wierdest mastering job ever - help

[huggybear]

Waves Maxxbass

[Lagerfeldt]

Harmonic distortion (overtones) is probably your best bet if pitching isn't you.

[wado1942]

Originally Posted by huggybear

Waves Maxxbass

I second this. It's a once a year plugin but it can work miracles for stuff like that and rap guys who's only actual notes are in the 20-40Hz range.

[Dene]

Originally Posted by huggybear

Waves Maxxbass

Just used this yesterday for a "remix" that had no info beyond 100 hz other than the snare and the vocals...I hate these types of plugin's/tools...but sometimes they are the easy solution to a complicated problem.

[Pedro_vde]

My two thumbs up for the Waves Maxbass.

An alternative could be the analog dbx Subharmonic Synthesiser.

Kind regards from Belgium

Pedro

[zohar]

ok, waves maxxbass, dbx, these are all devices that i cant use.
this is for iphone (on-board processing only)

but the idea of harmonic distortion sounds nice.
how can i achieve it with basic actions (compressor, eq)?
or in another way, how does it work?
(for example, i designed an on-board multiband compressor from eq and compressor)

thanks y'all

[wado1942]

The DBX subharmonic generator works by pitch shifting the sound downward an octave and low-pass filtering it. That sounds impressive on big systems with subs but doesn't help the earbud people.

You can somewhat simulate the Maxxbass by low-pass filtering the sound, adding lots of compression & some soft clipping and blending that back with the original sound in that order.

[zohar]

thanks wado, will try that

[evosilica]

Waves MaxxBass works kind of like this:
Highpass @ f1 - Lowpass @ f2 (f2 > f1) - asymmetrical nonlinear function (asym. distortion) - highpass @ f2 - lowpass @ f3 (f3 > f2)

Then mix this with the original signal

cutoffs could be for example
f1 = 30Hz
f2 = 80 Hz
f3 = 120Hz 1st order Lowpass

I don't wanna say that MaxxBass works exactly like this, but it should get you pretty close results.

you should use asymmetrical distortion for creating 2nd order harmonics.

[zohar]

after testing the maxxbass, it looks promising.
im trying to do a beta run of the algorithm in cubase (substracting signals by reversing polarity (or phase if you will)

trying to do what evosilica suggested, i wonder what is the assymetrical distortion function

and just to make sure there arent any inaccuracyies.

Highpass @ f1 - Lowpass @ f2 (f2 > f1) - asymmetrical nonlinear function (asym. distortion) - highpass @ f2 - lowpass @ f3 (f3 > f2)

are you sure its not:
(HP@f1-LP@f2)- Asym dist -(Hp@f2-Lp@f3)

because otherwise your just adding LP's togeather

[zohar]

and i tried it without the distortion and i got (suprisingly) a simple LP at 120 :\

[evosilica]

Originally Posted by zohar

are you sure its not:
(HP@f1-LP@f2)- Asym dist -(Hp@f2-Lp@f3)

because otherwise your just adding LP's togeather

you wrote the same as i did, or do i miss the difference?

I'm not sure what kind of asym. dist. is used in maxxbass, but it has to be some kind of asym. in order to create even harmonics.

i have to emphasize, that i haven't tried the above, so it's just a starting point.

[zohar]

ok, i dont mind experimenting...
i searched all over but i dont find any explanation on what a asym dist is.
can you explain roughly how it works?

plus, why substracting HP and LP from each other? what does it do?

[evosilica]

oh sorry, the "-" is supposed to be a hyphen, not a subtraction.
all the operations are in series, one after the other.

asymmetrical distortion means, the positive half-wave is treated differently than the negative. this results in an asymmetrical waveform = even harmonics. like this for example:

[zohar]

oh, so the filters coming after the distortion ment to cut low signals (which are there in the original signal) and leave only a LP of the distorted bass signal. right? pretty nice...

[evosilica]

yes, that's pretty much it. The highpass after the distortion is for cutting the low frequencies (fundamentals) that are already present in the original signal and the lowpass is optional for dampening the newly generated harmonics to taste.

[zohar]

nice! worked like a charm!
but i used regular distortion since i dont know how to implement a asym distortion (nor found any vst for it)

[evosilica]

you could add DC offset before the distortion and subtract/remove it afterwards.

[stinkyfingers]

if you are on Mac try Airwindows Single Ended Triode...
and Airwindows Drive2 / Density2 will work if you add DC (pre-efx) for the 2nd order harm. as noted above...
also, SonEQ has a drive section which imparts even/odd harmonics...(pc/mac)

[raymondwave]

Didn't read the whole thread, but you could try FLUX Trax Transformer, you can do all kinds of sonic tweaking with it. As far as I understand, you can (for example) move frequencies from one place to another. You can lot's of other stuff too with formants etc.

In this example I have an 808 drum where I moved freqs from around 90hz to 600hz. Atleast that's what I think I did, I just got this and still learning, sorry if I'm wrong.

This example took a minute to make, it does not sound good, but I just wanted to try it out myself also.

[zohar]

evosilica! you're a genius!

this asymetric distortion works great! i actually did something rather violent and almost completly deleted everything below the 0 line. and i did it for a LP order 6 in 40Hz!!! never thought i would do such a thing!

very nice sir!!

i found an interesting distortion function on CSound (my audio manipulation scripting language)

which was described by:
exp(sig * (shape1 + pregain)) - exp(sig * (shape2 - pregain))
SigOut= ---------------------------------------------------------------
exp(sig * pregain) + exp(-sig * pregain)

the rest of the documentation here:
distort1

shape1 and shape2 are numbers determining how sloppy is the curve (not sure which curve)

does this seem suitable to you? what curves do they mean?