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Which is better for sub-bass? I usually use the Triangle osc. on Massive, haven't really used a Sine...

Whatever you like best. But as far as straight up bassweight goes, nothing beats a bare, unprocessed, mono, sinewave (no filter, no EQ, no compression, nothing). If you end up lowpassing the tri, you're using a sine anyway, btw.

A lowpassed triangle will give some harmonics that may help the sub to come through on crappy speakers like laptops, ipods etc. A lot of people listen to music on inferior sound systems, so it may be worth considering adding some harmonics.

But if you wanted to make a club tune, a sine would be the most powerful. A subwoofer is most efficient when playing one single frequency.

If you want a sub with a few harmonics so that it's not 100% pure sine, I always find using a sine and adding distortion then EQ to provide much more weight than lowpassing a richer signal such as a triangle wave

Or you could just copy your sine to another channel, add distortion to that and then high-pass that. Adds some grit to the sound without compromising the bassweight.

Genevieve wrote:Or you could just copy your sine to another channel, add distortion to that and then high-pass that. Adds some grit to the sound without compromising the bassweight.

That's effectively the same from the speakers perspective. The speaker doesn't look at how your channels are set up, so if otherwise it sounds exactly the same, the 'bassweigh' is going to be the same. But it might still be a good method nevertheless (like if you high pass the distorted channel a bit higher then just the fundamental), just saying.

to be honest, i would say that if you are adding any other frequencies to a sub, you are taking away from the pure bass weight.. so using any method to add higher harmonics will ultimately amount to about the same thing, spectrum wise..
i think a triangle is a pretty good choice for sub, better for higher notes (i like making plucky echoey noises with them) because it uses odd harmonics, i believe.. which means the first note above the fundamental you hear is an octave and half up. which means that if your tri is playing a, say, 60hz note, you also get a little bit of 180 hz, and a few higher too.. which, some people would say, is good to have there.
again, it all depends on the system. i tend not play my tunes on a lot of sub heavy set ups, so i rarely use a pure sine wave alone for basslines, it's almost always added to somehow, to get some low mids in too. it's likely that the systems the music is designed for has influenced the bass design somewhat.

I prefer a sine wave. If I'm doing a tune that's mostly heavy sub for bass and want some harmonics on top I usually bounce to audio, then clone the audio of the sub and squash the shit out of it until it becomes...not sine! Sometimes I'll add slight distortion or bit crush or whatever sounds right for the tune. I know I could just layer it with square/triangle/saw whatever...but I think this sounds the best. Then I'll EQ and bus the two together.

sine wave + 5dB saturation + roll-off at 100hz = win.

got basically all the power of a sine with the harmonics of a triangle.

Sine waves are useful for more static subs or subs which change in pitch a lot. If you have a mid range bass which has a lot of movement but doesn't change in pitch then a square with a low pass filter set up with a decent amount of resonance is good for imitating the movement of mids in the low end. Neither one is better than the other there are countless producers who swear by sine, triangle or square waves for sub bass. Some producers just low pass a copy of their mid channel and compress it (if anyone has seen the Inside Info master class on digital labz). I find they all have their applications and all sound as fat as each other it just depends how you like to work and what effects your using.

and... dare i say, how you feel?

From what I understand it's not the sub physically playing other frequencies that causes the loss of bass weight, it's the signal being altered from a sine to something slightly less sine-y that causes the loss in weight. When using distortion on a sine sub, you change the signal to be less than a pure sine, however if you distort a sine wave, high pass it, then layer a pure sine underneath of it the pure sine sub will have all of the power it should while having the grit of the distorted one also.

Obviously, the only place you'll actually be able to tell the difference is in a club setting or on otherwise powerful setups. With desktop/home speakers/headphones it really doesn't matter a whole lot which method you choose.

I always sneak a really high-pitched SILENT square formant in the background behind a sine sub bass, so you can properly hear which note is being plaid without it sounding like a rumble on bad speakers. Sometimes I even let the formant 'pluck' by using a pluck-shaped envelope on the amp so it plucks loudly then immediately silences.

Just do it.

Here's a track I just made just to show you the sub bass I just mentioned. (It's not Tears from House... Lol.)

Soundcloud

i reckon it depends on the synth / sound source
i love a moog triangle sub w a resonant low pass

in reasons malstrom synth, i like the sine best.