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one of the biggest battles i feel i'm facing right now is getting sub and mid range sounds to mesh perfectly together as far as ADSR goes..it's not as easy as copying the same attack and release settings from one synth to another. i will have my sub in one channel, and my mid range in another, and constantly be switching between the two making little tweaks to get them "perfect" sounding on the subpac..

an example of an artist who does this flawlessly is noisia. how do they get the sub to follow their nasty mid range reeses so perfectly? the sub fits the mids so well in some noisia tracks it feels like they just somehow added a ton of low end energy to their mid with an eq while still having it sound very clean. icicle is another example, his bass sounds don't feel like a sub and mid mashed together, they are just one solid unit. it's that sound i'm after.

hoping there is an easy solution that doesn't involve me tinkering until the end of time, but i'm willing to do that if i have to haha something tells me it's just something you have to do by ear, but if there are any tricks i'd love to hear them.

another semi-related question is how do i get sounds "morphing" out of the sub. i'm guessing just use a versatile soft synth and add random automation to a low sine, like perhaps automating the amps of voice one and two in massive but have the first one be a dedicated sine voice so to speak..but that kind of violates the whole "sub in one channel, mid in another" rule i've followed since i started producing.

In the past, depending on what mid bass I am using, reese's work well for this, I have high passed them and used as a sub. This can sometimes work really perfectly well so that mid and sub sound as one.

Envelope followers!!

Also i know a lot of people don't have a separate sub, they just keep it on the stems.

My suggestion would be to use some sidechain expansion on your sub with your bass as the input. I don't have this problem so I've never done this, but theoretically it should work well for your needs.


Concerning sounds "morphing" out of your sub, I'm not quite sure what you mean, so I'll assume you are talking about some sounds that "rise" out of your sub frequencies into the bass and mid freqs. If that is the case, I should think the sounds are simply rising out of a lowpass sweep.

Regarding synth programming, you absolutely can have the sub and bass come from then same synth instance. For example, in a synth like Massive you can go to the "routing" tab and make the path of your sub oscillator go directly to the mixer, avoiding any filters or distortion, while your bass can be routed through a high pass so it stays out of the sub frequencies. Synth's like Massive also have the option for filters to work in parallel, but you will be deprived of your mixer FX because they will wet your sub.

There are problems with using just one synth, though. If you don't get the levels of the sub vs. the bass oscillators correct before bouncing your sound, you will have to fix the problem using very sharp EQ bands or multiband compression. You will also have to be wary of what notes you play on the synth because you risk pulling your sin wave above 100hz into the bass frequencies making people's ears bleed, or having it fall below 40 hz being inaudible on most systems. Another problem is that in order to add an FX chain after the synth, you will have to use frequency splitting if you want the sub to stay clean. In my personal opinion that is a very cumbersome workflow and I don't see why you wouldn't just use two tracks bussed together instead of cramming two tracks into one.

My suggestion to you is to spend some time learning more about your DAW and synth plugins, as you don't appear to know their capabilities yet.

RmoniK wrote:Envelope followers!!

Also i know a lot of people don't have a separate sub, they just keep it on the stems.

Yes... but how did they create the stems?

Echoi wrote:In the past, depending on what mid bass I am using, reese's work well for this, I have high passed them and used as a sub. This can sometimes work really perfectly well so that mid and sub sound as one.

I think sub frequencies tend to be the domain of sonic theory and technicality, meaning there is relatively little room for experimentation and personal creativity down low.

A reese, which is a wide, detuned sound by definition, has no place in those frequencies and will cause phasing issues.

But maybe there is something someone knows that I don't. I'm not an amazing mixer by any means and am better qualified to comment on something like workflow like in my comment above.

As for ADSR, have a bit slower of an attack on the sub. And pull the sustain level of the mid bass down a bit and set the decay proportional to the sub's attack. Then you've got mid bite at the onset of a note which then moves out of the way slightly for the sub to rise up and fill things in. Compressing the two together helps achieve this sort of effect as well. Sending them to different effects will add to the cohesion between the two.

A lot of times my mids will just be the sub sent to a second channel and distorted and filtered plus any other light effects. Instead of generating the mid frequencies in the synth and then trying to filter them out to get a sub, I start with sub and process it in parallel to get mids. You can use dynamic shaping or layer a second synth dedicated to mids only if you need a different envelope profile.

As for morphing subs, have you tried FM8? Route F back into itself and you've got a sine that morphs into a saw. Run another operator into F and link it to the same macro as the F feedback. Now you can go from pure sine to gnarly FM texture with the twist of a knob. There's also the morph square which can be useful for more expression.

There's some synths that will cut out the detune and stereo effects on lower frequencies so you can do your whole bass stack in one instance. Then you get authentic detune on your mids instead of having to resort to chorus after frequency splitting.

difference wrote:but that kind of violates the whole "sub in one channel, mid in another" rule i've followed since i started producing.

this is your problem. don't know why you think this is a rule. most of my basses that have midrange freqs start out in the sub (ie the fundamental is in the sub range). that way you are getting both sub and midrange in one patch. nothing wrong with that. just take a sine and process it to bring out some mids, but have the original sine be hitting in the sub range. no reason you can't do this with a saw or square as well

another technique if you want the fundamental for your mid bass to be above the sub range is to set up 2 filters in a synth like massive and then send a low sine to one and then other waves to the other. really you don't even need 2 filters to do this but it might help you understand what is going on better.

and then of course you can copy your midrange patch and then just low pass it, but like sunklo said, i would rather build on a sine then subtract from a saw/square if you get what I'm saying

Ocelots Revolver wrote:

Echoi wrote:In the past, depending on what mid bass I am using, reese's work well for this, I have high passed them and used as a sub. This can sometimes work really perfectly well so that mid and sub sound as one.

I think sub frequencies tend to be the domain of sonic theory and technicality, meaning there is relatively little room for experimentation and personal creativity down low.

A reese, which is a wide, detuned sound by definition, has no place in those frequencies and will cause phasing issues.

But maybe there is something someone knows that I don't. I'm not an amazing mixer by any means and am better qualified to comment on something like workflow like in my comment above.

I mistyped there, meant to say low passed my reese so all I was left with was a sub, and had the original reese in a separate device. I don't believe this causes phasing issues. And the two flowed together particularly well.

No phasing issues arise from a wide detuned sound in your low end?

OK bud.

Ocelots Revolver wrote:No phasing issues arise from a wide detuned sound in your low end?

OK bud.

You might not hear the phasing, but it is occurring. Use a plug-in to hear it as a mono sound and you will probably hear most of the sound fade into the background.
Besides that, isn't it ALMOST always safe to say under 150-200 Hz should be mono anyway? Sometimes up to 500Hz is safe... Then again it all depends on the sound.

Personally, I make a different sub for each of my mid-range sound/leads by copying the original and changing the waveform(s). Many professionals do it too (based on many Producer Masterclasses I've seen). It helps keep ADSR identical so you can adjust specifics like Attack on the sub.

Something interesting I picked up from High Rankin's Ableton projects is that you can create a good sub, bounce it and use it on in a Sampler, instead to having a synth open.

My process: I usually hi-pass my midrange at 100-300 Hz to get rid of its flab(if there is any). Copy and change the patch to a sub that has multiple waveforms with a nice Attack or distort/saturate it to give it harmonics that don't overpower the mid-range, then lo-pass it at 100-500 Hz. This helps gel the sounds together like they are ONE. Also, try different db/octave slopes when hi/lo-passing, 48db/o might be too harsh and ruin the top harmonics of the sub.
BUT HEY, THAT'S JUST ME