the HUGE distorted bass sound for metal:how do yo obtain it?

[bosone]

how do you obtain the huge and fat bass sound often heard in the latest metal records?
please, share some of your techniques...

i have tryed the following:

the bass goes into a tube preamp (TB202) and the "clean" direct soudn is directed to dynatube bass with AG model. in this way i can have a good clean and deep bass.
in order to get distortion, i send the clean direct soudn coming from the tube preamp to another mixer channel, in which i inserted a distortion plugin (i used the standard pulsar tube drive with EQ).
mixing the two sounds is not so bad, but you have to take into account the phase and re-align the two signal. (for example i have found that the two channels, apart some different delays - about 150 samples) are phase inverted!

now i have to tweak on the distortion channel...

any other ideas? (remaining in the digital domain, wihtout mic'ing an amp that, simply, i don't have! )

[dawman]

Contact the developers and see if there is a free trial or something, but I love this new stuff.
On keyboards I could never get useful distortion as playing more than one note caused serious degradation which wasn't suitable. Even running our Bassist through most plugs sucked except for this surgical beauty.
Saw can be placed on single or multiple harmonics and the precision is the best I have ever used.

http://www.sonic-core.net/documents/gost-dynomic-en.pdf
http://www.sonic-core.net/documents/gost-saw-en.pdf

Here's how it destroys my synth sounds, but I like the way I can play a bass line and rhythm parts/lead simultaneously due to the precision of the Saw.

http://www.planetz.com/forums/download/file.php?id=4026

[pollux]

The main issue with "distortion" plugins is that they're mostly tailored for guitar.. Making them sound with any other thing (like a voice or a bass) is a nightmare.

TQDrive (stock CW) is one of the few that works on different instruments.
Dynomic + Saw probably too (don't have first hands experience)

What works pretty well is the combination of an octaver with a bass overdrive:

you split the signal in two and feed one of them to an octaver (1 octave down), then to an overdrive, whilst the other one goes on straight, and you finally mix the two.

Staying purely "digital", you can achieve this quite easily with any DAW:

take your bass track and duplicate it.
pitch shift the duplicated track to -1 octave
feed both tracks into TWO separate bass dynatubes: the "normal" one into an AG, the "lowered" one into a SW with the gain cranked up so that you get a nice tube overdrive. You can also try to add a TQdrive (or a dynomic / saw) as a "pre gain" insert on the SW.
The SW is brighter and more present than the AG, so it works better with distorted basses.

You just need then add the output of the two dynatubes to the mix...


Another option is to use Modular II/III to process your signal, since it can use an audio signal as a sound source, or even as a modulation. You can get some pretty radical stuff by this mean (tried on a guitar a couple of years ago )

I guess Ralf can generate you a temporary key for Dynomic for evaluation purposes.

Cheers


Raul

[Mr Arkadin]

If you don't mind modding your bass you could try the old Chris Squire trick (i know, not metal, but he did have a glorious dirty sound in the early days of Yes). He had a stereo jack fitted to his bass, with the bridge pickup going down one leg, the neck pickup down the other - this probably helps keep things in phase. The neck pickup then went to a bass amp straight, the bridge pickup went to a guitar amp with the gain turned up. He could then mix the two signals back.

Or the cheap option (that i use), is a Boss ODB-3 Bass Overdrive which allows you to adjust the ratio of dirty to clean signal before it hits your amp/DAW.

[dawman]

I never knew that about Squire.......
I saw Yes live several times and the sound live he got on Roundabout was awesome.
Nice to know why. It had such presence in the low end and the Rickenbacker w/ a pick and the split signal makes perfect sense now.

Our bassist uses an Eventide hardware but more for chorused effect.
I will try and see what we come up with this weekend at rehearsal w/ the Octave PS idea.
We are currently running the Bass through Celmo's plug and routing the Eventide into the Scope Project via AES/EBU and the sound is great for a DAW. His 5 String Tobias gets pre amped by a FMR RNP8380 and sounds really round and full for a cheap pre amp.

I also want the big fuzzy bass sound so we can do Barbarian by Emerson Lake & Palmer.
Trying to get Karl Palmers drum style will definately be a serious challenge.

Thanks for the tips guys. I like getting home by 4:30 am after the gig, and seeing chaps from the UK & France online,...................way cool.

[pollux]

I will try and see what we come up with this weekend at rehearsal w/ the Octave PS idea.

Don't know how it might work because of the lower B on the 5 String bass.. You're gonna create an earthquake in Vegas

[dawman]

We have a SUB for those.
The bassist is a popular engineer up here ( Tahoe BTW ).
He helped me design our current stage set up using 4 x powered mid fields and 1 x Sub.
The only cabinets onstage are my Rotary Horn and our Guitarist's small but powerful Mesa Boogie studio rig.

I will try your idea this weekend as that sound is needed.
I am getting some ridiculously powerful low end bass stuff that we use for our dance stuff where I play the simple Bass line and he elaborates w/ slaps etc.
DSP synths are really good for this, and to get the sound really analogish I mix my analog monosynth w/ Prowave or Solaris and yes, we shake the glasses on the bar, while the annoying mids are isolated.

[voidar]

I've had success with the BXD as a driver/dist:
http://www.planetz.com/forums/viewtopic ... 16&t=23688

Instant tracktor.

The way I usually do it.

1. Duplicate your clean bass track. Drive the other one as prefered.
2. Low-pass your clean track to taste (between 200-500Hz or so) <- duck this to kick drum.
3. High-pass your driven track so that it crosses over the low-passed, clean track, to taste.
4. Mix to taste.

Make sure phase is relatively ok.

[tgstgs]

sorry but i have to add a 'first hands experience' here;

this is 'normal' digitaldistortion;
and you see the source of trouble;
thers not much man can do;
adding pre post EQs
splittin in bands;
add compression;
but the trouble stay!
it gets wors the lower the frequency is;
worst case is a bass;

[tgstgs]

SAW uses different technologie:
the lower the frequency the better and different it sounds;
with threshold / angle and wet/dry you are able to cut the wave in a lot of forms;
and there is nothing filtered or comprest;
its just cutted away thats it;
to do different cuttings on different bands put a few in a dynomic;

so its up to everyone to tweak around for weeks to get near to . . .
or use a few parameters to get a unique new sound in realtime;

good vibes

sorry its a gifmoster -> i reduced a bit

[dbmac]

Hey - where can I get one of those WaViewers?

/dave

[spacef]

oh Gosh !
another king of the animated gif
looks very nice

[garyb]

a big muff pi?

[dawman]

Ya gotta love this place.
Bosone knows he can check in 24 hours later and have several options, pics, and mp3's.

Trained Professionals.

[pollux]

a big muff pi?

I've a russian big muff which is a killer on a bass

[tgstgs]

WaViewer is old!
much better version in work;
----
if HW try to get a chandler tube driver 19" thers no equal;
30 years without repair!

good vibes

edit:
of course its a very early B.K. Butler tube driver, chandler just put their name on!

[dawman]

Ankyu............

These take zero DSP, are they run off of the host?

[tgstgs]

as you like;
the xrasterfader full to left makes it static full right is realtime;
but these are old versions;
i gave to all customers who pmed me corse we made SAW plug with it;
so it somehow belong together;
------
new one has more features;
save capturing as wav or txt file for further analysation just to name one;

sorry for off topic;
good vibes

[dawman]

Let me know what the A6 looks like through this, as I used my Analog synth in the jpeg.
Samples are displayed with much more space between the waves. And easier to seperate.