Great metal Bass sound?

with the new parallel processing feature it will be possible to have a overdriven, midrange-heavy amp sound on on side and a nicely processed (EQ & compression) DI signal on the other.
this will make the bass sound huge while at the same time leaving a lot of open space for other instruments panorama-wise.

this feature was implemented to facilitate this very popular practise for heavy, but mix friendly bass sounds.

As Don said, Parallel is where it's at for metal bass. You can do this without the Kemper, since we don't have the ability yet - make sure Constant Latency mode is on, then reamp your bass DI through a clean, compressed, clanky rig with a good amount of low end, and then again through whatever crazy distortion floats your boat. High-pass the distorted rig to taste, probably no lower than 200Hz to keep the bass tight, and then blend the two tracks in your DAW.

Also, a recommendation for bass distortion (I'm on a shitty laptop, so I can't give you any specific pointers on what you've got going) - there's a free VST out there called Extremist. It's meant for guitar, but some of the presets are amazing for getting that juicy grind you can hear on most of the Edge of Sanity and At The Gates material. I keep meaning to post a profile of it, but laziness always wins out.

A blend of DI and that awesome Blueline Crunch would be my pic, on separate tracks with a combined buss (or in a folder in Reaper), just bring the fader up on the DI until the bottom end feels really solid and punchy, and the overall tone becomes more steely. Check phasing and low cut if necessary. The free Liquid Avalon 737 profile makes a mean direct sound also, I'd reamp a take with that against the straight DI and compare. If you want to use the Kemper fx, the new parallel mode will be the way to go. Try all these options on one song and you'll be able to work out a good workflow from there.

i haven't started trying to get a bass tone on the kemper yet, but the way I always did it on the Pod was as described above. compressor/eq on the dry signal, pre-eq on the wet signal. I like to drop out the bass before the amp distortion on the wet side (not much different than using a Tube Screamer as an overdrive, but you get more control). this keeps the distortion from being too muddy/flubby, which helps get the tighter tone necessary for metal. the DI adds the low end, and with the compression, it's also pretty tight. The key is to get the same amount of compression on both the wet and dry sides. Otherwise, it sounds like two different tones blended together (can be distracting to listen to) rather than one killer tone.

personally, I found my clankier metal tone my 2nd favorite bass tone. My favorite was virtually the same thing but without the pre-eq on the wet side. This made the distortion quite muddy, then I'd post EQ out the bass, which the clean side filled in. You'd lose quite a bit of tightness, so forget about thrash or speedy metalcore, but it was excellent for creating a brutal wall of low end.

...now i want to start dialing in some bass tones on the kpa...still need to buy a 5 string.

If you want in-the-box ready metal bass tone, put a compressor in the X-slot, 4:1 ratio, 3-4 dB attenuation.

Personally I like to use a good character comp in the daw, scoop some low mids, boost around 750Hz, low pass to get rid of rattle if there is any, and some tape saturation for the not so heavy genres.

But 90% of good bass tone comes from having a good bass, not what comes after it imho.

I think the compressor in the Kemper is bit too transparent for getting some real grunt and grit out of it, but it should make the bass stand out better in the mix.

Also experiment which you like the best, eq-> comp or comp->eq.

You can also process your DI track with whatever you want prior to reamping, if you have any plugins that work better than the Kemper for getting the tone you're after.

The SVT track will be pretty compressed already, I'm not sure you'll gain anything by comping before reamping (but feel free to try it). I'd definitely compress the DI if you blend it though, and maybe character compress the buss as well. Those Slate plugins sound great on Bass (Tape, VCC, VBC)...actually on everything imo...

Btw you should be able to record the SVT and DI in one pass via the spdif, since it's a mono track you want. Then just reamp to try different gain levels or amps/fx.

The systematic mixing guide has always made me happy basswise http://www.ultimatemetal.com/f…ial-systematic-style.html

Here is the whole guide: http://www.systematicproductions.com/mixing-guide.htm

Oh yeah, anyone who wants to learn mixing should watch the "5 minutes to a better mix" series on youtube. There's three "seasons" of 31 episodes, 93 episodes in total.

Best results will follow if you actually work on a mix while watching through the series.

Stymphalian Productions - Darkglass B7K Pack

check the clip. great work by Jaymz here.