Isolating sub bass vs. Layering sub bass

[Basic A]

Hey guys. Ive been lurking around for a while and i figured i'd finally create an account on here and get in touch with the community. Anyways, my question is pretty simple. Ive been really into resampling and frequency splitting for the past couple months, but I always wonder if I should add a separate sub bass underneath my mid bass sounds and filter the lows out of my mid bass, or if I should just keep the low end of my basses isolated with a filter and possibly beef it up a little. The song in my signature is an example of my question. Should i layer a seperate bass underneath, or should I keep it the way it is?

it depends on the patch really... do you have a decent sub to monitor on? try muting all your bands except the one you have the sub isolated on, and just listen to the sub... Hows it stand up next to a sine? Youd be surprised, Im a big proponent of the pure sine thing but alot of the time shit with harmonic content can sound really good... Also, creating your sub separately from your resampled sound is going to lead to different dynamics if your using a lot of complex lfo's and filters and stuff, sine waves are single frequency so you would have to copy the automation from your filters and stuff over to the volume/amplitude to have matching dynamics, a filter is going to just mute and unmute the sine wave.

Use your ears and your chest.

[amphibian]

btw is that an ant as your avatar? haha

[grooki]

btw is that an ant as your avatar? haha

it certainly is

[Altron]

Thanks for all the replies guys. Im still having trouble deciding though! Isolating the sub sounds heavenly the at cerain points in my track, but with the way my bass is structured, the sub goes crazy at parts and turns into mush. But if I decide to layer a sub in, wont it kind of be a hellish task to try and fit it into a puzzle of tons of different sounds doing weird pitch drops and noises? I read somewhere that layering the sub doesnt have to follow the mid bass note for note. Is this true?

[Augment]

I find it really annoying, particularly in my tracks but also in other peoples tracks, when there is a mid range sound playing over a sub that has got different asdr or lfo settings, so that they don't gel properly. They all play the same notes but it's obviously a completely seperate sub and no attempt to make it fit nicely with the mids.

For this reason I'm a convert to taking one sounds and routing it to seperate FX channels for processing to get all the required sounds out of one patch. Once they are unified, they sound, well, unified.

I agree with you, i want my sub to go as mad as the mid-range does, not just hold a note, while the mid-range is crazy as fuck.

[-[2]DAY_-]

Thanks for all the replies guys. Im still having trouble deciding though! Isolating the sub sounds heavenly the at cerain points in my track, but with the way my bass is structured, the sub goes crazy at parts and turns into mush. But if I decide to layer a sub in, wont it kind of be a hellish task to try and fit it into a puzzle of tons of different sounds doing weird pitch drops and noises? I read somewhere that layering the sub doesnt have to follow the mid bass note for note. Is this true?

It doesn't have to at all, but the thing is, its easier to make a track sound good when the sub mirrors the bassline. Its not so simple making it sit right if its not in perfect unison.
I like it when theres some tasteful sybcopation between sub and bassline, and more sustain on sub because, it takes a while longer for a great big sub bass wave to complete a cycle and reach your ears, so its less pleasing when its choppy.

[Cymatic Kicks]

I'll usually see where the kick hits and then remove a lot of that frequency from the bass using a spectrum analyzer and a lot of eq. Then I'll clean up the eq on the kick to have it not interfere with the bass around it much. Although I wonder how much cleaner/powerful it would sound making a completely separate sub track, hmm.

[-[2]DAY_-]

kick and bass should have little to do with whats coming out the woofers, imo. Not nothing to do with it, but regarding sub, this is not the realm of punchy kicks and harmonically rich bass.