Should bass extender be used if having mastering done?

[dblock]

I'm considering having this instrumental piece mastered online for tv/film submission (Not even sure if professional mastering vs home mastering is necessary for tv/film but that's another subject).
The bass is pretty clear but it does seem to get a deeper bass with my waves maxxbass yet it also seems that when you use these bass extenders there is a risk of occupying too much headroom as well as possibly muddying the sound a bit.
Would leaving the maxbass off the bass guitar mix give the mix a better chance to breath and also help in mastering or is the mastering process pretty much limited to working with whatever's already there in the first place?
Thanks

[Waltz Mastering]

Originally Posted by dblock

Would leaving the maxbass off the bass guitar mix give the mix a better chance to breath and also help in mastering or is the mastering process pretty much limited to working with whatever's already there in the first place?

Hearing the source sound would usually dictate if you need to add something like the maxbass to the bass guitar or how much of it you would want to use.

I would tend to stay away from plugs like that and just go with a conventional minimum phase eq in the mix if more depth is required.

If there aren't a lot of other instruments fighting for that frequency range, it would probably be easier to manage that area without something like the maxbass on...hard to say.

[dblock]

Originally Posted by Waltz Mastering

Hearing the source sound would usually dictate if you need to add something like the maxbass to the bass guitar or how much of it you would want to use.

I would tend to stay away from plugs like that and just go with a conventional minimum phase eq in the mix if more depth is required.

If there aren't a lot of other instruments fighting for that frequency range, it would probably be easier to manage that area without something like the maxbass on...hard to say.

Thanks for your response. Seems most Mastering engineers who post are somewhat purist when it comes to bells and whistle plugins. I'll probably just compare the sound on smaller systems and see if I'm sacraficing any clarity for bottom or maybe I can find a happy medium.

[KyleDiSanto]

A little EQ can go a long way. Remember that alot of systems are enhancing their bass and treble ranges from the get go.

[dblock]

Originally Posted by KyleDiSanto

A little EQ can go a long way. Remember that alot of systems are enhancing their bass and treble ranges from the get go.

Excellent point! Thanks

[Bob Olhsson]

My experience has been that bass extension tends to work best with the speakers used to set up the effect.

[Andy Krehm]

Originally Posted by dblock

Thanks for your response. Seems most Mastering engineers who post are somewhat purist when it comes to bells and whistle plugins. I'll probably just compare the sound on smaller systems and see if I'm sacraficing any clarity for bottom or maybe I can find a happy medium.

In the mastering world, things like the MaxxBass are for trying to rescue tracks, not day to day work. If an eq of some kind or selective multiband work doesn't bring up the right area of the bottom enough, then I would definitely try the MaxxBass. Happens 3 to 4 times a year, though!

[macc]

Originally Posted by Bob Olhsson

My experience has been that bass extension tends to work best with the speakers used to set up the effect.

Praise be. Couldn't agree more. Please Mr Olhsson, if you have time, please help explain this in the other thread currently running on this topic. Thankee.

[Bob Olhsson]

I had great hopes for this because the space music albums we used to do often had low frequency pedal tones that created huge problems with distorting small systems. The effect simply didn't travel well at all. For a fixed installation, it's certainly a wonderful tool.

[bob katz]

Originally Posted by dblock

I'm considering having this instrumental piece mastered online for tv/film submission (Not even sure if professional mastering vs home mastering is necessary for tv/film but that's another subject).
The bass is pretty clear but it does seem to get a deeper bass with my waves maxxbass yet it also seems that when you use these bass extenders there is a risk of occupying too much headroom as well as possibly muddying the sound a bit.
Would leaving the maxbass off the bass guitar mix give the mix a better chance to breath and also help in mastering or is the mastering process pretty much limited to working with whatever's already there in the first place?
Thanks

Using a device like the Maxbass without proper wideband monitoring is a very dangerous situation. It's not just a headroom thing, it's a translation thing. Maxbass is a wonderful tool for the right application, but it can cause distortion, tinny sound, or vice versa, terrible rumble or other noises without you even knowing it unless you have very wideband monitoring to tell you what's happening. So I suggest you stay in close contact with your mastering engineer and let him/her hear your mix with and without the Maxbass and give you some good suggestions before you commit to the mix.

[dblock]

Originally Posted by Bob Olhsson

My experience has been that bass extension tends to work best with the speakers used to set up the effect.

I'm using it with my genelec 8020a monitor with the included sub woofer for mixing so I can maybe tell right away if it's getting a bit too heavy.

[dblock]

Originally Posted by bob katz

Using a device like the Maxbass without proper wideband monitoring is a very dangerous situation. It's not just a headroom thing, it's a translation thing. Maxbass is a wonderful tool for the right application, but it can cause distortion, tinny sound, or vice versa, terrible rumble or other noises without you even knowing it unless you have very wideband monitoring to tell you what's happening. So I suggest you stay in close contact with your mastering engineer and let him/her hear your mix with and without the Maxbass and give you some good suggestions before you commit to the mix.

I'll be damn. bob katz. I admire your work. Sounds like good advice.
Thanks for responding.
dblock

[dblock]

Originally Posted by Andy Krehm

In the mastering world, things like the MaxxBass are for trying to rescue tracks, not day to day work. If an eq of some kind or selective multiband work doesn't bring up the right area of the bottom enough, then I would definitely try the MaxxBass. Happens 3 to 4 times a year, though!

Thanks for your input. I ended up taking it off. Afre about 5 minutes of missing it, the mix seemed a bit clearer to me.

[bob katz]

Originally Posted by dblock

Thanks for your input. I ended up taking it off. Afre about 5 minutes of missing it, the mix seemed a bit clearer to me.

There you go! :-). As others have posted, I can count the number of times when I have actually successfully used Maxbass in a mastering situation on the fingers of one hand. I don't think I used it at all last year in a mastering situation. I may have used it once in a mixing situation. Still, I keep it around as a unique solution that nothing else can solve, when it happens.

BK

[Bob Olhsson]

FWIW I was using wideband monitoring. We set it up to sound good both on the full range system and some small monitors. We could make it sound better on the little guys but it was clearly worse on both the full range system and the other small systems we tried.

[dave-G]

FWIW, and IIRC (as I almost never use it, and only on mix elements) MaxxBass is not a bass 'extender' per se; not a subharmonic generator. Rather, it's more of an upper harmonics generator that creates the perception that there's a stronger fundamental. The net effect on bass instruments is that it creates a bit more low-mid energy, harmonically related to sounds below the chosen cutoff frequency to imply a bigger perception of bass-ness below.

-dave

[Adam Dempsey]

I'm certainly not missing never having needed it. The Sontecs are just spot on for tightening or helping define low end when needed, giving you that "LP sound". Or, like I said, the NSEQ-f for a subtle, broad "bloom" low lift.

[Jesse Graffam]

The starting point where I can get a quick idea if it'll work or not:


(the HighPass is 12db)

And then i'll slide up the MaxxBass level slowly. if I get above -18dB and it's not fixing the problem, then I don't use it. and as Bob said, it doesn't happen often. the main reason that doesn't happen often is that proper EQing alone can do 95% of the work with 95% of the recordings out there... and it almost always sounds more transparent than any other methods out there now.

Btw... MaxxBass is the only Waves plugin that I own. Go figure.

[Nordenstam]

This thread need a picture of this:


Not that it's a useful mastering tool, but it looks cool and it's a sub bass extender!

[Bob Olhsson]

In most movie soundtracks THAT's the only thing that's ever put in the LFE track. They patch one console send to it and the mixer "gooses" the appropriate knob at the appropriate times for dramatic effect.

This is why music folks shouldn't even think about ever putting anything in LFE. It's a gag effect that isn't intended to translate at all.

[Jesse Graffam]

LOL


Really though, @ theaters too...




A good theater sub which reproduces those special effects accurately. It's a tapped horn so both sides of the drivers (21-inchers) are used, but also the length of the horn extends when it's loaded against the ground and against other units (the plot above is anechoic). Combined with a little EQ and you can easily get ruler flat to under 10Hz. At ~145db peak. With impact and definition.

99% of the THEATER systems out there pale in comparison. IMAX is one consistent exception to the rule (subs by Tom Danely... mostly the BDEAP32). There are some indipendent commercial theaters with pretty incredible systems though. But it's definitely the exception to the rule, even in theaters.