Can't get rid of distortion in my bassline! (sample incl'd.)

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-- Can't get rid of distortion in my bassline! (sample incl'd.)

Posted by Ray_Chappell on Jul-28-2007 01:01:

Can't get rid of distortion in my bassline! (sample incl'd.)

I've got some "distortion" - maybe that's not what it's called but that's all I can think to call it - in a bassline sound I want. Whatever it's called, it sounds like shit.

I'm pulling it from hardware (a Motif ES8) and at first, I thought it was just my monitors or that I was running too hot or something. But I've turned the input down, tried my backup monitors, and listened straight from the keyboard to headphones - same scenario. Here's a sample:

HERE

So, I've tried messing with every setting I know of - ASDR, eq, the arp., etc. Does anyone happen to know by listening to this what I may adjust to get a straight bass line without the "distortion" or whatever the hell it is??? Thx!!!!

Posted by B_man on Jul-28-2007 01:17:

Well, my headphones appear to be damaged at the moment, so I used my eyes instead of my ears. I downloaded your sample and magnified it under Soundforge. Well, there's no distortion that I can see; it really looks more like a lp filtered triangle wave. Triangle waves have more harmonics in them than a sine wave does, so that's what is providing the illusion of distortion. Really, I'm having a hard time grasping what the root of your problem is unless your synthesizer is outputting a triangle wave when it is suppose to output a sine wave.

Another anomaly is that the triangle seems to be off-phase a tad.

Posted by Ray_Chappell on Jul-28-2007 01:57:

Man - I think you're right. Thanks for looking at this!!

I actually did another sample in a much higher tone and it comes through clearer. Here is that sample:

here

I can hear what you are saying. I guess if this is the case, and it is the sound itself with something built into it (WTH?), I'm SOL unless I can eq that out, huh? Damn... if you know of anything I might be able to use to isolate just the bass please let me know. The problem is that the arpeggio I want to use is on the Motif, so if I were to just sample the bass out of it I'd have to find a different arp. If it's not worth my time I can just look for another bass... just really curious how to "fix" this - for future reference if nothing else.

Posted by B_man on Jul-28-2007 02:31:

I'm personally not sure what you are trying to accomplish with the higher pitched sample. We've already accepted that it isn't pure Sine-age that you are hunting.

Personally, I'd go into the preset on your Motif and change the oscillator/filter settings. Hopefully there's some manuals to look at, or enough menu pointers on the keyboard itself to shed some light upon it's own operations. I do not own a motif myself, but I'm assuming that it is intuitive enough to have such settings changed.

Posted by Ray_Chappell on Jul-28-2007 04:44:

The higher pitch was just easier for me to hear what was going on. Thanks for the help. I'll see what I can do with it.

Posted by Evolve140 on Jul-29-2007 23:23:

It sounds like the note placement is wrong.... check on your ADSR, make sure there is no clipping going on.

Posted by mysticalninja on Jul-30-2007 11:30:

sounds fine on my mackie824's... alittle bass heavy.. no character. but no clipping.