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What is your bass chain?
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| Richard Butler |
I guess we all have a weakest area, and I suspect mine is teh bassline.
In terms of your low bassline, what does your FX chain typically look like?
Mine would be:
Synth > BBE Sonic Maximiser plug > Tube emulation such as T-RACS Fairchild > SSL EQ plug > Side Chained compressor
Do you have a specific sub bass lane and a separate low bass lane, plus a separate mid bass lane?
It's all pretty hit n miss with me. I've today stuck my monitors up for sale (Fostex PM1's and Yamaha HS 50M's), thinking an upgrade to something else might be a help. Budget about £500 / $800, probably will buy second hand.
Room treatment is not an option as I share the kids play room and no way will the wife want foam and bass traps all over the show. |
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| Raphie |
To be honest, i think those are 2 seperate discussions:
1- what do you use on your bass channel
2- can i trust my room response?
1 is fully intwined with 2. you might already have an out of this world bassline, but it might sound like a wet fart in room. Or the other way around: sounds great in your, but really disapoints elsewhere.
but to answer 1, most of the times only my TI with a saw based mid high line, and a copied sinewave an octave lower, EQed in the TI itself.
or just add the suboscilator to the mid/high bassline works fine as well. The TI has enough texture and distortion modes itself so no need to beef it up with bitcrushers or "tube" emulations
on top of that often the Vengeance Multiband sidechain
do yourself a favor, download REW (Room EQ wizard) and MEASURE your room response, it's free and takes maybe 30mins to install, setup and run tests, then you know exactly where you stand. |
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| Rodri Santos |
| i've started using pads for the deep bass (20-100hz) , i get a gloomier effect, i only use Compressor/Sidechain,> Soundgoodizer (FL studio effect)> EQ |
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| J.L. |
I usually have 2-4 different basses. I usually never use Soundgoodizer, since you have no control over the parameters.
I always like to help my eyes to spot potential problems. Here's an example.
I have 3 basses running. The offbeat bass running in the sub domain making sure it doesn't interfere with the bass frequencies of the kick.
Then I have a rolling bass that
The top left EQ shows the sub
The middle left shows the rolling bass
The bottom left shows the low-mid range bass sound
The right shows the kick
Of course, I'm using a static picture captured at a specific point (I think I captured the 'click' of the kick) so it doesn't tell the whole story.
Cheers
FYI, I'm running 79 patterns and about 60 channels for this project :P
This is what it sounds like (shameless self promotion :D)
http://tranceaddict.com/forums/show...9&forumid=74&s= |
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| Rodri Santos |
i only use the soundgoodizer for this deep bass, it adds a bit of colour and with the eq after it you control the unwanted frequencies.
Generally i just use 2 bass + pad or rolling bass and deep pad |
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| DJ RANN |
| quote: | Originally posted by Richard Butler
I guess we all have a weakest area, and I suspect mine is teh bassline.
In terms of your low bassline, what does your FX chain typically look like?
Mine would be:
Synth > BBE Sonic Maximiser plug > Tube emulation such as T-RACS Fairchild > SSL EQ plug > Side Chained compressor
Do you have a specific sub bass lane and a separate low bass lane, plus a separate mid bass lane?
It's all pretty hit n miss with me. I've today stuck my monitors up for sale (Fostex PM1's and Yamaha HS 50M's), thinking an upgrade to something else might be a help. Budget about £500 / $800, probably will buy second hand.
Room treatment is not an option as I share the kids play room and no way will the wife want foam and bass traps all over the show. |
Firstly, get rid of the sonic maximiser. does more to up mixes, especially bass, that it does to improve them IMO.
Actually, why do you have that chain at all?
I prefer to find good sound (clichéd as it may be) then add a bit of EQ and compression. That is really all a standard template chain should be. You can get in to tube emulators, chorus (tight), FX etc, depending on the bass, but if you're saying Bass is your weak point, I wouldn't limit yourself by using all these plugs, especially as it seems it not working for you.
Keep it simple and focus on the source first - bass in EDM nearly always needs a little compression and a feir bit of EQ (at least for filtering) but other than that, unless you already have a signature bass osund that alwys want on all your tracks, you're just giving yourself problems.
Another big issues here is your monitors - the PM1 have some bass, but they are fairly muddy and the HS50 don't have and lower bass response.
You'd do way better with monitors tat actually can properly represent bass frequencies....(here we go again)....like the Yama HS80, Dynaudio BM5 etc.
If you can't treat your room, then at least setup and place the kit in the best (optimum) position that you can. |
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| Subtle |
| Moog --> Compressor --> EQ (rarely need to touch it) |
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| DJ Robby Rox |
For low/sub bass I usually do:
TP Basslane (a must) > waves rbass (to control whether the sub needs more low mid or low bass) > vintage warmer (optional) > fab filter for clean up > then finally sidechain with FL Limiter (usually just a tiny bit).
After that it all gets sent to the main bass/kick bus where it undergoes further processing but all I usually keep on that bus is Waves L3 as its my favorite plugin for making sounds bounce and getting a bit of extra drive. So in the end its kick/mid bass/sub bass, each with their own effects in an individual channel, routed together usually with Waves L3 for the "glue". I rarely if ever use distortion on my subs or reverb but will often do it on my mid bass.
And in all honesty I rarely use software for my low bass. Although v-station and some others are good I just prefer using samples for my sub. And most of them don't even come from trilian they come from trilogy. For some reason and I know this is retarded but I think trilogy actually sounded better in the low end department. And yes I'm aware it has the same engine and all the samples are in trilian, but for some reason trilogy tends to sound tighter in the finished product.
I also don't find subs hard at all I find mid basses the hardest. As theres a million ways to get a static/generic mid bass, and its very difficult to get an edgy/original driving one. At that point you rarely even heard the sub due to the transients from the mid. So I tend to focus more always on my mid basses. |
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| Subtle |
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ Robby Rox
And in all honesty I rarely use software for my low bass. Although v-station and some others are good I just prefer using samples for my sub. And most of them don't even come from trilian they come from trilogy. For some reason and I know this is retarded but I think trilogy actually sounded better in the low end department. And yes I'm aware it has the same engine and all the samples are in trilian, but for some reason trilogy tends to sound tighter in the finished product.
my mid basses. |
agreed.. i think Trillian sounds , dont know what im missing but i havent found good use of it yet. |
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| DJ RANN |
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ Robby Rox
For low/sub bass I usually do:
TP Basslane (a must) > waves rbass (to control whether the sub needs more low mid or low bass) > vintage warmer (optional) > fab filter for clean up > then finally sidechain with FL Limiter (usually just a tiny bit).
After that it all gets sent to the main bass/kick bus where it undergoes further processing but all I usually keep on that bus is Waves L3 as its my favorite plugin for making sounds bounce and getting a bit of extra drive. So in the end its kick/mid bass/sub bass, each with their own effects in an individual channel, routed together usually with Waves L3 for the "glue". I rarely if ever use distortion on my subs or reverb but will often do it on my mid bass.
And in all honesty I rarely use software for my low bass. Although v-station and some others are good I just prefer using samples for my sub. And most of them don't even come from trilian they come from trilogy. For some reason and I know this is retarded but I think trilogy actually sounded better in the low end department. And yes I'm aware it has the same engine and all the samples are in trilian, but for some reason trilogy tends to sound tighter in the finished product.
I also don't find subs hard at all I find mid basses the hardest. As theres a million ways to get a static/generic mid bass, and its very difficult to get an edgy/original driving one. At that point you rarely even heard the sub due to the transients from the mid. So I tend to focus more always on my mid basses. |
I don't get why EDM producers use Rbass - I think it's because when they first see it, they see it has bass in the name so it must be good as a bass plugin.
It's actual use is to use psycholacoustics to make you think you're hearing bass, when actually you're not, you're just hearing the harmonics of a bass sound. Essentially, it just adds the harmoics so you think you're hearing loder sub bass frequencies, on systems that don't have the ability to reproduce that low range.
As we have access to generating (and reproducing) bass frequencies in the first place, so it's really not necessary - just generate a lower or higher frequency for the sound you need or layer it if need be.
Rbass is an easy way to muddy a mid section of a mix if you're not exactly sure what you're doing. |
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| DJ Robby Rox |
Yeh I agree but one thing it does do well is if you have a kick you like that has the right punch and attack phase, but misses essential low end, rbass will fix that rather fast. And w/out needing to worry about layering another kick and mixing them to sit well. Rbass just always sounds cleaner in that respect.
I did absolutely notice it can muddy up bass and it does. The only reason I use it on my sub is because subs are hard to hear through headphones, and rbass fixes that like you said due to its psychoacoustics or however it works. I do really use it more as a lazy plugin though, as I never finish tracks anyway. And if I did I'd prob take it out all together and just use a hipassed sub with more harmonics, and that way I'd have more control over how it sounded. But I definitely agree and I've always considered it more of a lazy plugin almost like soundgoodizer (*almost lol). "Woaah!! it meks da bazz go boom!" |
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| Beatflux |
Trillian > Ableton Amp > Softube FET Compressor > Multiband Sidechain Compression > Trident EQ > Pro-Q
Never had Trilogy but Trillian sounds fat to me. |
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