Sub Bass, the key of 'G' and Harmonic Exciters.

[Sharmaji]

it's sub-- why would you want harmonics in it?

seriously tho, if you're looking for some 1st/2nd/3rd order harmonics, you'd have much more control by layering a line w/ something else-- square waves, etc.

and yes, notching out room for stuff in the low end makes for a bigger-sounding mix over all. everything in its right (or not so right) place. The 100hz hump you often hear from folks who are developing their mixdowns is just eating up energy that could be used somewhere else in the spectrum.

[wirez]

seriously tho, if you're looking for some 1st/2nd/3rd order harmonics, you'd have much more control by layering a line w/ something else-- square waves, etc.

Yeh man, and as far as I'm concerned I do this with my mid basses... So I don't really see the point in bringing harmonics into the sub either... But I think the idea is to increase the harmonics slightly in the notes that go lower than say 50Hz (which I think is A1), which is sometimes necessary, so that the sub stays audible..?

[nowaysj]

Totally conjecturing, but if u wanted your sub to translate on small speakers wouldn't a an exciter with second order harmonics do a better job if you wanna just run a sub, without a midbass?

[wirez]

Totally conjecturing, but if u wanted your sub to translate on small speakers wouldn't a an exciter with second order harmonics do a better job if you wanna just run a sub, without a midbass?

IMO, yes (if you have no mid bass), because there's less in that area of the spectrum to clog up... But you'd still have to be careful with your kick or any other instruments, like lower frequency hogging subs... I could be wrong though!

[jah know]

Go look this up. Ableton Live -> Corpus filter -> Sub Feed preset chained to your midi freq w/ about a 35% decay rate. You can then play with whatever damn harmonic you want - a full 3 octaves above or below key. That tool is bad bad badman! BAD!

[grooki]

Totally conjecturing, but if u wanted your sub to translate on small speakers wouldn't a an exciter with second order harmonics do a better job if you wanna just run a sub, without a midbass?

IMO, yes (if you have no mid bass), because there's less in that area of the spectrum to clog up... But you'd still have to be careful with your kick or any other instruments, like lower frequency hogging subs... I could be wrong though!

I've found that if I have a pure sub line, when I route the copy to a distortion plug to add harmonics, it works really well - and the interesting thing is that the distorted line work best when its volume is really low. Like when I run just the dirstorted line (hi passed at 200 hz or something, sub off) it sounds thin an non existent. Then I run the sub on it's own and that sounds ookkk but not great. Then I turn on the slightly distorted-high passed-really quiet copy and the sub sounds like it just jumps out - it's amazing!

and the great thing is it doesn't sound like it has extra harmonics, it just sounds like beastly sub.

[nowaysj]

Wat distortion?

[rawali]

dunno... my take on subs is keepin it simple... 1 pure sine wave, no harmonics, no processing.... I could sometimes use a really fast lfo on the amplitude of the oscilator but thats all...

I say go fucking wild on your midbass but keep you sub bass retardingly clean... no phasing, no clashing, no retarded eqing or filtering necessary...

[wirez]

Does anybody know anything about the term 'blowing out' when used in conjunction with Sub Bass? If so could you explain...
my mate, who knows little about music production, was explaining to me that sometimes when he listens to certain tunes he can turn it up stupidly loud and it doesn't seem to push much air out of the woofer, but sometimes my tunes do and he's heard this as the term 'blowing out'?

[macc]

Sounds like too much bass to me. Uncontrolled, not tight enough, flabby/flappy... But hard to say based on words eh

[Jah Billah]

I say go fucking wild on your midbass but keep you sub bass retardingly clean... no phasing, no clashing, no retarded eqing or filtering necessary...

This. Pure sub bass inna mi dub!