Made this bass synth.. but i just can't seem to make it sound "full" kind of like excision on his new xrated cd..

they just seem flat.. any ideas/techniques on how i can make these surround sound basses??

http://soundcloud.com/swamiill/heavy-murda-clip

Record it in 5.1

not sure if fl can do 5.1

Well, if you want a bigger bass synth, there's a bunch of stuff you can do. Distortion, parallel processing, slight amounts of spatial effects, and proper layering can really go a long way. For example, if you have a really bright, gritty bass synth, layer it with a plain sine sub bass. If you're into parallel procesing, send your bass out to a bunch of different sends, and add heaps of processing to each (distortion, compression, very subtle amount of reverb or chorus, etc.) and then send all of those, along with the dry signal to a separate buss and throw some heavy compression on it to glue all the processed sounds together (just be sure to watch your latency and listen for phasing, because you don't want any phase cancellations). In all honesty, I really like Excision's X-Rated album, but the basses really don't seem all that "big" like a lot of people seem to be saying. Sure, they're really distorted and "phat", but not all that big. It's all about learning how to process your basses to suit your tastes.

The simplest way I can think of to give your bass a fuller sound is make two channels of it and pan one to the far left and one to the far right. Maybe you should also half the volume on each of the channels so they come together to make that full sound at the right volume.

TBH, I think it might come down to your mixing in this instance... Admittedly I'm only listening to it on a laptop at the mo, but I think the hi-hats are way too high up in the mix.... One of the tricks of getting a track element to appear "loud" is by making everything else quieter, and then adding some fairly heavy compression to the master channel to bring up the averages.

Have another listen to some Excision, forget about the sounds, and just listen to where things are in the mix... I.E. "How loud are the hi-hats compared to the kicks?"

It's basically listening in earphones you can notice directional information on the low frequences.

In a room you hardly notice that. That is why some equipment has subbass woofer in the center only.

So you have to go to the higher region, harmonics of the bass synth.

A guy that built a large number of free synths like NovaKiller has a lot of unison voices in his synths to enhance power of the sound, whatever style.

He basically double that incoming midi with a number of notes, with a slight delay between them. Yes, it costs cpu but give you more power to the sound.

Another little tip I have for making bass "bigger" is scooping out the low end. It may sound odd, but actually if you set a high-pass filter to about 60Hz, then your speakers have a lot more room to breathe, and focus on the main detail of the bassline around 70-100Hz.

i think it's called paralell compression, but whatever, it seems to work in fattening up anything you care to do it to.
make two tracks and compress the hell out of one of them, hard limit, whatever, then drop the volume to zero. play it in a loop and slowly raise the volume of the compressed one until it gets the fatness of the compression but doesn't loose the definition of the dry one.

Good tip. If the compressor has a dry wet.mix.knob can u basically just crank the settings and adjust the dry wet? Same as doing the above method^? Also what settings do you "recommend" Thx.
Last edited by bigdaveo11 on Sun Mar 04, 2012 9:09 pm; edited 1 time in total

Also for wub wub try out a short small reverb.

Get fl's reverb 2 and get the room looking purple (only a little low cut, and only a little damping) then reduce the tail length to maybe 100 ms or maybe smaller, with a predelay of more than 14ms with the dry/wet around 22 or 30% wet.
And make the width of the reverb maximum seperation!

I'm not even on my DAW at the moment, but i'm remembering my FL days.. this should add something you may be missing. A short thickening up of the sound, adds a lot if you are modulating the bass (e.g: wobble)

Also after listening to your posted track again here's some suggestions on the bass:

Reduce any bus maximizing plugins or big compressors, use them "in parallel" as people are suggesting, with a high threshold comp or limiter at the end of your chain.

Another big thing that adds "power" to wob bass is the sub line. Be sure you have an osc (maybe sine or better yet triangle+sine) that aren't going through your bandpass/lowpass whatever filter you are using for wobble. Make sure to play them at a low enough octave so that they add weight without being "beepy"
then send your sub to the same bus as the wobble for final compression

Had a few ? related to the thread topic, apologies OP not trying to hijack the thread just thought id post in here since the questions haev to due with the topic.

1. How come you avoid compression on any of the individual.channels? Not questioning this technique just curious.

2. When u parallel compress at the end of the chain are u meaning on the final aux/bus where everything is routed back to.before heading out to the master?

3. When sitting up routing to split your bass track (using Logic) is the easiest/most efficient (I know there is no "right" way if you will) by having the main channel with the soft synth and sending the signal out to three different busses/aux's. Each of these aux's will either have seperate FX on them or I will throw on a multipressor and single 3 bands, dividing them into low, mid, and high. The output of each of these aux's are changed to another "master bass aux" where that is sent out to the master (stereo output). Now back to the main synth track. is the output of this also sent to the "master bass aux?" Is this how I can retain the original dry signal but also have all the distorted/split up signals using the aux sends. Or do I set this to "no output" so that the dry signal is only going through the 3 different aux FX channels.

I guess I get confused when doing this process as to when to us a send on a channel so only part of the signal is being sent to the aux and when to change the actual output of the track. As I understand from reading I would use sends on the original synth track to send them out to three different aux's (or however many are desired) for processing and the output of my main synth channel as well as each individual channel for processing would all be changed to lets say for example Aux 10 the "master bass aux" so the entire signal can be processed on that channel after FX and this "master bass aux" output is headed out to the master, meaning this is the only channel/aux in the chain where the signal is being sent out to the master?

sorry for the confusion/long wording any insight would be appreciated. Sorry I cant offer advice OP, still a n00b, admiring your production skills though so forgive me if this post comes off as rude by not answering your original question
Last edited by bigdaveo11 on Sun Mar 04, 2012 9:41 pm; edited 2 times in total

excision bass or not, that is a good track

dw

This is a good, albeit contrary to most people's way of thinking, tip. Clashing frequencies can reduce a good kick or bass (or both) to cold gravy. Give one or the other a bit of room.

Or sidechain.