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I don't know why, but i made a sub bass for a song that I'm making and i did everything that ur supposed to do (low cut bass sounds, side chain sub to kick, saturated the sub, etc.) but when I hear it in the song it doesn't sound clear and thumpy like the ones in big-name productions, it actually muddies up my mix some. I watched the Mutrix tutorial for sub bass on youtube and copied everything that he did so I'm not sure why this is happening.

Low-pass the sub?

Did it. used able tons auto filter

Abletons auto filter I think is only a -12 or -24 filter, try EQ three at the -48 setting, set the range for your sub bass on the low band and turn off the other two. Also maybe try this with lowcutting your other basses to really grab everything. I wouldn't do this with any other sounds besides heavily synthesized basses. You might find your mixes sounding a little thin then. But that's my 2¢.

Take sound.

Play it really low.

Lower than your kick.

Sub bass!

The side chain settings could be something to look into?

What did you make the sub in?

I made the sub in Massive

I bet it has something to do with your sidechain settings, i would try messing about with those until you have found the sound your looking for.

Also you do not have to add saturation to your sub. I make all my subs in Massive and they are very audible, no problem hearing it without adding distortion or saturation to it. Try using the sine/square wave no the first osc and adjust the wavetable knob a little bit towards the square wave (adjust to about 9 o'clock, i dont usually go past there) to add some harmonics to the sound without over distorting it. This should help to make it more audible when you are lacking a sub.

Sub bass is the single most overthought thing in production. You literally cannot mess this up at all if you just stick to the simple principle that sub bass needs to be lower than your kick. Nothing else will be as low anyway. If you're gonna saturate it, send the signal to another channel, but keep the original intact. Saturate the send and highpass/EQ it.

But really, just having that thing play lower than your kick is all you need. Sidechaining isn't even necessary if you mix it well, unless you're like making house music or something.

Basically, stop "doing what you're supposed to do" and just do what you think will clean up your mix. Basic knowledge of how mixing works will tell you how to get a great sub. Not some youtube how-to giving you tons of techniques to incorporate.

genevieve is right, a sub is a simple sine wave. I hardly ever sidechain as i despise house music and that is where I hear the most sidechaining done. It is not necessary. However I have found it helpful to add a little bit of square wave to the sine to add some harmonics.

sweetjames wrote:genevieve is right, a sub is a simple sine wave. I hardly ever sidechain as i despise house music and that is where I hear the most sidechaining done. It is not necessary. However I have found it helpful to add a little bit of square wave to the sine to add some harmonics.

Oh yeah true, there's using other waves for harmonics rather than saturation. You can also use something else than a sine if you want a little color (though I'm still a sinewave fanatic myself for subs).

But I think it's crucial to stick with basic principles unless the situation ABSOLUTELY calls for more. And sub rarely does.

If your adding distortion to it then you might as well make it your mid sound =).

sweetjames wrote:If your adding distortion to it then you might as well make it your mid sound =).

Not necessarily. Distort a sine and compare that to the aforementioned squarewave; same thing. The distortion adds harmonics to the sine creating a squarewave. By routing the sine to a separate send, distorting it and then EQ'ing/hipassing it, you're doing the same thing as adding a squarewave to it. The character, though, will always slightly depend on what the source of the squarewave is or what type of saturation you've used.

It's basically 2 roads that both lead to Rome.

most of the time you dont even need to do half of the compress eq shit people say you need to do.

if your sub sounds fine when it's solo'd try keeping it solo and putting individual channels on solo with the sub until it loses defintition. chances are one or maybe more sounds in the mix are contributing to making it sound less defined. for example, if it goes quiet when you solo the sub and your kick, the kick might need some bottom rolling off with an eq.

tend to find subs with too much distortion make it a pain in the arse when mixing kick and sub volume + eq levels...

damn straight. sine wave playing a low note. if its clashing with ur kick ur kick is too low or ur sub is not a sub.

I half agree with what people are saying but it depends on what you're using to generate your sub.

Massive? Lol, the frequency bleed rolls out at a 40hz note > 500hz, thats at 100db noisefloor but still.
Same with Circle, even the synth I swear by Sylenth doesn't have a 'pure' sine wave.


People forget that before your synths even play a sound its going through its own audio engine, into your DAWs audio engine then coming out of the mixer into your speakers/headphones - every synth will have colouring - I bet you've been using the same tool for sines, right?

Thats also why you need filtering, EQing, Compression . Its probably already slightly saturated on the initial patch without tweaking any knobs.


Work with 808s yeah these have colour but they're a lot easier to get sounding 'right' and compliment your kick if you pitch them together.

Generate pure tones through Audacity and load that into a sampler.

You'll find the lighter weight a synth, the closer it is to being a 'pure' tone, synth1 http://www.kvraudio.com/product/synth1-by-ichiro-toda has a lovely sine tone, its not pure but its very manageable.


What people 'actually' mean is.. In an ideal world all you'll have to do is play a low note and sit it at the right level but not every sine is a pure sine.


I like to run my subs through Amplitube's bass amps - like the sub in my sig tune, thats distorted & compressed then filtered, then put through amplitube and filtered again. It sounds a lot more huge and powerful now, than what it did before the processing.

jordycash777 wrote:I don't know why, but i made a sub bass for a song that I'm making and i did everything that ur supposed to do (low cut bass sounds, side chain sub to kick, saturated the sub, etc.) but when I hear it in the song it doesn't sound clear and thumpy like the ones in big-name productions, it actually muddies up my mix some. I watched the Mutrix tutorial for sub bass on youtube and copied everything that he did so I'm not sure why this is happening.

assuming that you haven't made any rookie mistakes with something like adding too much release to your sub's amp envelope, causing the sub notes to overlap and fuck with each other, I would say from your description of the problem that it's most likely the saturation that is muddying up your mix.

i'm not sure how much saturation you added but you really don't want too much for sub. just a liiiiiiiitle bit to fatten it up, maybe adding a harmonic or two is good, but too much and it's just another midrange bass at that point. instead of lowpassing to fix that problem, go to the source of it and tone down the saturation.

what kind of saturation plugin are you using? i agree with legendary that sylenth is a great synth for sub. if you have sylenth, add a bit of filter drive to a lowpassed sine (like 20% on the knob). (i've read that) filter drive is basically a form of light saturation (not sure if this is 100% true but the end result is basically the same). i wouldn't crank the drive on ableton's saturation plugin, if that's what you're doing.

Ah its worth mentioning make ur sub's polyphony 1. Then notes can't overlap.

Who's on them detuned squarewave subs?

Thx guys. I stopped saturating my bass and instead used a sine and a smooth square wave to add in some harmonics which I then ran through a lowpass filter. My sub is much cleaner now. The only other question I have is should I compress the sub? If so, by how much?