How to make 'explosive' sub bass?

mr meh

mr meh

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So i cant get my sub to sound 'explosive' like i hear in a lot of tunes, ive tried resampling a number of times with saturation but i just ended up with a big old school sounding sub, not really what i wanted.

heres an example at 0.55:


i know that bassline is a synth part with a sub under it but how do you get the speaker splitting sub bass like that?

cheers

(btw, i know youtube and laptop speakers dont really show what im talking here about but anyone whose heard this tune on a decent system in good quality will!)
 
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What you want to do is "split" the sub bass. In other words setup a channel strip instrument for a sub bass and deactivate its output. Setup two sends, one send will be a the sub bass filtered (either via high cut/passing) in order to reveal only the bottom end frequency, and the other send should be filtered (low cut or high pass) to reveal the upper frequencies. Add a bit of "sizzle" to the high frequency part by addding a bit of bitcrusher. Now, change the output of these two strip to a common bus, will call it "Sub Bus." Add a compressor to glue the two and add whatever other FX/EQ you deem necessary. You're thick sub bass will now be accompanied by a nice hi freq sound to add a bit of definition and character.

Less is more.

Cheers.
 
lostnthesound said:
What you want to do is "split" the sub bass. In other words setup a channel strip instrument for a sub bass and deactivate its output. Setup two sends, one send will be a the sub bass filtered (either via high cut/passing) in order to reveal only the bottom end frequency, and the other send should be filtered (low cut or high pass) to reveal the upper frequencies. Add a bit of "sizzle" to the high frequency part by addding a bit of bitcrusher. Now, change the output of these two strip to a common bus, will call it "Sub Bus." Add a compressor to glue the two and add whatever other FX/EQ you deem necessary. You're thick sub bass will now be accompanied by a nice hi freq sound to add a bit of definition and character.

Less is more.

Cheers.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. But im a bit confused now as i have been eqing my subs so i only have the 40hz to 80hz range. So your saying that 40hz to 60hz should be sent to one send, and 60hz to 80hz sent to the other? Or are you using more of the frequency range?
 
Nah one send to subbass, say under 100hz, and then the other send is mid/high bass which is everything above that. Sometimes with a gap inbetween if its particularly muddy. Then chuck some bitcrushing or distortion on the mid/high for some sizzle and crunch which helps it fill out the frequency range better. Then route both through the same aux track or whatever its called in your DAW, and chuck abit of compression on that bus to glue the sound together. Its normally that mid/high bass that makes the bass sound explosive, the actual sub is usually pretty simple without much processing.
 
Defect said:
Nah one send to subbass, say under 100hz, and then the other send is mid/high bass which is everything above that. Sometimes with a gap inbetween if its particularly muddy. Then chuck some bitcrushing or distortion on the mid/high for some sizzle and crunch which helps it fill out the frequency range better. Then route both through the same aux track or whatever its called in your DAW, and chuck abit of compression on that bus to glue the sound together. Its normally that mid/high bass that makes the bass sound explosive, the actual sub is usually pretty simple without much processing.
Click to expand...

Exactly!
 
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