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I've been experimenting with sub bass distortions (lightly) to achieve a nice hum, something that might be heard on a not so deep system.

Here's an example of something that I think sounds really good, and would love to know how to eh... distort sub bass like it:



the sub comes in at 0:26, notice that really nice, chunky sounding hum, almost a wooden sound as if the sub is being played out of a really overpowered real instrument (never mind the screechy stuff later on).

I've tried: NI Driver; made it sound shit. Sausage fattener: not quite. Saturator: only seems to make it sound louder, and add to much and its like hardstyle sounding. Overdrive: just sounds fuzzy adding a lot of high end.

I've heard tape distortion is good for sub bass, does ableton have anything built in that could achieve this?

I guess it's also possible that this crispy layer I'm hearing is entirely separate from the sub?

Any help would be awesome:)

(I put this here rather than sound design as it seems to be a bit more relevant to more than dubstep sounds)

I can't listen atm but I'm guessing it would be a second layer over the top, almost anything you do to a pure sine sub bass will make it worse

Don't distort sub bass. If you want a "crispy" sounding sub then layer a sine wave with a quiet triangle wave.

a few things:

one, what instrument are you using? I typically use sylenth or massive for sub. if i use sylenth for instance, then I can use sylenth's distortion effects, and am not limited to ableton's effects.

two, it really depends on what kind of sound you're looking for. in that particular song, I doubt they used much distortion. maybe some light saturation, but idk. any distortion will increase the harmonics and bring the sub into the midrange, so you will have to lowpass if you want to keep it restricted to the sub frequencies. that said, if you're trying to keep it under 100 hz or whatever, then distortion + lowpass will likely sound weaker than just the sine on it's own. I would just stick with a clean sine, maybe a layered triangle like the guy above said.

There are valid uses of distortion on sine sub basses though. I do it all the time. It's how I make most of my midrange basses. I love the sound of a sine with a hefty amount foldback distortion in sylenth for instance. Then I put an LFO on volume. Did that in both tracks in my signature. (actually, the top one is overdrive, bottom one is foldback I'm pretty sure....I like sylenth's overdrive a lot better than Ableton's.)

yes, duplicate the sub and distort that,

any saturation/distortion on the sub itself will fuck up the base

Waveshapers man... Trust me, easiest way.

Example:
Soundcloud

Best part is a very light waveshaping wont fuck over your sub-bass like other distortion will.