Solid Sub Bass

[dj0045]

Ok that was definitely dickish! Sorry!

Let's just go back to to each their own. Honestly, to each their own simply makes more sense.

[Basic A]

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.

Im not involved in this arguement, but can I prove you wrong?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYTlN6wjcvQ

watch ths video, they get to talking about this somewhere in it. noise levels and audibility, and what does dithering do... pay attention.

[Basic A]

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.

Dude.

You dont know what your talking about.

Watch the video. My sine wave vs your sine wave is a myth. Sunklo is the one making sense here. Your saying use your ears. Yeah. And so is he. But hes telling you the bonified science of what your ears are doing. quit thinking this is an arguement and read what hes saying.

[staticcast]

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.

Something like that, for Massive. Operator was even cleaner IIRC. I've never used Albino so can't comment for definite, but I'd be highly skeptical that its sine is anything other than a proper sine (again, give or take harmonics at -100 dB or so).

Think I'm out of this discussion too; if a sine will simply never be good enough for 0045 then there's no point arguing with dogma.


BTW, "most" situations really is "all", seeing at a 16-bit wav can't reproduce anything below -96 dB anyway.

[RatRaceProducing]

Such as previous replys when it comes to the sub bass i try to keep it simply. Too much off anything fx wise on a sub bass makes it sound messy.
Its often a good idea to layer your mid etc over the sub so you can equalise them seperately.

Although im working on something a little bit more melodic at the moment and im using a Sq wave at -12 semi and sq at 0 and a sq at +24 semis with a bit of sliding and some specific automation, so i havent layered it this time. try to reduce how global i make automation because even the same sound at different octaves or semis can behave differently. The vst im using is FLs own 3osc. got the cut off automated, about 2/3 of a bar attack with the Amount on max, full mod to get it to "wobble out" on the end of the longer notes. Dropped the 100-110hz to make some room for the kick, bumped the 20hz and 85hz and put a bit of low mid in there to give it some tone so the automation stands out. The Sq at -12 provides a reasonable kind of growley sub low and the sq wav at 0 has a kind of rounded low/mid bass. Adjusted volume to suit and added a bit of predel on the automation aswell so the sub bass doesnt get killed by the porta on the cutoff. Seems to sound ok at the moment but when its done ill post and you guys can be the judge! Have got compression on this aswell but only a shade as compressing sub lows usually kills the fullness of it. But got a small bit on this to cover the higher end of the bass note as its all Sq wave its a bit prominant.

Seems to be proving a bit more difficult to master and bring the levels of the track up though without tweaking the internal volumes of the single waves.

god thats a blab sorry boys. Just something i tried and seems ok.

To get a simple one though stick to Sine as its smooth and usually just the 1 wave will provide more than enough depth to you sublow. Just fill out the low/mid and maybe some mid to give it a bit more tone, try this with a seperate layered synth. Also allows you to keep high bass strength throughout your bassline automation as the sublows never get cut or detuned.

!Peace! sorry for the blab!

[SunkLo]

Yup this wasn't meant to be an argument, rather an intellectual discussion of psycho-acoustics and its musical uses hah!
Basic's got it right though, I'm saying use your ears too, and trying to explain the science behind it. If you do a listening test on a decent system, no doubt a bare sine will be punchier, I've just been trying to explain why so people can understand it on a physics level and also a psychological level.

The theme of space is prevalent in all areas of music; subtractive eq, subtractive synthesis, mixing, mastering, composition, etc. Just look at the very subject of our discussion here, the sine wave. It has two parts, the positive portion of the cycle and the negative portion. Without the negative part giving the speaker space to retract, you'd just end up with DC offset and silence. In the same way you can't have the waveform be plus 1 all the time, you also can't have all frequencies playing at the same time. In order for one thing to have impact, it needs to have space around it to breathe. I remember starting production and thinking that I wanted to turn the bass up on everything. But this lead to a lot of bass but everything sounded like junk. Same thing for mixing, I wanted to have everything as loud as possible all the time and in focus. Composition too, like I said beginners will try to have lots of interesting things at once, but without the proper space between, nothing has the ebb and flow.
This is the characteristic aspect of balance, which governs the entire universe, and can be applied to virtually anything.

Scaling this back on topic, the way to give your sub the most impact is to give it lots of space, both in the frequency domain and also in the time domain. The more dynamic it is and the less it has playing around it, the more it'll pop. We could be arguing two different things here, I'm not talking about what sounds nice, simply the method to have the most punch and clarity in your sub. Doesn't mean it's right 100% of the time, you may favor some harmonics for musicality and character in a particular situation. Again it's all about balancing what you want out of the track. If the sub doesn't need to be so aggressive, you can sacrifice some punch for a bit of flavor. Can't have all of both though.

[SunkLo]

Also for some contrast, look at the extreme example, white noise. Despite being quite dynamic, it sounds static. It has all frequencies playing at once but provides no impact other than that of having a wide range of frequencies filled. Think of how easily the ear can tune it out. You're probably doing this in some form right now, I've got 7 fans around me if we're counting my computer case, all producing something similar to white noise. But the ear diminishes them to the noise floor quite easily as they don't stick out that much. Same for any static sound source, wind, vinyl crackle to a certain extent, etc. Without dynamics and balance, nothing will stand out.

[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.

Dude.

You dont know what your talking about.

Watch the video. My sine wave vs your sine wave is a myth. Sunklo is the one making sense here. Your saying use your ears. Yeah. And so is he. But hes telling you the bonified science of what your ears are doing. quit thinking this is an arguement and read what hes saying.

I'm not really sure this was what you were getting at, but just looking at the waveform and spectral analysis of Massive V. Albino sines, they are clearly different. You don't even need ears that can fool you to do it, you can simply look at them. Moreover, there is a blatant audible difference if you filter the high end out of Massive's sine so clearly it has upper harmonics - and therefore it isn't actually a pure sine tone (you can do this using Massive's internal filters, but it's even more obvious if you use other better filters to do it). So my point about where they are getting their sines, and the characteristics of those specific synths is actually a very good one, whether you want it to be or not. And BTW of course the aliasing of sub frequencies (especially in older vst synths) matters.

Thing is this discussion has now entered the realm of the inane and the useless. You don't need this kind of information to make tracks. If you are worried about this kind of stuff when you are working on songs, I think you may be overemphasizing the technical and forgetting that you are actually making music. (That last sentence is not a dig at anyone, more a statement about these kinds of details in general)

The only interesting discussion in all of this has been: best for sub? pure simple single frequency v. small dirty frequency grouping around a single frequency v. low fairly pure frequency with some upper harmonics v. small dirty frequency grouping with some upper harmonics. (dirty is clearly the wrong word, but screw it I'm hungover)

Personally, I much prefer the last three in just about every track, so I got into this thread and have been making a case for them - mostly because over the years I've wasted a lot of time trying sines for subs, and IMO they should be the last option, not the first (for sure in my production they would always be my personal last choice). Yet every time I see a post like this online they are treated as though they are always the best option (sometimes even the only option). Well not to me, not in my tunes, and I have achieved some monster basses (especially recently since I started using strobe).

At the end of the day, what I do works for me very well. I hope others try it, but really it's not something I want to keep talking/arguing about... especially here. I have said everything I want to say by this point. I just hope someone actually tries what I've suggested, rather than dismissing it, because non-sine wave subs could very well be exactly what their tunes are missing.

peace

p.s.: I couldn't watch the whole video because it's an hour long and I don't have the time right now (I was about to dismiss it entirely, but I saw the beginning and it's actually really cool, so thanks for sharing it! - I will make a point to watch it over the next few days, mostly because it's interesting in general, and not so much because it relates to this discussion). Maybe if you tell me the time frame of what you wanted me to see, I can actually watch it for the sake of this discussion, but honestly I'd rather just stop wasting my time on this.

[dj0045]

We could be arguing two different things here, I'm not talking about what sounds nice, simply the method to have the most punch and clarity in your sub.

Yeah man... I'm pretty sure we have been. Been fun pitting my thoughts against yours though.

Now I need to actually get some work done (both real and in the studio).

l8

[arktrix45hz]

Right, I've figured how to generate a sine wave in Audacity. Now what amplitude/length/hz settings should I use? I'm guessing for the hz it needs to be below 65 or so?

If someone could guide me through the process of setting the tone correctly and then importing into FL and mapping out to notes, I'd really, really appreciate it. Thanks.

[slothrop]

Right, I've figured how to generate a sine wave in Audacity. Now what amplitude/length/hz settings should I use? I'm guessing for the hz it needs to be below 65 or so?

If someone could guide me through the process of setting the tone correctly and then importing into FL and mapping out to notes, I'd really, really appreciate it. Thanks.

I did a quick check of synth1 (old freebie synth) versus audicity waves and couldn't tell the difference. static_cast has objectively measured Massive's sine versus a pure sinewave and found them the same to waaaaay below the noise floor. So to generalize a bit, I'd say that unless you're using a really old or crap synth, the whole 'load audacity sine waves into a sampler' thing isn't worth the bother.

You can probably find some free ABX software to test this with if you really care - produce a pure sine wave from your favourite simple synth, produce a sine wave at the same pitch and volume in audacity and then see if you can actually tell the difference.