Solid Sub Bass

[deadly_habit]

think out the box what havent you seen or have not seen

saw 'Moon' the other day. worth a watch.

seen, loved it, and sampled it

[dj0045]

FWIW that's not the point at all - pretty much the opposite in fact. It's that if you've got a normal bass following the same notes as the sub but an octave up, there's no real point adding subtle extra harmonics to your sub because those harmonics are already there a lot louder in the other bass. In other words, by saturating your sine wave sub you're just transferring a bit of power from the sub to the mid-bass. Which might have a good effect on your bass sound as a whole, but isn't doing anything to give you a more solid sub.

Not true at all - or at least not what I'm suggesting at all. What I'm talking about is transferring sub to more sub. I'm talking about spreading your sub frequency out so that it takes up more space than one specific frequency. You can saturate that sine all you want (or even better sine?+saw?+square?+triangle?), and when you run it through a filter afterward, if it is set correctly you aren't going to start getting more mid range - unless you use a really shitty filter (not even a good free one would have that problem). Do it too much and you get mud, do it right and you get huge sub-bass.

Whatever though, you guys keep doing it your way, I'll keep doing it mine.

[staticcast]

Whatever though, you guys keep doing it your way, I'll keep doing it mine.

Good plan dude....

Look, nobody here is denying that you can make a lovely sounding sub using some harmonics other than the fundamental. I do it all the time. But I maintain -- and am confident that I'd be backed up by most of the "pros" whose sub bass you seem to admire so much -- that to say "you can't make a good sub using only a sine" is simply bullshit. You can make a sub bass with a pure sine, or you can saturate and filter it, or you can do whatever you want..... you just get a different sound.

EDIT: Go stand in the middle of the Berghain dancefloor between four of the biggest Funktion One stacks you've ever seen in a club. Then listen to a 50 Hz sine wave and a slightly saturated/filtered sine, and come back to me with which one you think packs a bigger punch. There's a reason 808s sound so beefy on a big system (even if they're a bit anaemic on a lacklustre system), and it's because the tail end is a sine wave, no more, no less.

[dj0045]

Whatever though, you guys keep doing it your way, I'll keep doing it mine.

Good plan dude....

Look, nobody here is denying that you can make a lovely sounding sub using some harmonics other than the fundamental. I do it all the time. But I maintain -- and am confident that I'd be backed up by most of the "pros" whose sub bass you seem to admire so much -- that to say "you can't make a good sub using only a sine" is simply bullshit. You can make a sub bass with a pure sine, or you can saturate and filter it, or you can do whatever you want..... you just get a different sound.

EDIT: Go stand in the middle of the Berghain dancefloor between four of the biggest Funktion One stacks you've ever seen in a club. Then listen to a 50 Hz sine wave and a slightly saturated/filtered sine, and come back to me with which one you think packs a bigger punch. There's a reason 808s sound so beefy on a big system (even if they're a bit anaemic on a lacklustre system), and it's because the tail end is a sine wave, no more, no less.

Fair enough, and there is a reason why some of the highest selling sample packs of all time have been 808s saturated in different ways, from tape compression, to running them through valves, etc... etc... There is also a reason why so many people spend so much money to get analog external gear to add saturation to their songs.

As for the pros, who knows what they do. The only thing I know for sure is they all do things their own way. Who's to say what they use to make sub. And who cares. I judge by my ears alone, and to me pure/nearly pure sine subs generally sound unprofessional, and thin. Whereas professional tracks generally sound harmonically fat throughout the spectrum.

[paravrais]

single sine wave, no compression, no eq.

[SunkLo]

The point is you want it thin so it punches better. I can make a nice fat bass by detuning, saturating, flanging etc, but try to get it to be clear at sub depth and you'll want to kill yourself. Leave the saturation and harmonics to the rest of the spectrum where it will enhance the sounds and not cause mud.

I still can't really put it any better than the nail analogy. A single tone will penetrate better. Period. It might not sound as nice, or have as much character, or blah blah blah, but that's not of concern when making a deep sub. Your goal is definition and clarity, and a pure sine wave has that in spades.

[Pedro Sánchez]

It was nice reading this subbass thread, as opposed to the 'other' bass threads, a good sub goes along way IMO and it's simplicity forces you to be more creative with whats around the bass as opposed to bass's eating a track.

[Sharmaji]

There is also a reason why so many people spend so much money to get analog external gear to add saturation to their songs

pretty sure lots of folks on this board would be surprised by how few people are actually doing this in dubstep.

[staticcast]

There is also a reason why so many people spend so much money to get analog external gear to add saturation to their songs

pretty sure lots of folks on this board would be surprised by how few people are actually doing this in dubstep.

Wasn't me who said that quote above...

True story anyway. I think it's much more common in house and techno.

[slothrop]

FWIW that's not the point at all - pretty much the opposite in fact. It's that if you've got a normal bass following the same notes as the sub but an octave up, there's no real point adding subtle extra harmonics to your sub because those harmonics are already there a lot louder in the other bass. In other words, by saturating your sine wave sub you're just transferring a bit of power from the sub to the mid-bass. Which might have a good effect on your bass sound as a whole, but isn't doing anything to give you a more solid sub.

Not true at all - or at least not what I'm suggesting at all. What I'm talking about is transferring sub to more sub. I'm talking about spreading your sub frequency out so that it takes up more space than one specific frequency. You can saturate that sine all you want (or even better sine?+saw?+square?+triangle?), and when you run it through a filter afterward, if it is set correctly you aren't going to start getting more mid range - unless you use a really shitty filter (not even a good free one would have that problem). Do it too much and you get mud, do it right and you get huge sub-bass.

If you use another waveform or saturation, you're adding extra harmonics to your fundamental. I can break out fourier analysis to demonstrate this if you want, but I'd rather not. The lowest extra harmonic that you're going to add is one octave higher than your initial root note And once you're more than one octave above a sub frequency that's actually reproducible, you're no longer making a sub frequency, you're into the realms of normal bass (when I say 'mid bass' I don't mean 'midrange' I mean 'normal bass frequencies rather than sub) - which is where your actual bassline sits. And thus the extra harmonics mix with the normal bass rather than adding some sort of magic to your sub. There just isn't that much space to 'spread your sub frequency' because as soon as you spread it it's either a) detuned, which is going to get you into a world of phase cancellation woe and isn't what you get from any of the stuff you talk about above or b) not sub any more.

Sorry, I'm a boring maths geek here so I'm arguing about this from a pedantic maths geek point of view. If you get better tunes by using a square wave, filtering it, saturating it, filtering it some more, regenning it through an old shoe and then letting it marinade in its own reverb for three days then I'm not going to argue with the results, I'm just coming at it from a sciencey point of view as to what you're actually doing...

[SunkLo]

^We've been raining down that hammer among others for the last couple of pages
Oh well at least we're having a decent discussion of it instead of the usual extra waste sub threads

[serox]

single sine wave, no compression, no eq.

This is sub ^

I think you might be after Brutal Electro tho by the sounds of it.

[JemGrover]

This has actually been a prety good read, to be honest

[dj0045]

Out of pure curiosity SunkLo, these sines of which you speak, how are you making them?

[SunkLo]

I know that trick
Yes a lot of soft synths are not perfect sines but their harmonics are below the hearing threshold for the most part.

[dj0045]

@slothrop sp? (sorry iPhone - future in laws are in town - and they are sleeping in my computer room)

You're getting me all wrong. I'm not worried about trying to fit as many frequencies as possible into the sub range. I'm worried about making a sub that sounds good and hits hard. And no offense to the people who say otherwise, but a sine simply doesn't cut it. You can limit sub to a super low range say 30 to 60 hz and then you'll kind of be right, but as soon as you allow for what a) is reproduced on actual real sub-woofers and b) is perceived as sub by the general public... Saturation and filtering is the way to go.

I'm a math guy too, but at the end of the day, what sounds better IS better. End of story.

P.s: drunk, so if I was rude at all I apologize in advance.

[dj0045]

I know that trick
Yes a lot of soft synths are not perfect sines but their harmonics are below the hearing threshold for the most part.

Ask any mastering engineer... Those harmonics matter too.

[dj0045]

Btw mad props to the both of you, this HAS been an interesting discussion.

Also, for good measure: dubstep ninjas! Lol!!!

[SunkLo]

Well... they're inaudible. So, not really.
I hope you didn't misunderstand what I meant, they're below the hearing threshold in terms of volume, not frequency. And they obviously wouldn't affect mix headroom or anything like that, so yes it's virtually the same as a perfect sine

I think Static_cast took some wave samples and tested them, the harmonics were something like -100dB? Inaudible in most situations without masking taken into effect. We'll see what he says when he gets here. Either way you could always filter and resample if it was an issue.

[dj0045]

Wow! That's a perfect-ish sine!

Did you guys know you can get a perfect sine any time by using the generators in just about any audio editing program. Takes about a second (after loading) if you use sound forge. And then... You know... Save as wave... Import into DAW... Use as you want.

That said... Why on earth would you waste your time doing all of that?

No offense man, but at this point I've been done arguing with you for a while... Much love and all that, but to everyone else... Stop believing what you READ and start listening to your ears! Nough said.