Dubstepforum.com

Considering whenever i look at sub tutorials and get told that sub is only a sine wave and nothing else, this is kinda doing my nut in.

Anyway, when i play my tunes out of a big rig, my sub doesn't compare to other professional tunes.

This is my sub, playing in note F, in spectrum:

This is someone else's sub in spectrum:

What exactly am i doing wrong?

You need to add some higher end harmonics top your sub to give it definition mate. Try adding subtle amounts of saturation or layering it with a low passed reece.

Well, obviously they look pretty different. Yours has a big bump, maybe around 200 hertz. You might have a Lowpass filter cutoff around 200hz or so and the resonance turned up. This can trick you into thinking you have strong bass (particularly if your speakers can't produce low frequencies so well) but the bass actually being weaker. Also, because there are two lines in your bass, I think that means that your sub is in stereo, which can make it lose power (I'm not sure why though). I'm not sure why the fat sub has frequencies registering all the way up into the high registers, unless there are other sounds playing at the same time, or it is possibly saturated? A good thing to try is saturate (slightly distort) the sub to give it higher frequencies, it makes it sound louder. Or as JFK said to use a full sound filtered down (but be careful of the resonance)
If you are using a synth to make the sub, make sure you're using one oscillator set to sine, check the LP cutoff (I would open it all the way), completely turn down the resonance, and turn down stereo separation to 0. If your using a sub patch, check the same things, but you could just look for another patch.

The big bump in my sub is peaking at 43hz at -12db. I haven't eq'd the sub at all, apart from boosting it a little, and I haven't filtered it. I have put a saturator on it and its in mono.

The fat sub is just a song playing in ableton with spectrum whacked on it, hence the higher frequencies. But when i look at the lower frequencies of it, it doesn't have that bump like mine does, its more well rounded.

lolmatelol wrote:The big bump in my sub is peaking at 43hz at -12db. I haven't eq'd the sub at all, apart from boosting it a little, and I haven't filtered it. I have put a saturator on it and its in mono.

The fat sub is just a song playing in ableton with spectrum whacked on it, hence the higher frequencies. But when i look at the lower frequencies of it, it doesn't have that bump like mine does, its more well rounded.

I don't think you can compare to two in that case - one is an isolated sound while the other is a whole track playing.

What do you mean you have boosted the sub? turned it up?

And, are you sure it is in mono? For instance sometimes mono on a synth refers to how many notes can play at the same time, not how the final sound is being output. It is good to have sub in both types of mono.

And, can you hear the saturation when you play it? When I apply saturation to a pure sub, in the eq new peaks (harmonics) start to appear up the spectrum, but I can't see any evidence of that in your picture.

How are you generating your sub, and can you post a sample of it so we can hear?

edited

Yeah, comparing the two if the sub in the other track isn't in isolation is not going to work,

For me the main thing with sub is making sure to get the level right in the mix, i'd say that brings me 80% of the way to how I want it to sound

lowpass wrote:Yeah, comparing the two if the sub in the other track isn't in isolation is not going to work,

For me the main thing with sub is making sure to get the level right in the mix, i'd say that brings me 80% of the way to how I want it to sound

Off topic but feeling that track in your signature.

I heard nothing beats a pure unprocessed sine. Will adding saturation affect it's 'power' on a big system?

your sub looks a lot better EQ'd than the other ha ha the other has way to much high end which would probably cause clipping and muddle up all the frequencies in the higher end..

FuzionDubstep wrote:your sub looks a lot better EQ'd than the other ha ha the other has way to much high end which would probably cause clipping and muddle up all the frequencies in the higher end..

The other ones a full track with all elements playing whereas op's is just sub.