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super low freq

#61
I've ran test tones and sine waves on my fairly capable home theater subs. Below 20Hz and I don't really hear the note, but rather stuff shaking the house. Not unusual to later find stuff in the house fallen off of shelves several rooms away.

For some songs live, I occasionally play sub bass with a synth and set the filter to where I am mostly getting fundamental and a little bit of the second harmonic. Works really cool for some songs. The subs I use are decent down to around 40Hz, so I'm fairly good to a low E. I wish the subs had a little better specs because I'd like to get a low D (maybe C# on occasion) with decent amplitude. Some uber expensive live subs reach to the low to mid 30s with decent output. But below that in a live setting is pretty much not doable with the gear that I'm aware of and even it if were; it'd be largely pointless and waste of time in a live setting for 99% of musical goals.
 
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#62
My amp is set up to get into some serious low territory. I use parallel fx wet / dry set up. My dry side is low passed at 350Hz, and then sent into a sub harmonic synth. I do this to stop the synth from reproducing high order harmonics and sounding like an octave. After the sub harmonic synth, I low pass again at like 120Hz. I do this because, while I want up to 350Hz to hit the synthesizer, I don't want to actually hear the harmonics of 350Hz. All of this powered by a 1000 watt Crown XTi into 8x10. That dry side alone hits SO HARD, but there really isn't anything there below 40Hz. Still sounds huge, but not as low in the frequency range as you'd think. My peak for lows is right around 80hz. I can produce stuff down lower, and used to try and use it, but it's not really bass guitar territory. Kick and low tom are better suited for that low down stuff as they are somewhat momentary. Bass guitar on the other hand is for the most part constant and those frequencies don't flatter a mix like that. Just some food for thought.
 
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#63
Jack Wilcox said:
the TCE's -1 has much higher fidelity and is infinitely more clean than -2. Further, the Sub n' Up can be configure for low-latency polyphony with dynamics, while the DBX 120 series is locked in pseudopolyphony. Further the 120 series offers options for -1, -2, or -1+-2 octaves down. It is not concerned with musicality as much as "make signal lower,"
and is thus very clean in that regard.

These effects are synthesizers in the sense that they generate previously non-extant information. Each time you introduce another variable (read: another synth/effect), you will lose a certain degree of dynamic fidelity. The amount of this reduction will fluctuate depending on the equipment used, but subsynths are notorious for reducing dynamics. It happens to guitarists all the time with their massive boards.

Again, by the time that all this equipment is utilized, your noise floor is going to be horrific and dynamics will be virtually nonexistent.Once you begin dropping 2+ octaves, pythagorean fifth discrepencies will make everything sound terrible and out of tune. Seriously consider purchasing a proper synthesizer if you want to play this low.

Artists who frequently utilize information below ~40hz (namely bassnectar) almost exclusively use 'simple' melodic lines that low. There are no basslines in this region, just background drones while everything else plays on top.

Can you provide some examples of the kind of music you will be playing? Or some kind of reference material?
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Given that I have never achieved this level of low before, I am not sure how I would utilize it yet... some bass players I have seen use really low freq are Phil Lesh and Mike Gordon... Mikey hart has done some extraordinary low freq work on “the beam”.. a custom instrument that creates soundscapes I did not know were possible... huge low freq space drones... enormous... hearing and feeling... I would like to be able to do that... close encounters way out there stuff... that involves body and mind...
 
#65
btw the bag end powered 18” has a low pass filter at 95 hz... and a high pass at 8 hz...

The Alembic sf-2 allows me to low pass at 45hz... which creates some real thunder across the low e string... I have not tried it on 5 string yet... I have done some fooling around on the boss sy300 guitar synth.. but most sounds need to be tweaked for bass... and I have not done that yet...

I have a Moog Sub Phatty on the way... so we shall see how that goes as well...
 
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#66
I had a Sub Phatty (sold it), but actually like the versatility of soft synths better. But I'm mainly a bass player who just dabbles in keys as a means to make more bass sounds. Maybe I don't have the ears to benefit from Moog gear, but I am able to get sounds that please as much or more with soft synths.
 
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#68
Chad T said:
I had a Sub Phatty (sold it), but actually like the versatility of soft synths better. But I'm mainly a bass player who just dabbles in keys as a means to make more bass sounds. Maybe I don't have the ears to benefit from Moog gear, but I am able to get sounds that please as much or more with soft synths.
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Sub Phatty is for my wife, she’s into keys... and I’m sure we will plug it into the bag ends... see what this baby can do...
 
#70
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#72
Our catcher in the rye is Alex Claber of Barefaced bass cabinets. Read it, learn it by heart, BOTTOMS UP FOLKS:

Barefaced Bass - What is bottom?

Firstly, let's split the lows into three manageable segments:
20Hz - 40Hz = rumble
These are the kind of lows that are felt more than heard and add a certain rumble and sense of scale to movie soundtracks, pipe organ music and some electronic music. The sub 30Hz realm is very much sound effects territory - explosions, thunder, et al. There is very little content in music below 30Hz so club systems tend to cut off at this point if not a bit higher, whilst live music systems as seen at major festivals / stadiums tend to cut off at 35Hz (which makes the systems a bit more efficient so you need less gear to reach a given SPL than with a system with a 30Hz cut-off). A low tuned bass guitar does have output below 40Hz but it takes a seriously potent speaker system to reproduce that at high SPL. Sub 40Hz output adds a certain size and weight to music. It is almost more felt than heard and is rarely perceived independently of higher bass output (because any low frequencies will have higher overtones). A good word for it would be rumble. A bad word would be boom (boom happens much higher up).

Still remember that I am talking only about fundamentals here, the "sine wave" tone of the frequency, nothing else. Not sawtooth, not square. And OP still want to go lower than this.
 
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#73
Gravedigger Dav said:
Below 20 hz there will be no audible sound. Is that what you are after, just the pulses?
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Yes the fishing boat thumper above, which is about 10 Hz, ten thumps a second. Would be cheaper just to sample that video onto a looper pedal and kick it in at appropriate moments.

He hasn't understood yet that you need to stand 17 meters from the source before you're able to even FEEL it, let alone hear it, if ever. The "brown note" Mythbuster video above is seriously flawed because you can't detect, feel, or hear that low note so close, you have to stand 59 feet away... and that is at least. 10 hz would be non audible and just produced with a rotary subwoofer as described above at 26 grand. If you should feel that - you won't hear it - you have to stand far away from it, and the only thing you feel is if someone stood there with a giant fan and blowed wind at you, in pulses that you can count out loud. Think big large windmills, and you stand at the bottom of them while they're rotating.

My view of the OP is that he doesn't really get it, when it comes to lower than 20 Hz. No matter how much we explain it to him. Mythbuster video, or fishing boat thump sound in idle gear. The only thing that is hazardous to you, is that if you stand close to the speaker the thumps MAY squeeze air out of your lungs, and you will feel suffocated....if it's loud enough that is. Your hearing may be alright but your kidneys may start to wander inside...

Believe me, it's more efficient with a fan.

Rotary woofer - Wikipedia
 
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#76
Honch said:
My view of the OP is that he doesn't really get it, when it comes to lower than 20 Hz. No matter how much we explain it to him
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Yeah, I was getting the same feeling. I was pretty dense early on in my journey to understand bass frequencies among other things. For me it was string through bridges. No matter how many people told me there was no difference between string through and top loading, I refused to change my thinking... Best of luck, OP. Try not to spend a fortune chasing dragons/windmills like I did!
 
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#77
Honch said:
He hasn't understood yet that you need to stand 17 meters from the source before you're able to even FEEL it, let alone hear it, if ever. The "brown note" Mythbuster video above is seriously flawed because you can't detect, feel, or hear that low note so close, you have to stand 59 feet away... and that is at least.

Rotary woofer - Wikipedia
Click to expand...

This is a bit of misinformation. The wavelength may be 59 feet however it doesn't have to "develop" in it's entirety before it gets heard. Picture yourself standing in the surf on a beach. As the waves come in they flow past you. You don't get hit by the entire wave at once. It starts low, the depth of the water builds until it peaks and then the depth diminishes.
An audio wave isn't a whole lot different.
 
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#78
frnjplayer said:
This is a bit of misinformation. The wavelength may be 59 feet however it doesn't have to "develop" in it's entirety before it gets heard.
Click to expand...

You have to keep in mind that OP said, or actually, asked:

davidl13 said:
how does one create a clean fundamental below 31
Click to expand...

Which means only sine wave. The fundamental clean sine wave that makes up ONLY one frequency. At 30 Hz, or 20 or below. In your analogy you make the assumption by doing the comparison, surf board on waves at the ocean. It's logical fallacy. It's only one wave. With no walls to bounce around on. In music there are many waves occuring as they come at different frequencies. From any bass guitar strings, and the rest of the instruments of any band. Which the Pipe Organ mentioned above stood for clearly by knocking out the other frequencies. Think of it as a storm blowing while your listening, and the wind gusts comes arbitrarily. The wavelength have to develop in its entirety because it is - inside a building - just reflecting to the back wall and then hits back on you, and mixes up with the rest of the frequencies from the instrument, or other organ pipes. You'll hear, at best half, of it.It sure gets heard at shorter instances, but definitely not as a clean fundamental. And as I have yet to see an ocean surf wave bouncing to a wall and go back... It will knock the other frequencies out. And MOVE them just like a gust of wind does to some outdoor speakers anyway when you have outdoor festival at risky weather.

On earphones it's another matter. The tiny space it has to move in there is at a scale ratio to all other frequencies. And you don't need that much power...

The rotary subwoofers just does that: produces strong gusts.

- - - - - - - -

FWIW, I would love to, and be quite impressed and amused if they actually used these rotary subwoofers at outdoors festival in windy weather, but out of phase with the natural wind, and calculate when they come and thus makes the playing field totally free from any wind...gustbuckers...you'd have to set up a bunch of them though...

-------------

Another thing with these very low fundamentals, which is very easy achievable with almost any synthesizer, but especially of the analog Mini Moog kind of stuff, is that even if you hear them (like in ear phones) you can just play slow, and not fast enough. You can't play tight, you must hang, and drone in there. If you just "POP" a bass guitar string tuned that low, it hasn't been oscillating enough, but stops halfway through it's cycle. So you can't play anything but slow droney doom notes anyway. Just like they do - mostly - on these church organ pedals anyway when they produce the lowdown of things...

EDIT: You know that the CD standard for sound starts at a mere 20 Hz, don't you? Just about the same as the rest of the audio formats out there...
 
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#79
I have forgotten by now, but at the earliest days of YT there was this experimental "pyrophone" organ, or not really organ pipes, but large silos which they filled with propane and ignited and played on them. They said they produce huge low fundamentals even below 20 Hz, but you could hear them. It was of course only outdoors. Forgot what they're called, and I can't google them because all other stuff turns up first...
 

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