There’s a third party plugin that claims to improve bass, by adding harmonics etc.
But I’m wondering if that’s grifting, that it’s just another type of saturation.
So I went hunting for ways cubase can shape bass, but didn’t find much. Except for this vid where he uses quadrafuzz 2 to saturate bass.
So not sure if having a dedicated bass shaper matters, or if it’s all the same. How do you get that T H I C C bass? Or how do you shape your bass? Do you just use a saturator and maybe ultrashaper?
Hi,
there are a gazillion plugins out there and many of them work in slightly different ways. What kind of thick bass sound are you referring to? Translation on smaller speakers, introducing subs, saturation, grit etc?
I am not a fan of Waves but sometimes the old Renaissance Bass still does the trick. Bark of Dog is also a decent free plugin which is not too bad either. It all depends on your goals, actually.
I’ve been using Melda’s MBassador to add sub bass and/or higher frequency harmonics to get more of the bass line happening on speakers that don’t do low frequencies very well.
I don’t really care which plugin it is. Ideally a stock plugin, something cubase can already do, to save the cost of buying something. I want to shape the bass (as many abilities to do that as possible), so the question is if it matters that a plugin is designed specifically for bass. ?
The plugin I was referring to is Bass Focus.
See the gui, that it shows you what it’s doing. That’s ideal.
Yes, that looks good thanks.
I just noticed that Bass Focus plugin doesn’t seem to have a Sub knob, where you can add sub to it. That’s really bad. Any bass plugin should be able to add sub.
If you create a Plugin Alliance account you can use some plugins for free like bx subfilter which is the little brother of bx subsynth. I have never really used both of them TBH…
Think I’ll stick with the cubase effects for now. I should learn what the hell I’m doing before just throw money at the problem. I actually already have sublab xl, which has basic subs that I can shape if I want. Forgot I had that. But now I have to figure out why a single note uses up 25% of my cpu.
For frequency shaping I’ll stick with the quadrafuzz 2, octaver, imager, transient shaper. Lots of options there. Was hoping for more of an “everything for bass” kind of thing, instead of using multiple plugins tho.
But I got my eye on that Tone Projects - Bass Lane pro. But that’s for stereo image mostly. And the $129 USD price tag = yikes.
And I don’t trust the competency of WA Pro for plugins. Even Devious Machines, I dunno. Izotope and Waves, ya probably. Brainworx, I dunno maybe.
I have Bass focus from Devious Machines along with IK Multimedia bass one and bx Subsynth. I don’t use any of them now. They are fine to add subtle stuff but for thick results Just layer. Use a Sine (with some sat if needed) under other synths and then EQ.
Or put this Akai s950 tone into the sampler (Set root key to C3) and apply some LP filter. Play low and watch your speakers blow!
Voice Of God you can recreate with cubase; use one of the low cuts that has a good resonance for this…turn up the Q super high on 50-60hz and you get the exact effect of the UAD Voice Of God (there is a youtube video on this somewhere, im not sure what low eq to use for this, but is was cubase stock for sure)
You can also use Fabfilter Pro Q 4 to track the low end and boost dynamically/spectral
Like everyone says, there are so many ways to do this
I personally cut low end of weak bass sound, and replace with sine or triangle where i want real bass…this is much cleaner are more control…you can saturate the new low bass for extra warmth…in the mix you dont notice the actual sub comes from another synth plugin
Edit: Deleted the comment as it didn’t really add anything to the advice seeing as I’m not really sure what type of bass the person was after. Thought they meant drum and bass low end stuff but seems more like guitar now?
Usually there are three different ways for enhancing a bass:
add upper harmonics
add sub-harmonics
Boosting low ene with a huge Q of HiPass Filter
1st option: you can do with any saturation plugin + bandpass filtering. The best way is to do it on Send (Effect) in parallel - this way you don’t affect original sound. Saturate it then use bandpass filter or EQ: remove lower and higher range that you don’t need. More or less, this is what Waves MaxxBass and RBass are doing.
2nd option: this one os tricky and Cubase doesn’t have a dedicated plugin for this. You can try and use Octaver and PitchShifter which can generate one octave below you bass, but the most important in sub-generators is perfect tracking of a pitch of your bass. This is tricky part and IMO Cubase is not on par with dedicated plugins for this purpose. Although PitchShifter is really close.
3rd option: the easiest one just use any EQ. Set a narrow HiPass Filter and twist the Q value to the max. Boost as much as you want at a frequency of your choice. Personally, for me this is the most horrible way to “enhance the bass”, especially when you play more than one note. I can’t think of a situation when this is a good solution but you can find dedicated plugins that do just that (HPF filter hidden under a mysteriously looking GUI) so I guess people are using this method. Good luck with boosted peaks that I’m pretty sure people later are trying to fix with limiters and clippers.
Ah, the 4th method: play a synth with only a sine wave an octave below your bass. It’s the ancient trick.
My favourite is the 5th method: fix the source aka use great sounding bass instruments when possible
Very cool, lots more plugins than I thought. Looked at them all.
Will start with the cubase bass amp. It’s got all the goodies.
For adding a sub I like the independent generator idea (Instead of add to what bass already exists). That way it can have its own midi score, which can deviate away from the rest, so you feel a different rhythm than you hear. Skrillex did that a bunch of times.
I wonder if we should be making three versions of each song. A regular version, a smartphone mono version and a club version.
You guys saved me some time and money again. Cheers.
Thanks again Steinberg.
…
So slide over here
And give me a moment
Your moves are so raw
I got to let you know
Steinberg, ur one of my kind
since nobody seems to have mentioned it, this one also “does something” to the deep bass frequency spectrum - and I like it for its rather subtle approach:
