Where did the bass go??
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Posted on Mar 19, 2006 10:44 pm
Goldenmean87
Conjurer of Emotion
Member Since: Jan 14, 2006
Well I am using a Roland XV-5050 synthesizer and it contains some sub-bass patches which produce bass like you would hear bumping loud through the subwoofers in a car. I try to use this for some rap beats and it comes through nice and bass-like through the monitors but then after recording and exporting it, the bass is like gone. You hear the tone, but on a cd, the signal doesnt really stimulate the sub-woofer in any system I try it in.
EQ really doesnt do anything, it will wash out the tone with a lower quality but it wont push any kind of signal to a subwoofer and support the beat. The beat will sound alot less alive after export.
Anyone have any Idea what to do?
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Mar 20, 2006 11:28 am compression my friend!
i'm wrapping (i punned) up a hip hop session and i've just recently figured out how to get them sine waves to 'pound'...
if you're fimillar with programming a synth, you can use a compressor as an amplitude envelop generator (wow that sounds cool just sayin' that)....basicly it gives you Attack, Decay, Sustain, and Release control over your sub.
go for a pretty fast attack, a really high ratio, and a release that lets go just before the next hit.
boost the crap outta the makeup gain and experament with tape compresson and even distortion to get them lows....don't forget around the 200hz range so ppl listenin' on a computer will know it's there.
peace
wyd
Mar 20, 2006 03:18 pm Ok thanks, I'm just getting familiar with editing beyond the basic stuff so I will see what I can come up with
Mar 20, 2006 03:26 pm yeah you're sine wave sub bass notes will look flat on the screne, which means no dynamics (change in volume)....basically you hit a note and it goes OOOOOh, with a compressor, you can set the attack to make it go DOOwOOOOh which is what gives that hit that everyone loves.
cheers bro
wyd
Mar 20, 2006 10:33 pm hmm, I completly understand the flat look of the wave and lack of dynamics but how does changing attack or adding dynamics make the bass any more noticable? Shouldnt the bass represent the frequency domain it occupies as it was recorded? I'm really trying to grasp the whole EQ concept while knowing why certain settings do what they do...
Mar 21, 2006 03:09 pm Also, when I try to increase the amplitude of the bass wave, the wave plunges down below the line but the top of the wave doesnt rise very much at all, what causes this?
Mar 21, 2006 04:25 pm hmmm how are you increasing the amplitude? raising fader? or accually processing the track?
are you working on a stereo track (two waves in one channel) and only processing one?
i'm havin' a hard time picturing in my head what you did to make the wave look like that...
the top and bottom should be darn near identical (we are talkin' about polarity here right?)
my ears are bleeding
brb
Mar 21, 2006 05:20 pm It is a stereo track in which you can see both left and right channels in the wave editor. I used the amplitude effect to raise the level. I had already recorded the track at maximum level before clipping and normalized it.
Looking back, the bottom half of the wave was actually already longer and reaching toward the bottom while the top was shorter. So it was a problem when recording the patch, but I dont understand what would cause that and how I could fix it...
Mar 21, 2006 05:34 pm ahhh...ok yeah it looks like when you recorded it, the source was panned to the right some....this isn't much of a problem though, cuz you want that track to be mono, it's very important to keep your bottom end as mono as possible ESPICALLY in hiphop, you're mix will sound very strange if one speaker is poundin' and the other isn't....there should be a mono/stereo button in the channel strip (just above the fader in mixer view) just click that and you can ignore the 'picture' of the wave.....
also i wouldn't recommend normalizing individual tracks, it just brings up the noize floor and you'll end up just turning the channel down durring mixdown keep your tracks around -6 to -12db as far as 'good levels' go... anything louder is just gonna eat up headroom.
cheers bro
wyd
Mar 21, 2006 06:04 pm Ahh, your headroom advice is very useful, especially since I have been normalizing all of my individual tracks lol. But in Cakewalk, all of the tracks are set to 0.0db by default so should I lower the decibals to the range you suggested for every track? Also what exactly seperates volume from db? there are two seperate adjustment bars for each but arent they relativly the same?
As far as the sub-bass goes; If it were panned then I believe one of the channels would have been larger and the other smaller, but the size difference I was talking about is in just the very wave itself in each channel. For instance if you were to take a butterfly and hold it horizontally as if it were a wave file (since it is equal on both sides), the butterfly's lower wing would be stretching out further than the other.
I'm no expert but I know panning is simply the act of diverting between 2 stereo channels. This had nothing to do with the signal in relativity to the left and right channel but the wave itself is messed up somehow. Maybe I'm missing something.
In any case, I am always looking for more headroom so, answers to my questions up top and more advice would be greatly appreciated!
thanks wyd
Mar 21, 2006 06:41 pm Also, I just need some clarification on the mono low end thing. Should I just have a mono track of bass and thats the end of it? because you said "as mono as possible" so I don't know exactly what you mean.
Mar 22, 2006 10:22 am yeah all my low end stuff (kick drum, bass guitar, and any 'low synths') i try to keep mono....as for the unsymmetrical waves, ummm i gotta admit i'm stumped....that's definately a polarity issue, when the wave goes up (+) that pushes your speaker out, and down (-) sucks your speaker in, apparently your track is (pardon the bad pun) sucking more than it's pushing....HOLY CRAP!!! this could be DC OFFSET! basically something is confused on exactly where the zero crossing from positive to negative is.... lemme dig up a thread about DC offset cuz this might apply to your situation...
read this thread here.
gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php3?t=61720
here's another one, the more i read about it, the more i think this is what's happening to you.
gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php3?t=63665
Mar 22, 2006 09:10 pm Thank you very much for posting the thread. I find it interesting since this only happens with that one sub-bass patch.
Mar 26, 2006 04:05 pm when a signal is run through a compressor-depending on the settings it is recorded as you refer to .The signal is bi-polar and it can be shorter above the baseline than below.Your sample probably was processed with some compression [which is typical] while mastering down by the manufacture [Roland].
If not you can or need to check your 2 track mix in MONO ,to see if your bass signal magically disappears.If it does then you have a phase relationhip problem .When a signal is at varying degress of phase difference at the same frequency with a another signal of the same freq, [hetrodyning] occurs and the signals will have,depending on the phase relationship; an amount of "self" cancellation going on.
If this is the problem it can be corrected by changing the phase of your signal.
There are various software and hardware solutions available for this.,and it is typically provided in more fully featured Daw software,I don't use Cake- so I don't know it that program has it.
you can always send the signal out into the analog world and re-amp through a pre that has a phase reversal option .
Hope this gives you same info to think about.
