Distorting your sub bass?

TecBloc · Post by **TecBloc** » Sun Apr 03, 2011 12:30 am

Ive been playing around with distortion plugins on some sub bass patches and getting some really fat beefy bass from it. Just wondering if any of you lot have any knowledge about distorting subs (good/bad idea?), i always sketch out about doing anything to my subs just because they have the potential to fuck you in the ass if you dont treat em right.

jrisreal · Post by **jrisreal** » Sun Apr 03, 2011 12:36 am

i usually just add bassboosters and they make the bass much fatter. as far as distortion goes, nothing is a bad idea if it sounds good, so if it sounds good,

vertx · Post by **vertx** » Sun Apr 03, 2011 12:40 am

On the occasion I do enjoy either distorting a sub through limiting or parallel distorting a clean sine into a charactered square and filtering the good bits then mixing the two but it's always good to remember you will loose power to the original sine wave because if clean, it's only hitting one frequency - this means less movement for the speaker cone which equals more power and efficiency (someone please confirm??)

I think your best bet for a harmonic sub is layering and low passing something on top of a pure sine.

deadly_habit · Post by **deadly_habit** » Sun Apr 03, 2011 1:13 am

vertx wrote:I think your best bet for a harmonic sub is layering and low passing something on top of a pure sine.

Basic A · Post by **Basic A** » Sun Apr 03, 2011 2:51 am

vertx wrote:On the occasion I do enjoy either distorting a sub through limiting or parallel distorting a clean sine into a charactered square and filtering the good bits then mixing the two but it's always good to remember you will loose power to the original sine wave because if clean, it's only hitting one frequency - this means less movement for the speaker cone which equals more power and efficiency (someone please confirm??)

I think your best bet for a harmonic sub is layering and low passing something on top of a pure sine.

Your please confirm thing... essentially yeah your right, the basic idea is think of a speaker/magnet as the piston in an engine... Do you get more miles per gallon out of a piston the rises and falls cleanly, at a steady rate of speed, or out of a piston the has to go up to the top, bounce around a little bit, go halfway down turn around twice and then repeat?

vertx · Post by **vertx** » Sun Apr 03, 2011 7:48 am

Basic A wrote:
vertx wrote:On the occasion I do enjoy either distorting a sub through limiting or parallel distorting a clean sine into a charactered square and filtering the good bits then mixing the two but it's always good to remember you will loose power to the original sine wave because if clean, it's only hitting one frequency - this means less movement for the speaker cone which equals more power and efficiency (someone please confirm??)

I think your best bet for a harmonic sub is layering and low passing something on top of a pure sine.
Your please confirm thing... essentially yeah your right, the basic idea is think of a speaker/magnet as the piston in an engine... Do you get more miles per gallon out of a piston the rises and falls cleanly, at a steady rate of speed, or out of a piston the has to go up to the top, bounce around a little bit, go halfway down turn around twice and then repeat?

Ashamed to say I know more about audio then cars, that one went right over my head

vertx · Post by **vertx** » Sun Apr 03, 2011 7:53 am

Ah ok I get you now, makes sense I'm just far too hung over.

jrisreal · Post by **jrisreal** » Tue Apr 05, 2011 1:00 am

I once distorted a sub with a bitcrusher for hiphop and it was PPHHHAAAAATTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rubik · Post by **Rubik** » Tue Apr 05, 2011 2:57 am

Yeah if I layer a deep sine under a bassline and it won't punch sometimes I rock a little clip distortion to square it off a little but it does detract from the purity of the bass so you really have to be careful

kaiori breathe · Post by **kaiori breathe** » Tue Apr 05, 2011 3:14 am

... How does distorting a sub make it 'fatter' surely the sound is as fat as it can be when it's just a sine wave, when you start adding harmonics to it surely that makes it less fat, isn't that what a midrange is for? Or am I missing something?

Sharmaji · Post by **Sharmaji** » Tue Apr 05, 2011 5:20 am

it can definitely be useful... i've never really liked the sound of actual compression on sub, but there's times where, for whatever reason, the dynamic range of the sub needs to be reigned in. clipping it, via distortion, limiting, or a combo of the 2, and then lo-passing it can do great things down there.

shaneynclan · Post by **shaneynclan** » Tue Apr 05, 2011 5:29 am

tasteful distortion op.

Electric_Head · Post by **Electric_Head** » Tue Apr 05, 2011 5:50 am

If it sounds good then use it.

jrisreal · Post by **jrisreal** » Tue Apr 05, 2011 7:09 am

kaiori breathe wrote:... How does distorting a sub make it 'fatter' surely the sound is as fat as it can be when it's just a sine wave, when you start adding harmonics to it surely that makes it less fat, isn't that what a midrange is for? Or am I missing something?

idk man. sine wave by itself is just kinda boring, so i tried bitcrushing it a little bit and it became much less boring!

Rubik · Post by **Rubik** » Tue Apr 05, 2011 8:29 am

Sharmaji wrote:it can definitely be useful... i've never really liked the sound of actual compression on sub, but there's times where, for whatever reason, the dynamic range of the sub needs to be reigned in. clipping it, via distortion, limiting, or a combo of the 2, and then lo-passing it can do great things down there.

I'm the same on the sub compression tip but you're right, sometimes it's needed. Especially if you've used a peaking or lowshelf filter with a lot of res and all of a sudden it's fucking dominating the entire mix

JFK · Post by **JFK** » Tue Apr 05, 2011 11:34 am

Gotta be a simple sine, layered with a low passed Reece. Works everytime and sounds huge!

TecBloc · Post by **TecBloc** » Tue Apr 05, 2011 11:50 am

jrisreal wrote:
kaiori breathe wrote:... How does distorting a sub make it 'fatter' surely the sound is as fat as it can be when it's just a sine wave, when you start adding harmonics to it surely that makes it less fat, isn't that what a midrange is for? Or am I missing something?
idk man. sine wave by itself is just kinda boring, so i tried bitcrushing it a little bit and it became much less boring!

I was always under the impression that distorting your sub makes it richer and fatter by adding higher harmonics, this is the principle Waves MaxxBass works on.

Disco Nutter · Post by **Disco Nutter** » Tue Apr 05, 2011 4:50 pm

jrisreal wrote:sine wave by itself is just kinda boring

-[2]DAY_- · Post by **-[2]DAY_-** » Tue Apr 05, 2011 5:03 pm

Re: Distorting your sub bass?

No.

PaddyG · Post by **PaddyG** » Tue Apr 05, 2011 6:19 pm

I'm defo a fan of layering other components into the SUB bass. I feel like I lose the SUB in the mix if I distort or layer to heavily though; just goes to show I need to practice up on EQ