch pad more than a bible. To be honest, I don't really like ANY charts as every track will inevitably be different and will require different cuts, boosts, etc. I was simply giving him an aid to help someone get familiar with frequency ranges and where things, more or less, should be placed. I may be wrong but I've read that the audible frequencies for a human ear is 20 - 20,000 hz. 20-50 hz you feel more than hear so on a lot of systems you won't even notice if you've cut from 20 or 50. Maybe on monitors you can tell but not in most clubs.

[SunkLo]

A nice clean and tight sub under 50hz will make a difference on a good system. Cut it and you'll feel that loss of weight. That said, an unrestrained bass that's just muddy rumble below that point should be trimmed in favor of headroom.

[Nevs]

In addition to FatScout's recommendation, you may want to cut some of the other frequencies out. Sometimes when sounds are fighting for space, it can make the mix sound less than perfect.

For Sub bass - Cut everything below 40 or 50 hz and also anything above 100- 120 hz. Keep 50-100 hz
For Mid - Cut everything below 100-150 hz. Frequencies from 300 and above you can cut to taste depending on what bass you're using. The money frequency is just over 200 hz

Just my practice and I'm sure many will argue with the figures I've mentioned above.

Maybe this will help as well http://cdn.mos.musicradar.com/images/le ... _dsktp.jpg

I've had that chart in my music folder for a few months, its a very handy reference

By "money frequency" do you mean the one you would typically want to boost slightly, because the mid range typically sounds best at/around 200 hz? I'll have to give that a try!

A nice clean and tight sub under 50hz will make a difference on a good system. Cut it and you'll feel that loss of weight. That said, an unrestrained bass that's just muddy rumble below that point should be trimmed in favor of headroom.

Really? Most of what I have read says you should roll of your track at 60hz, as anything below this will muddy up the track and eat up headroom. Although rolling off doesn't mean it cuts out the sound entirely, just makes it less audible. Any thoughts on that?



Also, does anyone have anything for my re-sampling question? What volume should I re-sample (record) a sound at and should I include the sub bass in this process? What I've been doing is, bumping my group channel volume back up to 0, so the sound is almost peaking, then recording it, and dropping the volume back down. Would this be best practice? can I record it at the reduced volume? Will it make a difference? Do I include a sub?

Thanks for the awesome responses, I love this forum, you guys are really helpful

[skimpi]

A nice clean and tight sub under 50hz will make a difference on a good system. Cut it and you'll feel that loss of weight. That said, an unrestrained bass that's just muddy rumble below that point should be trimmed in favor of headroom.

Really? Most of what I have read says you should roll of your track at 60hz, as anything below this will muddy up the track and eat up headroom. Although rolling off doesn't mean it cuts out the sound entirely, just makes it less audible. Any thoughts on that?

Are you mad bruv?! do you not want any bass in your track? lol

[Brothulhu]

I roll off at about 20Hz, if I rolled off at 60Hz I wouldn't have a sub :s

[SunkLo]

Yeah 60hz is much too high for most cases. It really depends on the track though, because on say a rock band, not much useful shit is below 60. But if you're doing a deep sub roller, best believe you want those low lows.

What are you resampling for? If you're resampling the mid bass with the sub included, that removes your ability to treat them as separate entities which you probably don't want. However I get the feeling like you're resampling because you think it's a necessary step or that it does something to the sound? If that's the case, stop it. If you are actually resampling for a valid reason, think of whether you'd want your sub included in that process. It can be useful for certain nonlinear processes. For instance, including the sub before distorting will produce upper harmonics of the sub. Even if you highpass the clean sub out afterwards, the harmonics will still be present in the midbass signal.

In most cases, assuming your track gain staging is alright, you can just bump the fader to 0dB and bounce that. If it's a lot quieter you can gain it up with the trim output on the last plugin in your chain or add a gain plugin. If it's clipping you obviously didn't get the gain staging right. You really only have to worry about making use of the dynamic range of your bit depth. If you're running at 24 bit you've got lots of dynamic range and would only see a quality decrease if you repeatedly bounced clips at a super low volume. So basically, run 24 bit audio, get it relatively close to 0dB. No need to sweat the few dBs of lost dynamic range, you're making compressed electronic music anyway.

[Nevs]

I roll off at about 20Hz, if I rolled off at 60Hz I wouldn't have a sub :s

Sorry I meant 30hz not 60 hz

Yeah 60hz is much too high for most cases. It really depends on the track though, because on say a rock band, not much useful shit is below 60. But if you're doing a deep sub roller, best believe you want those low lows.

What are you resampling for? If you're resampling the mid bass with the sub included, that removes your ability to treat them as separate entities which you probably don't want. However I get the feeling like you're resampling because you think it's a necessary step or that it does something to the sound? If that's the case, stop it. If you are actually resampling for a valid reason, think of whether you'd want your sub included in that process. It can be useful for certain nonlinear processes. For instance, including the sub before distorting will produce upper harmonics of the sub. Even if you highpass the clean sub out afterwards, the harmonics will still be present in the midbass signal.

In most cases, assuming your track gain staging is alright, you can just bump the fader to 0dB and bounce that. If it's a lot quieter you can gain it up with the trim output on the last plugin in your chain or add a gain plugin. If it's clipping you obviously didn't get the gain staging right. You really only have to worry about making use of the dynamic range of your bit depth. If you're running at 24 bit you've got lots of dynamic range and would only see a quality decrease if you repeatedly bounced clips at a super low volume. So basically, run 24 bit audio, get it relatively close to 0dB. No need to sweat the few dBs of lost dynamic range, you're making compressed electronic music anyway.

thanks! I wasn't implying that it did anything for the sound, what I mean is, if I have a particular bass hit that I've created in a tune and I want to save that hit for use in a future project, Rather than recreating everything. Also I sometimes like to sample it and pitch it around and see what other sounds I can make using something I've already created, I've heard a lot of artists do this to produce their sounds and sometimes it produces awesome results.

[SunkLo]

Yeah in that case just get it relatively close to 0dB.

20-30hz is a much smaller range, only being about half an octave. Whether it's useful in your particular track is circumstantial. If it's not contributing anything, trim it in favor of headroom. But if you have bass notes actually hitting down there, by all means leave it in. A pure 30hz sine will still be pretty potent, whereas 30hz rumble from an unfiltered kick drum won't add much. Ideally you'd be able to test your mixes on a rudebwoy club system to make sure the lows translate.

Listen to this, it's got subs around 30hz:

[peaka]

In addition to FatScout's recommendation, you may want to cut some of the other frequencies out. Sometimes when sounds are fighting for space, it can make the mix sound less than perfect.

For Sub bass - Cut everything below 40 or 50 hz and also anything above 100- 120 hz. Keep 50-100 hz
For Mid - Cut everything below 100-150 hz. Frequencies from 300 and above you can cut to taste depending on what bass you're using. The money frequency is just over 200 hz

Just my practice and I'm sure many will argue with the figures I've mentioned above.

Maybe this will help as well http://cdn.mos.musicradar.com/images/le ... _dsktp.jpg

I've had that chart in my music folder for a few months, its a very handy reference

By "money frequency" do you mean the one you would typically want to boost slightly, because the mid range typically sounds best at/around 200 hz? I'll have to give that a try!

Not necessarily boost but just make sure when you look at a spectrum analyzer, it's got some juice at 200-250. Too much might make it muddy but if you get it right the "power/overall fullness" will start to come out.

A nice clean and tight sub under 50hz will make a difference on a good system. Cut it and you'll feel that loss of weight. That said, an unrestrained bass that's just muddy rumble below that point should be trimmed in favor of headroom.

Really? Most of what I have read says you should roll of your track at 60hz, as anything below this will muddy up the track and eat up headroom. Although rolling off doesn't mean it cuts out the sound entirely, just makes it less audible. Any thoughts on that?



Also, does anyone have anything for my re-sampling question? What volume should I re-sample (record) a sound at and should I include the sub bass in this process? What I've been doing is, bumping my group channel volume back up to 0, so the sound is almost peaking, then recording it, and dropping the volume back down. Would this be best practice? can I record it at the reduced volume? Will it make a difference? Do I include a sub?

Thanks for the awesome responses, I love this forum, you guys are really helpful

I'm not sure if there's a right answer but what I do is, have a bass buss that I send all bass sounds to. I find when I do this, the sounds I use for a bassline sound more cohesive due to the fact that all the sounds are being processed by the same plugins, compression, eq, etc

Then I split that signal twice, so at the end you'll have 3 channels playing the same output. 1 for Sub, 1 for mids and the last for the highs. Again, I don't know if this is the most efficient way of doing things but I find this method has some advantages to adding a simple sine wav playing the same notes as your basslines. Things like pitch bends, sidechains, etc will already be done for your sub and highs without having to mess around with your sin wave trying to match your already existing bassline.

Also, spread the high slightly to make it sound more full. Dopler from Waves does this very well.

[peaka]

In addition to FatScout's recommendation, you may want to cut some of the other frequencies out. Sometimes when sounds are fighting for space, it can make the mix sound less than perfect.

For Sub bass - Cut everything below 40 or 50 hz and also anything above 100- 120 hz. Keep 50-100 hz
For Mid - Cut everything below 100-150 hz. Frequencies from 300 and above you can cut to taste depending on what bass you're using. The money frequency is just over 200 hz

Just my practice and I'm sure many will argue with the figures I've mentioned above.

Maybe this will help as well http://cdn.mos.musicradar.com/images/le ... _dsktp.jpg

I've had that chart in my music folder for a few months, its a very handy reference

By "money frequency" do you mean the one you would typically want to boost slightly, because the mid range typically sounds best at/around 200 hz? I'll have to give that a try!

Not necessarily boost but just make sure when you look at a spectrum analyzer, it's got some juice at 200-250. Too much might make it muddy but if you get it right the "power/overall fullness" will start to come out.

A nice clean and tight sub under 50hz will make a difference on a good system. Cut it and you'll feel that loss of weight. That said, an unrestrained bass that's just muddy rumble below that point should be trimmed in favor of headroom.

Really? Most of what I have read says you should roll of your track at 60hz, as anything below this will muddy up the track and eat up headroom. Although rolling off doesn't mean it cuts out the sound entirely, just makes it less audible. Any thoughts on that?



Also, does anyone have anything for my re-sampling question? What volume should I re-sample (record) a sound at and should I include the sub bass in this process? What I've been doing is, bumping my group channel volume back up to 0, so the sound is almost peaking, then recording it, and dropping the volume back down. Would this be best practice? can I record it at the reduced volume? Will it make a difference? Do I include a sub?

Thanks for the awesome responses, I love this forum, you guys are really helpful

I'm not sure if there's a right answer but what I do is, have a bass buss that I send all bass sounds to. I find when I do this, the sounds I use for a bassline sound more cohesive due to the fact that all the sounds are being processed by the same plugins, compression, eq, etc

Then I split that signal twice, so at the end you'll have 3 channels playing the same output. 1 for Sub, 1 for mids and the last for the highs. Again, I don't know if this is the most efficient way of doing things but I find this method has some advantages to adding a simple sine wav playing the same notes as your basslines. Things like pitch bends, sidechains, etc will already be done for your sub and highs without having to mess around with your sin wave trying to match your already existing bassline.

Also, spread the high slightly to make it sound more full. Dopler from Waves does this very well.

By "money" Frequency, not necessarily boost but just make sure that when you look at a spectrum analyzer that there's some juice at 200-300 hz. Too much might make it muddy but if you get it right the "power/overall fullness" will start to come out. For Fullness, I think this is a very important frequency.

[dca]

We use ableton and depending on the track we will have a 2 or 3 channel Group with a Sub channel and a seperate channel for the mids and highs.. or a 3 channel Group with [sub/mids/highs] each in its own channel. just depends on the sound youre going for and what return tracks are set up.

that group gets compressed slightly as well