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!!!!

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.

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Last edited by B_man on Jul-28-2007 at 01:32

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.

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.

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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.

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

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

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