Fundamental Bass

Fundamental Bass - Get Low

It's all about the bass, a great vocalist once sang, and she would be right for the majority of musical genres! Because the dynamic range of low end content can be so wide, balancing the bass line has always been a difficult task for producers, especially during the mixing stage. Bass lines may threaten to imbalance the rest of your mix if you leave them alone, but if you add compression too liberally, a dynamic bass sound will lose its energy. So what do you do?

To quickly tighten up your bottom end dynamics while maintaining the snap and glitter of your mids and highs, turn to Fundamental Bass. An configurable frequency split that feeds to two different processing units allows for the processing to be accomplished. Twin compressors and imaging modification for clarity and mono compatibility are aspects of the low band. The high band keeps the bounce of the bass while compressing and adding grit to enhance natural harmonics.

You only need to worry about where to set the frequency split for maximum dance floor damage because there are plenty of helpful parameters and presets available.

Features

• Frequency-split bass processing

• Independent compression & stereo imaging

• Tube-style saturation & distortion

• High and low frequency filtering

• Visual feedback

• Responsive & CPU friendly

• Factory presets

• Resizability

Low & High Frequency Split

The main concept behind Fundamental Bass is in the way it splits audio into high and low modules for independent processing. This way of mixing bass ensures that the low end is smoothly compressed without losing the excitement of mid and high frequency dynamics. Green (low) and yellow (high) coloured modules make it easy to see which range you’re adjusting, and each has separate on / off buttons, gain sliders and mix ratio dials.

Low Module

The Balance dial sets a compression level with up to -60dB attenuation. Make-up gain is automatically applied. The Flatten dial is a more aggressive compressor, used for evening out the dynamics of really bouncy bass lines or acoustic material with a wide dynamic range. Experiment with these two compression types to control your bass whilst still maintaining the groove.

High Module

Use the Balance dial to introduce gentle compression and the Drive dial to add a little (or a lot) of grit to the sound. You get tube-style saturation at low levels and full-on distortion when pushed harder. Careful tweaking of this control can add sparkling top-end to bass lines whilst keeping the low end clean and clear.

High & Low Pass Filters

Manoeuvre your bass line out of the way of your kick with the high pass filter handle - simply drag to determine a lower frequency limit and your kick and bass separation will sound much clearer. You can also ditch troublesome high frequencies that might be conflicting with other instruments. Just use the low pass filter handle to set a limit.

Split-stereo Imaging

An age-old producer trick is to collapse bass lines to mono. This ensures that they will mesh with the kick more effectively and better translate to a wider range of playback systems. Fundamental Bass can perform this trick easily, with independent stereo imaging sliders for the low and high modules. Set the low module to mono and high module to stereo to maintain the lively top end whilst centering any wandering low frequencies.

Mix & Balance

With independent gain controls for both the high and low modules, plus mix ratio dials for parallel processing, you can use Fundamental Bass for either subtle changes or powerfully expressive makeovers. The master clipper smooths out the dynamics of the outgoing audio and the output level slider allows you to set an accurate level for accurate A/Bing with the pop-free bypass control.

Visual Feedback

The live frequency display towards the top of the interface shows exactly what’s happening to the signal as it’s being processed in real time. Separate green and yellow meters correlate with the coloured high and low modules so you can visually monitor what’s happening each time you make a parameter change, with precision and accuracy.

Presets

With many included factory and artist presets, it’s easy to find the perfect starting point for your own bespoke bass tone. Tailored to specific bass characteristics and even other instruments, these factory options can be used to quickly cycle through parameter snapshots. The presets include everything from full-range bass compression, to frequency-specific transformations.