Mixing. Roll off lowest frequencys at 20Hz. Yes or no? (club dance music)

[vurt]

how are you going to benefit from cutting it?

if it's not doing any harm, leave it.

it's a hang up from classic recording techniques imo.
when recording a band for example, most of that cutting is to remove crosstalk from the different channels as much as any unwanted freq from the channel itself.
ie, drop everything below 80 for your guitars, as that's where the errant bass might be or a bit of the kick.
kick and bass drop everything above your highest bass note...

itb with software instruments only, there is no cross talk, so eq shouldn't need to be so drastic, nothing more than a slight cut or boost here n there (although, stop being lazy, do it in the synth )

[DJ Warmonger]

Infrasonic components may be a product of distortion, which is very common in EDM. In fact every non-linear processor generates extra partials which may be infrasonic. This includes DC component.

Now, this inaudible signal may still hit your audio chain, including compressors or subsequent stages of distortion. Try to saturate DC signal and see how it feels.

[AnX]

how are you going to benefit from cutting it?

if it's not doing any harm, leave it.

it's a hang up from classic recording techniques imo.
when recording a band for example, most of that cutting is to remove crosstalk from the different channels as much as any unwanted freq from the channel itself.
ie, drop everything below 80 for your guitars, as that's where the errant bass might be or a bit of the kick.
kick and bass drop everything above your highest bass note...

itb with software instruments only, there is no cross talk, so eq shouldn't need to be so drastic, nothing more than a slight cut or boost here n there (although, stop being lazy, do it in the synth )

exactly....

dont forget to put a compressor on every channel

[cnt]

No sound system is going to reproduce 20 Hz in first place

That is simply not true by a long shot.
If you are refering the avarage sound system for people listening on the living room, sure.

And yes, my sound system, with dual sub-woofers (had to got with two (stereo) to fit my studio room dimensions), goes down to 18 Hz almost totally linear (-3dB at 17 Hz).
Even commercial subwoofers goes down in these frequency areas. Genelec for example. Their 7360A for instance do it down to 19 Hz.

I would say cut-off 20-30 Hz at final mixing stage if you feel that it is needed. If you do have too much information in those frequencies, you probably have missed fixing particular tracks (most probably kick+bass if that is what you're doing..).

Of course compressing the whole track should not be done on the subs at all.

I will make us an example when I get back to the studio, A+B blind test on a kick + psy bass. One with 30 hz cut and one without. Let's see if we can hear the difference, both in subs and in "energy"...

EDIT: of course you can cut off if the sound is still good (in-phase, no/little pre-ringing, good tonal quality). I make my own kick drums and I choose where the bottom end should be. I never go as far as below 20 Hz (E0) so it's basically a non-issue for me on kicks. On bass lines on the other hand I tend to cut 18 dB/Oct at 20-35 Hertz depending on tonal qualities etc etc. There will still be some info down there since you will probably use a 12-24 db/oct lowpass filter. You probably don't want to use a Brickwall filter or something like a 72 db/oct filter since it will probably make it sound bad (although there are probably cases where this works also, as with anything in audio engineering - just listen - don't use your eyes...).
If I remove everything (lets say 48 dB/Oct below 40 Hz on my bassline, in this example I'm doing right now, it loses the bottom "in-my-chest" feeling...

Cutting at 12 or 24 db/Oct at 30 Hz leaves a lot of info still in there at 20 Hz so basically your NOT cutting it, just lowering the volume. (24 dB/Oct is about -2 dB per note in a 12 note system, right?)
So if you cut off at 30 Hz at -24 dB you will still have something like 20 Hz at -14 dB? Don't know if my math is correct here.. ... Anyways, for a movie score I would probably cut at 20 Hz. So it all depends...

[vurt]

how are you going to benefit from cutting it?

if it's not doing any harm, leave it.

it's a hang up from classic recording techniques imo.
when recording a band for example, most of that cutting is to remove crosstalk from the different channels as much as any unwanted freq from the channel itself.
ie, drop everything below 80 for your guitars, as that's where the errant bass might be or a bit of the kick.
kick and bass drop everything above your highest bass note...

itb with software instruments only, there is no cross talk, so eq shouldn't need to be so drastic, nothing more than a slight cut or boost here n there (although, stop being lazy, do it in the synth )

exactly....

dont forget to put a compressor on every channel

at least two!

[Ah_Dziz]

You can. I would only worry about it in the case of sends and severely distorted sounds. A long reverb can build up a whole lot of near DC signal and so can a long delay (so I usually cut the inputs and returns of any delay effects somewhere up around 100Hz).
As mentioned earlier in the thread distortion will exacerbate these problems as well as others. I usually cut the whole mix below 20 hz (around 10) and then with any track that is supposed to have LF content I give it a once over with an eq to make sure it doesn't have any phantom content that's screwing things up. I do this as I'm putting the track together so I don't have to worry about the phase issues of slamming the whole track through a filter. If it sounds screwy while I'm doing it, then I approach things differently.

Also this can be much more of an issue when recording live sources. Anything that comes in through a mic gets some sort of low cut and usually a very gentle high cut as well.

The main takeaway is that there is no standard "always cut away everything below x and you'll be fine" this will depend on the key of your song, what roll the kick and the bass play, as well as other stuff, but if you can't hear a difference then it's probably not something you need.

[Hermetech Mastering]

No. Roll them off where it sounds good, or don't roll them off at all, depending on what the track calls for. For that you need full range monitoring, and if you don't have it, send it to someone who does! There is no "by rote" in audio production.

[thermal]

I always do a brick wall cut at 40 Hz because my music is just a -0.1 dB RMS 41 Hz sine wave anyway

[Spring Goose]

I always do a brick wall cut at 40 Hz because my music is just a -0.1 dB RMS 41 Hz sine wave anyway

nice

[highkoo]

Ive always heard that one of the reasons attention is paid to low cuts is that super low freqs put far more 'energy' in the mix.
So not only could they get wonky on a sound system, but could eat up your mix.

[ghettosynth]

I always do a brick wall cut at 40 Hz because my music is just a -0.1 dB RMS 41 Hz sine wave anyway

I'm calling my lawyer. My 42Hz sine wave from the same album is the very meaning of life, you best not try to copy that too!

[Uriel Anthony]

To cut or not and at what frequency really depends on how much bloat you have down there in your mix. No need to cut if there's nothing much going on down there to begin with, as someone already mentioned "if it's not doing any harm, leave it". Or you might need to cut more/higher instead if there's really too much energy below your kick's (or lowest bass note, whichever is suppose to be lowest) fundamental. A spectrum analyzer would be handy if you can't hear or your monitoring system can't reproduce those subs.

[thermal]

Highpass filters often increase peak level rather than reduce it. Sure you can use linear phase filters but then pre-ring can be an issue, especially since it’s the low end / long waves you are targeting. Sometimes low shelf filters are a better choice. It doesn’t make much difference if your rumble is at -40 dB rather than -60 when your sub’s fundamental hits -10.

Many don’t know that highpass filters frequently result in subtle distortion way up the spectrum. Accrued over many tracks, it can get ugly. On the other hand you can use this knowledge to push an element forwards as the midrange distortion will tend to make it more upfront. It’s obviously less of an issue with electronic dance music than delicate classical.

If you don’t believe this, look up the youtube video on highpass filters by Paul Frindle, ex-engineer for SSL and main guy behind Sony’s Oxford console. Think he did a few of the Sonnox plugins as well, and Frindle Dynamic Spectrum Mapper (DSM) distributed by Plugin Alliance. It was quite shocking to see tbh.

[Hermetech Mastering]

Many don’t know that highpass filters frequently result in subtle distortion way up the spectrum. Accrued over many tracks, it can get ugly.

Not disagreeing, but would love you to post an audible example.

The Paul Frindle video is looking at square waves, not music...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73PbD6o ... aulFrindle

[thermal]

Many don’t know that highpass filters frequently result in subtle distortion way up the spectrum. Accrued over many tracks, it can get ugly.

Not disagreeing, but would love you to post an audible example.

The Paul Frindle video is looking at square waves, not music...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73PbD6o ... aulFrindle

It's been a while since I highpassed stuff nilly willy, but here's an old track where I wasn't aware of the downsides: https://soundcloud.com/djthermal/chagrined

The track is unfortunately low bitrate but you can hear the sharpness/harshness in the upper mids which is in part due to highpassing. The kick in this track is a good example of "highpass syndrome" - it's had its life sucked out of it and gotten all ugly in the mids.

I find that highpassing kicks and basses is often a sacrifice of smoothness, solidity and weight to achieve agility and focus. Not talking about attenuating the fundamental here. It could be a 30 Hz cut on a kick with an 80 Hz fundamental, for instance (and filter slope which does not extend anywhere near 80 Hz). The kick may become leaner and less sluggish when the hpf is switched in, but something about the sound usually seems to deteriorate. Mids get rougher and a hole appears in the low end. The image I get in my head when hearing it is something like this (you must think I've gone mental, lol):

Screenshot 2021-04-16 at 18.02.38.png

It's like the low end has lost its anchor. More focussed, but less full and pleasing. I think it is not only that mud is removed, but that reduction of these low frequencies shifts the overall frequency balance towards a more middy sound, and that's not taking into account possible midrange distortion which would bring the mids even more forwards.

The bass can still be powerful, of course, and an hpf can be a big help if the sub is eating too much headroom, e.g. from subsonic frequencies created as a side effect of saturation. But I've become accustomed to paying intense attention to what happens when an hpf is switched in...there needs to be an obvious benefit of highpass filtering (outweighing its negatives) for me to leave it on. As a mastering engineer I'm sure you've experienced how low end fullness can get compromised when a highpass filter is applied, even when its cutoff frequency is very low?

Rant aside, I do use highpass filters all over the place, including on bass. Just much more conscious about potential side effects than I used to be. No such thing as a free lunch