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 Forum index » How-tos » Production - engineering/mixing
What is bass?
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Jason



Joined: Aug 12, 2004
Posts: 466
Location: Los Angeles, CA. USA

PostPosted: Wed Jun 29, 2005 5:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

This is a big topic. I can imagine starting an opposite topic on Treble and High Frequencies. That would be far less likely than the topic of bass.
Bass can always be the more problematic. I find that yes as Kassen says
cutting certain frequencies can be key. It isnt that simple though.
I like to think of it sometimes as sculpting you see. Lets just say with the example of a kick drum and a bass line. In order for the 2 not to clash harmonically and if their fundementals are too close one can get some problems. You can cut the kick in a certain range allowing the bass line to come in and cutting the bass line allowing the kick to come through. As for this attack issue on bass, it is a good point yes. However it isnt all the time that you want a bass sound with higher frequencies included. It just depends on the sound you are after.

In terms of the points regarding if playback equipment is getting better or not , I want to briefly point out the advent of the SACD and the lesser DVD-A formats. Yes this is a very limited market but I dont think that most stereo or surround systems are getting worse. On the contrary, cost is going down and some of the higher end systems are becoming more in reach. Also this is where mastering comes in again of course when dealing with how well your music will translate to all systems good or bad.

And again back to the issue at hand here, its all about balance in my opinion. In good mixes they speak for themselves I think. Also I wanted to remind us on the note of bass that bass is Omni directional and also that of the issue regarding low frequency wave lenghts and how your monitoring conditions therefore directly contribute to ones perceptions.
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Kassen
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 29, 2005 6:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Yes and no. I certainly don´t advocate cutting it all, for every instrument, all the time (see the jokingly formated link); you need it somewhere but depending on the context and material not nearly as much as popular culture would have you believe. Drum&bass records, impressive as they often are with a single modulated note that runs for three bars of a four bar loop are a nightmare to deal with as a sound engineer. You need to carefully ring out the soundsystem or there will be trouble, believe me, I know, for a while I used to spin some pritty hardcore stuff in basements and so on. If your DJ doen´t recognise turntable feedback the fuses *will* go.


There is a lot going on; as I noted you can be tricked into "feeling" a low-end that´s not realy there. If you don´t believe me about the brain filling in the fundamentals; take your Nord, take some rich soundsource (acid tracks do nicely) and LP filter it. Tweak it. Satisfactory, isn´t it? Now do the same with a HP filter with the same amount of poles. Not nearly as satisfactory while every analysis program and dsp theory shows you are doing the exact same amount of filtering. What´s going on? You are subconciously filling in the blanks; calculating what´s missing. I´m serious, try this once. You will lose a sense of satisfaction that´s hard to pinpoint, but look at the headroom you are gaining. Mosc is right in pointing out that two ocatves are going down the drain wherever you do this but notice where they are going away from; not from what you hear but from what is actually there; don´t make me record my stereo barberpolephaser for you :¬).

What I´m sugesting is getting a ballance between having actuall sub and using the headroom gained from filtering to add punch. I also sugest that everybody should get one hardcore record. Make it one by somebody deeply into the soundsystem scene, somebody who can set them up, ring them out, somebody who speaks favourably of "philishaves" as the only true midrange speakers (not sure wether the U.S. scene has those), who´s gear is covered in stickers (there are whole tribes of those). I´ll bet you the kick and bass are higher on the analysis software then were you thought they were and I also bet that it will sound louder and lower anywhere then anything you can do. Those people, you see, know the price of decent bass amps, how much extra power they´ll draw from the already strained generator and how to fix messed up Bass bins. This gives them a unique perspective on getting the most out of it. D.I.Y. hardcore has high kicks with lots of harmonics and this is no accident. Frankly I´ve met few engineers under 45 that equal the average 20something shaven-head borderline-junky squater-scene tech in actual practice.

Realy, try some of those tricks instead of theorising about them; these phenomena don´t care about theory since they are in a lower part of your brain. next time a bassline pushes the rest to the back at the final limiter lowcut it, then aply a well placed boost in the low-mid. This takes all of two or three minutes. If it doesn´t work I´ll give you your money back, no questions asked :¬).

</rave>(pun intended)

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elektro80
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Joined: Mar 25, 2003
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2005 3:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Kassen´s suggestion are sound. I have used these methods myself often, but again these apply mostly to beat oriented stuff. Ideas can also be used ( and should ) for other kinds of music, but obviously there is a lot one can do with bass that does not work on low end playback systems.

As for the illusions of nonexistent bass, I often experience that songs played on the radio.. and strutting an unimaginable promise of real bass going on, simply has no bass to speak of when played on high end gear. This is unproblematic as such, because a lot of this music was made this way for a purpose.

As for the illusion of bass, inexperienced listeners often misinterpret room artifacts like standing waves for what is really going on signalwise.

Trivia: I still remember how Howard almost took out the bar during his concert in Trondheim.. and I am not talking about his drinking habits of course. Very Happy His NM-1 really shook the house.

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mosc
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2005 12:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

elektro80 wrote:

Trivia: I still remember how Howard almost took out the bar during his concert in Trondheim.. and I am not talking about his drinking habits of course. Very Happy His NM-1 really shook the house.


Ha ha. I remember that too. That room started shaking like an Earthquake was going on. Smile

I only do that when playing solo. Smile Not many other musicians would like to play along with that. There's a case where the bass energy was very intense and there was very little in the mid and high freqs - except for the rattles of the glasses and bar furniture which was just as much part of the music as anything coming out of the synth.

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