First, I like your first statement, and I agree with it. Everyone is entitled to his/her opinion, and all our ears are different.
I can’t say I enjoy those bass heavy cars anymore, either. I turned 50 this last Saturday. However, I have designed, built and installed many such systems, and I would definitely say they give you a “thump in the chest,” but it’s not from 250 Hz area. It’s from 35-80 Hz. In live concerts, most people that like a kick drum in the FOH subs that hits them in the chest have the kick drum tuned around 60-80 Hz. 250 Hz is male voice tenor range around B-C at the top of the bass clef or female voice alto range below the treble clef. Anyway, it’s just below middle C area on the piano, otherwise known as C4. I’ve personally never considered that to be a thump type of sound.
I’m curious what bass heads you refer to when you say, “Usually that Bass EQ is a shelving control centered around 30Hz.” I’ve personally owned 4 bass head, and I’ve played through quite a few more; and I’ve never played through one that had a bass EQ that low unless it had a built in EQ at that frequency. My Aguilar TH500 is at 40 Hz, my GK MB200 is at 60 Hz and my Sansamp RBI is at 80 Hz for the bass EQ. I’m kinda a specs guy so I always look it up. Now the active bass EQ on my bass is at 20 Hz. Maybe that is the EQ you are referring to instead of the amp like JimmyM was talking about.
Finally, I just listened to the YouTube song you posted. I’d never heard it before, but I kinda liked it. I’m curious what audio system or headphones you listen to it on because on my home stereo system, I could make out every bass note distinctly. As I said, I’d never heard it before, but after listening twice through, I had picked out the entire bass line. My home audio system includes a Yamaha receiver, a pair of North American Sound speakers (2-way speaker with 8” Toby woofer and Phillips 1” soft dome tweeter) and my own transmission line subwoofer with a 15” Petras woofer. I could hear the bass plainly and clearly through my system. The lows were in the sub, and the uppers were in the mains.
Please, don’t take any of my statements as critical toward you. I believe you feel and hear exactly what you said just as I do. It gets back to what so many are saying that we all have individual preferences, we hear differently, etc. Basically, it’s just fun to enjoy what we do, discuss what we like and dislike and learn from each other.
Thank you @Rip Van Dan for inspiring me to comment, and thank you @JimmyM for this post. I’m enjoying reading all the comments and offering my own.
Thanks for your comments. Always interesting to get the different takes and also different reactions to what you hear.
I had some nice 3-way KLH speakers with 12" woofers, 8" mids, and compression tweeter. Unfortunately when I moved to Washington the U-haul truck I used leaked after they assured me that crunch in the overhead corner had been fixed and was waterproof. Sure enough, it leaked, warped the cabinets and got onto the woofers. I had insurance with them but never got a dime...don't patronize U-Haul!
I have some very nice Bose headphones that I use to listen to music where I live now because we live on the bottom floor of a house with our landlord living above us. I also have some Sennheiser headphones that I got after my first pair of Bose headphones bit the dust. Both are over-ear design but Sennheiser allows other sounds in and evidently out too. My wife complained about hearing my music with the Sennheiser's, so I contacted Bose about repairing my original. They would no longer repair them but gave me a silly-good price on a new pair that replaced them. So I primarily use the Bose headphones again.
As far as the 30Hz bass EQ shelving pot goes, that's on all the Eden and the DNA amps. There were also a number of other amps that had shelving EQ there for the bass when I went looking for them last year. Didn't realize there were so many others that had it up higher. So, my bad on that. I think having it up at 40 or 60 Hz is a lot more useful. I also have semi-parametric controls on my amp that allow me to adjust EQ anywhere over the 3 octaves I want. Previous amp had one. So, I can adjust anything with it without boosting every frequency below it's center it like a shelving EQ does.
I'm really surprised to hear you say that most of the drummers in your experience tune their bass drum up around 60Hz and 80Hz. I've never played with a drummer who tuned it higher than my low E (41.2Hz). That's even higher than my A string (55 Hz) and my D string is right in the middle of those (73Hz). Drummers always seem to be stuffing pillows and such in them to turn it into more and more of a low thud.
Regarding the low-mid centered at around 250Hz, you have to remember that all of those fundamentals, which bass cabs have a hard time reproducing, also have overtones at 2X the fundamental frequency, as well as 3X, 4X, etc. Even though most cabs can't produce a 30Hz fundamental at anywhere near the level of the rest of the frequencies, your ear can still easily identify it from the overtones it produces. A boost in the low mids at 250Hz to about 300Hz results in a thump in the chest pressure. Try boosting it a bit and then try cutting it out and see what you think
David Nordschow, who founded Eden, very specifically put a low-mid hump in his XLT cabinets for just that reason. Even after he designed the Eden XST cabs, which have a very flat frequency response across the spectrum instead of the low-mid hump, the XLT cabs far outsold the XST's because of that characteristic aggressive sound that sat so well in the mix both live and in recordings. He now designs cabs for his new company DNA and I have his DNS-410, which has a very flat frequency response, more like his XST cabs that he did for Eden. I dial in some boost at ~250 Hz (as close as I can get to it) to get that same definition and thump with it.
Now granted, all the recording classes I have taken were online classes, but invariably after recording the first track the instructions are to boost the low-mids around the 250Hz range if the bass is not present enough in the mix. And, every time I've done that, it has brought clarity and presence to the bass track. That was a further inducement to boost that setting in my own gear - your mileage may vary
I have to tell the truth here now...I have hearing loss from playing loud music for so long. HOWEVER, my hearing loss is at 3KHz and above. So I hear the lower frequencies just fine. I can get clarity in the frequencies above that by just upping the levels (playing the music louder). And yes I do have hearing aids to compensate for "normal" life.
OK, back to the video. Did you notice that when they did a close up of that run that it showed him playing the second part of the run when he was actually playing the first part? You can see him go down to the F at the end the run while the music has him just starting the second part of the octave A to D pattern?
Here's an example of that sound with Debra Killing. She's using an Eden WT800 with an Eden D410XLT cab. That cab has that low-mid hump I mentioned. There's nothing blurred, boomy, or muddy about her sound at all. Granted she's featured in the first section, but even when she is just playing with the band later on, she has a really clear sound.
