I think the “a” makes the difference here:
At least I think @mitya33 is talking about a dedicated sub bass layer/channel, not sub bass as a general part of the frequency spectrum.
I think the “a” makes the difference here:
At least I think @mitya33 is talking about a dedicated sub bass layer/channel, not sub bass as a general part of the frequency spectrum.
They also serve you, whether you want to follow or break or interpret however you want.
More a prompt than a barrier.
In the days of old, people didnt know wtf they were doing. We are still in awe of some of that music. Overthinking and EM, especially the more dance oriented, is a bad combination IMHO
On the topic of “Sub bass” specifically, its a bit of a red herring. Many people starting out dont have very good monitoring/room acoustics. Trying to cram in subbass to a mix when you cant even yet properly judge the impact of your kick drum, tragedy is likely to ensue. Cue the famous meme where a roaring dragon of a mix (in your room) turns into wimpy lil barking chihuahua (in the car)
Yes, bass is important in dance music. But in house music, as long as the kick is banging and you got at least some sort of bass line to give it a lil funk, you’re already good, no need to always try to get subsonic
Continued thanks, everyone. Some great advice here. Good to know I can free up a track on my DT1!
This is still largely my modus operandi.
safest approach that’s for sure.
as someone hosting live techno venues:
highpass for the subs, this is what happens anyway.
so: dont care that much about stuff <40 Hz. get everything above 40 or 45 Hz right and youre good to go
I would say be careful to understand everything related to the low end and the consequence of high-pass blindly, especially on individual channels in mixing a track.
for mixing there’s more modern and better techniques
uh oh, “phase” is a dangerous term
my advice: if youre into making music, not engineering, dont care for “phase”
Im just trying to keep strange (unnecessary) stuff away from people.
Yes but you know in electronic music, more and more we’re going to a one person do it all… and even mastering for loudness, because in Independent music there’s no money for the project and a mixing engineer + a mastering engineer + press/release and distribute cost.
I prefer to use, multi-bands sidechain into the low end or spectral sidechain instead, eventually prefer a shelf. And I usually have an eye on phase correlation, when the house of cards collapse, understanding phase is a fast way to try fix it, before to choose a more suitable sound.
Edit: even though I think for mastering it’s better if another person do it with fresh ears.
yeah, I do so as well, I know what youre talking about
Ive never checked phase ever. I can tell it was never “false” though, no special tools needed. anyway, I dont want to make this a mathematical discussion
for beginners and intermediates, Id give the advice above anyway.
Part of it is just isolation from community, I think. It’s easier to move on and decide when there’s more than yourself and (not the good kind of) echoes in the brain.
I think that’s more a problem for your average person, I 100% get it but I try to be an expert on everything and all I ought to need is songwriting/composition/arrangement, nobody cares about my mastering skills of my own music
I’m talking about mixing here and to me mixing is part of creating an electronic music track. (and layering)
if layering causes phase issues, layering game is weak. in the shortest way possible:
all the info is in the frequency responses as “phase” and frequency are each others differential/integral and phase is just a complicated idea of that curves slope at that very specific place. back to the shortest way possible:
if you have to worry about phase correlations in the lower frequency spectrum, you
a) made poor decisions in dividing the frequency spectrum
b) your cutoff frequencies overlap to much
c) the samples themselves overlap for too long/are too long and thus one contains unnecessary low frequencies that make (the bassy kind of) phasing possible in the first place
so:
a) make cutoffs in “safe regions” where wavelength is small enough to not have any comb filtering happening down there at all, no phase issues ever again. when I cut a kick in half, its most of the times above 300-500 Hz, so that wooden knock in the 100-300 Hz range is still there and I never ever have to worry about anything down there summarizing well. you dont put crossover points down there. if something is interfering, its a matter of sample length or filtering
b) crossover points overlap too much and summarizing results in destructive intereference above/below f_c; raise/lower your f_c, youre probably not doing a)
c) if you want to layer a click/transient onto a body of another kick, just use the transient, nothing else. cut it off, its like using a highpass but way more effective
its all pretty much about (F)FT , it tells you what to actually look at.
sidenote:
abolute phase response itself is not audible.
the only thing that is audible, are phase correlations, interactions between one phase/frequency response and another. so if you ever use a really nice and expensive linear phase eq to master your track…
afraid to put a 96 dB/oct filter on the drum bus because its changing phase? its not audible, just adjust the filters bump resulting from high Q and all is perfectly good.