Possibly a stupid question, but what are you monitoring the sub-bass with? If you don't have a wide-range, high power monitor system and a big room to allow those 35+ foot wavelengths some breathing space, hard to tell when you have enough sub-bass. Although, your next door neighbours might be able to tell you.

well.....I have mackie hr824s which according to their specs go down to 39hz. The lowest note I ever put in my songs is an E which is at 41hz. That's the low E on an 88-key piano, as well as the low note on a bass.

My room isn't treated so honestly I couldn't tell you wtf I'm hearing w/ the sub half the time. Mostly I'm just feeling it, making sure it has weight to it, and hope for the best. I've been told by two mastering engineers that it's easier for them to turn the sub up than turn it down, so they've said if anything I should err on a quieter sub so they can work with it more easily.

For parties, we rent an 18" subwoofer, so we have plenty of sub

Ah, ok. The 824s low bass doesn't loosen many teeth or smack with kidney-busting kick. They don't output a lot of energy in the lowest octave even with room gain. Maybe consider treating your room and adding a dedicated (non-party) sub.

Or as you say, just make it the mastering engineer's problem.

thank you for this! now I can have something very similar to Renoise's Maximizer in Studio One

You can't. Period.

The more and deeper bass you have the more a limiter will choke on it or make it distort. There is no way around this fact. It's written in the unfortunate digital laws of ours.

Like I said earlier, there is only a compromise to be made. How loud do you need it? Then decide how much you can add bass. Or vice versa. Add as much bass as you need, then see how loud it gets. You can not have both massive amounts of subs and incredibly loud record. They are mutually exclusive.. that is unless you like a completely distorted mess.

If you have no problems with distortion then go as "loud" as you want. Perhaps some day we'll all listen to white noise.

Seriously though, I hope that we in the future have "intelligent" playback mediums that can automatically adjust track volume depending on material, so that everything plays at equal loudness no matter what. This is the only way to get rid of the loudness war. It'd get rid of it real quick too as the tracks that are not squashed to death would sound way more punchy and have much louder bass. There are virtually no negatives to having a track with lots of dynamic impact whereas there are massive losses to be had with squashing everything to death.

Cheers!
bManic

That would be brilliant! It really would be 21st century technology. Can we lobby to get it in the mp37 spec, so our great, great grandchildren can get the benefit of something that should have been implemented 15 years ago?

Isn't prol known for not messing with the low end.
I would think, the waves L3 and L16 would be good at preserving subs.
I'd like to know how they're getting the bottom end on this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gcxp3hGVr-E

It's kinda sad to assume everyone'll be listening on earbuds and cheap PC speakers. 20-80Hz is the "power" range of frequencies. Even breakbeat/accoustic kicks can sound sterile to me when highpassed. It all depends whether you're going for bassy kick or bassy bassline obviously, but I'd leave at least *something* to fill out that region, because of it's psychological impact.

and on that day i shall weep with joy