Strange Sub Bass Issue...

[SunkLo]

Lately my headphones are broken and sometimes cut out the mid channel if the cable isn't in the right spot. So I listened to that example the first time barely being able to hear the sub. I figured you just bounced it super quiet.

It sounds like a sync problem. I'd set the lfo for the 1/8 patch to restart and adjust the phase of the lfo by dragging the waveform.

And I'm pretty sure I hear stereo sub frequencies in your mid bass. Throw on an EQ on the Pro Tools channel where your midbass is coming in and pull up the low cut.

[halifaxer12]

Can you explain what the restart even does? I usually have it on, so I guess I'll turn it back on again. And when you say adjust the phase of the lfo, you mean drag the waveform in Massive? I tried doing that, I'll mess with it again.

Edit: I slapped on a high pass EQ preset in Pro Tools, and I'm resampling the mid into Reason now.

[SunkLo]

Restart just resets the phase of the LFO every time a new note plays. So if it's midway through a cycle and you play a different note, the LFO goes back to the start of its cycle. It can make stuff sound wonky if you're playing a lot of syncopated notes since the LFO starts when the note-on midi event happens. If the note is out of time, the rest of the LFO will be as well.

If the LFO was previously set to 1/12 and gets switched to 1/8 it might not restart perfectly causing sync issues.

You can drag the LFO waveform so the highest part of the sine wave is at the start. But it might sound better if you drag it a bit to the right, depending on the phase of your mid vibrato. It could just be that the mid vibrato needs to be restarted via midi (dunno if Reason can do that) A lot of times if I'm trying to get an LFO timing right, I'll program a bar of hihats that play at the speed I want the LFO to be at. Then I have a reference for what's too slow or what's too fast compared to the 1/8th note hihat ticks.

As for high passing, any EQ should have a highpass/lowcut filter built in. Use EQ3 or whatever the stock EQ plugin in Pro Tools is.

[halifaxer12]

The high pass really helped a lot! and I think I'm going to keep the restart on. They are flowing together well now. Should I do the same high pass for the first bass line as well?

[halifaxer12]

I wish I knew more about these minor technical details. Like when I should use high pass or low pass, etc.

[SunkLo]

Edit: I slapped on a high pass EQ preset in Pro Tools, and I'm resampling the mid into Reason now.

You don't have to resample. That's still just putting the EQ before all the processing you do in Reason. You want the EQ at the end of the chain.

I'm assuming you bounced your audio in protools, sent it to reason for processing and then either bounced it again and imported it in PT or rewired? If you bounced it from Reason, whatever channel in PT you imported it back onto, put an EQ there. Or if you're rewiring Reason into PT, put the EQ on the rewire channel.

The high pass really helped a lot! and I think I'm going to keep the restart on. They are flowing together well now. Should I do the same high pass for the first bass line as well?

Yep. Most producers highpass pretty much everything. Unless something absolutely requires bass frequencies, they should be cut out to make room for your sub. Otherwise you just get layers of shit stacked on top of each other.

You'll learn all this stuff with experience. Read the production bible sticky, pretty sure it has some info on mixing and EQ.

[halifaxer12]

Yea I'm gonna start high passing most of my synths now, great idea. No I basically used the high pass on the original mid synth in Massive/Pro Tools then bounced it out to desktop and resampled back into Reason. It sounds right now, no sloppiness. Too much high pass can't be good either though because then the synth will sound too thin. Ya I'll read up on it, I just need to improve on my mixing/mastering/eq. Thanks a lot for helping me out this long. I should get back to studying for my finals lol

[SunkLo]

Yeah you gotta fine tune the highpass. You can also lowpass the sub if you're running it through a tube saturation plugin or anything else that adds upper harmonics. How isolated everything is comes down to taste and is dependent on the circumstances of each individual mix.

[halifaxer12]

Word, very true. Thanks for the helpful input man.

[SunkLo]

[bkwsk]

Glad to hear you worked it out. You might wanna watch out for that tuning thing though. If you have one oscillator set at 23.00 that means it's playing a major seventh above the root note which will be out of key depending on what note the bass plays. If I were you I'd use the fine tuning instead. You can double the top oscillator and set them at 24.50 and 23.50 or something. Then there will still be a semi-tones worth of dissonance there to create the beating effect but the average of the two oscillators will be at 24.00 which will make it sound more in tune. In the end, if it sounds good it is right, but you may run into some unexpected issues down the line when you play different bass notes if you're still using only the coarse tuning.

Straight on the money. SunkLo's posts are some of the most insightful, useful and informed ones in this forum. I just wanted to say this. Very nice work dude.