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I currently have a track that has a sub alone at point that is around 45 hz. I know this is really low but on normal headphones it is not picking up the frequency. Just wondering how i could bring the frequency up to audible range without making the track out of tune. Any help would be much appreciated.

Are you sure it's not audible and your headphones don't just suck? Try on different headphones/speakers/etc. 45 hz should be audible. I can even hear all the way down to 30 hz on my speakers, and even lower really - my spek just doesn't show anything lower than 30 hz.

You should be able to hear 45hz fine. Is the track showing volume and you just can't hear it? Or is it not even showing volume? Make sure you don't accidentally have a highpass filter or something like that.

Make the sub with an FM synth, add a little sine modulation to add a few upper harmonics.

I can hear the bass loud and clear on my headphones. The problem is that i want everyone to be able to hear it. When I switch to earbud's it's not picking up, and I know laptop speakers wont pick it up either. Ill give some modulation a try and mess with the eq a bit.

FatChocolate wrote:I can hear the bass loud and clear on my headphones. The problem is that i want everyone to be able to hear it. When I switch to earbud's it's not picking up, and I know laptop speakers wont pick it up either. Ill give some modulation a try and mess with the eq a bit.

That's because your laptop speakers and earbuds don't have as great a frequency depth as the headphones. If you start mixing your sub so that it can be heard on laptop speakers, it'll won't have as much impact on a big system.

If your sub is a pure sine wave, then add another sine wave one octave higher with 50% amplitude. Harmonics above that are just useless.

or add some distortion; or even Waves Maxxbass

yeah i'd say send a little of the signal to a buss with a distortion plugin on, then cut out the sub from that bus.

Or, you know, not worry about idiots listening to bass heavy music on laptop speakers...just an option...

fragments wrote:Or, you know, not worry about idiots listening to bass heavy music on laptop speakers...just an option...

try this http://www.waves.com/plugins/renaissance-bass

45hz is NOT low lol. I'd say below 35hz is low, but even below that should be able to be reproduced by any subwoofer...

I used to worry about making my bass translate to laptops and shit but now I don't care. Now I pretty much only make music that hits in the lows like 35hz and below, basically I make music for people with good systems.

fragments wrote:Or, you know, not worry about idiots listening to bass heavy music on laptop speakers...just an option...

Good Point

haha good points guys. I just wanna have a good master you know. It's not the end of the world if I cant get it to sound good on earbuds and stuff. Just want people to enjoy it the ways they listen to music.

I would follow the stuff about harmonics more than the stuff about ignoring the guys with poor speakers for two reasons.

1. In an untreated room with bad room modes, it will be hard for an ear to pitch just a sub, however adding a harmonic to it will make that much easier.

2. Many people (read DJ's, A&Rs fans, everyone) will blitz though their soundcloud feed playing the first 4 seconds of every song on their phone or other low-fi device. Don't let them skip yours because they think it has no bottom end due to everyone else having harmonics.

A good master gives EVERYONE, regardless of device an idea of what's going on in the tune, even if it doesn't sound great on the crappier systems. Test it out, play a record that you think had a pro master on it on your phone.

DISCLAIMER: If you make DMZ style dark subby dub records then all of this does not apply, as the definition of a good master is not the same as it is for a typical dubstep/EDM record.

1 simple answer


buy some new headphones

45 hz isnt low at all

below 30 is like ...sublow (badumtis)

do u mean that u cant hear ur subbass in ur full mixdown? if youve got a lot of other low end frequencies even if theyre higher up the spectrum than ur sub bass they can still drown it out occasionally

gen_ wrote: DISCLAIMER: If you make DMZ style dark subby dub records then all of this does not apply, as the definition of a good master is not the same as it is for a typical dubstep/EDM record.

That is a typical dubstep record

bennyfroobs wrote:below 30 is like ...sublow (badumtis)

45hz is low

A lot of club systems barely go below 30, and hardly any monitoring systems people are likely to have at home do either

m8son wrote:

gen_ wrote: DISCLAIMER: If you make DMZ style dark subby dub records then all of this does not apply, as the definition of a good master is not the same as it is for a typical dubstep/EDM record.

That is a typical dubstep record

No it's not. That is not what I mean. Even when going back to the days before brostep, DMZ style records, like Rusko - Jahova (to quote a non-DMZ record) that were specifically trying to sound very Jamaican-dub inspired would aim for a different kind of master when compared to people like Skream, Caspa etc, because they want a whole different, older, more vinyl-like sound to emulate the dub records that influenced them. This requires different aspirations in your master to make sound authentic.

m8son wrote:

gen_ wrote: DISCLAIMER: If you make DMZ style dark subby dub records then all of this does not apply, as the definition of a good master is not the same as it is for a typical dubstep/EDM record.

That is a typical dubstep record

bennyfroobs wrote:below 30 is like ...sublow (badumtis)

45hz is low

A lot of club systems barely go below 30, and hardly any monitoring systems people are likely to have at home do either

45hz compared to below 30hz is a big difference. most music does not go below 30hz, but when you're dealing with electronic music, anything is possible. A real bass guitar will most likely not be able to produce below 30hz effectively, but in electronic music we have sine waves. But most producers choose not to go below maybe 35 in their music because they want it to be accessible to anyone with a decent speaker setup. Most people don't even know what 35hz sounds/feels like. They just think there's no bass lol.

Okay, I guess you all win by majority vote then. I'll be quiet next time.