RBass is a simplified version of MaxxBass, which itself is Meir Shashoua's implementation of an enhancer for the Missing Fundamental Effect. The concept is that psychoacoustically, the ear can make out the fundamental of low pitches even if they've vanished (say, due to a small speaker) provided that harmonics (both odd and even) of the fundamental are still audible. The original intent was to make cheap small speakers sound closer to large ones, which is an honest effect even if it is, essentially, an illusion caused by the way our brain interprets sound.
And to add to this, Dell licenced the technology from Waves for their laptops circa mid-2010s, and I have to say, it does a very good job at making the laptop speakers sound bigger than they are when paired with nicely-sculpted EQ
It doesn't sound as good when it's overdone on speakers and headphones that actually have the most frequencies available. Moderation just gives inadequate workers a bit more body down low. Done really want to be using R-bass personally..... Just getting some harmonics in the inadequate speaker range on bass and kick send to be enough, in my opinion. Just so it doesn't disappear completely on the phone or laptop. It's not worth trying to make it all articulate though. In my opinion.
As far as I understand, Waves RBass is essentially a "easy" version of Waves MaxxBass, which offers more granular and specific control over the algorithm. Sound on Sound has a good article on that, dating back to 1998: As far as I can tell, it's running a lowpass into distortion into compressor and a highpass to remove the fundamental from this parallel bus, lowpassing the distorted signal to remove highs, and then mixing with the original, with the original signal optionally attenuated by some amount. It was originally designed to make bass sound good on less-than-full-range speakers.
I remember the MaxxBass manual specifically mentioning sound effects meant for Theme Park Speakers as one use case for maxxbass. Opened my eyes at the time to how these plugins are useful for way more than just music production.
Agreed. I would like to see Dan's take on the classic Inflator, even though it's been pretty thoroughly copied aside from the band split at this point.
this reminds me of how i once tried to put reverb on a subbass, just because people claimed that is a thing one shouldn't do. so i did that and also put some distortion on it and it creates lots of cool harmonics, which i then highpassed so i could have the original bass in the lowend and badabim, badaboom, i had a sub-bass reverb that actually sounded good
I usually always stick a reverb on my basses early on in the chain but only as like a short decay (usually under a second and tune the mix and low cut off ) and then when distortion is added it colours the wet signal and can give a nice release effect
-----> Important to know: The harmonics are in mono, even if you feed it a stereo signal. It will shrink the perceived width. That may or may not be what you want.
Are you talking about R Bass? Because both Saturn and Volcano are dual mono, meaning each signal (Left and Right or Mid and Side) is processed separately.
I have to say: you’re probably the only one who is actually taking the time to look at Waves’s plugins objectively. I get tired of either the demonstrations that are interpreted as subtle shills or the accusations that Waves are just siphoning customers of money. Admittedly, I “grew up” with Waves. But at the same time, I like to know what these tools can and/or can’t do, especially in light of other ones that are used as often or even more than Waves. Nice job as always and looking forward to more.
and this is so much the dan worrall experience. Watch a fabfilter overview video to see what a new plug-in of theirs does and I end up changing my whole mix workflow
One tip I have for Rbass is to use it to free up a little headroom while retaining the "feel" of the low bass. Put the fundamental frequency somewhere low and appropriate for the song, then take the original sub OUT, which high passes at that frequency, then turn intensity up until the perception of fullness is close. Finally, level match it using the output so you're comparing apples to apples. I find that if I have a low tuned kick with lots of sub, and a low tuned bass or bass synth, I'll use it on one or the other and it can help relieve your system some by not having all the sub frequencies compounding and eating up all your mix headroom. I tend to use it as a tool more than an effect, personally, but to each their own. Hope that helps.
Fun fact, if you ever used to use spectrasonics old trilogy plug-in but always found it hard to fit the bass into your mix, it was because they processed the acoustic bass with r bass but forgot to turn it off when exporting the synth samples!
@@bathanhnguyen202 I'll have to do some digging. I used to sell music software in the early 2000s it's just something I remember from then. I can't remember if it was told to me by either company or I saw it in an interview.
Thank you! Thank you!!! Youre simply a genius, and it's a blessing having your channel for free on YT alongside with a lot of misinformation goin on other channels. I may not use all of your techniques, but all of them are strong weapons to have in a mixing arsenal. Apologies for the grammar, not native english
Unfiltered Audio's Bass-Mint plugin gives you similar results with a bit more control over how the bass sound is manipulated. I get some pretty fat results with just a few tweaks. That said, I kind of prefer R Bass in that it's really simple and so am I.
I'm curious on what RVox actually does. There's a lot of talk of it doing more than just compression - some say there's an exciter under the hood. Would love to hear your thoughts on the discussion!
I used RBass on a few broadcasts in mastering. Now I insert it on my drum n bass stem. It took me some time to realize it’s not a full time thing. It’s so stunning you don’t want to hear it too much. This and RVox are just astoundingly easy to use. Waves was on a huge roll then. I recall that I analyzed Max Bass endlessly in the beginning, trying to understand what it might be doing to my mixes. Once I figured out it was a ‘second speakers’ thing, it became much easier to use. In my main monitors, its effect was not so desirable but after tweaking with constant speaker switching it made perfect sense and my clients were happy without a clue, which is the ideal.
So many people I know put the thumbs down on RBass. It doesn't always work for me, but when it does, nothing else is quite like it. Especially useful for the small speaker bass trick: Run it on a parallel copy and mix it in. Works well.
For someone who spends an awful lot of time informing us about aliasing problems, your font rendering settings are surprising... 😂 Thanks as always for the videos!
This is ace! Would love to see a similar vid on analogue obsession's lovend, another bass harmonic enhancement plugin that sounds great but is difficult to use subtly. as the lowest setting is still doing something.
This just gave me an idea that might be worth trying. I’ve done this before when I wanted to boost somewhere with a specific eq but I didn’t really need a boost. I attenuated the area first with another eq. So, like with Lovend/rbass, you could slap on after an eq and just attenuate the low end on the eq with a shelf to the desired amount, or, as I would probably do(and will try next time I mix something) is to attenuate the low end on the eq enough to where you actually have to boost more on the Lovend/rbass. That might sound more fatter than the first method.
I just bought RBass today and was wondering how it works. Found your video, glad i see that it seems to do a good job. I always struggle mixing the bass, and i like having a lot of low end without getting the mix muddy. And your music is VERY nice! I hope i´ll find your music somewhere!
i did this a few years back, made an Ableton rack. Always thought it was just harmonics but was surprised to find how much volume it was cheating in general.
Of all the waves stuff. The few things I’d actually consider buying are their R series (Renaissance) X-crackle, sibilance, H-delay and Api 2500. That’s it.
I've been watching your videos for a while and man oh man, you and Michael White (Mixing with Mike) contributed so much to how i approach mixing now! Thank you so much! Would love to see your take on Tone Projects Basslane Pro! Feels like to get the most out of this plugin requires an experienced guy to run his tests on it.
RBass is one of my absolute essential plugins. I don’t know scientifically how it works but I hear it as “inventing” bass underneath the material around the frequency you specify. Anything that I feel doesn’t have the low end present to boost with a normal EQ I just create it with RBass - thin vocal, 808s, bass synths/guitars. Great video.
That's not what you see in analysis. It shows no signs of resynthesising lower low end at all (and if it did, you could filter down with a brickwall filter until only this area was left). What you're hearing is just the illusion where more harmonics trick your brain into thinking that it hears deep bass better, which is just a product of saturation.
Thanks, Dan! There're also interesting plugin for lows called FathomFive by AirWindows. I think that it works very differently, but good thing is that it acts well in parallel.
Cool. I would love to see your analysis on Rvox. I keep ending up using it on vocals and it just sounds good. I never seem to be able to get the same sound with other compressors. Cheers
Hi! Have you analyzed Izotope Trash 2? I'm interested in your opinion on that plugin. Trash has EQ before and after 2 stages of distortion, so that parallel processing technique can be done with one, instead of three plugins. Also, convolve with some bass amp impulse response, after all processing, could get you closer to R bass, maybe. Peace :)
Hey buddy, let me tell you what RBass does actually. It's much easier than you think, and you can definitely figure out how to copy it 1:1. So first of all it gets the input, they call it the "original signal". Then what it does is it puts a steep resonant low pass filter on that. The result is called the "original bass". Then, they do non-bass = original - original bass. That is the "high passed version" that you've seen. And when you turn up the slider for "original bass", that re-adds that low pass filtered signal. Now for the bass processing. They take the "original bass" signal and put it through a shaper, which timbre-wise is something that's kind of like a diode shaper. However, they probably use a polynomial shaper that exactly adds the 2nd and 3rd harmonic. Let's call that "the harmonics". So what you can get out of RBass is "the harmonics" + "high passed version" + "original bass" * A where A is some number between 0 and, what, 1? Does it go above unity gain? If you want to analyze what is REALLY happening in RBass, you have to feed it a sinewave at a bass frequency, and look at the sonogram. That will tell you everything that's happening in the curve shaping stage. Enjoy!
I'd absolutely love to see the plug ins that come with Mic Modeling systems analyzed. Something like the Antelope Edge system and Slate ML1. I've always been curious what's truly under the hood.
RBass is legendary. On rap mixes use it on 808s, coincidentally along with saturn2 but the former is to add sub and latter to add harmonics to help it cut
@@DistrictSoundLab it gives an illusion that the sub gets more prominent but what you’re really hearing are added harmonics, and those sit in higher frequencies than the fundamental. On smaller speakers you hear less sub/ or not at all (depending on how small) and low sine waves are quick to get too low for ‘small’ speakers to reproduce and that’s why saturation helps to make ‘808s’ (more) audible on small speakers and more prominent in general. So kelainefes is right, it doesn’t add bass, but yes it does make it more prominent. You can use both Rbass and Saturn to add harmonics.
@@DistrictSoundLab Nice, so if I understand you correct you apply a bit of rbass’ saturation to make the sub feel/seem more prominent and then have use saturn to saturate whatever/in your case higher freqs with saturn which gives you multiband distortion/saturation options. Sounds like you have a solid go-to method there!
Thanks for (yet) another enlightening video 🙏 Just wanted to suggest another Waves plugin that is very poorly documented and understood: Waves IM (Infected Mushroom) Pusher. I think every junior producer who has seen or bought Pusher would benefit from some of your enlightenment on the plugin!
Hi. Just wanted to add that you directly inspired me to get PluginDoctor, and I’m really happy with it- thanks. Have answered my own questions about the Infected Mushroom Pusher, but still think it would make a fun video. For a bedroom producer like me, the interaction of the EQ bands is quite interesting to observe, and the effect of the ‘Magic’ knob on the various dynamic responses seems quite refined. Definitely some helpful pointers on PsyTrance mastering, anyway ☮️
Great plugin, useful for some spice on bass DI. The whole Renaissance plugin range are still the workhorses today that they always were. Super manuals too! Remember them?! Ren EQ reads like a novel, a real page-turner..
I recall there used to be a patent for small-speaker bass optimisation back all the way in the 90s, it should be well and truly lapsed by now, it was issued to Philips or one of their connected companies, i think. It went like this, isolate sub-bass, then run a trickle integrator, resetting it on every zero-crossing of the isolated signal, resulting in a sort of wonky sawtooth with the waveform rising from each zero crossing. Then gently highpass the input to attenuate the most offensive sub-bass, lowpass the synthesized sawtooth, and mix. I don't think the technique as described is complete, since if you had little bass, it will still synthesize a lot and overwhelm it, there has to be some sort of gain or filter control there as well for the synthesized portion. The technique is intended to run completely mixed music through it, as a reproduction device feature that salvages some perceived quality out of limited hardware.
Great video as always. I tend to gravitate towards Ableton's native overdrive, setting the dynamics to 0% to avoid artifacts. Great results for bass sounds if you use it parallelly (or set the dry/wet incredibly low).
Hi Dan, have you heard of "The God Particle"? It's a plug-in designed by Crave and Jaycen Joshua, generally a mix bus plugin I would say. It seems to be popular with pros who often say it replaces many or all of their usual mixbus plug-ins. It would be good to hear your opinion on it after an analysis.
You might gain more insight into R-Bass by looking at MaxxBass, which is the more elaborate version of the same idea. As I understand it, it is indeed low-passing the original signal at the crossover frequency you specify, and the "original bass" toggle switches that in and out. The rest of the signal is synthesized and controlled by the intensity, I assume. You can also look up US patent #US5930373A, "Method and system for enhancing quality of sound signal" which is Waves' patent for the process. I have never found anything to truly replace MaxxBass, personally.
@@sergeyleps8492 I'm just trialling FIre the Bass against RBass, as I want to find a good alternative to RBass - but Fire the Bass sounds completely different.
I've got 3 Waves bass 'enhancers' - R, Maxx and LoAir. R sounds the most different from the other two. Perhaps that's the High Pass filtering component ?
@@KozmykJ Well yes but you could tweak them to sound identical, I presume the sonic difference comes from the settings not being matched to one another.
I don't think you're going to like the answers... The '808' is a synth I built in Reaktor 5, never really finished properly, but keep using nonetheless. I think the drums were sampled from my son's not-quite-a-toy little drum kit.
As for mixing, just the usual stuff, no magic tricks. I found the more I improved my monitoring in the low frequencies (bigger monitors, added sub, bass traps) the easier I found it to get the bottom end right.
I have a similar story to yours except I bought Waves Maxxbass and have yet to use it on any project for not really knowing when, why or how to really utilize it best.
Will there be more Waves related videos? I'd love if you would look at the Waves MV2. A bonus for us Reaper users might be how to DIY its effect in Reaper.
I’ve tried every sub bass plugin and I’ve found nothing that sounds the same a an actual DBX unit any chance of an analysis of some of the DBX subsynths? I have a couple and the older one is particularly good :-) would love to know what it’s doing compared to a plug-in maybe to understand why the plugins don’t “do it “for me :-) Ps I add saturation and harmonics to the bass guitar and kick etc to help them sit in the mix thru smaller speakers, after it’s been DBX’d I high pass the lowest frequencies away a little as the subsynths add actual lower frequencies and can be a little too much :-)
I just started paying more attention to this channel and also purchased R Bass almost exactly 24 hours ago. For 2 seconds, I thought, "what is going on here" as if something magical happened.... or it did, I'm not sure.
I think you might have more luck tackling MaxxBass which is like the utility version of RBass that their algorithm was based off. I use it a lot, but only for a little amount of actual delta change. It's one waves plugin in my workflow I wish I knew how to replace but have no idea
E bass relies on psychoacoustic effect of the low frequencies, I believe they have a pattent for this tech. regardless, I'd rather distort the frequency above 600 hz and keep the low end clean. because the overtones start very close to the original frequency it makes it more audible on phones but at the same time fattens it too much...
@@nobodynoone2500 That is what Waves is saying. They mean the algorithm, software, etc which is not surprising. at any rate. I think its too much even with small doses of whatever it puts in the signal
@@nobodynoone2500 It's funny then that Yamaha FM really modulates phase, not frequency? Maybe the triple tuning fork company filed the patent specifically in order to mislead the competition, send the engineering divisions of their neighbours on a wild goose chase? Though i'm too lazy to read it and figure out whether that's the case.
I'll break the flow of supportive comments for a moment with a complaint about a high-pitched noise which correlates with signal on that distorted bass channel. I'd maybe think it's my smartphone speakers acting up but they don't do it normally, plus I can see the noise on the spectrogram in the video. (I know I shouldn't be listening to this with smartphone speakers but nevertheless) Otherwise a great video, as always.
Dan, I love your videos and was very excited when this one popped up. However, I fear you've missed a significant part of what RBass does. In my somewhat limited testing (couldn't figure out Waves vs Plugin Doctor) I noticed that it wasn't just harmonics being added. The frequency selected in the plugin seems to be synthesized, whether it's present in the original sound or not. Even when it's below the fundamental of the sound source. It might be a result of resonant filters on extraneous noise, but mostly, it seems to me that RBass' processing is somewhat more complicated than we think. BTW my freqency selection is fixed at 42. Mostly because Alan Meyerson recommended that, but I guess it really is the answer to life, the universe and everything.
RBass is a simplified version of MaxxBass, which itself is Meir Shashoua's implementation of an enhancer for the Missing Fundamental Effect. The concept is that psychoacoustically, the ear can make out the fundamental of low pitches even if they've vanished (say, due to a small speaker) provided that harmonics (both odd and even) of the fundamental are still audible. The original intent was to make cheap small speakers sound closer to large ones, which is an honest effect even if it is, essentially, an illusion caused by the way our brain interprets sound.
informative comment, thank you
@@tryingtotryistrying Not for MaxxBass. Its patent may have expired by now, though.
And to add to this, Dell licenced the technology from Waves for their laptops circa mid-2010s, and I have to say, it does a very good job at making the laptop speakers sound bigger than they are when paired with nicely-sculpted EQ
@@Snedd99 Theme parks have been using this for their hidden outdoor path speakers as well.
It doesn't sound as good when it's overdone on speakers and headphones that actually have the most frequencies available. Moderation just gives inadequate workers a bit more body down low. Done really want to be using R-bass personally..... Just getting some harmonics in the inadequate speaker range on bass and kick send to be enough, in my opinion. Just so it doesn't disappear completely on the phone or laptop. It's not worth trying to make it all articulate though. In my opinion.
As far as I understand, Waves RBass is essentially a "easy" version of Waves MaxxBass, which offers more granular and specific control over the algorithm. Sound on Sound has a good article on that, dating back to 1998: As far as I can tell, it's running a lowpass into distortion into compressor and a highpass to remove the fundamental from this parallel bus, lowpassing the distorted signal to remove highs, and then mixing with the original, with the original signal optionally attenuated by some amount. It was originally designed to make bass sound good on less-than-full-range speakers.
I remember the MaxxBass manual specifically mentioning sound effects meant for Theme Park Speakers as one use case for maxxbass. Opened my eyes at the time to how these plugins are useful for way more than just music production.
If you made this a series, where you "investigate" different plugins (Waves or otherwise), I would be HOOKED.
Agreed. I would like to see Dan's take on the classic Inflator, even though it's been pretty thoroughly copied aside from the band split at this point.
@@EzyoMusic It's a saturating limiter, ala PSP's Vintage Warmer (only easier to use.)
the investigation was very artificial and subjective, id pass
this reminds me of how i once tried to put reverb on a subbass, just because people claimed that is a thing one shouldn't do. so i did that and also put some distortion on it and it creates lots of cool harmonics, which i then highpassed so i could have the original bass in the lowend and badabim, badaboom, i had a sub-bass reverb that actually sounded good
That’s a cool trick indeed, just have to be careful reverb doesn’t get too muddy!
this is my go to for techno production, add a delay before the low pass and get some extra rhythms for the rumble
It's cumbersome to pull off, but I've also done similar!
@@vminus7505 what subbass? Wish I knew what the rest meant
I usually always stick a reverb on my basses early on in the chain but only as like a short decay (usually under a second and tune the mix and low cut off ) and then when distortion is added it colours the wet signal and can give a nice release effect
-----> Important to know: The harmonics are in mono, even if you feed it a stereo signal. It will shrink the perceived width. That may or may not be what you want.
Are you talking about R Bass? Because both Saturn and Volcano are dual mono, meaning each signal (Left and Right or Mid and Side) is processed separately.
@@qasderfful rbass
Well if you want it differently, just put an instance on both channels, one for left and one for right.
I have to say: you’re probably the only one who is actually taking the time to look at Waves’s plugins objectively. I get tired of either the demonstrations that are interpreted as subtle shills or the accusations that Waves are just siphoning customers of money.
Admittedly, I “grew up” with Waves. But at the same time, I like to know what these tools can and/or can’t do, especially in light of other ones that are used as often or even more than Waves.
Nice job as always and looking forward to more.
Came in to learn what R Bass does, learned a really interesting bass mixing technique instead. Thanks Dan as always for your informative videos.
and this is so much the dan worrall experience.
Watch a fabfilter overview video to see what a new plug-in of theirs does and I end up changing my whole mix workflow
One tip I have for Rbass is to use it to free up a little headroom while retaining the "feel" of the low bass. Put the fundamental frequency somewhere low and appropriate for the song, then take the original sub OUT, which high passes at that frequency, then turn intensity up until the perception of fullness is close. Finally, level match it using the output so you're comparing apples to apples.
I find that if I have a low tuned kick with lots of sub, and a low tuned bass or bass synth, I'll use it on one or the other and it can help relieve your system some by not having all the sub frequencies compounding and eating up all your mix headroom. I tend to use it as a tool more than an effect, personally, but to each their own. Hope that helps.
First time viewer, at two minutes in- I perceive overwhelming amounts of passion. I’m super psyched to have discovered you.
Fun fact, if you ever used to use spectrasonics old trilogy plug-in but always found it hard to fit the bass into your mix, it was because they processed the acoustic bass with r bass but forgot to turn it off when exporting the synth samples!
cool fact. where do u find that? I want to read more about it
@@bathanhnguyen202 I'll have to do some digging. I used to sell music software in the early 2000s it's just something I remember from then. I can't remember if it was told to me by either company or I saw it in an interview.
@@Bthelick 💡wait on the acoustic samples or the synthetic like the moog ?
@@Fay-kr9oy everything. It was only supposed to add weight to the acoustic bass, but it ended up on everything
Thank you! Thank you!!! Youre simply a genius, and it's a blessing having your channel for free on YT alongside with a lot of misinformation goin on other channels. I may not use all of your techniques, but all of them are strong weapons to have in a mixing arsenal. Apologies for the grammar, not native english
Thanks for analyzing this plugin!! Can definitely considering what's already going on, and not repeat the effect!!
The quality of your videos is insane! Production, presentation and information!
Unfiltered Audio's Bass-Mint plugin gives you similar results with a bit more control over how the bass sound is manipulated. I get some pretty fat results with just a few tweaks. That said, I kind of prefer R Bass in that it's really simple and so am I.
Brilliant plug-in.
Oh my god... I have never noticed that original bass in and out on the side and I have been using this plugin for nearly 10 years. THANK YOU
Always amazed how effortlessly Dan delivers tips I've never thought of... Reacomp as a distortion tool...🤔
Your videos are so cinematographic!
this is what I come to this channel for. You're the best, Dan!
I'm curious on what RVox actually does. There's a lot of talk of it doing more than just compression - some say there's an exciter under the hood. Would love to hear your thoughts on the discussion!
I used RBass on a few broadcasts in mastering. Now I insert it on my drum n bass stem. It took me some time to realize it’s not a full time thing. It’s so stunning you don’t want to hear it too much. This and RVox are just astoundingly easy to use. Waves was on a huge roll then.
I recall that I analyzed Max Bass endlessly in the beginning, trying to understand what it might be doing to my mixes. Once I figured out it was a ‘second speakers’ thing, it became much easier to use. In my main monitors, its effect was not so desirable but after tweaking with constant speaker switching it made perfect sense and my clients were happy without a clue, which is the ideal.
Can you please make a video breaking down how to recreate RVox? The community needs it!
I'm learning how to code plugins and these videos are being so helpful! Thanks Dan
So many people I know put the thumbs down on RBass. It doesn't always work for me, but when it does, nothing else is quite like it. Especially useful for the small speaker bass trick: Run it on a parallel copy and mix it in. Works well.
He was trying exactly that (run RBass in parallel) and it sounded awful.
In parallel? It doesn't remove the original signal completely so it's problematic to use it in parallel
For someone who spends an awful lot of time informing us about aliasing problems, your font rendering settings are surprising... 😂
Thanks as always for the videos!
Exactly what i was looking for
This is ace! Would love to see a similar vid on analogue obsession's lovend, another bass harmonic enhancement plugin that sounds great but is difficult to use subtly. as the lowest setting is still doing something.
Lovend is a beast.
@@jackalisland as well as Airwindows FathomFive ;)
This just gave me an idea that might be worth trying. I’ve done this before when I wanted to boost somewhere with a specific eq but I didn’t really need a boost. I attenuated the area first with another eq. So, like with Lovend/rbass, you could slap on after an eq and just attenuate the low end on the eq with a shelf to the desired amount, or, as I would probably do(and will try next time I mix something) is to attenuate the low end on the eq enough to where you actually have to boost more on the Lovend/rbass. That might sound more fatter than the first method.
Works great for laptop, or small bluetooth speakers. And the same mix plays great on high end systems.
I just bought RBass today and was wondering how it works. Found your video, glad i see that it seems to do a good job. I always struggle mixing the bass, and i like having a lot of low end without getting the mix muddy. And your music is VERY nice! I hope i´ll find your music somewhere!
i did this a few years back, made an Ableton rack. Always thought it was just harmonics but was surprised to find how much volume it was cheating in general.
I kind of feared this. Rbass is a well designed plugin, with novel processing.
Of all the waves stuff. The few things I’d actually consider buying are their R series (Renaissance) X-crackle, sibilance, H-delay and Api 2500. That’s it.
I've been watching your videos for a while and man oh man, you and Michael White (Mixing with Mike) contributed so much to how i approach mixing now! Thank you so much! Would love to see your take on Tone Projects Basslane Pro! Feels like to get the most out of this plugin requires an experienced guy to run his tests on it.
RBass is one of my absolute essential plugins. I don’t know scientifically how it works but I hear it as “inventing” bass underneath the material around the frequency you specify. Anything that I feel doesn’t have the low end present to boost with a normal EQ I just create it with RBass - thin vocal, 808s, bass synths/guitars. Great video.
That's not what you see in analysis. It shows no signs of resynthesising lower low end at all (and if it did, you could filter down with a brickwall filter until only this area was left). What you're hearing is just the illusion where more harmonics trick your brain into thinking that it hears deep bass better, which is just a product of saturation.
Thanks for all your videos! Please do a video on RVox!
Thanks, Dan! There're also interesting plugin for lows called FathomFive by AirWindows. I think that it works very differently, but good thing is that it acts well in parallel.
Dan, you’re spoiling us. 2 videos in one week, it’s Christmas
Cool.
I would love to see your analysis on Rvox. I keep ending up using it on vocals and it just sounds good. I never seem to be able to get the same sound with other compressors. Cheers
Hi! Have you analyzed Izotope Trash 2? I'm interested in your opinion on that plugin. Trash has EQ before and after 2 stages of distortion, so that parallel processing technique can be done with one, instead of three plugins. Also, convolve with some bass amp impulse response, after all processing, could get you closer to R bass, maybe. Peace :)
Hey buddy, let me tell you what RBass does actually. It's much easier than you think, and you can definitely figure out how to copy it 1:1. So first of all it gets the input, they call it the "original signal". Then what it does is it puts a steep resonant low pass filter on that. The result is called the "original bass". Then, they do non-bass = original - original bass. That is the "high passed version" that you've seen. And when you turn up the slider for "original bass", that re-adds that low pass filtered signal.
Now for the bass processing. They take the "original bass" signal and put it through a shaper, which timbre-wise is something that's kind of like a diode shaper. However, they probably use a polynomial shaper that exactly adds the 2nd and 3rd harmonic. Let's call that "the harmonics".
So what you can get out of RBass is "the harmonics" + "high passed version" + "original bass" * A where A is some number between 0 and, what, 1? Does it go above unity gain?
If you want to analyze what is REALLY happening in RBass, you have to feed it a sinewave at a bass frequency, and look at the sonogram. That will tell you everything that's happening in the curve shaping stage.
Enjoy!
Hello Dan, can you analyse and review the waves nx series🙏 Would love to hear your thoughts on speaker/room emulation software
I'd absolutely love to see the plug ins that come with Mic Modeling systems analyzed. Something like the Antelope Edge system and Slate ML1. I've always been curious what's truly under the hood.
same here. I think all they do is EQ curve, Harmonics / Saturation, and multiband dynamics.
RBass is legendary. On rap mixes use it on 808s, coincidentally along with saturn2 but the former is to add sub and latter to add harmonics to help it cut
Using RBass to add sub? it doesn't do that, it adds harmonics to the sub frequencies.
@@kelainefes it sure does that for me every time
@@DistrictSoundLab it gives an illusion that the sub gets more prominent but what you’re really hearing are added harmonics, and those sit in higher frequencies than the fundamental. On smaller speakers you hear less sub/ or not at all (depending on how small) and low sine waves are quick to get too low for ‘small’ speakers to reproduce and that’s why saturation helps to make ‘808s’ (more) audible on small speakers and more prominent in general.
So kelainefes is right, it doesn’t add bass, but yes it does make it more prominent. You can use both Rbass and Saturn to add harmonics.
@@greedokenobi3855 I use rbass to create the feeling of more sub and saturn2 to bring out more bite in higher frequencies
@@DistrictSoundLab Nice, so if I understand you correct you apply a bit of rbass’ saturation to make the sub feel/seem more prominent and then have use saturn to saturate whatever/in your case higher freqs with saturn which gives you multiband distortion/saturation options.
Sounds like you have a solid go-to method there!
Greetings from Brum, UK. Good stuff as always.
Thanks for (yet) another enlightening video 🙏 Just wanted to suggest another Waves plugin that is very poorly documented and understood: Waves IM (Infected Mushroom) Pusher. I think every junior producer who has seen or bought Pusher would benefit from some of your enlightenment on the plugin!
Hi. Just wanted to add that you directly inspired me to get PluginDoctor, and I’m really happy with it- thanks. Have answered my own questions about the Infected Mushroom Pusher, but still think it would make a fun video. For a bedroom producer like me, the interaction of the EQ bands is quite interesting to observe, and the effect of the ‘Magic’ knob on the various dynamic responses seems quite refined. Definitely some helpful pointers on PsyTrance mastering, anyway ☮️
Great plugin, useful for some spice on bass DI. The whole Renaissance plugin range are still the workhorses today that they always were. Super manuals too! Remember them?! Ren EQ reads like a novel, a real page-turner..
Amazing!
I've not watched the video yet but I am so happy you covered this plugin 😆
Dan, have you tested the Tone Projects Basslane Pro? And btw, thanks a lot for your videos.
Cheers
I recall there used to be a patent for small-speaker bass optimisation back all the way in the 90s, it should be well and truly lapsed by now, it was issued to Philips or one of their connected companies, i think. It went like this, isolate sub-bass, then run a trickle integrator, resetting it on every zero-crossing of the isolated signal, resulting in a sort of wonky sawtooth with the waveform rising from each zero crossing. Then gently highpass the input to attenuate the most offensive sub-bass, lowpass the synthesized sawtooth, and mix.
I don't think the technique as described is complete, since if you had little bass, it will still synthesize a lot and overwhelm it, there has to be some sort of gain or filter control there as well for the synthesized portion. The technique is intended to run completely mixed music through it, as a reproduction device feature that salvages some perceived quality out of limited hardware.
Very Nice. Thank you Dan for the insights. 👍🏻
Aagh, the polarity switch! I’ll keep that in mind, I think I could have used that a few times in the past. Thanks, Dan.
Dan keeps dropping the good stuff on us
you have to release this track Dan! sounds really good!
Great video as always. I tend to gravitate towards Ableton's native overdrive, setting the dynamics to 0% to avoid artifacts. Great results for bass sounds if you use it parallelly (or set the dry/wet incredibly low).
PLEASE DO ONE ON ROOT ONE.
I’m starting to think that leapwing are mostly hype.
Have some high quality filters but that seems to be about it.
Hi Dan, have you heard of "The God Particle"? It's a plug-in designed by Crave and Jaycen Joshua, generally a mix bus plugin I would say. It seems to be popular with pros who often say it replaces many or all of their usual mixbus plug-ins. It would be good to hear your opinion on it after an analysis.
wtf - this is so huge. thank you for spreading this knowledge and information :)
You might gain more insight into R-Bass by looking at MaxxBass, which is the more elaborate version of the same idea. As I understand it, it is indeed low-passing the original signal at the crossover frequency you specify, and the "original bass" toggle switches that in and out. The rest of the signal is synthesized and controlled by the intensity, I assume. You can also look up US patent #US5930373A, "Method and system for enhancing quality of sound signal" which is Waves' patent for the process. I have never found anything to truly replace MaxxBass, personally.
Fire The Bass
@@sergeyleps8492 I'm just trialling FIre the Bass against RBass, as I want to find a good alternative to RBass - but Fire the Bass sounds completely different.
In this particular case, it make sense using lin eq on parallel tracks, imho. Reafir, for example.
Hi Dan, could you make a Maxx Bass video?
You have a great understanding of audio and I would love to have your take on it.
Appreciate the indepth experimenting done for this video! Though confused why you sound like you're on a brisk walk while recording this... ?
Parallels band pass is fucking brilliant in theory and in practice. So bad ass. Thanks King
Parallel*
I've got 3 Waves bass 'enhancers' - R, Maxx and LoAir.
R sounds the most different from the other two.
Perhaps that's the High Pass filtering component ?
R is just a simplified version of Maxx
@@avepe6094 I get that but there is a sonic difference, to my ear at least.
@@KozmykJ Well yes but you could tweak them to sound identical, I presume the sonic difference comes from the settings not being matched to one another.
Ok and do you got a video for how to load a plugin in to the software ?
Have you tried Wavesfactory Spectre? It's like EQ boosts with harmonics. Maybe something like that can come closer.
He did the official introduction video of the plugin
Very useful, wich Is the difference between R-Bass and MaxBass ?
Good question. They don't sound the same, but I'm not clear why. It's on my list, no doubt I'll get to it eventually...
I always assumed RBass is just a stripped down, simpler version of Maxxbass
As always nice work Very Nice Work.
Sick kick and 808,what samples do you use?
How you mix the kick and 808?
Please throw me a bone!!!
I don't think you're going to like the answers... The '808' is a synth I built in Reaktor 5, never really finished properly, but keep using nonetheless. I think the drums were sampled from my son's not-quite-a-toy little drum kit.
As for mixing, just the usual stuff, no magic tricks. I found the more I improved my monitoring in the low frequencies (bigger monitors, added sub, bass traps) the easier I found it to get the bottom end right.
Glad to finally hear the term 'plenty of welly' in a technical context - where it belongs....
I like it even in the master bus
Great stuff👍 Love the beat also.
Very useful video, thanks!
Thanks dan
I am using it since always, but learned to set it very low as it can feel great at first but usually ruin everything later. 😀
That’s probably the same thing the do with Rvox. 🤔 now I get to go play around with this technique and try it on different sounds in different ways.
What about Maxxbass from Waves Dan ? I've never been able to make that click in a mix tbh.
I have a similar story to yours except I bought Waves Maxxbass and have yet to use it on any project for not really knowing when, why or how to really utilize it best.
Thank you Dan..
Another nice lesson. Thanks!
Thank you master for our daily bread.
reFuse Lowender - Found by recommendation of Andrew Scheps. Awesome bass enhancer & you won't have to deal with Waves B.S. 😉
Will there be more Waves related videos? I'd love if you would look at the Waves MV2. A bonus for us Reaper users might be how to DIY its effect in Reaper.
Yes probably. I've not tried MV2 yet but I've had other requests. I'll see what I can do...
@@DanWorrall excellent
I’ve tried every sub bass plugin and I’ve found nothing that sounds the same a an actual DBX unit any chance of an analysis of some of the DBX subsynths? I have a couple and the older one is particularly good :-) would love to know what it’s doing compared to a plug-in maybe to understand why the plugins don’t “do it “for me :-)
Ps I add saturation and harmonics to the bass guitar and kick etc to help them sit in the mix thru smaller speakers, after it’s been DBX’d I high pass the lowest frequencies away a little as the subsynths add actual lower frequencies and can be a little too much :-)
insufficiently caffeinated 😄 best excuse I have heard for a long time, I'll put that one in the bank for later, and thanks for another great video!
Airwindows Floor isn't RBass but it does a similar job.
Another Waves plugin for Dan to checkout would be MV2.
I just started paying more attention to this channel and also purchased R Bass almost exactly 24 hours ago. For 2 seconds, I thought, "what is going on here" as if something magical happened.... or it did, I'm not sure.
This guy is like a National Geographic narrator but for audio lol.
I think you might have more luck tackling MaxxBass which is like the utility version of RBass that their algorithm was based off. I use it a lot, but only for a little amount of actual delta change. It's one waves plugin in my workflow I wish I knew how to replace but have no idea
E bass relies on psychoacoustic effect of the low frequencies, I believe they have a pattent for this tech. regardless, I'd rather distort the frequency above 600 hz and keep the low end clean. because the overtones start very close to the original frequency it makes it more audible on phones but at the same time fattens it too much...
A patent on the effect is useless when the tech is obvious. Look up yamaha's patent on FM synthesis and casio's clever 'Phase Distortion' workaround.
@@nobodynoone2500 That is what Waves is saying. They mean the algorithm, software, etc which is not surprising. at any rate. I think its too much even with small doses of whatever it puts in the signal
@@nobodynoone2500 It's funny then that Yamaha FM really modulates phase, not frequency? Maybe the triple tuning fork company filed the patent specifically in order to mislead the competition, send the engineering divisions of their neighbours on a wild goose chase? Though i'm too lazy to read it and figure out whether that's the case.
It's a cleaver and useful plugin, when used moderately
I'll break the flow of supportive comments for a moment with a complaint about a high-pitched noise which correlates with signal on that distorted bass channel. I'd maybe think it's my smartphone speakers acting up but they don't do it normally, plus I can see the noise on the spectrogram in the video. (I know I shouldn't be listening to this with smartphone speakers but nevertheless) Otherwise a great video, as always.
Are the sample softs there when you open the software or do you have to download them from sowhere
They're third party plugins, from Waves, Arturia and Native Instruments.
What is the difference between RBass and MaxBass? I use MaxBass on mastering
It's a good question, I'll probably try to answer it soon.
How similar is it to the vog?
Dan, I love your videos and was very excited when this one popped up. However, I fear you've missed a significant part of what RBass does.
In my somewhat limited testing (couldn't figure out Waves vs Plugin Doctor) I noticed that it wasn't just harmonics being added. The frequency selected in the plugin seems to be synthesized, whether it's present in the original sound or not. Even when it's below the fundamental of the sound source.
It might be a result of resonant filters on extraneous noise, but mostly, it seems to me that RBass' processing is somewhat more complicated than we think.
BTW my freqency selection is fixed at 42. Mostly because Alan Meyerson recommended that, but I guess it really is the answer to life, the universe and everything.
Another classic. I actually preferred the native plugins.
Since I'm this early:
Dropping a huge THANK YOU for your amazing content Dan, please keep it coming!
Thanks Dan. Was thinking about this plug in from the last video. What's the difference between R Bass and Maxx Bass? Any ideas?
They're the same thing really, maxxbass has more parameters to control though
Good stuff. Kinda already knew it all, but your approach gives me some fresh ideas. Thanks.