brconflict
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Re:Recommended Bass Plugins for X2 Pro
2013/01/28 17:40:54
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What is use to record a DI bass is to use a SansAMP (with a decent amount of Presence), with one output to the board and the other dry output to a Chandler Germ 500 with the thick button enabled (or not). Does wonders for my Rickenbackers. Or, just go into the Chandler Germanium PRE/DI.
Bass is a whole different breed from guitar. Note the sheer number of bass guitars people will play vs. the number of different brands guitars. In other words, for many bassists, a Fender will do, but some want a Zon, Pella, Dingwall, Wal, Warwick, Rick, Conklin, Kramer, St. Blues, Acacia, Alembic, the list goes on. For guitarists, if money were no object: Les Paul, Fender, Gretsch, Rickenbacker, or ESP, for the most part. Bass players will try more basses more often than not. Same goes for recording bass.
I may amp a bass or just record DI, but either way, get it right going in. Make sure no notes are louder than other notes. A Summit 2BA/221 is fun, and of course, many love the Avalon D5. Be careful with multi-mics. Phase issues are awful and can muddy up an otherwise great bass tone.
Mixing, I like to use the Waves CLA Signature Bass plug-in SUB feature for some low-end boom, but I'll use the Waves L1 limiter for mashing the notes a little, and a little compression. The Sonar Tube Saturation is fine, too. And don't overlook Console emulation! The S-Type is pretty awesome! The Maserati Signature B72 is worth a look for overall punch and tone, although Sonar will "play" the effect through silence if you use Gain automation. You'll have to Mute or use Volume automation to get rid of that weird effect.
Lastly, cut off any frequencies below 25Hz. It's easy to get rumble in a bass, especially when recording through the Chandler Germ with the Thick button pushed.
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ed97643
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Re:Recommended Bass Plugins for X2 Pro
2013/01/28 20:00:31
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I am old-school. Since around 1994, I have been using a mid-80s Fender Precision Elite bass (with a strange P-J hybrid: bass has two P-style pickups; the previous owner ripped the originals out & installed active Duncan & Dimarzios in their place - I have forever wanted to rip both out & put passive quarter-pounders in their place). Anyway, the P-bass goes through a DI straight in to the PC. No FX or sims on input. In the box, it gets Sonitus EQ (as little as needed for the song) and Sonitus compressor (ditto). Song-depending, there MIGHT be a bit of a feed to a reverb bus (I still use Pantheon; 'old school' again). I may not be the hottest producer on the block, but this gets me GREAT full, fat, rich bass tones. Wish the 6-string guitar was so easy to capture well. They figured out how to record great sounding bass (with DI) 40 years ago; no need to reinvent the wheel. Go with what has worked well for decades. Adding things like J-Stations will just add artifacts and crud, IMHO. Direct is best. Just my honest $0.02. Wishing you the best of luck & success, Ed
Registered Cakewalk user since 1995
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Bristol_Jonesey
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Re:Recommended Bass Plugins for X2 Pro
2013/01/29 03:13:12
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My normal chain is to run the bass into a DI, then run the XLR out via a Focusrite ISA One into Sonar. The direct out is run into a Behringer Bass V-Amp.
The V-amp needs considerable tweaking - as was said above, get the right tone at source before recording!
This then gives loads of options when mixing.
One or 2 compressors, EQ & a hint of distortion is usually enough to get the bass part sitting comfortably in the mix
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Christopher D
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Re:Recommended Bass Plugins for X2 Pro
2013/01/29 11:08:29
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Hey guys, thanks for the replies. Yes, I’m familiar with the typical techniques and methods of recording bass. I’ve been in and out of the music scene for going on 27 years now, and I’ve been immersed in home recording for over 13 of those years. But, you know how it is---you’re always looking for new and better ways to approach things. Heck, I’ve never been big on plugins at all, but now, they’ve come so far I’m starting to come around. I never thought I’d actually consider selling off my Premier birch kit with custom Sabian cymbals either, but with the sounds I get between SD 3 and EZDrummer linked up via MIDI to my Roland TD-4 e-kit, I am in fact considering it.
Anyway, the little Behringer V-Tone pedal I mentioned is essentially a Samsamp knockoff. It provides a plethora of presence FWIW, and if anyone out there is on a budget but craving “that tone,” I can vouch for this pedal. It’s a steal.
I know a lot of guys like to mic their bass cabs. I’ve done enough of that over the years to know it’s usually not the recorded sound I’m looking for. Whereas drums, guitar, etc. were almost exclusively miced in order to move air in my old setups, I always found bass to be the one instrument that benefited from a DI approach. Of course, I’ve done a few recordings where I split the signal by recording both DI and the bass amp using a direct box. That’s fun, and you can get some great bass tracks that way; yet, it’s also time consuming and a little tedious IME.
To be honest, up until this point the best bass tones I’ve gotten were achieved by just running direct out of my bass amp’s head > whatever pre I was using > whatever converter > the old 1880. Compression was usually applied lightly going in and then reapplied in greater detail come mixdown. But at this point, I’m really digging the sound I’m getting running from the little V-Tone to the J Station. I also picked up one of those BBE Sonic Maximizers a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t tried it yet, but on my next bass tracking excursion I’ll give it a whirl too.
BTW, I only own two basses—a Greg Bennett Corsair with flatwounds and a Cort 5 string J Bass with Bartolini pickups. These are actually pretty good basses and provide plenty of bass for a guy who doesn’t consider himself a bass player, per se (i.e., it’s one of my secondary instruments that I can fake well). That said, I’ve been jonesing for another bass just because, but I haven’t identified exactly what I want yet.
Best regards,
Chris
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konradh
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Re:Recommended Bass Plugins for X2 Pro
2013/01/29 11:48:37
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EZMIX 2 has a few good options for basses. I wouldn't buy EZMIX 2 just for that, but if you have it already, you will find some very usable presets for bass.
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Christopher D
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Re:Recommended Bass Plugins for X2 Pro
2013/01/29 14:47:09
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I considered EZMix a few months ago, when I was just getting my feet wet with Sonar LE, which came with my Quad Capture. It seems like a pretty cool program, BUT—and you just knew there’d be a “but” in there, didn’t you?—some of the EZMix users on other recording-related sites, who owned EZMix, turned me off the idea. It’s not that it was bad or anything like that. The biggest complaint was that the entire purpose of EZmix was to provide the user a good generic starting point for a mix, but these users claimed they spent just as much time tweaking from that starting point as they would have without it; so, according to them, it sort of defeated the purpose. And that makes perfect sense to me too.
Honestly, the entire concept of being able to plug in a mix, and “voila,” you’re 80% or 90% there is flawed IMO. I just can’t see how any experienced or competent engineer could buy into it, and even just as a songwriter and musicians who’s been doing this for a while, the concept seems fallacious. There’s no “one size fits all” that will work for any two of my songs; so, I can’t imagine most people would be in a different situation.
But the thing that is cool about it is all the plugins that come bundled with it. That alone may be worth the price of entry down the road.
Chris
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