Is 32hz TOO low in a track?

[Tricky-Loops]

I think bass is way too exaggerated these days, only pisses off neighbors, if it can be heard at all.

Because even the cheapest car hi-fi system has a bass enhancer that transforms every car into a rolling earthquake!

Reminds me of those black guys with those cars whose front ends jump up and down

That's because of all the hip-hopping girls on the load bed

[JCJR]

Just set up a fairly bright synth patch, hipass it fairly high, maybe 80 hz or even higher if you want. Then you can play your 32 hz bass tone and listeners will be able to hear it even on wimpy tabletop radio speakers.

It doesn't require much of a speaker to be able to hear (and properly identify) the lowest note of a grand piano.

[Sendy]

I think bass is way too exaggerated these days, only pisses off neighbors, if it can be heard at all.

Because even the cheapest car hi-fi system has a bass enhancer that transforms every car into a rolling earthquake!

Reminds me of those black guys with those cars whose front ends jump up and down


Anyway, bass is strange. There are certain frequencies that sound very unpleasant, and it is not about how low the frequency is. It is certain frequencies where everything seems to vibrate in an ugly way. Maybe that is specific to my speakers and furniture, dunno...
If I play notes above or below those specific notes, it sounds fine again.

Congrats, you found the resonant frequency of all the shit in your room

I used to have that problem, it went away when I put my monitors on stands, and changed the room around a bit for better accoustics. Stuff rattling (including speaker enclosures and things near the speaker) are most certainly specific to your setup. It's good to use headphones to check.

[ghettosynth]

...

[fluffy_little_something]

I think bass is way too exaggerated these days, only pisses off neighbors, if it can be heard at all.

Because even the cheapest car hi-fi system has a bass enhancer that transforms every car into a rolling earthquake!

Reminds me of those black guys with those cars whose front ends jump up and down


Anyway, bass is strange. There are certain frequencies that sound very unpleasant, and it is not about how low the frequency is. It is certain frequencies where everything seems to vibrate in an ugly way. Maybe that is specific to my speakers and furniture, dunno...
If I play notes above or below those specific notes, it sounds fine again.

Congrats, you found the resonant frequency of all the shit in your room

I used to have that problem, it went away when I put my monitors on stands, and changed the room around a bit for better accoustics. Stuff rattling (including speaker enclosures and things near the speaker) are most certainly specific to your setup. It's good to use headphones to check.

Actually, it is already a whole lot better in my new apartment. There was a lot of rattling noise when my monitors were still placed on my glass and metal table That's probably the worst combination one can think of in terms of resonance. A glass surface resting on a frame of hollow metal tubes

Now I put them on a solid wall, and I put little adhesive rubber pads at the bottom, just two mm thick, no more rattling

[Fluffbomb]

Most audio signal chains have enough hipassing to protect the woofer from over excursion on near-dc low frequencies. Otherwise woofer failure would be much more common from such accidents as loud thumps (dropped microphones and such).

Hmmm not sure that's true to be honest as most PA drivers are just built ruggedly to be able to cope with abuse. One off hits pushing a cone to maximum excursion doesn't tend to kill drive units it's sustained overdriving that does.

Some PAs and studio monitors will have very low frequency filters but the majority of music systems won't.

[JCJR]

Most audio signal chains have enough hipassing to protect the woofer from over excursion on near-dc low frequencies. Otherwise woofer failure would be much more common from such accidents as loud thumps (dropped microphones and such).

Hmmm not sure that's true to be honest as most PA drivers are just built ruggedly to be able to cope with abuse. One off hits pushing a cone to maximum excursion doesn't tend to kill drive units it's sustained overdriving that does.

Some PAs and studio monitors will have very low frequency filters but the majority of music systems won't.

You are correct that it is difficult to generalize. However, I'd guess that 99 percent of electronic audio modules with inputs (including power amps) have highpassing on the input. And 99 percent of audio modules which have outputs (not including power amps which tend to be DC coupled), have highpassing on the output.

A few pieces of high-falutin "deluxe audiophile" gadgets will be dc coupled on the front and back ends, but they tend to be rare because they can cause problems in practice.

Nowadays the highpassing is usually via capacitor, though older or pro modern gear might use audio transformers (which cost more than capacitors, explaining the rarity).

Large value caps tend to cost more than small value caps, so a company will use a smaller cap if it saves a penny, if they think the smaller value is "good enough". Depending on the target market, they might size the coupling caps to be -3 dB as high as 40 Hz or as low as 10 Hz. Maybe lower in some cases, just generalizing.

Some devices such as analog mixers not only have in and out hipassing, but multiple stages of hipassing inside the devices. Between the preamp and the tone stack. Between the tone stack and the bus driver. Between the bus driver and the mix bus.

So you plug the mic in the pa-- Perhaps it is hipassed on input, hipassed three times inside the mixer channel, at least one time on output. Then hipassed one time on input to house EQ or speaker controller, hipassed again on output to power amp, hipassed again on power amp input.

That would be 8 stages of first order highpass in series. If the average -3 dB point of all stages were 10 Hz, then your mic signal would be attenuated -24 dB at 10 Hz when it reaches the speaker. It would be attenuated on the order of -48 dB at 5 Hz. It would be attenuated on the order of -96 dB at 2.5 Hz.

[zerocrossing]

I say bring the whole piece down a few octaves and market it as dance music for elephants!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seismic_communication

[chickenhide]

Thanks for all the help everyone. Moving the C to a G sounded just fine. and it sounds perfect on the subs in my car so I'm happy

[Ah_Dziz]

Mwaveshaper from melda productions is a great free wave shaper with a wet dry control. I use it often for sub bass driven tracks that need to translate to small speaker systems. I generally follow it with a gentle low pass filter to take off a bit of the edge I've added to the sound. For songs where the sub is less of the focus I usually use waves' rbass with its frequency control set near the fundamental of the root of whatever key I'm in. This will add some harmonics that can be brought out in the mix through eqing and whatnot without being too blatant. I generally try to not go lower than the low e when writing. I've used the low c from time to time as a "super sub" effect when I know something is going to be played on a large pa.

JJ

[Jrace]

I would still keep it in, a lot of systems won't be able to reproduce it so you'll have to find a balance between that 30Hz area and the 60Hz area (for this type of sub I would have both and blend, it will be very hard indeed to get a full sound with just one or the other)

[godog1023]

When hearing a tune played In a common setting, club or restaurant on even a nice speaker system - it is almost always noticeable when the bass player plays a note on a B string (the lowest string on a five string).
There are 2 reasons:
1) physical difference in the attack of the thicker string- which makes the note (even if it's a G, played higher on the neck) BLOOM instead of Boom.
2) the response of the speakers themselves which cannot deliver the desired BOOM, or impact at those frequencies as the higher notes
Also keep in mind that the difference between 30 hertz and 45 hertz is half of an octave - huge!
I think the key is having overtones that carry the bass tone (or kick tone) way above what you consider bass frequencies.
A 2 db bump at 900 Hz will sometimes make the bass (gtr) sound overwhelming in a mix. But most of the time it's just what the dr ordered.

[cron]

I had issues with audibility going this low on a track I abandoned. Even took it to a mate's place where there's a pair of speakers the size of a 5-year-old child and the lowest bass note still sounded like a fart. Perfectly audible on cheap closed-back headphones, oddly enough.

I've had great results using unfiltered triangle waves in place of sine for ultra low stuff. They've a very sine-like quality, and none of the 'cheese factor' that more complex lowpassed waves have to my ears. That compromise seems to work pretty well for me, although my stuff is more targeted for home listening than the club.

Going off topic here, but as for the "120 BPM = 2 Hz" discussion earlier, Stockhausen's 1957 paper wie die Zeit vergeht (translated by Cornelius Cardew as "How Time Passes") is an interesting read around this kind of principle: the idea that pitch and rhythm can be thought of as the same thing happening on different time scales and that interesting effects can be had by playing around the boundary where one appears to become the other. An essential read for experimentalists, but I hear the principle at work in EDM a lot too. There's an oft-used effect where the lead's pitch divebombs down at the end of a bar so low that each oscillator cycle (i.e. the jump from -1 to +1 or vice versa in a sawtooth or square wave) comes through as a series of individually perceptible clicks. Same deal the other way round in ye olde IDM tracks where a percussion sound would be repeated so quickly that it came through as a pitched tone, or in the ultra fast snare rolls you'll sometimes hear before the drop in club tunes.

[thewizrad]

I don't think 32Hz is too low at all. It's a nice bit of heft in the kick, or a rumble in the bass. Just make sure there is nothing else down there fighting for the territory. I must be crazy, though, because everyone else is saying otherwise....