Anyone use a sub to mix?

Doctor J

Does anyone here use a sub for mixing, just curious to see what the collective experience is. A lot of the tunes I work on are low down heavy stuff and regular monitors just aren't accurate enough in the realms of low B and A and, as a result, a lot of eq tweaking down low is guesswork and then time-wasting reference checks on a multitude of other systems. Is a sub the way forward for this or are they more trouble than they're worth?

teamdresch

I'm guessing the best thing would be to acoustically treat your room first.
A sub in a room with weird bass response might do more harm than good.

Doctor J

It's a rented house, possibly moving out in a couple of months, not worth the expense or effort, I think. A lot of the stuff I'm working on has fundamentals below the frequency range of my monitors, which is why I'm leaning towards the sub rather than acoustic treatment.

jtsuited

yeah i use a genelec sub, sort of essential for the stuff i do. just be real careful about your acoustics. run a test oscillator down to 20 hertz and see if there are any big jumps in volume.
then you'll be able to gauge how much work you'll need to do regarding acoustics.

PaulBrewer

Very VERY difficult to get a sub working in an untreated room and also very difficult to get it working in a treated room!

The two biggest issues are the sub coupling to the room and getting the phase to match the top two.

Nightmare! Never heard and even passable system....

Am I making myself clear!?

Doctor J

PaulBrewer wrote: »

Am I making myself clear!?

Very

But I can't help thinking I'd still be slightly better off than where I am now :pac:

I'm not looking for incredible bass presence or anything like that, just a way of referencing similar styles and sounds and being able to get a bit of an idea just what's going on down there.

PaulBrewer

The problem is that you probably won't be! I'm of the opinion you'll be better off with a Bigger Main Monitor pair. Throwing stuff sub 80hz or even higher into an untreated room is a disaster.....!!!

teamdresch

You could always check the low low stuff on headphones.
Also, most of your listeners won't have subs.
And a million records with crazy low end were mixed on NS-10s

studiorat

anybody tried one of these?

Neurojazz

Ok,
Subs... a few bits of advice - don't stick it in a corner to start with and you'll have to play around with location (i'd say stick it somewhere randomly placed to start with and not paralell to a wall - just to give you a fighting chance with all the weirdness with 'room modes' and all that jazz...

Next.. make a bass sine wave that plays from 30htz or what ever frequency you need and rise it up to 150htz (of whatever your sub goes too) - and play it back and change colume until you get balanced level for the bass range... that's probably the best you can do in a non elite audio studio with a squillion quids worth of duck down glued to the wall ;P

Another little tip which i heard was that you get a little phase switch on the front/back of some - apparently when you flick it on in your 'sweet listening spot' it is supposed to appear louder to be correct

If your buying a sub coz of muddy dance mixes then just shelve every track at 25/30htz to get rid of most that mush that will shake that poor sub to death

jtsuited

PaulBrewer wrote: »

Very VERY difficult to get a sub working in an untreated room and also very difficult to get it working in a treated room!

The two biggest issues are the sub coupling to the room and getting the phase to match the top two.

Nightmare! Never heard and even passable system....

Am I making myself clear!?

I've heard a good few decent systems with a sub. For many types of electronic music a sub in a bad room will actually be better than no sub at all.

Just make sure none of the corners of your room aren't basstrapped. It just takes a bit of messing around using a test tone and you'll get there.

Audiowarehouse not selling subs Paul?

PaulBrewer

jtsuited wrote: »

Audiowarehouse not selling subs Paul?

We do indeed!