Dubstepforum.com

Hello,
This is my query, and I was wondering if anyone knew of any techniques. How do producers make their basses and leads stand out with such force, but nothing gets kinda left behind in the mix? So, everything stands out perfectly and not muddy or unclear.

The first producer that comes to mind with this is Zomboy, for example in Mind Control the growls and the lead in the drop hit with such force but nothing sounds muddy, everything sounds dominant in the mix. How does he do this?

I get this is pretty vague, but I hope you get what I mean.

Thanks!

he samples good sounds

check this: http://www.dubstepforum.com/viewforum.php?f=8

EQ

Electric_Head wrote:EQ

dats the point
and compression
but wisely used

we've been getting a lot a zomboy threads lately...

How about stereo widening? I use sometimes and it usually fattens and spreads the bass

The easiest answer is frequency distribution. You don't want to have two sounds that share too many frequencies and play at the same time.
Arrange the way the sounds come in - try to play one sound at a time. Really!, that is most of it.

However that is probably not that common in a track, so how can you have as many sounds playing at once? Well... you have to think up a concept if you aren't just using other peoples samples that are carved out and sort of 'pre'-fitted (everyone does though!) .... you could instead imagine stacking a fridge or something like that.
¨You Wouldn't put your fish on top of your fresh vedgies, would you? so what is your trick?

Also don't EQ, software eqs are shit (yes, sorry it's all of them) and good hardware EQs cost as much as a car.

hubb wrote:
Also don't EQ, software eqs are shit (yes, sorry it's all of them)

Maybe good hardware EQs sound better (ie; character via harmonic distortion in analog circuits and other pieces parts), but that's just fucking stupid. There are plenty of fine software EQs. Tons of professional sound engineers and bedroom producers use them everyday to create great music.

You went right for the bit you disagree with, huh ?
I'm talking ideally here and producers who's sound stand out, work hard.
You might be able to notch out a few distracting freqs, have a wide boost that doesn't warp the tone entirely and filter out a highend/lowend or two with a fabfilter/gliss eq/dsp or whatever eq you have on a track - but that is what a filter is for, at least originally.
A hardware equaliser is sort of a harmonic tone generater and in that aspect you can't really trust/expect the same from a phasing software eq, which is to harmonize or distract tonally.
You can compress in the digital realm but you can't EQ without either having phasing (regular softeq) or a delay that forces you to resample and rearrange all the time (nonlinear phasing eqs).

Not that phasing isn't pleasant once in a while but it's effect detracts from the tone/becomes freq mud.

Oh and I don't have any hardware btw.

LogiSpark wrote:How about stereo widening? I use sometimes and it usually fattens and spreads the bass

i think everyone should sop doing this tbh, i actually hate it, it makes noises sound "big" but also weak as hell and the tune as a whole just sounds messy and loses focus IMO

i mean its up to you if you think it sounds good but yeah people please stop doing this.

hutyluty wrote:

LogiSpark wrote:How about stereo widening? I use sometimes and it usually fattens and spreads the bass

i think everyone should sop doing this tbh, i actually hate it, it makes noises sound "big" but also weak as hell and the tune as a whole just sounds messy and loses focus IMO

i mean its up to you if you think it sounds good but yeah people please stop doing this.

That's why you only spread the freq. over around 2KHz.
Also playing with offset in Izotope Ozone Imager is awesomeee...

yeah idk what he meant by bass butif youre making a tune for the dancefloor i'd say the bass should be mono and centre

(of course there's always exceptions )

if you're going to make a headphone crazy tune then its ok to mess with the bass panning widening a bit for effect- vessel does this really well in his tunes but for me the only thing you should be using the stereo widener on is pads and atmosphere, in order to fill the audio spectrum you would do better to keep them narrow and pan them around, eg. lead synth left mid, snare right mid, vocal sweep

hutyluty wrote:yeah idk what he meant by bass butif youre making a tune for the dancefloor i'd say the bass should be mono and centre

(of course there's always exceptions )

if you're going to make a headphone crazy tune then its ok to mess with the bass panning widening a bit for effect- vessel does this really well in his tunes but for me the only thing you should be using the stereo widener on is pads and atmosphere, in order to fill the audio spectrum you would do better to keep them narrow and pan them around, eg. lead synth left mid, snare right mid, vocal sweep

I believe that when he said bass he meant like the reese bass, growls, neuro basslines etc.
The sub bass is yeah mono, center, sine wave but the basses that became the common thing are all over the spectrum.
But of course if he meant about the mono 400Hz bass... then no widening should be applied.

EQ boosts post-compression, some soft limiting

It really boils down to sound design, arrangement and mix. Spend hundreds upon hundreds of hours dealing with each of these and you'll get there eventually.

I don't care to answer your question in any other way, the topic is simply too large to cover.

hubb wrote:You went right for the bit you disagree with, huh ?
I'm talking ideally here and producers who's sound stand out, work hard.
You might be able to notch out a few distracting freqs, have a wide boost that doesn't warp the tone entirely and filter out a highend/lowend or two with a fabfilter/gliss eq/dsp or whatever eq you have on a track - but that is what a filter is for, at least originally.
A hardware equaliser is sort of a harmonic tone generater and in that aspect you can't really trust/expect the same from a phasing software eq, which is to harmonize or distract tonally.
You can compress in the digital realm but you can't EQ without either having phasing (regular softeq) or a delay that forces you to resample and rearrange all the time (nonlinear phasing eqs).

Not that phasing isn't pleasant once in a while but it's effect detracts from the tone/becomes freq mud.

Oh and I don't have any hardware btw.

Pretty much none of that made any sense. Software EQs are actually really superior in a lot of ways. Advising people not to use any EQ at all is quite ridiculous, especially given the type of music being made around here. All analogue EQs have phase shift. It's inherent in the design of all EQs except linear phase digital EQs. Picking the right filter for the scenario and dialing it in properly will sound much better than avoiding any EQ altogether for fear of phase issues.

Mixdown & Effect Chain.

Notching out bad frequencies, leaving space for important stuff, sidechaining, exciters, saturators, & parallel compression etc.

having a good chain on the master also.

Picking the right filter for the scenario and dialing it in properly will sound much better than avoiding any EQ altogether for fear of phase issues.

That is exactly what I was saying, I just see a point in calling that filtering and not eq'ing- because eq'ing is originally a musical measure and filtering is systematic. In software EQs there's not just one shift of phase but a constant 'wrong' interpretation of where to shift to, so to speak.

Yeah, I was talking about the reece growls and his leads. It seems to be down to the sound design mainly, he uses FM8 mostly I believe, he's said he's not a fan of Massive. They don't really sound layered, they just sound so punchy and fierce, I'm not massively a fan of Zomboy's originality but I do appreciate his sounds.