Double Octave Sub

[e-motion]

Hey there,

I'm asking everyone who has a decent sound system what do they think of this. I have an Alesis M1 Active (goes down to 56hz) and a Logitech 2.1 old system (the sub goes lower than that so sometimes I like to test stuff on it) so I think I can't really thrust what I hear from it.

Basicly, I like to have my sub in two octaves (one osc at 0st and another at -12st) because like this I can go lower/higher and still hear the sub, it sounds great on my sistem. Problem is, I have no idea how this would sound on a PA or in a good pair of monitors.

Has anyone tried this? What are you thoughts?

Thanks in advance

[ehbes]

just make sure its mono and ill be good

[e-motion]

Ok, I was afraid it would get messy on PA's

[sketchyderek]

It does get messy :S

Just stick to one octave to get more power out of it; having two octaves stacked up means your sub takes up more room, and having one booming sub sounds better. If you're using massive, you can set the wavetable a little away from sin to square or triangle, but I haven't really tried this (had someone tell me about it from a tutorial by distance).

[coogcoo]

as long as you mix it right it should sound fine??

[ChadDub]

In this beat, I used a 2 octave sub, but the higher octave is pretty low in volume compared to the lower octave, giving it a touch of whatever. It's 38hz btw, I think.

Soundcloud

[Hircine]

I use an envelope modulating the pitch one octave up, really quick then it decays, to give it a initial 100hz punch

[MassAphekt]

I always find myself doing a 2 octave sub, because either my subs suck or the notes are either too high or too low, one barely audible, one annoyingly high pitched...

[bigfootspartan]

I used to, but when I compared a single octave to a double octave the single won out every time. Trouble is that with a 2 octave sub you begin to get both constructive and destructive interference between them, I think it's probably because the sine wave an octave higher is oscillating at double the speed, so you get points of increased amplitude, and points of decreased amplitude.

In the end it made for a sub that was weak sounding and really hard to place in the mix.

[baboon2525]

If you're using two octaves then the space the sub takes up in the bottom end will be huge.... I guess you could do it, but why overcomplicate? In that bat you posted, I'm using (fairly shit) computer soundcard on headphones, and I can't hear much bass.

Way I understand it, most home systems don't have proper subbass, and they just make the sound 'bassy' by making the c.80Hz octave louder, cos they don't go lower than 60Hz or whatever. So in most cases people simply won't be able to hear the lower octave if it has no harmonics (is a sine).