- Jul 3, 2014
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For bass enhancement plugins like RBass, MaxxBass, LoAir, etc, we normally see them used on bass or kick drum, but recently I stumbled upon some other cool usage of these type of plugins, namely when I feel like I need more thumb, body, and thickness out of any source without using drastic EQ moves, or even when the sound source is soooo thin-sounding that there's simply no low end/low mind information to boost.
Two of the rather unusual usage I found with these plugins are on vocals and snare.
Recently I got some tracks of high-pitch screaming vocals that have tons of mid-range boxiness and weird resonance with little low end information. I clean the mid up with heavy EQ cuts and am left with a rather clean but thin sound. I then send the EQed copy to another track with RBass (set to 200+ hz, amount to taste), high-pass low-pass EQ, heavy compression, and bus the original and the bass-enhanced track back together and apply further EQ, compression and saturation. The result is a clean, clean-sounding screaming vocal with consistent low mid body.
Now I think about it, this is quite like the usual split processing trick we use on bass but tailored for vocals.
On snares, for some instances I find that EQs just aren't quite enough for achieving tight and explosive low mid without sounding uncontrolled or flubby. So I might throw on a RBass and set it to the low mid resonant frequency of the snare and blend in the harmonics for adding the thickness. I'd trick this pretty much like an EQ move so would put it before the compressor and control the whole enhanced snare sound afterwards.
Just some interesting things thought I'd share with you guys. Hope you find helpful!
Is there any other unusual sources you find yourself using the bass enhancement plugins on?
Two of the rather unusual usage I found with these plugins are on vocals and snare.
Recently I got some tracks of high-pitch screaming vocals that have tons of mid-range boxiness and weird resonance with little low end information. I clean the mid up with heavy EQ cuts and am left with a rather clean but thin sound. I then send the EQed copy to another track with RBass (set to 200+ hz, amount to taste), high-pass low-pass EQ, heavy compression, and bus the original and the bass-enhanced track back together and apply further EQ, compression and saturation. The result is a clean, clean-sounding screaming vocal with consistent low mid body.
Now I think about it, this is quite like the usual split processing trick we use on bass but tailored for vocals.
On snares, for some instances I find that EQs just aren't quite enough for achieving tight and explosive low mid without sounding uncontrolled or flubby. So I might throw on a RBass and set it to the low mid resonant frequency of the snare and blend in the harmonics for adding the thickness. I'd trick this pretty much like an EQ move so would put it before the compressor and control the whole enhanced snare sound afterwards.
Just some interesting things thought I'd share with you guys. Hope you find helpful!
Is there any other unusual sources you find yourself using the bass enhancement plugins on?
