5 ms·

> a performance by the electronic music duo Orphx Maybe EDM fans are conditioned to react to bass sounds, the lower the frequency the better? Would be interest

by rob74 4y ago

> a performance by the electronic music duo Orphx Maybe EDM fans are conditioned to react to bass sounds, the lower the frequency the better? Would be interesting to try if the same effect can be achieved with other music genres too...

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
RajT88 4y ago
Bass players have long said the same thing. I am sure I have read some colorful quotes on the topic from Bootsy Collins. Yeah baba!
- analog31 4y ago
  Bassist here. Oddly enough most speakers made for bass use have diminishing response below roughly 80 to 40 Hz. Mine included. There is a tradeoff between low end response and other aspects of tone quality -- depending on your preferencea of course.
  - drcongo 4y ago
    One of the first tricks one learns in electronic music production (possibly also other genres) is to roll off the frequencies below 40 - 50Hz across most/all your tracks as down there it all starts to smudge together and makes your mix sound muddy. I'm guessing your bass speaker does the same for a live performance.
    - analog31 4y ago
      Indeed, that's what's happening. Now it doesn't prevent the sound tech from feeding it at full strength through the subs, turning it into a wall of mud in the audience.
    - munificent 4y ago
      I tend to high pass most tracks except for the kick and bass, but it's less about mud down at <100 Hz and more about dynamic range. When you have high amplitude low frequencies (inaudible or not) then the higher frequency content has less head room when stacked on top of that giant wave before it starts clipping. Consider how at the limit, a 0 Hz DC positive offset sounds like nothing but pushes the entire signal closer maximum sample value. In order to avoid that clipping, you have to turn everything down and now the whole track doesn't sound as loud as other comparable music, which is bad news for something you want DJs to play. There's rarely any useful signal that low for instruments other than kick and bass anyway, so stripping those rumbles and thumps out just keeps the waveform more centered overall. That lets you increase the overall loudness without clipping. For me, things get muddy when I have too much going on around, I don't know, 100-300 Hz. I high pass tracks to clean up the mud there. Below that, the high passing is mostly for dynamic range and loudness.
      - drcongo 4y ago
        Excellent descriptions, thanks!
    - timc3 4y ago
      Hey drcongo long time no speak! But I can’t say that is the way to do it anymore. Often you have to make sure that there is not multiple things going on down there, so you high pass a lot of the elements in a track. Then the sub of a Kick can’t be out of phase with a sub bass. You can duck one of them so they dont occur at the same time (probably still the way a lot of people do it), or you automate a high pass eq in relation to the other sound which can cause other phase issue but tends to work really well and is easy. Or you align the waveforms of the kick and the bass to match in phase and control the ducking more manually. It also depends on the playback medium to some extent - vinyl has a slightly different set of challenges to digital. Check this out for reference: https://youtu.be/K-eneMG_DVE https://youtu.be/K-eneMG_DVE
      - drcongo 4y ago
        Hey Tim! I knew someone would be able to go nerdier than me, thanks for the video!
orangepurple 4y ago
Also if you need bass on crappy speakers a poorly quantized sawtooth wave under 50 Hz can fill in the gap to an extent
- djsavvy 4y ago
  Sounds like a neat trick. Why poorly quantized?
  - filoeleven 4y ago
    My reply is just a guess. A poorly-quantized saw wave will have “bit-crushing” artifacts at higher frequencies, which can imply the existence of a frequency that’s too low for the speaker to handle. The video link is to a video showing bit-crushing effects applied to saw waves (and others), along with the audio. Headphone warning: it sounds pretty gnarly. https://youtu.be/Tv5c8gPYwFs https://youtu.be/Tv5c8gPYwFs See also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoacoustics#Missing_fundamental https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoacoustics#Missing_fund...
- squeaky-clean 4y ago
  Waves has a plugin, MaxxBass which is meant for adding/raising harmonics to create the illusion of audible lower bass tones than the system is actually producing. It gets used pretty commonly in electronic music nowadays but was originally made for more mundane applications like audio mixed for television or theme park speakers.
jeroenvlek 4y ago
Please don't call Orphx EDM. They make techno and ambient. Slightly related: Saw them at Labyrinth 2015 in Japan. Amazing performance.
- rob74 4y ago
  I'm not an EDM expert, so I'll refer to the Wikipedia definition ;) > Techno is a genre of electronic dance music (EDM) which is generally produced for use in a continuous DJ set, with tempo often varying between 120 and 150 beats per minute (bpm).
  - attemptone 4y ago
    I get the instinctual response of distinguishing EDM and Techno or any genre for that matter. Yes, Techno is technically EDM. But when people talk about EDM they generally mean commercialized electronic pop-music. I think it comes from the fact, that people who not have delved deeper into what "EDM" is, mean something like Avicii (no hate) when talking about it. Since that is all they now.
  - radley 4y ago
    The NY Times still spells DJs as "D.J.s". (AP Stylebook fixed this in 2016, but NY Times hasn't kept up).
- etrautmann 4y ago
  Isn’t edm the most general term that encompasses all these subgenres?
  - yamazakiwi 4y ago
    Old-heads like to distinguish early electronic music genres because the term EDM didn't come along until much later thus Techno and Ambient being specified. if someone points it out I generally just say, we get it, you like neuro-funk jungle house and don't want it lumped in with other genres. In my experience "EDM" fans will skew more towards newer genre's of electronic music.
thisisbrians 4y ago
I wouldn't say the lower the better. A lot of bass music is written in keys around E/F since that places the root note just within the lower end of audible range. Most sound systems don't respond much below around 20 Hertz, anyway.

by rob74 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

RajT88 4y ago

Bass players have long said the same thing. I am sure I have read some colorful quotes on the topic from Bootsy Collins. Yeah baba!

analog31 4y ago
Bassist here. Oddly enough most speakers made for bass use have diminishing response below roughly 80 to 40 Hz. Mine included. There is a tradeoff between low end response and other aspects of tone quality -- depending on your preferencea of course.
- drcongo 4y ago
  One of the first tricks one learns in electronic music production (possibly also other genres) is to roll off the frequencies below 40 - 50Hz across most/all your tracks as down there it all starts to smudge together and makes your mix sound muddy. I'm guessing your bass speaker does the same for a live performance.
  - analog31 4y ago
    Indeed, that's what's happening. Now it doesn't prevent the sound tech from feeding it at full strength through the subs, turning it into a wall of mud in the audience.
  - munificent 4y ago
    I tend to high pass most tracks except for the kick and bass, but it's less about mud down at <100 Hz and more about dynamic range. When you have high amplitude low frequencies (inaudible or not) then the higher frequency content has less head room when stacked on top of that giant wave before it starts clipping. Consider how at the limit, a 0 Hz DC positive offset sounds like nothing but pushes the entire signal closer maximum sample value. In order to avoid that clipping, you have to turn everything down and now the whole track doesn't sound as loud as other comparable music, which is bad news for something you want DJs to play. There's rarely any useful signal that low for instruments other than kick and bass anyway, so stripping those rumbles and thumps out just keeps the waveform more centered overall. That lets you increase the overall loudness without clipping. For me, things get muddy when I have too much going on around, I don't know, 100-300 Hz. I high pass tracks to clean up the mud there. Below that, the high passing is mostly for dynamic range and loudness.
    - drcongo 4y ago
      Excellent descriptions, thanks!
  - timc3 4y ago
    Hey drcongo long time no speak! But I can’t say that is the way to do it anymore. Often you have to make sure that there is not multiple things going on down there, so you high pass a lot of the elements in a track. Then the sub of a Kick can’t be out of phase with a sub bass. You can duck one of them so they dont occur at the same time (probably still the way a lot of people do it), or you automate a high pass eq in relation to the other sound which can cause other phase issue but tends to work really well and is easy. Or you align the waveforms of the kick and the bass to match in phase and control the ducking more manually. It also depends on the playback medium to some extent - vinyl has a slightly different set of challenges to digital. Check this out for reference: https://youtu.be/K-eneMG_DVE https://youtu.be/K-eneMG_DVE
    - drcongo 4y ago
      Hey Tim! I knew someone would be able to go nerdier than me, thanks for the video!

orangepurple 4y ago

Also if you need bass on crappy speakers a poorly quantized sawtooth wave under 50 Hz can fill in the gap to an extent

djsavvy 4y ago
Sounds like a neat trick. Why poorly quantized?
- filoeleven 4y ago
  My reply is just a guess. A poorly-quantized saw wave will have “bit-crushing” artifacts at higher frequencies, which can imply the existence of a frequency that’s too low for the speaker to handle. The video link is to a video showing bit-crushing effects applied to saw waves (and others), along with the audio. Headphone warning: it sounds pretty gnarly. https://youtu.be/Tv5c8gPYwFs https://youtu.be/Tv5c8gPYwFs See also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoacoustics#Missing_fundamental https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoacoustics#Missing_fund...
squeaky-clean 4y ago
Waves has a plugin, MaxxBass which is meant for adding/raising harmonics to create the illusion of audible lower bass tones than the system is actually producing. It gets used pretty commonly in electronic music nowadays but was originally made for more mundane applications like audio mixed for television or theme park speakers.

jeroenvlek 4y ago

Please don't call Orphx EDM. They make techno and ambient. Slightly related: Saw them at Labyrinth 2015 in Japan. Amazing performance.

rob74 4y ago
I'm not an EDM expert, so I'll refer to the Wikipedia definition ;) > Techno is a genre of electronic dance music (EDM) which is generally produced for use in a continuous DJ set, with tempo often varying between 120 and 150 beats per minute (bpm).
- attemptone 4y ago
  I get the instinctual response of distinguishing EDM and Techno or any genre for that matter. Yes, Techno is technically EDM. But when people talk about EDM they generally mean commercialized electronic pop-music. I think it comes from the fact, that people who not have delved deeper into what "EDM" is, mean something like Avicii (no hate) when talking about it. Since that is all they now.
- radley 4y ago
  The NY Times still spells DJs as "D.J.s". (AP Stylebook fixed this in 2016, but NY Times hasn't kept up).
etrautmann 4y ago
Isn’t edm the most general term that encompasses all these subgenres?
- yamazakiwi 4y ago
  Old-heads like to distinguish early electronic music genres because the term EDM didn't come along until much later thus Techno and Ambient being specified. if someone points it out I generally just say, we get it, you like neuro-funk jungle house and don't want it lumped in with other genres. In my experience "EDM" fans will skew more towards newer genre's of electronic music.

thisisbrians 4y ago

I wouldn't say the lower the better. A lot of bass music is written in keys around E/F since that places the root note just within the lower end of audible range. Most sound systems don't respond much below around 20 Hertz, anyway.