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shadyJ

Speaker of the House
Staff member
Here is another tune from Ed Solo - Egyptian Horns. Nice wobbly dubstep bassline, and I like the sound of this tune too. Lots of bass energy so turn those subs way up!

Interestingly, what can be discerned from those those who know a little bit of history of electronic dance music is this track contains bits of subwoofer candy tunes from years past. The horns are sampled from the classic hardcore breakbeat tune 'The Horn Track' by Egyptian Empire (that is a killer tune, btw), which would have been considered very bass heavy back in the day (very early 90's).

'Hardcore Breakbeat' as a genre was a great pivotal moment in electronic dance music, a heavily derivative genre and a hugely influential one as well. It takes the fast tempo and constant bass of techno and mixes it with the breakbeats of electro and hip hop. Many of the recording artists sampled from other sources very promiscuously and often without even bothering with trivialities like copyright permission in doing so. The tone of the tracks could range from dark and menacing to chirpy and blissful. There was no strict way these tunes were supposed to sound. The people who were making it were very young and most didn't have an education in music or access to high-quality studio equipment. The scene and sound was chaotic, and that's one of the things I loved about it: anything goes. Of course, we didn't call it 'hardcore breakbeat' back then, we just called it 'techno', but nowadays the label 'hardcore breakbeat' serves as a useful distinction since it is clearly more than just techno.

It didn't really last long as a genre, maybe from 1990 to 1993 and was mostly done by UK artists, and dissolved into a bunch of other genres. Of the genres that directly came from hardcore breakbeat are drum'n'bass, jungle, and 'happy hardcore'. Dubstep has a pretty direct line of succession from hardcore breakbeat: hardcore breakbeat -> drum'n'bass. Drum'n'bass + UK Garage = dubstep. Of course, dubstep has evolved as a sound quite a bit since its early days. In fact, I don't know that many current dubstep fans would even recognize its early incarnations.

Ed Solo's 'Egyptian Horns' also samples Egyptian Lover's classic early hiphop recording 'Egypt, Egypt' that I am sure many of you would recognize. It is an old breakbeat tune from 1983 I think, very electro and a hit with breakdancers. Believe it or not, the sound of that tune would have been considered very heavy-duty back in its day, and would have been subwoofer candy in its time, had they had subwoofers back then. It was from music like this early electro that house would emerge, and house begat techno, and techno begat hardcore breakbeat.

When we listen to 'Egypt, Egypt', we hear the melody sampled from the Kraftwerk's 'Trans Europe Express', a huge early electronic music hit back from 1977. The influence of Kraftwerk can not be overstated. If we made an analogy of electronic dance music to western civilization, Kraftwerk would be like Ancient Greece, a central point in history whose influences shaped everything else that came after it. And even back then, I think Kraftwerk would be considered bass heavy because the electronic sound had a lot greater ratio of fundamental to overtones. In the bass line and bass drum, this makes for a much cleaner sound and more of a spectral emphasis on the deeper frequencies.

So 'Egyptian Horns' (dubstep) samples from 'The Horn Track' (hardcore breakbeat), much as dubstep had come from hardcore breakbeat's successor, Drum'n'Bass. 'The Horn track' (harcdcore breakbeat) samples from 'Egypt, Egypt' (electro), much as house and techno comes from electo, and hardcore breakbeat comes from techno and house. And 'Egypt, Egypt' samples Kraftwerk, which is where it all started.

OK, I did not mean to write a treatise on electronic music history, but I couldn't help to note the rich history implicit in Ed Solo's 'Egyptian Horns' when you listen closely. This tune contains all the DNA of electronic dance music going back to its beginnings. I suppose they all do, but it's very clear on this particular recording because of the samples. I was originally only going to say something like "this is a great tune to rock your subs on!"


 
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shadyJ

Speaker of the House
Staff member
Here is something transported from the 1980's on a mission to destroy humanity: MegaDrive - Crimewave 2. With the way things are going, if it achieves success, it may be doing us a favor. Fat bass all over this one!

 
William Lemmerhirt

William Lemmerhirt

Audioholic Overlord
This is from another thread, but drops pretty low. I can’t remember how to scale the visualizer so for now, I’m guessing the drops are around 22hz. James...?
 
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shadyJ

Speaker of the House
Staff member
This is from another thread, but drops pretty low. I can’t remember how to scale the visualizer so for now, I’m guessing the drops are around 22hz. James...?
Here is a spectrogram of the main bassline:

This one goes down to the mid 20s, looks like maybe 25 or 26 Hz at the deepest. Quite low for any kind of music. Nice head-bobbing rhythm on this tune!
 
William Lemmerhirt

William Lemmerhirt

Audioholic Overlord
Here is another tune from Lorn: Unraveled. This is one of the few guys using deep bass for actual music purpose. This one digs very deep, lots of energy in the teens. That lingering extreme deep bass is used as a subtle decay for the bass line which occurs at around 30 Hz. Very cinematic tune, it looks like this one was used for a video game sound track. A tune this mellow but yet so heavy is best played at late night hours.


I went through some of the later stuff in this thread. Good stuff as usual Shady.

This one stuck out to me with the almost constant mid teens stuff. 7.3ch with dynamicEq on. Pretty sweet. Here’s a shot of the last time I swept my subs. Notice the free bump at about 16hz. This track seems just right!
 
William Lemmerhirt

William Lemmerhirt

Audioholic Overlord
Here is a spectrogram of the main bassline:

This one goes down to the mid 20s, looks like maybe 25 or 26 Hz at the deepest. Quite low for any kind of music. Nice head-bobbing rhythm on this tune!
My first thought on this was 25, but the strange thing is, the more I listened to it, the deeper it sounded. Still, a really cool track.
 
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shadyJ

Speaker of the House
Staff member
I went through some of the later stuff in this thread. Good stuff as usual Shady.

This one stuck out to me with the almost constant mid teens stuff. 7.3ch with dynamicEq on. Pretty sweet. Here’s a shot of the last time I swept my subs. Notice the free bump at about 16hz. This track seems just right!
overall that is a pretty good response. The only thing I might do is shore up the null in the 50's Hz region, but other than that, very nice. The bump at 16 should actually sound pretty good.
 
William Lemmerhirt

William Lemmerhirt

Audioholic Overlord
overall that is a pretty good response. The only thing I might do is shore up the null in the 50's Hz region, but other than that, very nice. The bump at 16 should actually sound pretty good.
Yeah thanks. It does sound pretty good overall. The 50 range bothers me on paper, but it’s not really a huge thing with content. I will take care of that when I install the x4300/4400 and complete my Atmos install. The bump is definitely nice, although I sometimes run over and check the excursion on hot stuff just because I’m paranoid. Lol
 
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shadyJ

Speaker of the House
Staff member
Found a tune that had a great sound tonight, I am loving the sound of this one: Distance - Clash. I have been trawling through a bunch of mixes by Distance, this guy has a great ear for interesting sounds. This tune has some fat bass and a panoramic sense of sound. This ought to be played loud!


 
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shadyJ

Speaker of the House
Staff member
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.
So I just heard this tune again in a random mix, and I had forgot that I put it in this thread. I was like "what a massive tune!" and looked it up. When I saw the name, it rang a bell, and I realized I had posted it in here. The bass in this recording sounds so heavy. This is real subwoofer candy. If you have already listened to this one, listen to it again. If you haven't heard it yet, crank it up. Also check out 'The Third Stage' from the same album, my god it sounds like ten tons of bricks, bass so thick you could cut it with a knife. This stuff is chicken soup for the soul.
 
KenM10759

KenM10759

Audioholic Samurai
I was just streaming a Tidal HiFi playlist with my new office/desktop setup. A song came up that made me think I suddenly had a ground loop problem!

If anyone with a way to check frequencies playing and has Tidal HiFi, could you do me a huge favor and tell me what this song shows?

Artist: Dirty Projectors
Song: Little Bubble

My new KEF Kube10b can't go terribly low, but I sensed there's some serious sub-sonic stuff going on there.
 
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shadyJ

Speaker of the House
Staff member
Hey Ken, I don't have Tidal but this song is on Youtube in HD, and the spectral content should be the same. Here is the spectrogram of the bassline at 2:05 and after. This is where the bass of the tune is at its ost deepest and most powerful:

It is fairly heavy bass for that type of music, bouncing from 40 Hz to 70 hz. What makes it really stand out is that it is a very clean electronic bass sound with not much overtones (although there are some). There is a bass guitar in other parts of the song but that does not play below 100 Hz and is not tapping the subs, so this recording has two bass lines, one for deep bass effect and the other is a melodic frame for the other components of the song.

By the way, ground loop noise mostly come in the flavor of 60 Hz hums, so they sound like this.
 
KenM10759

KenM10759

Audioholic Samurai
Thanks! Looks like it does dip pretty deep. This new KEF Kube 10b digs deeper than any 10" 300w sealed sub has a right to. Does it better than any 10" sub I've ever heard, which surprised me bigtime. I didn't have any respect for KEF subs until today. It apparently meets their 24dB +/-3dB spec easily, and tapers off a slow curve. When I get Dirac Live I'll be making some measurement. Nice work, KEF.

Maybe not the greatest bargain at list, but for $450 shipped I'm very happy.
 
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shadyJ

Speaker of the House
Staff member
Here is a great sounding gothic tune with a killer bass line: Keluar - Threads. The bass line is very reminiscent of the older Oberheim synths, and I love hearing that sound pop up in newer music, especially when used in a dark song such as this one. Such a fat sound, very harmonically rich, its great to hear it used in music once in awhile and not just as a flying saucer sound.


 
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shadyJ

Speaker of the House
Staff member
Here is something with a massive bass sound, both in the bass line and percussion: dǝǝls – regrets. In the genre of 'witch house,' I imagine this is what the angstier teens of today are listening to, but despite the hammy melodrama of the subject matter (your life isn't the greatest tragedy to ever occur, missy), I still like the sound of some of these tunes. The fundamental in this bass of this tune vacillates between 50 Hz to 30 Hz, with the kick drum hitting at just above 50 Hz. That is relatively deep bass, but its harmonic structure is what gives it such a massive sound. This one sounds great at loud volumes with the subs running hot.

 
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shadyJ

Speaker of the House
Staff member
Here is something fun and completely different. Deadmau5 claims a bass line to this particular tune would be impossible to play in reality, that it could only be sequenced in a sampler- so this bass maestro proves him wrong! Cool video, amazing talent, and very nice groove here:
 
Pogre

Pogre

Audioholic Slumlord
Here is another tune from Lorn: Unraveled. This is one of the few guys using deep bass for actual music purpose. This one digs very deep, lots of energy in the teens. That lingering extreme deep bass is used as a subtle decay for the bass line which occurs at around 30 Hz. Very cinematic tune, it looks like this one was used for a video game sound track. A tune this mellow but yet so heavy is best played at late night hours.


Holy crap. This is VERY deep! Very moody too. Lots of fun!
 
Pogre

Pogre

Audioholic Slumlord
I went through some of the later stuff in this thread. Good stuff as usual Shady.

This one stuck out to me with the almost constant mid teens stuff. 7.3ch with dynamicEq on. Pretty sweet. Here’s a shot of the last time I swept my subs. Notice the free bump at about 16hz. This track seems just right!
Your chart looks a lot like mine. Same free bump at 15-16 hz and same dip (my dip is a little higher).
 

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