How do I make my basslines sound full?

[Justiboi]

This song isn't dubstep, but it's a good example.



Everyone keeps telling me reverb, but this song has no reverb, everything sounds clean, and the bass sounds really full and complete. I use massive for most of my sound design, but I'm switching over from dubstep to electro and if any other synth is better fit for stuff like this, I'd be happy to learn it.

[smile]

These basslines are all about overtones and midrange content. When building such sounds you use the whole frequency spectra (mostly mids) to attenuate and give character to one specific bass-note. There's no set recipe on how to make it but the main principles involve using layering and distortion.

Massive is more than fine for these kind of synths.

[NinjaEdit]

Yeah, there's a sub sine wave, then other shapes various octaves above.

[audiowaves]

+ I bet there's a short reverb or delay on the mid range stuff

[smile]

A weak bassline simply can't be remedied by reverb/delay. If someone here is stuck on not being able to make a full sounding bassline I don't see how adding short reverb or delay is going to help them get there.

Basically you use reverb/delay to add dimension to your sound, and indeed you can do a lot with it. But it can't turn shit into gold. In fact, feed it shit and have it transform into some multidimensional turd.