Recording bass - boomy notes - any advice?

  • Hi all, been using one of the TAF factory profiles for bass - its an SVT450 with a bit of direct blended in.


    I find when recording bass it gets pretty boomy on some notes - any suggestions for pre or post processing ideas to deal with this? I use compression VST to even out the tone.

  • If there's one prevailing range of freqs you can arm a parametric eq, set a tight range (high values of Q), set the gain to maximum and slowly sweep the freq till you find the boominess is exagerated. Then invert the gain to minimum.


    HTH

  • Does the Kemper output LED hit a higher value when you play these notes compared to adjacent ones?
    If it does, it's not the room. Guitars have their own resonant frequencies, that's not unheard of. Your electric likely has a tendency to resonate around 224Hz and needs the same treatment if you chug a lot.


    A surgical EQ is a good on-board fix. A multiband compressor is better, but not on-board.

    "But dignity is difficult to maintain
    stamina requires constant upkeep
    repetition is boring
    and you pay for grace."

  • I have a suspicion it could be the room - easy ways of telling?


    Plug in headphones. If the boom is gone it's probably the room.
    You could use a signal generator playing sinewaves at different pitches. If a sinewave at the same (more or less) pitch of your basses "boom notes" is significantly louder it's very probably something in your room (the room itself, speaker placement etc.)

  • Thanks guys the monitors are on my desk - I and are ESI EAR 05s - I have had them years. I think it could be the room as we moved recently and the room is quite reflective - wooden floor and no carpet and the desk is quite reflective. I actually had to get one of those foam shields for the vocal mic due to reflections. So perhaps that is making the bass go boomy.


    Headphones I do not notice it so much. Someone mentioned foam pads for the speakers to de-couple them - any recommendations? Also other ways I can treat the room to make it less reflective in an affordable way? I hang a blanket behind the singer to reduce reflections.

  • This depends on what range of frequencies is most boosted, reflecting surfaces have few to do with low freqs actually: it's more the size and shape of the room itself. No ise to put carpets or "egg boxes" on the walls :)


    As for the pads, I use Mo-Pads by Auralex. Keep in kind tho thst they will just kill the resonances deriving by the mechanical coupling of cabs and desk, and if the latter have no role in the resonances you're hearing, you'll get no benefits for the specific issue (but the overall sound will benefit nevertheless).


    :)

  • What do you recommend for the walls? Our rehearsal room has no coverage on the walls, just the stones. Everything else but carpet would be very expensive, I think.

    I could have farted and it would have sounded good! (Brian Johnson)

  • See, treating a room is a matter of measuring and determining its sonic personality. The behaviour on the low frequencies basically depends on the size and proportions of the room itself, while the behaviour of longer wavelenghts depends on the surfaces. A pattern with peaks and valleys such as an eggbox, for example, kills the frequency whose wavelenght corresponds to twice the difference between the valleys and the peaks, like Don pointed out.


    Basically, you can't treat a room a priori, as if there was a magic treatment good for any kind of resonance or dampening. Once you realize where the non-linearities are through a (even rough) battery of tests, you'll be able to make a decision about what to put where or what to remove from the room.


    HTH

  • Thanks Gianfranco. I've expected an answer like yours. There seems to be no universal way that leads to an acceptable compromise.

    I could have farted and it would have sounded good! (Brian Johnson)

  • You're welcome :)


    Nowadays, javing a sinusoidal sweeping from 20 to 20,000 Hzon a ny computer is... free :) There are also downloadable collections of synusoidal tones, or CDs.


    If you are curious, run a slow sweep in your room through your monitors and see what happens. You'll hear many peaks and valleys, and it can be funny, useful and educational at the same time. Just be aware that you'll hear the sum of your ears', the room's and the monitors' non-linearities and, above all, that what you'll be hearing depends on where in the room both you and your monitors are placed.


    Another very interesting experiment is to settle a fixed synusoid, and move through the room: you will litterally cross the peaks and valleys created by the room's resonating modes, which is amazing per se; and will realize that certain reinforcements or dumpings just take place in precisely spotted aread of the environment, depending on where the waves sum or subtract from each others.


    :)