When resampling basses...

A

Attire

Last Winter
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Do you filter out the sub at each stage, and then layer with a clean sine later on?
Or do you keep the sub to keep it sounding glued together?
Because I often find that layering with a sine makes it sound less... 'authentic', if you get me.
But sometimes keeping the sub throughout results in it becoming kind of weak..

Thanks!
 
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I'm not sure if this is an insight as to how others work, or instructions as to how you should work. However, the reason your your bass doesn't sound as 'authentic' when you layer a sine underneath it, is simply because it isn't going through the same dynamic/pitch modulations as your processed (mid) bass. If you can find away to replicate the movement of your (mid) bass or sequence your sine to fit in with the groove, I think you'll be able to achieve the authenticity you desire.
 
This is a question I've found myself asking when I multiband split a bass sound into separate layers.

If you find that adding a sin to the resampled bass isn't sounding as cohesive as you want, try splitting the resampled bass sound into three bands and then adding a sin for sub bass by doing the following:

  1. On the channel strip containing the bass sound, turn off the output and setup three sends (@0db) to busses named low bass, mid bass, high bass.
  2. Set the output of these three busses to a new bus that we'll name "all bass."
  3. Solo low bass and set the bus to mono. Add your EQ of choice and cut the highs from around 500Hz up. Now Low cut everything below 70-100Hz to leave room for your sub. You may want to add a compressor with light sidechaining linked to your kick.
  4. Unsolo the low bass bus and now solo mid bass bus. Low cut everything below 500Hz and high cut everything above 1000Hz (aka 1kHz). At this stage, you may want to add some FX inserts (ex. distortion, bit crush, etc.) to give the mids a bit of character. It's totally up to you.
  5. Unsolo mid bass bus and now solo high bass bus. Low cut everything below 1000Hz, and gently high cut the extreme high frequencies that you don't want present or that may be eating up headroom. At this stage, you may want to add some light chorus or other FX to add a bit of stereo to your sound. It's totally up to you.
  6. Now that we've got your bass split into three bands, it's time to add the low end. Create an instrument channel with your plugin of choice to create the sub. Set the output of this channel to your "all bass" bus. Hi cut everything above 70 - 100hz, and apply a smooth low cut to remove frequencies below 30Hz.
  7. Finally, go to the "all bass" bus and add a compressor of your choosing (I find that VCA type compressors are great at "gluing" sounds) as well as some EQ to fine tune the overall bass sound. And of course add any plugins that you feel the overall sound requires. You will most likely need to go back to your bands and make adjustments to the "bass mix."

The result should be a large, resampled bass sound that covers the spectrum and sounds coherent.

A Couple Notes
  • The frequency numbers I've provided are not concrete. Depending on certain factors (key of the song, the bass timbre, etc.) you will have to adjust the values accordingly–use your ears as well.
  • If the sound is lacking coherency, try enabling a smoother slope with your EQs so that the frequency of each bus crosses over slightly.
  • Exercise patience when using this technique. Most importantly, give your ears ample time to rest between sessions or your hearing will become fatigued, harming the end product.
  • If there are phasing issues, mute each bass band to determine which one is causing the issue. Once you've determined the culprit, either apply a plugin that will "monoize" the sound or see if a certain plugin is causing the phasing issue; adjust settings as necessary.

Cheers.
 
Nice post^ You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to lostnthesound again.

Sometimes I when creating these, I render them to be layers, after these layers are processed I layer them together, if these layers are lacking good low end I add a sine or other layer that has good lows to compensate, give them all over processing to make the sound a whole.
 
That depends. I faced a similar issue with my latest track I'm working on. You can always add low end via 'low end' bus, but sometimes the original sound you routed in sub, mid and high buses has too much movement to be a tight, powerful sub. The sub bass, that my bass had, had tooo much movement, so I created a sine sub and ROUTED all the same settings which I had on my original (distortion, vocodex, stuff) 'Bass in' channel strip EXCEPT the filters and stuff that was modulating the original sound and routed it to my 'low end' bus. The original bass was dividied to mid and high buses. That way the overall sound remains coherent, except with a tighter bass than originally. All those buses end up in 'bass out' bus, where the real filter modulation happens.
 
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Yeh id agree with above, its subjective to the track and your bass. Sometimes it works but sometime you need a dedicated sub.
 
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