Bass that's right.

[LelandCrooks]

http://www.prosoundweb.com/article/what ... forcement/

[Gregory East]

I gather the general gist of it implies with the horn subs we're on a pretty straight path to his ideal bass. Low to no harmonics reproduced right? Then he throws a curveball:

An Exception
I have to mention that there’s one exception to all of the above: trance music. By this I mean dance music, rave music, some kinds of techno music, and generally any kind of music that’s designed to produce an altered state of consciousness by physical bombardment of the body and senses.

If you’re into that kind of thing, then you want your bass to have a stunning effect. Such an effect is produced when each bass transient is accompanied by a blast of harmonics that shakes the room, dims the lights, masks the music, and makes people’s eyes go blurry.

If that’s what you’re after, then you’ll probably want high-distortion bass. The easiest way to get that is to use nonlinear woofers. To get more control over the phenomenon, you can use bass-distorting devices, including subharmonic generators and other evil machines.

[loupey]

It all sounds pretty good at low levels, but when things get cooking, up comes the roar from below.

What sounds good at low volumes just does not work for at performance levels and he explains why. Good bass, goodness, I have rarely ever heard it live. I particularly loved his 8 points of what "good bass" sounds like. I seriously wanted to make a post about what defines good bass and I think this articles explains it, ahem, and pretty much sums of a lot of what Bill has been saying.

In the recording realm, I wonder if there is a relationship between the "loudness wars" regarding mastering and what people are used to hearing. Not only that, car stereos, boom boxes, and the like seem to artificially boost bass for effect, not sound quality. That, to me, trains listeners to go after that same distorted sound, perhaps? When listeners get trained to hear crummy bass, they feel cheated when they don't get it and complain. The cycle gets repeated with the sound operators do not unlearn these bad habits.

[loupey]

Ya, what's up with the advocacy of distorted bass for trance, et. al.? I always thought it was just normal clear bass but with a lot more speaker area to bump up the sub-bass?

[Gregory East]

I drive a cab and pull up right to the door of (sucessful) local bar specialising in "DoofDoof...SCHWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRG....GUDGAGUDGAGUDGA...
.DoofDoof...SCHWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGSWAAAAAAAAAAAANGGGGGGGGGGGGG" all distorted to Hell.

To me it sounds like absolute shiite, but what do I know. Now you're saying it's meant to sound like that

[sine143]

In the recording realm, I wonder if there is a relationship between the "loudness wars" regarding mastering and what people are used to hearing. Not only that, car stereos, boom boxes, and the like seem to artificially boost bass for effect, not sound quality. That, to me, trains listeners to go after that same distorted sound, perhaps? When listeners get trained to hear crummy bass, they feel cheated when they don't get it and complain. The cycle gets repeated with the sound operators do not unlearn these bad habits.

The smiley face EQ curve seems like a popular strategy for most nonpro sound devices. I feel like another issue that you didnt touch about the normal consumer is: Most of the music they are used to hearing is either from FM radio, or 128 kb/s pirated mp3s, blaring out of either the white ipod earbuds, or their cars. Its not really a stretch to say that music designed for radio play *generally* lacks "good" low end content, in comparison to some of the specialized music out there (dare I say... underground), and this really affects the masses idea of "deep bass". The amount of times i have heard the words "bangin on the 18's" is enormous, and I must say that before I decided to sit down with some books, and learn from the experienced members of this forum, I was

The Trance exception is kind of wierd imo. Especially since he points to trance specifically. I find I like to have my bass/sub bass MORE musical for trance, and less saturated with well.... crap. I think he might be saying something like "if you are having a party with 2k people who are rollin, just pump as much sound across all frequencies as you can, cause they can feel things better than hear them".

I also dont know if I agree with the "if you want to have a bass guitar crunch, add the effect into the mix". If money is permitting, and you have a tone you want... I dont think it matters how you obtain it, be it by using a certain cab, buying a certain guitar, or using effects to taste.

in regards to the loudness war, TURN IT UP. lol. I hope they record a clean version of this track, cause even in the ear destroying rendition, Its grown on me since I first heard it, especially after saw them live.

[loupey]

LOL!!! I can't stop laughing @ Mr. East's post. I can just imagine what passes for "great sound" [in a technical sense] these days. Case in point is my reply to Sine143:

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Not my cup o' tea at all, but Industrial floats some people's boat.

Loudness war:
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GIGO. You can have superb speakers but if the recording has been treated with an overuse of a compressor/limiter, it's ruined. Live music, of course, does not suffer as much from this unless all the instruments are heavily compressed either at the source (bass, guitar rig) or at the board.

EDIT: [] for clarification

[Radian]

Most of the music they are used to hearing is either from FM radio, or 128 kb/s pirated mp3s, blaring out of either the white ipod earbuds, or their cars.

Who is "they"?

It's bad juju to lump people like that in conversation, mostly because I don't fall into that category. I'm not mad or anything, just saying that I don't fit that mold, so I'm not they.

A good example:

I watched an episode of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. The owner of a restaurant unknowingly lost a whole pile of clientele because she had underestimated her customers' pallets. It wasn't until Ramsay brought in a crowd of former customers, that proceeded to lambaste her menu and quality standards, did she even realize the harm she had done to her business. She thought she was doing right, completely ignorant. They called her out publicly, and she had to swallow her foot hard ("..people know good food"). She took it pretty well, changed the menu and her kitchen practices, and turned things around.

I know what sounds good to my ears and that means there's at least one other person in the world who thinks the same way. Before I discovered low-distortion, sound reproduction technology, I listened with what equipment I had because it was all I had at the time. It wasn't because I didn't know what sounded good to my ears. No more, no less. When I found out I could change that for myself, I did. I'm not part of the unwashed herd, and I could certainly be your next customer.

Skip to 5:50 to see what I was referring to:

[sine143]

Most of the music they are used to hearing is either from FM radio, or 128 kb/s pirated mp3s, blaring out of either the white ipod earbuds, or their cars.

Who is "they"?

"That, to me, trains listeners to go after that same distorted sound, perhaps"

Those guys, them, the ones going for the same distorted sound. Perhaps I should have defined the exact person I was thinking about, but hell its tough to put it to words other than this image in my head, which is part of the problem that you so aptly picked up on. I guess I should have started with

"the people who listen to radio designed music in their cars, and all the time, and pirate Mp3s at 128 kb/s to throw on their ipod and thus listen to through stock ipod headphones, are used to hearing music that is composed of a fairly limited fare of deeeep sub bass content, or much bass at all, other than a layered kick."

I know its bad to just throw people into a group... I'll try to be a bit more descriptive next time lol

[loupey]

I LOVE Kitchen Nightmare's ...

I think Sine143 was merely referring to the those of us who are interested in best practices in sound engineering (bass in particular in this article) versus the average consumer who generally do not care about the science behind it, or non-enthusiasts. So "us" would just mean "us sound guys" in general, and "them" would be, by logic, non sound guys.

If one truly is an elitist snob and is condescending towards customers (I've comes across a few) then perhaps that not good for business, nor relations, but that's quite another topic.

Sticky Lemon Chicken...lovely...just lovely http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mARkUax2jg0

EDIT: grammar

[sine143]

lol... Maybe someday I'll fit into the group "Us sound guys". For now, its "us poor guys", who opted for DIY solutions to their problems. Maybe, just maybe, I'll pound some learning into me

[SeisTres]

Wow, that article pretty much sums up everything i would probably have to say about bass. That's the reason once I built the t18 and got used to the new sound(granted, I did not find it "better" at first), I was sold on folded horns. Now i hardly notice any bass is there since everything just seems to merge like one big speaker. However, for all the electronic stuff, I'm still not entirely since the main thing about is the bass and since there's no vocals or real bass guitar or distortion guitar or piano producing all those mid harmonics the 18" still feel like they fill in that hole. The best i've done with synth music is to make the titans into a kind of sub/kickbin combo by raising the xover by alot, but then if I did play this kind of music all the time (or even at home) I would still use a kick bin for my set up. But for any other music out there, i wouldn't trade my horns.

[Gregory East]

OMG that "Sleigh Bells" track has the exact "timbre" I was trying to describe but in 120dB BOLD TYPE. The producers kindly put it out like that so "they" can have that sound at any volume. How thoughtful.

[sine143]

hahahaha, exactly. the first couple times had me cringing in my chair. the 3-4th time I was like "if I put my hand next to my head like this it takes the edge off a bit to make it bearable". After that, it was stuck in my head. I wake up to this tune (makes a hell of an alarm).

that was all before I built my BFM cabs, maybe about 8 months ago. Fired this one up with the Otops

I'd thought it was "ear-piercing" treble before. The piezos ate it up, and took *loud* to a new level hahaha

[Harley]

LOL!!! I can't stop laughing @ Mr. East's post. I can just imagine what passes for "great sound" [in a technical sense] these days. Case in point is my reply to Sine143:
Loudness war:
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This was very, very interesting indeed!

I love tracks done like the original he was referring to and the comment that "when there's no quiet, there can be no loud"

Educational to say the least.

Thanks for that post loupey