[stevenhernandez]

Hi there,

I am trying to repro a sub bass using the Serum synth but I kind of struggle finding the right tone and it seems to be spread in the stereo field too with some overtones.

It is on this beat : https://soundcloud.com/goldlink/meditation

Starts at 34 seconds.

Thanks!

[Joe Hanley]

Solid bass. Getting width in the sub is tricky, as you can easily lose bottom end, and it can sound off-center.

How It’s Made

• Synth: Serum
• Voicing: Mono. Very important, otherwise the upcoming Sub is going to be a muddy mess
• Oscillators.
  • Osc A: This will be our Sub, so set it to Sine. To achieve our width set Unison to 2. The sound will now be wide (because Unison Width is already set to 100%) but it will also be pulsating way too much, so turn the Detune down all of the way. This effectively slows down the movement to a crawl. We still have a little left/right movement but it’s slow and subtle. Then set Phase all the way up to “Memory”. This will effectively start the phase where it last started on each note, so the movement isn’t as jumpy (though Random is all the way up so I’m not 100% sure why this is helping).
  • Osc B: This is the higher part of our sound that’s providing the tone, so pitch it up 1 octave. We want a pulse wave that’s just a little thinner than square. I chose the Basic Mg wavetable, with WT Pos set to 140. Set Unison to 2 voices, with 0 Width, and a decent amount of Detune, so our sound gets a little splashy, but stays centered, leaving the width to our sub.
• Filter: MG Low 24. Disable Osc A so it’s untouched by the Filter, and enable Osc B. Little bit of Res, and a decent amount of Drive (with Level turned down to make up for the volume boost created by Drive). Set Cutoff pretty low at 121 Hz, to be modulated by…
• Filter Envelope: Sustain at 0, with Decay and Release at around 500 ms. Mod amount at 39. This gives us a “peow” shape. Then, to make it a little fatter, increase the Attack to 47 ms. Creating that subtle opening filter movement on the attack transient gives us a plusher attack. Hello fat.
• Amp Envelope: Short notes with a little tail. Sustain at 0, Decay/Release at 673 ms. And a little Attack (about 20ms) to take off any pops on our sub’s attack transient
• Compression: Tighten it up a bit, and create a more even tone with Threshold around -24 dB, and a little makeup gain to make up for the loss of volume. This is subtle and should only result in 2-3 dB of compression
• EQ: Beef up our low end with a band at 175 Hz, a fairly wide Q at 40%, and a few dB of gain. And then bring out some high mids to give the upper Osc some teeth: 1300 Hz, 40% Q, 5 dB of gain

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[Daniel Ray]

Joe, is your soundcloud track in mono? I don’t hear a difference when I switch my outputs between mono and stereo.

Steven, another way to widen a synth sound would be to use a dimension expander. There’s one in Massive and Serum, and there’s also a free plugin by xferrecords.

[Joe Hanley]

Daniel Ray wrote:

Joe, is your soundcloud track in mono?

Stereo. But I went back into Serum to make sure I wasn’t fooling myself, and there’s a noticeable difference, particularly with headphones, between Osc 1 Unison Width 0 and 100. I can throw up a side-by-side comparison if that helps.

[stevenhernandez]

Thanks Joe, that sounds quite accurate in the sound.

Yep Daniel, thanks for the tip on the dimension expander, I also use Thump from Angelic vibes to play with the stereo field. Pretty dope plugin for adding multiple effect too.

https://www.kvraudio.com/product/thump-by-angelicvibes