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Old 02-02-2012, 08:11 AM   #1
777funk
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Default Found a great way to mix 1 track of bass with one send for punch AND bass

I had heard a trick by a customer of mine who's worked for some big names (Dave Mathews Band one of them).

I asked him what he does for bass tracks amps or no amps etc. He told me he usually uses two tracks for bass.

One out of a Line6 Pod which surprised me and the other out of a miked amp. He told me he had a setting on the Pod that was just for it's ultra low Bassy tone I believe he said it was called SubSonic.

So I tried it. I actually just recorded a single track direct. I then took the Line6 SubSonic EQ settings from the TonePort I have and wrote them down for use in Reaper's ReaEQ. And bam! Sounds so great. I have the clarity of the direct bass and the Subtle but powerful subsonic lows on another mixer channel via a send that give the bass track a professional feel. It's fattened up my tracks ever since.

Here's what I've been doing.
1. Record a bass track
2. Insert a new track that will be a send and Name it SubSonic
3. Send the bass to the SubSonic Send
4. Add the Line6 SubSonic EQ Settings to a ReaEQ (I now have them saved as a preset which I can upload here if there's a way to do that).
5. Add ReaComp with the Driving Bass preset on the SubSonic Send

I have all that saved in my template so every time I record I have that bass setting all ready to go in my Reaper Template. It's awesome! I have the bass direct sound for liveliness then I have the SubSonic Send taking the exact same take but adding another dimension in the mix by fattening and compressing the heck out of it. Makes for a great bass sound!

The Line6 SubSonic EQ settings were amazing, I tried to tweak further but found them to be the fattest I could get. They thought about that EQ setting. Anyways, here are those settings (not sure I matched on the octave widths but the graph looked close-regardless it sounds great):
155 Hz - 3dB - 2oct band
50 Hz - 3dB - 2oct band
200 Hz - -7.4dB - 2oct band
500 Hz - -12.8dB - 2oct band

This is pretty much all lows and only sounds good blended in with a natural signal but man does it fatten it up and still have a nice clear punch when it's a blended signal.

Love it.

Last edited by 777funk; 02-02-2012 at 08:24 AM.
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Old 02-02-2012, 08:26 AM   #2
Cosmic
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I'm gonna try this right now..I don't have a line 6 but I've a nice pre amp..I'm using the ampeg amp sim

Edit..I think you might be onto something here alright....I'll have to see whats it like in the car before I can commit
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Last edited by Cosmic; 02-02-2012 at 08:35 AM.
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Old 02-02-2012, 08:44 AM   #3
chrisharbin
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Using two tracks to "mix" is a known trick but I'm going to be really interested in this so an in!
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Old 02-02-2012, 11:11 AM   #4
Guncho
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I'll try this out as well.

What I do is record two tracks of bass simutaneously and mix them to taste.

One is the Ampeg dub sound from Guitar Rig 4 and the second os the B.O.D. TSE free Sansamp bass driver clone. The Ampeg sound is fat and the TSE track has the definition.

I keep them in a BASS folder so when closed only takes up one track. Also on the folder track I have REAEQ and Blockfish compressor.
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Old 02-02-2012, 12:34 PM   #5
777funk
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dj Gaz Le Rock View Post
I'm gonna try this right now..I don't have a line 6 but I've a nice pre amp..I'm using the ampeg amp sim

Edit..I think you might be onto something here alright....I'll have to see whats it like in the car before I can commit

Yeah you don't need the line6 at all. It's just the 'SubSonic' patch's EQ Settings that I was reporting. Use those in ReaEQ and with a compressor on the bass track's send channel (see my directions in the first post). I find I have the SubSonic send channel up pretty high. The direct recording I usually turn down a bit and it still comes through plenty for definition and a live stringiness.

Old old trick (read about it quite a bit over the past few years) but it seems like the SubSonic does it very nicely for the Fat side of things.
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Old 02-02-2012, 09:24 PM   #6
Guncho
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I tried this and I wasn't that impressed but to each his own of course.

One thing to note is you don't really need two tracks. Just turn the wet knob in REAQ down to where you want it.

This is my bass setup.

(Arm the two child tracks not the parent track to record)
Attached Files
File Type: rtracktemplate BASS.RTrackTemplate (8.5 KB, 253 views)
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