Isolating sub bass vs. Layering sub bass

[Altron]

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?

[amphibian]

I ALWAYS have a separate sub bass, but that's also because my main mid bass sits a bit higher, usually by about 50-70hz.

[2mb1o]

Hipass your bass(~60Hz) and put un sin wave under.
It more powerful than a muddy low end of a big bass and usefull for the mixdown (if you want increase or sidechaining the sub level).

[jrisreal]

do whichever way sounds better. sometimes the bass that comes from the midrange is meatier than just sine sub...but if you are gona keep the midrange's sub bass, put a lowpass and resample the sub as a separate instance so that you can edit it separately from the midrange.

[2mb1o]

Sub & Bass are different.

[jrisreal]

Sub & Bass are different.

if youre talking to me, when i say sub, I mean sub bass...when I say bass, I mean sub bass. Midrange 'bass' isnt really bass at all...so sub and bass are the same, unless by sub you mean an actual subwoofer or by bass you mean a bass guitar.

[RandoRando]

i never use just the bass from my midrange wobble.1 because most of the time its not big enough, and 2. its not as clean and full as a sine, just filter out your midrange by cutting like 150hz and below. 200 hz sounds nice from a midrange bass.

[2mb1o]

In my mind it's something like that :

|_______|60|________|300|___________|
.... SUB ........ BASS .......... MID .......

[RandoRando]

In my mind it's something like that :

|_______|60|________|300|___________|
.... SUB ........ BASS .......... MID .......

what iis the difference between sub and bass in that diagram? 300hz is pretty high pitched to be any kind of bass

[2mb1o]

Sub hits under 60Hz and the bass is between, I don't know, 60 & (250 or 300) Hz

[masaki]

both techniques work. personally, i usually split my sub from any other frequency above 80-100k.
one reason i do this is because when you are dealing with sub in the form of a sine wave, there are usually nice tones where the sub is richest. you might want to keep these tones isolated, while your mid range bass moves into different tones along a key scale.
but at the same time, play it by ear everytime. there is no set in stone rule. whatever sounds better. EXPERIMENT

[NRHc]

Usually I'll have my sine a separate one,but in my last track,I've kept the sub from the more midbass and with a lot of modulation and after the mixdown sounds pretty weighty

[-[2]DAY_-]

In my mind it's something like that :

|_______|60|________|300|___________|
.... SUB ........ BASS .......... MID .......

I'll cosign on this, more or less.
"bass" gets up there around 300, anything above is mids
back to the OP though, i ALWAYS get a better mix with separate sine sub. Often it is barely audible if not inaudible. but the presence it gives when layered with your bass is pretty much vital. Unless having sub isn't too important for your purpose, I can't say that for myself, but I'm not one to argue.
If you want sub, its best done seperately.


On a related note, I don't see the point in "isolating" or splitting frequencies for the bottom on your main bass. imo the sound is always much more pronounced and steady when you simply boost the bass freq's with a shelving EQ.
Basically, all in all I'm saying
1) layered sub.
2) Don't freq split just because someone said to. I find its only useful when isolating the UPPER parts to give them some gnarly effects that would otherwise over-mud the body of the bass.

[-[2]DAY_-]

by the way, welcome fellow lurker, and your sig tune is pretty sick. I dig the originality in your heavy tip. To further address your question: yes, it needs sub. Then it would be an absolute banger.

[pete_bubonic]

Sub Bass specifically refers to frequencies below 90hz. Though a lot / most people in music (excluding electronic music) tend to refer to the whole bass section (sub bass and bass) as just the bass.

SUB GENRES BLAD.

[Ascian]

Definitely layered sub

EVERY track I make where I need to get a good balance between hard hitting bass and hard hitting drums, I do this:

Sub Bass - Low Pass @ 80Hz

Kick - High Pass @ 80Hz, Low Pass @ 100Hz

Bass - High Pass @ 110Hz

Well, ya know, I change it up a bit depending on what different sounds I'm using but that's general gist

If you LP the sub bass at 60Hz then you are reducing the volume of anything from B1 upwards = not great if you want melodic versatility in your basses!

[netrik]

Depends. If the mid has alot of sub in it already I'll use it because then It keeps alot of the same movement as the mid. then I just split the frequency's around 150hz so I can compress, mono, and eq the sub seperate from the mids. but if not, I'll layer a sine
I think the tune in your sig needs more sub personally. Just try splitting the freq's and turning up the vol on the low group alot and if that doesn't work layer a sub.

[grooki]

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.

[amphibian]

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.

Although I agree with your general sentiment - this is just bad production form of the producer in question. That said, it is sometimes worth while having the mid slightly behind the sub, it gives it a lazier kind of feeling.

Another reason to have sub separated is so that you can play the sub separately - notes don't always need to be identical, and sub doesn't always have to follow the mid-range. Some of my favourite tunes, the opposite is true - both doing their own thing. It adds a layer of complexity you generally don't find in dubstep. Knowing your style of production however grooki, I can see how you would want to keep them unified. Your bass is generally simple in terms of its note progression, so keeping them together makes a lot of sense.

[grooki]

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.

Although I agree with your general sentiment - this is just bad production form of the producer in question. That said, it is sometimes worth while having the mid slightly behind the sub, it gives it a lazier kind of feeling.

Another reason to have sub separated is so that you can play the sub separately - notes don't always need to be identical, and sub doesn't always have to follow the mid-range. Some of my favourite tunes, the opposite is true - both doing their own thing. It adds a layer of complexity you generally don't find in dubstep. Knowing your style of production however grooki, I can see how you would want to keep them unified. Your bass is generally simple in terms of its note progression, so keeping them together makes a lot of sense.

I don't mean that I don't like sub on its own, or that I don't think that sub and mid range should play the same notes, just that if you have a layered bass and sub which are supposed to be a unified sound, I like it to sound unified - and one way of doing this is by splitting frequencies so that you can control mids while having the same source bass. Anyway way everyone does it their own way, the classic answer of "to each their own" applies in the end