Subwoofer Candy

[Bucknekked]

I think this is a great topic for a thread. For enjoying what we have in audio, stressing the outer limits is great. Are you accepting nominations or contributions for big bass? I don't have a spectrograph, or any ability to see ultraviolet either. But, here's a piece that I think is both fun and taps the bass pretty hard in a good way.

BELLA FLECK FLIGHT OF THE COSMIC HIPPO

If you accept donations on this thread, I'd love to see what a spectrograph looks like.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

Not sure if this qualifies as candy, but the bass line is awesome. Nice groove I believe played is played on a 5 string. Lots of open b which just about 30hz exactly.

 

[Pogre]

Not sure if this qualifies as candy, but the bass line is awesome. Nice groove I believe played is played on a 5 string. Lots of open b which just about 30hz exactly.

Very nice groove with some nice bass. I've never listened to a lot of Garbage (though some would argue that ), but I have a feeling I might be checking them out some more.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

Very nice groove with some nice bass. I've never listened to a lot of Garbage (though some would argue that ), but I have a feeling I might be checking them out some more.

Lmao! I've been accused of that myself. I'm not really into them but have a few things. Good band. Iirc this song was done for Romeo and Juliet. It's fun to run em hot on this one.

 

[Pogre]

I think this is a great topic for a thread. For enjoying what we have in audio, stressing the outer limits is great. Are you accepting nominations or contributions for big bass? I don't have a spectrograph, or any ability to see ultraviolet either. But, here's a piece that I think is both fun and taps the bass pretty hard in a good way.

BELLA FLECK FLIGHT OF THE COSMIC HIPPO

If you accept donations on this thread, I'd love to see what a spectrograph looks like.

This one is fun. Not powerful bass per se, but deep and smooth.

 

[shadyJ]

I think this is a great topic for a thread. For enjoying what we have in audio, stressing the outer limits is great. Are you accepting nominations or contributions for big bass? I don't have a spectrograph, or any ability to see ultraviolet either. But, here's a piece that I think is both fun and taps the bass pretty hard in a good way.

BELLA FLECK FLIGHT OF THE COSMIC HIPPO

If you accept donations on this thread, I'd love to see what a spectrograph looks like.

No problem. Here is a representative passage of that tunes bassline, about 18 seconds worth. This starts at about the 1:18 mark in the tune. As you can see on the X axis, this only represents bass in the subwoofer frequency band:

The fundamental hangs around the upper 30s to 40s Hz range. But, one thing I want to stress is that one instruments like the bass guitar, that isn't mostly what you are hearing. In fact, even though that is where most of that instruments energy lay, the fundamental is pretty mostly buried under the harmonics. Here is a spectrogram of a wider frequency bin that catches a lot more of the bass guitar's harmonics:

This is taken from that same 1:18 passage, so same as above, but now we can see most of the overtones of the bass guitar. All of that stuff is a lot easier for human hearing to pick up than 30 Hz stuff. In fact, most systems do not playback 30 Hz well, but they still can sound fine for this kind of stuff, in part due to the phenomena of the missing fundamental.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

A little much compressed, as the percussion and higher range stuff. BUT, SUPER cool bass line. The juxtaposition reminds me of some promise. Bass N banjo lol.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

Hey shady, can you do that garbage song? The lowest stuff isn't right at the front but I'd love to see it plotted.

 

[Pogre]

Let your subs have some fun with this tune: Dyssomnia & Gamma - Delusion. Chilled out dubstep tune with a deep and chunky bass line that drops from 60 Hz to 30 Hz on every beat. Nice, simple but atmospheric tune.

This one really makes my walls rattle. This thread is a lot of fun. Thanks for plotting those Chevelle songs. I really was curious how deep some of their stuff goes.

 

[shadyJ]

Not sure if this qualifies as candy, but the bass line is awesome. Nice groove I believe played is played on a 5 string. Lots of open b which just about 30hz exactly.

You are right, there is notation right on 30 Hz. It isn't a whole lot, but it digs down there here and there in the tune. As with the Bela Fleck tune, most of the sound would be heard as harmonics. Here is a spectrogram, but I have set this one on a logarithmic scale so you can better see how far down it goes. This is a graph of a piece of the track starts at about 1:35.

 

[Bucknekked]

This is taken from that same 1:18 passage, so same as above, but now we can see most of the overtones of the bass guitar. All of that stuff is a lot easier for human hearing to pick up than 30 Hz stuff. In fact, most systems do not playback 30 Hz well, but they still can sound fine for this kind of stuff, in part due to the phenomena of the missing fundamental.

shadyj
Thanks for doing that. One reason I enjoy the song and the bassline is because I can actually hear it. Perhaps I can hear it so well because the music is actually higher up in the hertz count than perhaps one would think. Because it has so much between 30hz and 50hz, for old ears like mine it still rattles those tin cans in my head in a way I can enjoy it.

This thread is a great affirmation that for music, and music content, there's a lower limit for content and that lower limit is much higher than one would suppose. Like me, I think most folks would assume their music has a lot of content and energy lower than what's actually there. Maybe we can blame it on Radio Shack and all those claims for paper speakers in MDF cabinets that advertised 20hz to 20,000hz capabilities.

I know the subwoofer golden ear types often claim to be able to hear the differences in sounds under 20hz.
I think this thread and the spectrographs do a good job debunking that ability.

 

[Bucknekked]

In fact, most systems do not playback 30 Hz well, but they still can sound fine for this kind of stuff, in part due to the phenomena of the missing fundamental.

I read the article about the missing fundamental. Interesting stuff. I know that human hearing is a very complex task and one that most of us don't understand all that well. Because my wife is hearing impaired, and wears instruments, I know more about it than many although when you get really really technical like the missing fundamental article gets, I still don't know beans.

That was a great article to share because it explains (at least a little ) why equipment that can't reproduce low bass often has the illusion of doing so. I don't claim to have gleaned a PhD's worth of knowledge, but that was a good read. And, I got to see Flight of the Cosmic hippo graphed out. Its been a good morning.

 

[Pogre]

I spent the better part of my morning listening to most of the songs in this thread. What a blast. Pretty cool to not even turn it up past -30 and still rattle the walls

I agree with buck too. I have to reassess what I considered really deep bass in some of my songs.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

I spent the better part of my morning listening to most of the songs in this thread. What a blast. Pretty cool to not even turn it up past -30 and still rattle the walls

I agree with buck too. I have to reassess what I considered really deep bass in some of my songs.

Buck does have a good point, although I feel it's a little dismissive. I respect it nonetheless. Truth is, it's hard to know really what frequencies are being played down low sometimes. Especially when played underneath higher overtones and harmonics. My system is useable down to about 17hz with a room bump at 22, and has no trouble with these tracks. Lots of texture in them and lots of fun.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

You are right, there is notation right on 30 Hz. It isn't a whole lot, but it digs down there here and there in the tune. As with the Bela Fleck tune, most of the sound would be heard as harmonics. Here is a spectrogram, but I have set this one on a logarithmic scale so you can better see how far down it goes. This is a graph of a piece of the track starts at about 1:35.

Thanks for doing that. I really appreciate it.

 

[Bucknekked]

Buck does have a good point, although I feel it's a little dismissive. I respect it nonetheless. Truth is, it's hard to know really what frequencies are being played down low sometimes. Especially when played underneath higher overtones and harmonics. My system is useable down to about 17hz with a room bump at 22, and has no trouble with these tracks. Lots of texture in them and lots of fun.

I love it when I get dismissed. Hopefully, I wasn't too overbearing and being dismissive.
I always assumed bass was in the 20hz to 30 hz range. I think I'm learning that most bass is much further up the scale and I may have adjust my perceptions. I'm still learning so I'm up for changing perceptions.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

I love it when I get dismissed. Hopefully, I wasn't too overbearing and being dismissive.
I always assumed bass was in the 20hz to 30 hz range. I think I'm learning that most bass is much further up the scale and I may have adjust my perceptions. I'm still learning so I'm up for changing perceptions.

No, not too much at all. Just enough lol.
You aren't wrong in your assumption. Open e on a 4 string is just above 40hz, so anything as far as bass goes, below that(electronic musically speaking) would be in the use of a 5 string bass, a 4 string in dropped D tuning or synthesizers, etc. I like that AH keeps things real, and opinions in Check. My own included.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

No, not too much at all. Just enough lol.
You aren't wrong in your assumption. Open e on a 4 string is just above 40hz, so anything as far as bass goes, below that(electronic musically speaking) would be in the use of a 5 string bass, a 4 string in dropped D tuning or synthesizers, etc. I like that AH keeps things real, and opinions in Check. My own included.

Forgot to add this. It's a function/tone generator for iPhone(I think android too). Select whatever tone you want, or sweep or whatever, then you can know fo sho. There is a free version, and others too. I like it because it's much more streamlined than YouTube.
Audio Signal Generator PRO - incl. Sweeps & Noise by Thomas Gruber
https://appsto.re/us/pgCw1.i

 

[shadyJ]

I spent the better part of my morning listening to most of the songs in this thread. What a blast. Pretty cool to not even turn it up past -30 and still rattle the walls

I agree with buck too. I have to reassess what I considered really deep bass in some of my songs.

Musically speaking, there isn't too much point in digging too low since our pitch perception really goes down the drain in very low frequencies. A little bit below 20 hz, and we totally lose it, it is just 'stuff' that is being sensed, and it becomes indistinct sound pressure.

For this thread I am only posting the tunes that I like which will give your subs a workout. There are plenty of tunes I could post that are a lot harder on the subs than these, but I just don't enjoy those songs as much, a lot of them are gimmicky 'bass' songs. For example, here is a very brutal tune with tons of energy in deep bass. In fact, it sound like a 'quiet' recording, because the track's dynamic range is almost all eaten up by sub 20 Hz output, and not much is left for higher frequencies. It's not really that bad of a tune itself, but it represents a genre whose purpose is only to pound out low frequency sine waves.

You can see most of the energy is between 25 and 11 Hz. Probably not a great idea to play this at max volume with a ported subwoofer. Most sound systems wouldn't even be able to play about 85% of this tune's content!

 

[Pogre]

Musically speaking, there isn't too much point in digging too low since our pitch perception really goes down the drain in very low frequencies. A little bit below 20 hz, and we totally lose it, it is just 'stuff' that is being sensed, and it becomes indistinct sound pressure.

For this thread I am only posting the tunes that I like which will give your subs a workout. There are plenty of tunes I could post that are a lot harder on the subs than these, but I just don't enjoy those songs as much, a lot of them are gimmicky 'bass' songs. For example, here is a very brutal tune with tons of energy in deep bass. In fact, it sound like a 'quiet' recording, because the track's dynamic range is almost all eaten up by sub 20 Hz output, and not much is left for higher frequencies. It's not really that bad of a tune itself, but it represents a genre whose purpose is only to pound out low frequency sine waves.

You can see most of the energy is between 25 and 11 Hz. Probably not a great idea to play this at max volume with a ported subwoofer. Most sound systems wouldn't even be able to play about 85% of this tune's content!

That sir, sounded like a challenge!

I know my system won't play that low, but it digs pretty deep. Enough to make my ears want to pop with the volume at -30. I can watch the woofer and count the oscillations by eye with some of those frequencies!