So i've been wanting to give something back in return for all the great mixes and information i've got from here. I havent actively produced anything in about year because its been an ass of a year, but i keep playing with my DAW, experimenting and refining techniques,.....

so until i start making something worth uploading, i thought i would share something i recently discovered:

the best sub bass will almost always be a pure sine wave.

i like my sine waves in the 30hz-45hz region. yes, i like it when my pancreas gets massaged.

audacity generates my sine waves.

and they are fine sine waves.

but there's always been something a bit too sterile about them. if you layer them under midrange bass then its not really a problem, but i like to use the sub as the central bass, so the clinically clean sound always bugged me a bit. i tried out a whole bunch of exciters, distortion chains etc,.... i could mix it in and it would sit very nicely, but none of them gave me the kind of sub i lusted after.

i was pretty convinced that i would have to shell out the price of a small child to get what i wanted.

then i stumbled onto nebula3 by acustica audio ( http://www.acusticaudio.net/ )

if the website's description is kind of thin, there is a soundonsound review that you can find with google. in a nutshell, it samples effects processors and then gives you emulations of various kinds of gear, like reverbs, comps,eq's etc.

i grabbed the free version, loaded up one instance with the Boing compressor emulation setting, and then one instance with the Eric TEAChes tape emulation setting in series.

push the input settings hard or to taste on either instance and you'll get the silkiest warmest fattest sounding sub ever.

it works great on drums and vocals as well and the everbs are just stunning.

it can be heavy on cpu, so you do need atleast a dualcore.

have fun boys and girls.

55hz is the fattest frequency, i love doing bass tests (55hz won when I played at Beta in denver)

Nebula3 is the shit. If you upgrade to the full version ($150), don't mind searching & downloading the algorithms for various bit torrent peers, and can handle very plain (or for me, confusing) GUI's, then you have access to EQ's, compressors, tape emulations, limiters, etc. that many people feel are better than Waves/URS/Sonnox/etc.

I just stumbled upon Nebula3 about 3 weeks ago, and I'm still wrapping my head around all of it. But, a couple of the EQ's I've tried are the best I've personally ever heard.

i do like 55hz but i find the pitch abit high for my liking,... not that its bad, i just prefer something a bit lower. you know trouser flappers .

and yeah nebula3, i'm pretty sure i'm going to upgrade. i simply cant believe what i heard come out of the free one. all the hassle involved is bloody worth it if you ask me.

and its interesting that even some open minded UAD users are going for certain nebula emulations over the UAD ones.

this is vst only though right? or any au available?

only vst right now, but they are working on porting it to mac i heard.

i do recall reading about someone wrapping the vst and that it works ok if you fancy trying that route.

No one frequency wins. It always depends on the box/size of the driver reproducing your sound.

Some tunes slay on 18"s and some tunes slay on 12"s. I always love it when a certain tune jumps out on a new system.

I don't understand how you can be using only one freq. or such a small freq. range.

I usually have my sub line minimal, maybe 2 or three notes over 4 bars, but even in the space of one octave you can't be too specific.

umm dont know if thats aimed at me zarkov, but no i dont use just the one sample.

i was bored one night so i rendered out sines from 33hz up to 57hz and built an instrument out of it. so no need to pitch samples up or down, straight playback.

i'm musically stupid so its easier to think of basslines as 45-45-53-35, than as d-d-b-e or whatever the equivalent might be

Not aimed at you, I meant more at the "55 is the best freq."

I mean, I'm not denying that it's fat, but yeah, just a bit confused as to what that really means re: basslines...

55hz just jumps out at you on most systems that I've played on. Granted a nice rack of subs will pump the lower frequencies, but usually they get muddy in the mix.
The best way to test your speakers is to get a keyboard and use a sinewave softsynth and play notes decreasing by one semitone. Some frequencies seem too high and then after a certain point they seem too low and lose punch. Usually, a certain frequency will make the whole room shake, and thats what i mean when i say 55hz is the fattest

I've never really considered sub bass along these lines. Interesting. I mean, I know that certain frequencies just resonate better on sound systems and in the club, but using that as the focal point to a track? Not sure I would take that route.

I tend to just write what sounds good to me and if it happens to hit extra hard on a club sound system then "yay!"

No sub frequency should be louder or punchier than any other if they are in a certain range.
If a particular frequency seems to resonate much louder than ones near it, than that is more a symptom of room nodes. You are hearing the resonant peak of a particular room.

Before I acoustically treated my studio, there was always a certain sub note that just made the whole room shake, this doesn't mean its a particularly universal phat frequency. On different systems in different rooms, those frequencies won't hit as hard.

If you sweep some bass frequencies in your studio space and get uneven response, it's time for some serious bass trapping.

Good advice.

Man I wish someone would come over to my place to help with a proper setup. My studio room is an odd shape and very cramped. I'm also still having trouble setting up my sub. I have an old 70s sub powered by an 80s amp. It's all very thrown together (I don't even have a crossover for the sub and monitors setup). I'm pretty sure the sub just punches through the thin floorboards into my room mates room (muahahaha) more than it does into my own studio...

But you feel certain frequencies differently than others, don't you? Maybe its just me and my ears, but I've played on a lot of different live systems and this is just something i've picked up

exactly right. the room response and characteristics of the speakers is what you're hearing.

hmmm,....

so what happens when youre using headphones and you hit that one frequency that feels like your chest is vibrating?

perhaps chest is too far down,.... its more like the throat collar bone area, which actually makes more sense since your ear nose and throat are all directly connected.

O how I have missed this forum, u guys kick ass

I like mixing my bass with headphones on. I trust them more than the monitors.

I also sprinkle diamonds on everything I eat. It makes your doodie twinkle.

I've been primarily mixing with some decent headphones for the last few months and its drastically improved my mixes. I find myself hearing things that don't come out in my untreated room, and if the sub is warm on the headphones it sounds amazing on a bigger system. During the creative production stage I'll use monitors, but when it comes to making things sound proper, out come the headphones. I was just talking to a friend that went to Berklee and he told me that some of the lectures with mastering greats also advise using headphones. The point being is that the majority of the time your music will be heard through headphones, even worse, many people are using those crappy i-pod buds. Thought that was an interesting point....

Very interesting....hell of a lot cheaper buying quality headphones than it is to fork out for studio speakers....

i-pod ear bud's have awwwwsome sub's!

I'm a big user of headphones, simply as my $350 headphones are a lot more accurate than $1500 monitors in an untreated room, as well as having a bass extension that is only normally possible with a sub.

But there are a few considerations, all of which can be worked around:

Firstly, headphones have a different stereo image to speakers. This is obvious, but still must be stated. For example, if you are listening to something out of speakers that has a sound panned 100% left, your right ear is still going to hear it, just a little delayed.

On headphones your right ear is not going to hear it at all.

Basically, what this means is that panning is significantly exaggerated on headphones, so you have a tendency to not pan things enough.

That said, panning can easily done effectively even in a less than ideal listening environment.

Second major point is that bass changes through the air. Obviously headphone do not offer the "air" for it to travel through.



In my opinion, the easiest way to make an accurate mix is simply to A/B with a track you know is well mixed. This way, it doesn't matter if your room or headphones have a 3db boost at 1000, and a cut at 100, as long as your mix sounds like the mix you know is dope, then it'll be a dope mix.

Whateves, just fucking make dope shit.

you really need both, but you could get away with cheapish speakers in an untreated room and decent headphones.

careful with those ipod earbuds though, their awesome bass could leave you with weak bass when played through speakers.

learned that the hard way i did

so true about the exaggerated panning on head phones. i always wonder about my stereoing on drums. my theory: if it sounds great on headphones, it has a great possibility of creating moist panties in the club.

do you think that the bass is accentuated on systems in comparison to headphones, or dampened? on my headphones you can barely hear the subs bc they are mixed much quieter, but in a system it will pop off, amirite?