Sub bass cut off on headphones

Rubs90

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So yeah, been working on a tune for the last couple of days and I made it all through monitors. It was sounding nice on my speakers, with all the frequencies on their right place, but I tried listening to it on headphones today and you just cant notice the sub bass. The headphones arent the best in the world, but on other tracks you can definitely notice its there, whereas in this one it just sounds as if the whole track was low cut. I dont wanna go around blindly boosting frequencies, especially since everything below 200hz is already high enough, what suggestions do you guys have? Cheers
 
have a look at a spectrum analyzer and see the highest point where the sub is peaking

you may be able to fix it by simply widening the sub out (bit of distortion/bitcrush/pitch bend perhaps)

and try a lil eq boost at 60hz

60-80hz is like a 'fake sub' for inferior systems
 
Chances are your headphones cannot reproduce such low frequencies. I have the same thing, my KRK Rokit 6's produce a lovely sound, but when I listen back late at night on the headphones, the real low sub 50hz and under doesn't really shine through
 
Chances are your headphones cannot reproduce such low frequencies. I have the same thing, my KRK Rokit 6's produce a lovely sound, but when I listen back late at night on the headphones, the real low sub 50hz and under doesn't really shine through

/\ This. Most headphones that deliver a flat frequency response don't have a dynamic range capable of letting the user here those low sub sounds. To bypass this, I'll simply use my DJ headphones to give me a general idea of how the sub bass is sounding.

Cheers.
 
Chances are your headphones cannot reproduce such low frequencies. I have the same thing, my KRK Rokit 6's produce a lovely sound, but when I listen back late at night on the headphones, the real low sub 50hz and under doesn't really shine through

Yeah I have the exact same monitors. Im gonna try widening the sub a little bit and maybe cutting off the really frequencies on pads etc so they dont clash, if not I guess ill just leave them like this
 
You can do the following:
  1. Set the output of your sub bass channel to strip to nothing.
  2. Create two sends on the sub bass channel.
  3. The first send (that we'll call "low sub" will be your, um, low sub. So place a hi cut (or low pass) filter on the send 1 channel. A good cutoff point is usually around 70 - 85Hz depending upon the key you're writing in.
  4. The second send (that we'll call "high sub" will be your upper harmonics that will allow a user with a sound system not capable of reproducing sub bass (i.e. iPhone) to "hear" the sub tone. On the "high sub" channel, setup a nice distortion, saturation plugin or even better–a wave shaping plugin (I use sinevibes turbo). At first, it's going to sound like shit. Now insert a low cut filter after the distortion and cut between 250 - 350 Hz. You'll now have all the low end garbage cut out and the "buzzy" upper harmonics in place. Also, less is more so set your channel volume fader to null and then gradually raise it until you start to hear those harmonics kick in.
  5. Set the outputs of both "low sub" and "high sub" to a Bus that we'll title (You guessed it) All Sub.
  6. Place a very conservative compressor on "All Sub" just to get a bit of "glue" for the two sounds.
  7. If need be, go back and make modifications to your EQ and/or channel faders.
  8. Don't be afraid to experiment either...for example, what would happen if we placed a phase distortion on the "high sub" channel? It may "spread" the harmonics of the high sub to convey a sense of "width." Or it could sound like shit. The point is, experiment.

This almost always adds a bit of "umph" to subtones.

Cheers.
 
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You can do the following:
  1. Set the output of your sub bass channel to strip to nothing.
  2. Create two sends on the sub bass channel.
  3. The first send (that we'll call "low sub" will be your, um, low sub. So place a hi cut (or low pass) filter on the send 1 channel. A good cutoff point is usually around 70 - 85Hz depending upon the key you're writing in.
  4. The second send (that we'll call "high sub" will be your upper harmonics that will allow a user with a sound system not capable of reproducing sub bass (i.e. iPhone) to "hear" the sub tone. On the "high sub" channel, setup a nice distortion, saturation plugin or even better–a wave shaping plugin (I use sinevibes turbo). At first, it's going to sound like shit. Now insert a low cut filter after the distortion and cut between 250 - 350 Hz. You'll now have all the low end garbage cut out and the "buzzy" upper harmonics in place. Also, less is more so set your channel volume fader to null and then gradually raise it until you start to hear those harmonics kick in.
  5. Set the outputs of both "low sub" and "high sub" to a Bus that we'll title (You guessed it) All Sub.
  6. Place a very conservative compressor on "All Sub" just to get a bit of "glue" for the two sounds.
  7. If need be, go back and make modifications to your EQ and/or channel faders.
  8. Don't be afraid to experiment either...for example, what would happen if we placed a phase distortion on the "high sub" channel? It may "spread" the harmonics of the high sub to convey a sense of "width." Or it could sound like shit. The point is, experiment.

This almost always adds a bit of "umph" to subtones.

Cheers.


Cheers.

Great idea, will definitely try this when I get a spare minute!
 
I think he means creating upper harmonics to replicate the bass sound onto higher frequencies. Stick a sine note on a spectrum then distort it and check the spectrum after and it'll make sense.

Oh right, yeah whenever I see the term widening I generally think they are referring to stereo width.
 
Again, thanks lost... I was just gonna start searching for something like this as I am making a tune with purely 55hz sin bass and I have a feeling that this will not be reproduced on the vast majority of systems!
You however, have just answered my question! Nice one.
How much of a better option is a waveshaper than distortion/saturation plugins? Worth getting one? (just noticed that sinevibes is mac only, anyone use owt else that they recommend?)
 
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Again, thanks lost... I was just gonna start searching for something like this as I am making a tune with purely 55hz sin bass and I have a feeling that this will not be reproduced on the vast majority of systems!
You however, have just answered my question! Nice one.
How much of a better option is a waveshaper than distortion/saturation plugins? Worth getting one? (just noticed that sinevibes is mac only, anyone use owt else that they recommend?)
Glad I could help!

A waveshaper is a slightly different animal than distortion/saturation. In a nutshell, a waveshaper basically mangles the hell out of the audio being fed into it using a combination of a waveform, bit degradation, saturation, etc. However, many distortion plugins do offer capabilities similar/equal to that of a native waveshaper. I've found Audio Damage's Kombinat and Rob Papen's Distort! to be extremely useful when it comes to mangling audio.
 
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