Hearing the Lows

[BeatAssassin]

Geting to hear the low end of the track. I found that having a Sub really help when your mixing. I have a good set of monitors M-Audio SP5-B monitors. They great but anything below the 60Hz range is not getting hear well. Well you don't actually hear those ranges, you should feel them. So who has sub in there monitoring setu?

 

[Phi'Zik]

i don't have any sub but i try to mix low end of the track with headphones and a spectrum analyser

 

[SlickVikNewman]

I bought a sub right after I did a session at a professional studio, I didnt realize that I was making it harder on myself at the crib not having one when I mixed. Gotta have it.

 

[Equality 7-2521]

I dont have a sub in my studio but i have one in the studio I record at. It's not as simple as adding a sub to your setup though. There is no point having a sub if your room doesnt have the neccessary dimensions to reproduce frequencies that low. The minimum recommended size for a monitoring room is 43 cubic meters and I think youd find that there are many home studios that are much smaller than this. So if your room is smaller than this, theres no point having a sub. The bottom end will be lumpy as fuck. That said, subs are definitly good in the right acoustic environment, especially for mixing genres such as Hip Hop.

 

[SlickVikNewman]

No doubt

I dont have a sub in my studio but i have one in the studio I record at. It's not as simple as adding a sub to your setup though. There is no point having a sub if your room doesnt have the neccessary dimensions to reproduce frequencies that low. The minimum recommended size for a monitoring room is 43 cubic meters and I think youd find that there are many home studios that are much smaller than this. So if your room is smaller than this, theres no point having a sub. The bottom end will be lumpy as fuck. That said, subs are definitly good in the right acoustic environment, especially for mixing genres such as Hip Hop.

I agree, when I was recording downstairs in my house, the room was so small the sub was annoying. Now that I record upstairs, the size of the room and those wood floors make a world of difference.

 

[Anubis-Ra]

Subs really help me out a lot in my production.

 

[Nuff B]

equality is right use to have a sub in my room sounded crappy moved to the back house sounds lovely

 

[BeatAssassin]

I think it can make a differnce ebven in a small room. There always some mathematical way to make it work. Yes, we alll know they say there a certain size a monitor room should be. You can work around this. Check this page out. This guy has good information on acoustics and how to make bass traps. I check it out and it solid. I even went to the point of asking a physic teacher about some of the equation involved in determine how frequencies act do to size and shape of a room. I do understand where you guys are coming from but there always a loop hole.


http://www.radford.edu/~shelm/acoustics/bass-traps.html

 

[Equality 7-2521]

Well, bass trap or no bass trap, there is no loophole to the length of a sound wave being greater than the length of the room. If you dont have a room of reasonable dimensions, the sub bass response you hear is a lie.

 

[DrOscillator]

^^^^^
i was worried when i heard all this talk about a room being "too small" for a sub - b/c my studio is pretty small and i was wanting to get one - but then i found this article, and apparently the too small thing is a myth. heres an exerpt:

" BIG WAVES, SMALL ROOMS

There is a common myth that small rooms cannot reproduce low frequencies because they are not large enough for the waves to "develop" properly. While it is true that low frequencies have very long wavelengths - for example, a 30 Hz wave is nearly 38 feet long - there is no physical reason such long waves cannot exist within a room that is much smaller than that. What defines the dimensions of a room are the wall spacing and floor-to-ceiling height. Sound waves generated within a room either pass through the room boundaries, bounce off them, or are absorbed. In fact, all three of these often apply. That is, when a sound wave strikes a wall some of its energy is reflected, some is absorbed, and some passes through to the other side.

When low frequencies are attenuated in a room, the cause is always canceling reflections. All that is needed to allow low frequency waves to sound properly and with a uniform frequency response is to remove or at least reduce the reflections. A popular argument is that low frequencies need the presence of a room mode that's low enough to "support" a given frequency. However, modes are not necessary for a wave to exist. As proof, any low frequency can be produced outdoors - and of course there are no room modes outdoors!

Here's a good way to understand this: Imagine you set up a high quality loudspeaker outdoors, play some low frequency tones, and then measure the frequency response five feet in front of the speaker. In this case the measured frequency response outdoors will be exactly as flat as the loudspeaker. Now wall in a small area, say 10x10x10 feet, using very thin paper, and measure the response again. The low frequencies are still present in this "room" because the thin paper is transparent at low frequencies and they pass right through. Now, make the walls progressively heavier using thick paper, then thin wood, then thicker wood, then sheet rock, and finally brick or cement. With each increase in wall density, reflections will cause cancellations within the room at ever-lower frequencies as the walls become massive enough to reflect the waves.

Therefore, it is reflections that cause acoustic interference and standing waves, and those are what affect the level of low frequencies produced in a room. When the reflections are reduced by applying bass traps, the frequency response within the room improves. And if all reflections could be removed, the response would be exactly as flat as if the walls did not exist at all."

the rest of the article is at http://www.realtraps.com/facts.htm , an interesting read for this topic

 

[Formant024]

yo, in a small room its all about small nearfields ( not over 8" ) and no subs and when you do have em their set to very minimal but that still never enough. Read this;

Reflection of Sound
In a perfect recording studio there aren’t any reflections of sound, so the studio itself doesn’t influence the quality of a recording. Indeed, the perfect place to make a recording is in the open air, where sounds are evenly absorbed into the air at all frequencies. Unfortunately, in the modern world, it’s virtually impossible to find a quiet outside place for recording.

When a sound wave meets a solid surface, some of the energy in the wave is absorbed into the surface, either passing through the material or changing into heat. However, the remainder of the sound is reflected back into the air. Such reflections are inevitable and occur when:-

The surface isn’t totally absorbent, which is nearly always the case.
The dimensions of the surface (at right angles to the direction of the wave) are greater than the sound’s wavelength.
The latter effect causes low frequencies to pass through a surface, an effect known as diffraction. However, at high frequencies, most sounds are reflected, sometimes creating a sound shadow behind an object. Because of this effect, a square panel of around 300 mm by 300 mm (roughly corresponding to the wavelength of a sound at 1 kHz) reflects hardly any sounds waves below 1 kHz, half the waves at 1 kHz and almost all the waves above 1 kHz.

When a sound passes through an aperture whose size is less than the wavelength of the sound, the ‘fronts’ of the normally flat sound waves become curved. If the aperture is larger, or the frequency higher, the wave fronts are unchanged. Some types of loudspeaker exploit this effect to obtain a directional characteristic.

A studio’s RT60 should:-

Be under 0.3 seconds for a studio whose volume is less than 100 m3. This figure is particularly important for frequencies up to 2 kHz. Unfortunately, it’s hard to achieve without using numerous absorbers , although not so difficult for a large studio.
Be constant between 60 Hz and 8 kHz, although small increases below 125 Hz can’t be avoided in smaller studios. In a large area, where the total volume exceeds 300 m3, there shouldn’t be any increase in the value below 250 Hz.
Give a result at 63 Hz that’s less than 50% higher than the figure at 250 Hz.
Deviate by less than 10% between 250 Hz and 4 kHz: a high value in this range can result in recordings that contain sibilant speech or shrill music.

Im dealing with another topic about the new JBL 4328 which is supposed to clear phasing ( timing ) and has an auto eq but its not a solution how good the problem is you cant clear the problem because it eventualy has to do with roomsize and the shape of the room.

 

[Fury]

i think its pointless to mix wit a sub cuz the bass ur mixing is louder than it rele is the sub just pushes it out more and alotta ppl wud mix wit to much bass thinkin it sounds great in they studio but ass in other cd players and systems cuz it dont have the bass response of the sub..

 

[Formant024]

yup, you just playing yourself hehe.

 

[5th Sequence]

^^ what i would say as well.

But, I mix on near feild monitors with no sub, but i play things out and cross reference on regular stereo system that has a sub. The sub can be useful in pointing out obnoxiously loud bass parts and a poorly mixed low end. I wouldn't make beats using one though, only as a periodic reference.

 

[Formant024]

also check your summing in mono, it helps for reference aswell.

 

[Kontents]

Honestly, i dont have a sub i use headphones cause the person below my apartment gets pist. so i make beats by head phone it really sux, but i manage.. I would say a sub would help to define the lows but you can still make the track sound good without it.

Kontents

 

[wrightboy]

I say no sub, and nearfield monitors around 6". the nearfields will give you enough bass response, if they're big enough. i mix with a pair of 4" monitors right now (can't hear the bass response at all), and some headphones. always check your mix in the car if you can. the car reveals all of your fuckups. i usually review my mix in the car, and on a cheap lil boombox.

 

[Formant024]

technicaly, its bass response depends on the coil/magnet on the backside of the speaker. In general, the bigger the magnet, the more accurate the response is. Second, the outer membrame's strength and flexibility decides how much air can be displaced in order produce low frequency waves. The more the speaker can move in and out of its initial axis, the more audible pressure you will feel/hear. The size of speaker is related to the size of the room, so bigger isnt neccesarily better but i.g. 6" to 8" is max for the common bedroom techie.

If you happen to be stuck with a set including a sub in a small room, that small it exaggerates the bass, you can put a piece of cloth ( socks whatever ) in the bassport and then monitor the sub level so it creates a balanced image of the stereo field. You do so by playing a cd of a good recording, or in extremes ( like most of the time hehe ) dnb music.

 

[Kohlmon]

well im not gettin as deep as y'all did in this discussion but im in the same boat as kontents. myparents are always on me to keep the bass down so i havent even gotten a sub. i just use my stereo speakers and then i put it through my headphones and just adj it all from there.

 

[monokrome]

I prefer to mix with headphones, because flat headphones give the best response from what i've seen, but sometimes I use my sub when I mix (sound card only sends noise below 60-80hz to that channel tho, adjusted based on the current mix)