Hi all!
I am currently working on a mix where I am attempting to add a sub to “fill” the song out a bit more in the drop areas, but I am having a lot of trouble making this sound correct. Whenever I listen to, let’s say, a Knife Party song, I don’t seem to hear a true sub until usually the drop. And it is always so subtle and clean that I can’t even tell it’s there (minus the nice rumble :D). But it obviously makes the song way more punchy and “filled”. I want this sort of professional effect, but I just cant seem to get the timing, frequency, and position correct for it to sound well. I know this is mixing 101, but I have always had trouble in this one particular area, and I have always been too embarrassed to ask ha. Any help is much appreciated!
Thanks!
-Shammrokk
Subs are hard. You first have to have good monitoring hardware to notice it correctly and how/what to use.
Don’t think you use a sub to fill out a song. I use it mostly to give the beat more groove. In a break I hardly ever hear a subbass, but if you could give me an example on youtube/soundcloud, I will have a listen.
I have on my sub channel a highpass filter to remove the extremely low frequencies that take up too much of the power of the kick. Next is an EQ to remove the main frequencies of the kick and bass, so they pierce through the mix. There’s also a sidechain compressor to remove too much of the sub while the kick hits.
Thank you very much for your response. I will try to post an example soon after I get out of this incredibly long microbiology lecture 
Anyways, so I already implement side chaining a bit in my basses and I high pass, but I never thought to EQ the prominent frequencies! I assume I could use a frequency spectrum analyzer to determine these prominent frequencies? That might be a dumb question, but I just want to make sure ha. The reason I don’t have much experience with subs is that usually I have stacked oscillators running at different frequencies, and I usually make one at a nice, low bassy frequency, which kinda acts as my low bass frequency.
Thanks for the help! I’ll have an example up shortly.
I never ran into a proper sub bass tutorial on the Internet maybe it’s time sonic academy
should make one , concerning only that ?
I usualy Boost my Subs on 60hz untill my woofer Start sheaking The room and it Doesn’t
overcome the kick (which I boost as well in 52-58hz).
Then I compress it to control. The boost comes after cutting everything below that .
Depends on the style and the content of course but this I think will give you a good start.
You can hear an example in this track of mine to hear the results of that boost:
Stream drumnote - Hydrogen (Original Mix) by drumnote Productions :: | Listen online for free on SoundCloud
Hope I helped ;
Yeah… ill have a think about how to put something together.
I think the problem for a lot of folks is unless you have seriously good speakers or a good sub its really hard to do anything in the sub domain without a lot of guess work.
even with my bm15a 10" cones its still sometimes hard to know whats going on.
I think a plugin called “SUB” would be cool… something that analyses the really low end and just makes sure its all tight.
Yes! This helped a lot. And I agree that there should be a course pertaining to this area definitely. Nice track by the way. Loved the drum groove.
Thanks!
Btw I meant to post an example, but I got heavily bogged down with classwork and forgot to haha. But you provided a great example of what I was looking for in a sub.
Yes Phil a sub plugin would be amazing. You should look into designing one! ha 
Happy you liked the track 
and glad you got a bit of idea how to treat the sub.
Phil , i will be looking very much forward to the sonic academy Heavy Subs tutorial
you guys do amazing job and i owe you a lot for all that great vids.
Keep up the great work,
Roy.