Bass: How Low is too Low?

[the get down]

So this song Im working on has a subby bassline- almost a pure sine, very little harmonics going on. One of the prominent notes in the bassline is around 30hz so obviously it doesnt even play on many systems. This brings me to my question

How low is too low?

Sure its one thing to have a deep sub layered under a more audible bass sound, but with a bare dub style sub bass, wheres the limit? It Sounds massive on a big system but the majority of listeners today will be using iPod style earbuds, unfortunately.

[Astral]

Its a bit of a subjective situation, how low do you want it to go? Do you want people to feel or hear it, if the latter being the case, usually no lower than 30hz, even that would be stretching it alot.

[Basic A]

30hz is the rough cutoff to feel it in our bodies, it becomes air pressure rumble, most speakers, even high end club rigs, do fuck shit responding below 20htz, youd need a mechanical speaker powered by servo for that I believe?

Harmonics are pretty f*ck shit pointless in a good rolling sub, imo. If you wanna get into harmonics best set mixer channel to mono and not worry about phase later. Then again, general rule of thumb for sub is to mono everything down there anyway, so, meh you should know this by now.

[Bullshit]

I aim for 35-55Hz with my subs, anything lower than that wont play on most systems, and anything much higher interferers with the kick drum.

[mc wayne]

30hz

[madmeesh]

Breakage's Rain = low C = 33 Hz = inaudible on most consumer speakers.
Low B is pretty much silly, but can be justified.

[back2onett]

20Hz is the limit for human ears so I'd say aim at 30-40Hz to get teh mad subz

wasn't there another thread about this recently?

[setspeed]

i generally don't go below F1 which is 43Hz. a good soundsystem should be able to go lower than this, but not everywhere has a funktion one rig!

i don't know if you've ever played one of your own tunes out with a sub below the reach of the rig, but it's fairly embarrassing to see that people think the tune has no sub-bass...

[alphacat]

Also, if you look at the rolloff specs on most audio gear (i.e. the graph that shows freq range) - while many of them claim to go down to 35 or 40HZ or (even a handful that claim 5Hz ) - when you look at the graph plot and don't just read what they're claiming, the lines tend to drop down dramatically at the high & low end, which translates into less of that being audible in the mix.

[moki]

Get waves max bass its like $200 it uses psychoacoustics to let you hear bass up to an octive and a half lower than the speakers can produce. stuck a spectrum anyliser on a pure sine and saw some kool looking shit. you can here bass on laptop speakers even (even though its not so smooth sounding on those).

[tripwire22]

20Hz is the limit for human ears so I'd say aim at 30-40Hz to get teh mad subz

wasn't there another thread about this recently?

this pretty much though i some times go for 15 and compress/gain it up but dont do that it sounded shit

[the get down]

im thinking of running the bass out to a tube bass amp, hi-passing that track around 500hz and layering that over the original sub for some nice harmonics


its a low D in the tune btw.

[kaiori breathe]

Isn't the answer to this a simple: "If you can't hear it or are struggling to hear it then it's too low"?

[Basic A]

20Hz is the limit for human ears so I'd say aim at 30-40Hz to get teh mad subz

wasn't there another thread about this recently?

nah mate limit for current speaker technology... lower then that youve successfully made a fan out of servo and a piece of plastic.

And if you HEAR sub somethings wrong guys...

You FEEL that shit.

[alphacat]

FYI, all you jokers throwing 20Hz sines or lower in mixes are possibly fucking up your track even more by introducing another source of phase...

[Basic A]

FYI, all you jokers throwing 20Hz sines or lower in mixes are possibly fucking up your track even more by introducing another source of phase...

see, he gets it.

[jaydot]

Do you actually get samplers etc that let you go much beyond 30hz? What's the lowest attainable?

Surely not into the minus Hz?

[alphacat]

Fanks Basic A!

Technically there's no such thing as negative hertz - zero means there's no oscillation happening (or "cycling") at all.

As for sampling thresholds, my audio editor can take things down way past 30 Hz, but it's not audible unless it's clipping, and even then you just hear a series of clicks.

Also, the speaker diaphragm size is directly related to a system's ability to play shit back and if I recall right it's logarithmic, meaning that the lower (and hence bigger) the wave, the bigger the speaker has to be to physically play it back without using something like harmonic synthesis. 30 Hz is something like a 3 foot wavelength... about as big as you'll ever see a speaker in any bin.

Think of tuning forks: the higher pitched ones get smaller and have thinner tines while lower notes have fatter tines and are longer. For example - and again, this is only off the top of my head based on shit I read a long time ago - if you wanted to create the infamous 7Hz wave using a tuning fork, it would need to be something like 32 feet tall! The actual wave itself is that fuckin' big.

Read this:

http://www.astralsound.com/bass_pattern.htm