What are your methods and tips to maximize bass and kick

[pedro50]

Hello,

This could be the following of one of my previous post concerning the eq separation between kick and bass.
While having a nice separation between them , what are your methods to maximize them ? ?
Limiter, parallel compression, bus compression, or other stuff like RennBass, subharmonic processor, inflator......

I will be curious to know.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

Pedro

[sven hauck]

For me it comes down to a proper choice of kick and bass samples. I lightly compress both individually but try to make sure that the interplay between the two makes sense. I try not to use any of the plugs like a limiter or bass enhancer, as everytime I've done that I've made it worse. Start at choosing the proper sounds for each.

Currently all my mastering is done at Medway Studios, so I generally don't go beyond using hi or low cuts and have Jesse do the eq'ing, compression, limiting or whatever seems necessary.

[admin]

I don't use much either in the way of really maximizing them. As Sven said getting the right samples and sounds first is your main concern. At the end of the mix there will be some buss compression and limiting so this is generally where those elements would get processed. I used to go crazy coming up with all sorts of parallel and compression groups but again as Sven said lots of times this just makes it worse. If you find yourself going though that much trouble to get them to sound good maybe the problem lies elsewhere.

The last time I used anything like this was a group to send the kick and bass to and compressed slightly. What this does is takes some of the burden of the limiting of the low end away from the master so that the track can breath a bit more.

I have used Inflator now and then as well on basslines.

Bass enhancers I stay away from, a good bass sound or kick wont need them. You can get plenty of low end without.

If anything I tend to use this stuff when mixing other peoples tracks as I don't have control over the kicks and bass sounds they use. So these methods become repair scenarios. When doing my own productions I like to get it right in the sounds themselves as already discussed.

[pedro50]

Thanks for the reply

So it seems to come primary from the sample choice ?

Any sample bank particulary to advise ? I'd like to get deep kicks like you have on tracks like Heliopause(groove call mix): punch and deep at the same time.

Thanks

[admin]

Good source for those types of kicks are 808 ones with a layer on top sometimes to add extra punch if necessary. Sometimes just compression will do.

[NuEra]

Do you ever use a sine wave generator with a gate? I've played around with this a bit, but it always comes out way too intense. But then how does one make their kick's sound like dubfires? :confused:

[admin]

The sine wave with gate can be tricky. Dubfire though I'm sure is using 808 style kicks, or something similar. Sounds like that to me at least. I've had dj's come in requesting that type of kick and that's what I used to get it very close. There is a nice plugin by mda I think which will generate a sine tone keyed to an audio trigger. It has some envelope functions which help shape it as well.

I also have a sample I've made of a sine tone but modified it to have some pitch characteristics which helps tighten it up. This layed under a top/clicky kick sound can work well.

[NuEra]

As always thanks for the reply.

That Audio Damage Dr. Device filter you recommenced is really working out great. I'm having a lot of fun with it!!

[admin]

Good to hear.