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Is it common to put a high pass filter on a bass guitar?


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Ran into this last night, my band is going to be the guest music at a new church in town this Sunday and we were rehearsing at the church last night. During soundcheck the sound guy insisted there was a problem with our bass players guitar as he was having trouble getting a good signal at the board and had the fader max'd out. I ran back to the mix station and found the gain was set low (sound guy didn't want to adjust it as a "pro" had set the gains for all of the channels a few months ago). After a brief explanation about what gain is, he let me set gain for all of the channels we were using. This fixed the signal issue but it still sounded "thin" and "tinny" for a bass guitar.

 

Then I noticed the bass guitar channel also had a high pass filter set to cut off everything under 80 hertz. The church board was an X32 by the way. The EQ was also set as a gradual slope cutting off the low frequencies beginning around 300 hertz. Combined, these two settings really cut the low end. I turned both settings off for rehearsal and plan to do so this Sunday as well.

 

I have not seen this before and was wondering if it is normal? When we use our own system I never high pass the bass guitar. My only guess is that maybe the regular bass player has some type of EQ or processor that required cutting some low end in the system, but our bass player uses a standard P-bass DI'd into the snake (and an amp on stage fed from the line out of the DI).

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Purely speculating with limited information- if there were little to non-existing sub boxes to support full range (think tops only) and they were used a bass amp on stage filling in the low and then maybe I'd use a low cut filter. Possibly the same with an over aggressive eq user playing bass as well. But generally speaking no, bass, floor tom and sometimes keys would not have a high pass filter engaged. And that gain thing is like a guitar player I heard a long time ago say, "but it was in tune when I bought it last year!" I don't care how much of a "pro" you say you are, you can't accurately set gains for something that has never been plugged into the board before.

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Yes, always.

 

There will be a HPF either within the system processor that acts to high pass whatever is coming from the console as a whole, and/or a HPF on the bass guitar channel to prevent subsonics from interfering with the clarity of the mix, or the DI out on the bass amp is already equipped with a HPF (like ALL of my products are) so that it becomes a self contained, correctly configured source.

 

Where the HPF is placed depends on which scenario you are dealing with. Generally, I like to HP bass at around 30Hz, assuming the PA is a real one.

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It really depends on what else is in the PA. A keyboard with lots of extreme low content. A bass drum with a very low tuning done for a reason. Music content/type in general. There is no one size fits all. Sometimes in a small room and a loud bass guitar cabinet on stage with plenty of bass you could low pass some to make room for the bass drum. A very small PA that wont can't handle extreme lows etc.etc.etc. It sounds like you have a low cut button not a low cut that you can sweep. Push it and then add some low shelving and experiment. Some low cuts are only 6 to 12 db cuts. I've low cut a bass at 100hz before just because of the cabinet on stage had tons of lows to start and just to make room for the bass drum/keys. The bass may sound thin played alone but when the bass drum/keys come in the overall mix may be better with better definition in the bass guitar to boot. The last show I did the bass player said he never heard his bass guitar sound so good. I passed on telling him it was high passed at 60hz......

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This is an interesting subject. Had a show on last weekend where I could not get the bass to blend well in the mix on the first band. Second bassist comes up and plugs in and I am ready for the next battle and the bass sounded much better. I did ask the first bassist where his settings were and he had his low end cranked and the mid and highs at half. Didn't get either make or model of guitars so that may have had something to do with it. Out of all instruments lately the bass has become the instrument that either sounds great right out of the gate or just a struggle fighting with it. Both players used the same amp #2 player had a better sound. So that all said it seems a lot of variables can play into the room, the gear, the player which will cause significant changes and decisions to be made. First guy I am not so sure he was getting the flesh on the strings sort of speak either? Can light players cause harmonics or other issues that don't favor well in the mix? Oh it was direct out of the bass cabinet for clarification.

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... probably not 80 Hz with an additional system rolloff below 300 Hz as in the OP - that's just crazy land :facepalm:.

 

Still, it "depends". If the previous bassist had some insane EQ with all the lows boosted, this might make perfect sense even if the resulting sound is compromised...it'll still sound better than the system farting out and massively overdriven.

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I keep my bass players channel neutered with a 70-90Hz HPF (depending on the day and the bass settings he brings in). He has his bass uber tone shifted to the very bottom so when he plays at home on a cheep rig, he still gets some bottom out of it. The same settings on the PA with a DI gives absolutely no note definition to my ears.

 

It also muddies up the mix something awful.

 

Of course, I am a very big fan of 10" bass speakers simply because I love the note definition you get from them. I don't personally care for very woofy bass.

 

 

After seeing this thread, I'll give it another once over to see how it sounds again.

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I keep my bass players channel neutered with a 70-90Hz HPF (depending on the day and the bass settings he brings in). He has his bass uber tone shifted to the very bottom so when he plays at home on a cheep rig, he still gets some bottom out of it. The same settings on the PA with a DI gives absolutely no note definition to my ears.

 

It also muddies up the mix something awful.

 

Of course, I am a very big fan of 10" bass speakers simply because I love the note definition you get from them. I don't personally care for very woofy bass.

 

 

After seeing this thread, I'll give it another once over to see how it sounds again.

 

Exactly the type of situation I'm referring to. Unfortunately, a lot is still going to be lost by all the EQ manipulation of the basic bass guitar signal. Explaining this to someone with little to no understanding of phase and gain and cut is at best frustrating.

 

Sometimes the job is like trying to herd cats.

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IMHO high-passing the bass is not the way to solve any problem that one might have.

 

It is if you understand the problem and know what you are doing. Either that, or I have had a very good career solving problems the wrong way. I'm sure my touring buddies would find this comment as absurd as I did. :facepalm:

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I'm in a progressive rock band and this is the stage we are at now. For me the solution is to ask: "What do you want to sound like". Since most members are fans of Pink Floyd, Porcupine Tree and Riverside, I figured that would be a good place to start. So here is a spectral analysis of Riverside "Stars Die":

 

FC_Riverside_StarsDie_Edited.jpg

 

This is Pink Floyd "Breath":

FC_PinkFloyd_Breath_Edited.jpg

 

Porcupine Tree "Arriving Anywhere But Not Here":

 

FC_Riverside_AnywhereButNotHere_Edited.jpg

 

And what we currently look like:

 

CurrentBand.jpg

 

So I believe the answer is yes, only if you want it to sound good. Knowing what I have now in our mixes in comparison, I have to decimate the entire bottom, just for the slightest bit of kick. If all the previous, professionally mixed, kick drums are peaking at about 50-60Hz, a bass below 80Hz is just going to destroy the bottom end. Look at the picture right above this, it's not my opinion to say that's an EQ nightmare. Unless you're a three piece and have the bass carrying the bottom, I guess you'd go for 90-110Hz to get something from the kick, but I prefer an honest thud. I think Floyd may have used a side chained gate of some sort, because the bass flows over lower until there is a kick hit, which immediately replaces up to 80Hz on the bass hit.

 

In either case; it seems that there has to be separation between the two, for any sort of decent sound. Not only that, but in the professional examples you'll see just five solid bars for the bass, telling me its extremely compressed probably an outright limiter and has a lowpass cutoff as well, at around 130-140Hz. The vocals are going to be from 100 to maybe 300Hz, which makes perfect sense to me.

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I see this was posted some time ago but I'll put my .02 in.

 

I high pass everything BUT the freq depends on many things These including Instrument, Tone, system capability etc..... This does many good things such as keeps LF "mud" from bleeding into mics, help keep down needless overload in various stages down the signal path (better S/N ratio) and most importantly keeps the magic smoke in the box :).

 

Bass, I'd usually go pretty low (about 50hz - 60hz as that's the lowest my monitor rig will go). If I'm doing FOH, I'll go as low as 30hz - 40hz provided the subs can handle it. There could be times when the bass player is swamping the stage with bottom end (think smaller stage & big amp) from their amp and I'd HP it higher to just add some articulation to the mix.

 

Agreed the 80hz HPF and 300hz main EQ slope sounds like it might be good for a choir with OH mics or a number of speakers with open mics (think lav on the minister) but not so much for music. I didn't catch it but does the system in question reproduce low freqs well (It's not a pair of 12" 2 way boxes on sticks correct??)?

 

OK maybe .03 worth :).

 

Cheers

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My bad. It was the top Google hit for my search. I didn’t realize that Google doesn’t care how old it is. I’m having this discussion with some band mates this afternoon and I’m worried about how that’s going to go. The trailing comment when I posted, was to dispute that an 80Hz. HPF is basically worthless on a bass, which I think a plenty of bass players would eagerly agree that 50 HZ is where they want to be. Most certainly the one in our group, to which I would have to disagree. From the data I see and what I hear, I don’t notice anything lacking when the bass is bracketed between 80 and maybe 130Hz. I have to assume that the people who mix Riverside, Porcupine Tree and Alan Parsons (Dark Side of The Moon) know what they're doing. Looking at that data it's obvious they took measures to limit the bottom of the bass at 80Hz. If we want to sound close to that, we'll have to do the same.

 

On the kicks we are using Beta 52s and all we get through the 52s is low end, it looks optimized at around 50Hz leaving very little past 100. So even with a HPF on the bass at 80Hz, it still only leaves around 30Hz audible bandwidth for the kick and the bass is going to be brighter and louder, with about twice that range with HPF at 80Hz. We tried Beta 91s which have great clarity, but sound like cardboard. The drummer is getting some Earthworks KP1s. It’s a little bit of disagreement I’m having between a drummer and myself who want to simply hear the kick and a bass player who’s all over the very sub bottom. When I tell the bass player who has a considerable investment in these very large bass cabinets, that I’ll be capping the low end of the bass, I just don’t see that going smoothly. Rattling the neighbors windows may sound great when he’s alone, but everything I’m looking at and hearing, tells me it’s not good for the mix, or the group.

 

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I always high pass everything. Exactly where depends on a number of things that usually get down to a trade-off between sound quality vs system protection. As others have already said ... There is no advantage to send lows that will only cause the system to distort.

 

You should also remember that high pass filters do not "cut off" the sound at their center point. They just turn it down below it (and the rate at which they do it varies from unit to unit).

 

An easy way to set them is to start low and keep increasing the frequencies until you hear it as a problem. But even then you may want to use them to keep instruments from fighting each other. Remember, a good mix is not making each instrument to sound great but rather to make all instruments together to sound good.

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My bad. It was the top Google hit for my search. I didn’t realize that Google doesn’t care how old it is. I’m having this discussion with some band mates this afternoon and I’m worried about how that’s going to go. The trailing comment when I posted, was to dispute that an 80Hz. HPF is basically worthless on a bass, which I think a plenty of bass players would eagerly agree that 50 HZ is where they want to be. Most certainly the one in our group, to which I would have to disagree. From the data I see and what I hear, I don’t notice anything lacking when the bass is bracketed between 80 and maybe 130Hz. I have to assume that the people who mix Riverside, Porcupine Tree and Alan Parsons (Dark Side of The Moon) know what they're doing. Looking at that data it's obvious they took measures to limit the bottom of the bass at 80Hz. If we want to sound close to that, we'll have to do the same.

 

On the kicks we are using Beta 52s and all we get through the 52s is low end, it looks optimized at around 50Hz leaving very little past 100. So even with a HPF on the bass at 80Hz, it still only leaves around 30Hz audible bandwidth for the kick and the bass is going to be brighter and louder, with about twice that range with HPF at 80Hz. We tried Beta 91s which have great clarity, but sound like cardboard. The drummer is getting some Earthworks KP1s. It’s a little bit of disagreement I’m having between a drummer and myself who want to simply hear the kick and a bass player who’s all over the very sub bottom. When I tell the bass player who has a considerable investment in these very large bass cabinets, that I’ll be capping the low end of the bass, I just don’t see that going smoothly. Rattling the neighbors windows may sound great when he’s alone, but everything I’m looking at and hearing, tells me it’s not good for the mix, or the group.

 

There are some comments here that I'm unsure of.

 

You stated, " HPF is basically worthless on a bass, " The context of high pass filtering is typically about system protection and efficient use of available amplifier power. In many cases, the instrument or some part of the system will generate some low frequency signals that are not part of the actual music. An example, just to clarify or illustrate is "stage rumble"....a mic on a stand will often pick up the vibrations present in a wooden or platform stage. We use a HPF to remove that rumble but still pass the vocal or instrument signal. A bass guitar can sometimes generate some LF below the fundamental and subharmonic musical notes. This usually doesn't do anything good, so filtering this will save amplifier power and clean up the sound/mix. If the bass cabinet is mic'd, the previous need to remove stage rumble applies. I think these are useful, not worthless, applications of HPF for bass guitar. In what way is HPF "useless" in your opinion?

 

Your plots show what appears to be a muddy, bass-heavy mix. The 100Hz area is consistently (across these plots) 20 to 30dB higher than the midrange, and ever greater disparity above the high end. Does the resulting mix sound good to the band and the audience? You seem to be against the bass guitar "rattling windows" but previously seem to in favor of an unbalanced bass-heavy mix. I'm missing something here...can you please clarify?

 

Welcome to the Forums!

 

 

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