deep, clean sub/sine bass. using thor

[vladsonn]

hello. been producing music for a while. one of the things that still gets me is designing a sub bass sound, thats clean and even through most notes on the lower C octaves. something that'll come through on normal, low end consumer systems, and boom through proper club systems. i'm sure most people have had this problem at one point or another, especially working in bass heavy music. I'm not a fan of adding distortion to my bass sound, and I do have an example of what im talking about
kicks in at 2:10
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apiGgEGysUo

im working in reason right now, using the thor synthesizer.
any tips would be appreciated

have a good one

[bigfootspartan]

Hmm usually what I used to do was turn one of the oscillators into a low sine wave, for the punch. Then add your second oscillator as something with some warmth, but still tune it low. If I remember right theres some wavetables you can use in Thor which are pretty cool. For the third oscillator just add something else that sounds good, ie maybe a triangle wave that's pretty deep. After that be sure to use a LP filter, although you might not need it, it'll keep the weird harmonics from messing with your mix.

Also, you can always try adding some warmth with the other synths in it to. Use a combinator with a 8 ch mixer in it and use one synth for your sub bass and one for your harmonics (Maelstrom or Subtractor). That's the nice thing about Reason, you have essentially unlimited oscillators for your patches if you combine the synths. Another thing to try is the tape distortion on the Scream 4 unit. From what I remember if you have it right, and the body settings right then you can give some decent warmth.

[Echoi]

^^^ Yea hes right, the wavetable osc's have some real nice and deep sine settings in them.

[RmoniK]

Try taking an a multi oscilator and detune it, that'll fatten your sub up.

[bolsty]

agree on wavetable for your second osc

i find subtractor ntb for subbass as well

[paravrais]

The example you posted sounds just like one sine wave to me :\ it's just placed carefully in the mix and played over more than one octave. More often than not layering your sub is gonna weaken it not strengthen it.