Sound Design, Mixing, & Studio TechniquesNeed to know how to make a specific sound? Want to improve your mix? Need advice on micing-up a drum kit? This is the area for you.
what genre you talking dubstep etc its 45 to 60 hz (50 being the best bet) and synth bass (wub wubs reeces etc) usually 145 to 180 mark. killing off the 50 for a sub.
Also so it dosent clash with kick which will be around the 9o to 110 mark. (100hz is your best bet for kick aswell ans killing off the 50hz )
Well, really it depends on the what the listener is listening on. If its laptop speakers/ear buds the "fattest" bass note is way different than it would be on a big club system. So, I guess it depends on the intended audience and where/what they are listening on.
I'm sorry but kidsgot their priorities backwards nowadays.. I can see miles Davis/Bach/Jimi Hendrix: "Yo, the bass on this one is just G G G G G G G G bcuz that is the fattes bass frequency"
without latent fizzle your bass tone is literally meaningless though
when you get the two together in the right ratio you will know about it because your speakers will pop and splooge in that special way that makes you smile.. You know what I'm talking about!
just make sure that you trust your ears to get the whole picture and dont just search for the fersnozzle because thats a fools errand man it will either come or it wont
There are tracks where because the bass line is written in a certain way or the push of the track is in a certain way, or the relationship between rhythm and bass are a certain way, it just sounds fat beyond belief.
In my mind this is why there is no perfect science to it (to be sure there are a lot of interesting things about bass), but why threads like this one constantly appear.
Put another way, I can put a tuned down 808 bass drum on something, but it is not necessarily going to sound as fat, warm and funky as some old 70s funk track even though that bass guitars barely reach below 100hz.
Frequencies above 80Hz arent really sub bass, and we can't hear below 20 Hz. So anything in between that would be PHAT. If people are listening on a big system or whatever, typically subwoofers are low passed at 80Hz or even lower. It's hard to find a stereo system that plays loudly below 30Hz and lots of people just high pass at 30 Hz anyways. I really like subbass in the mid 30s though.
I personally like 48,529Hz and 87,103Hz.
Stay away from 6,700Hz. That's the brown-note.
Ah, lol. This thread is just funny.
Seriously though - If you hear a certain frequency extra loud (or "fatter") when you sweep a low sine across the spectrum, it's because your room is not treated correctly, and you are probably sitting in a standing wave.
haha, benwaa has the best answer, but i'd like to add my 2 cents...
around 100 to 125 is usually a big THUMP area for kick drums.
But electronic kicks will often sweep from somewhere above 100 Hz all the way down to at least 45 or 50 Hz. It's kind of a subtle doppler effect, kind of a laser chirp sped up really fast and lowered. Lots of resonance usually.
45 Hz tends to be an architectural problem area for big concerts. If there's too much 45 Hz, it can destroy parts of a building.
45 Hz is also a loudspeaker enclosure resonance hotspot. If it's too loud there, the speaker chassis will buzz in a bad way.
But there is still that sweet sinewave bass all the way down to 15 Hz that you can feel / hear in headphones if they are good enough and if the signal is strong enough. So I never highpass much of anything.
There is often an acoustical resonance which is bothersome in typical rooms at about 160-170 Hz. So you have to be careful there.
Interestingly, in the late 90s, some pro sound gear started building hardware EQ boosts around 80 or 90 Hz instead of the typical 100-125 Hz. I think this is because so many consumer devices have automatic or manual bass boosts at around 100-125 Hz, so it's sometimes overkill if you mix it in also. But sometimes it's exactly what the kick needs to thump.
And then for lowest tonal content, 60 Hz, is about as low as sounds good for EQ boosts usually. 60 Hz can really beef up some music if it's part of the overall bass tonal curve.
The thing about EQ and frequencies, is the shape of the EQ curve. If you put the EQ's on a diagonal slant, you can maximize their collective effect so that psychoacoustic masking is decreased or increased according to your needs.
And if you play around with zig-zag shapes of the whole frequency spectrum, you get interesting effects although it can get difficult to control.
But for sinewave sub bass, don't worry to much about which frequencies, just keep it moving and listen on a variety of speakers and playback systems to get a real world idea of which works.
around 100 to 125 is usually a big THUMP area for kick drums.
But electronic kicks will often sweep from somewhere above 100 Hz all the way down to at least 45 or 50 Hz. It's kind of a subtle doppler effect, kind of a laser chirp sped up really fast and lowered. Lots of resonance usually.
Resonances, harmonics and fundamentals.
100 to 125hz would be the harmonic resonances of 50 and 62.5hz.
The lowest resonant frequency of a vibrating object is called its fundamental frequency. Most vibrating objects have more than one resonant frequency and those used in musical instruments typically vibrate at harmonics of the fundamental. A harmonic is defined as an integer (whole number) multiple of the fundamental frequency. Vibrating strings, open cylindrical air columns, and conical air columns will vibrate at all harmonics of the fundamental. Cylinders with one end closed will vibrate with only odd harmonics of the fundamental. Vibrating membranes typically produce vibrations at harmonics, but also have some resonant frequencies which are not harmonics. It is for this class of vibrators that the term overtone becomes useful - they are said to have some non-harmonic overtones.
That Waves MAXXBASS!!!! plugin basically emphasizes/excites the harmonics around the 100hz-180hz range to give something like a kick drum thump.
I see some people boosting 50hz for kicks and that's usually the frequency people go with for deep bass on kicks, hipassing @ 30hz.
My best advice would be to try out kick samples/etc in your bassiest system you have, usually the car stereo. Do it soloed and in a mix. There you shall find your fat.
I'm no expert on sound engineering by no standard whatsoever, but being a fan of fat bases, here's a few things I've discovered (maybe obvious to some):
- Frequencies and how "fat" they sound depends heavily on the headphones/speakers/environment.
- The feeling that a bass sounds "fat", has several aspects: It needs the really low frequencies (subbase, below 60 Hz) that you rather feel than hear and it needs the base-frequencies slightly above the subbase that are the deep ones you actually hear. It also needs maybe some sort of a kick to keep it rhytmic and maybe even some frequencies well above 100 Hz to balance it out across different headphones/speakers.
- "Fat" sounding Bass is often a trade-off and can easily make your tracks sound muffled and take away from other parts of the track in a significant way. Always compare with other tracks that you think have a cool base and don't succumb to the notion that your base has to be even louder and fatter: Often, theres a really good reason why the base isn't THAT fat. ^^'
What I like to do is keep the base itself rather mono and don't add much distortion or other effects. This is mostly due to the fact that the frequencies around 60-100 take so much air out of the mix otherwise. Then I make the subbase stereo with short reverb but keep it very low on the volume: just so you can feel a bit of vibration on good headphones with a decent sound pressure level.
The frequencies a bit higher can also be a bit wider to make the bass sound more fuller.
So here's my anatomy of the bass I make in FL Studio:
- Subbase below 60 Hz [very low vol, stereo, a bit of reverb] I do this one in Harmor or BassDrum.
- Main Bass around 60-100 Hz [Mono, high volume, little effects] Mostly work with Harmor.
- Kick (if needed and seperate from the normal kick you use, just to make the bass more rhytmic) around 100 Hz [low volume, mono, low effects] I use samples or drumaxx for this mostly.
- Mid or even higher frequencies above 100 Hz to make it more melodic and balance the base if it's needed. Often I copy the synth for the main bass, cut out the lower frequencies and push it up a few octaves. I also make the synth wider with effectors or in harmor. [mid vol, more stereo, all the effects you want].
On a proper system (all club speakers don't qualify), those artificially "fat" basslines sound crap. Ones that have tons of 100-200hz, like heavily saturated 808s. Clean tone @ anywhere below 50Hz > any other type of sub imo.
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