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Hey people, I was just wondering how sorrow gets his subs sounding so fat and tight -so that you can still hear on ipod headphones... here's an example:

https://soundcloud.com/sorrowgarage/sor ... shura-your

is it some kind of multiband compression?i just can't get my head around it.

Try using a saturator (I use Ableton's because it's based as hell IMO) and low pass everything below 200hz. This should give your subs more low-mid while still keeping the bass emphasis. Alternatively double your sub midi up an octave (if your using a separate instrument for sub) and highpass @ 200hz.

Edit: Waves MaxxBass (or RenBass or whatever it's called, I don't have any Waves stuff so I don't exactly know) could be another option if you have the cash.

I too was wondering this and messed around in FM8 and found a good way to get really phat subs. Basically just get like 3 or 4 oscillators all sine waves, pan a couple left and right, detune them a little bit. And then add a shitload of compression, and that's pretty much the basis for it, you can add some rhythym to the the envelopes, put some lfo, some modulation to get a nice texture to some of the oscillators, boost some low end on an eq, or whatever really. I'm sure you can do the same shit in pretty much any other synth with more than one oscilator, all your really doing is laying the sub a bunch of times instead of having one single sine.

What's the point of compression in this ? Avoiding any change in volume due to phase cancellation ?

BrightLights wrote:I too was wondering this and messed around in FM8 and found a good way to get really phat subs. Basically just get like 3 or 4 oscillators all sine waves, pan a couple left and right, detune them a little bit. And then add a shitload of compression, and that's pretty much the basis for it, you can add some rhythym to the the envelopes, put some lfo, some modulation to get a nice texture to some of the oscillators, boost some low end on an eq, or whatever really. I'm sure you can do the same shit in pretty much any other synth with more than one oscilator, all your really doing is laying the sub a bunch of times instead of having one single sine.

Unsure, but do you really think this is the best method? I would be against any kind of panning for sub-100hz frequencies... LFOs on a sub really don't make a lot of sense either (assuming you mean on a cutoff, subs really can only LFO the volume in my experience). I'm all for compression and light saturation though (as long as you don't distort the lower frequencies because this weakens the sound).

Honestly I think a big part of beefing up a sub is just choosing the more powerful sub notes. Along with gentle compression/distortion, this is the best method in my opinion

Yeah, I meant LFO on the volume. And I personally just noticed the sub being more loud and fat when using several different oscillators at once. I'm not sure sure to what exact panning helps, but I noticed that spreading it out helped widen the sound a little bit. Just to add, I don't know a whole lot about technical aspects at all, this was just experimentation, I just messed around and found whats worked for me personally, and thought I would share. It probably would help to know a little more about what I'm doing though.

My suggestion is to create an instrument rack running two subs, one low passed dry sub and one high passed wet "sub". The latter really won't be a sub because the sub frequencies are high passed out.

Throw your saturator, overdrive, distortion etc on the high passed channel so your subs do not suffer from phasing issues.


Also I don't understand why you would compress a sub in isolation (maybe on a bus with something else). If it has a harsh transient adjust your ADSR envelope. Adjust velocity between different sub notes.