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Although not a big fan of the genre, I do like to try different things and if I run any bass-heavy content through BBP I tend to get pretty unsatisfactory results. The heavy bass causes a lot of distortion. For example, try Akon – I Wanna Love You. There is quite a bit of bass in the 40-50 Hz range. Volume Logic had an option to minimize IM distortion which seemed to do the trick for the most part but in BBP the presets all seem to be afflicted by this bass induced distortion to varying degrees.
My favorite preset is Plutonium NR which I have set at:
Final Drive: +2.7 dB
Range: 71
Power: 43
Speed: 59
Bass: 0The problem gets worse with increased drive, which is expected, but to get the loudness I want I need it set moderately high. The above works great until it encounters any real bass content and then things get ugly. It seems to be a problem with most of the presets. Is there any way to improve this such as what VL had?
I’d post a clip, but I’ve yet to figure out how to capture BA’s output.
Thanks,
StuartHi Stuart!
The first step is to watch the oscilloscope, and look at what you’re asking it to do with those settings. 🙂
Comparing to VL is apples to oranges — VL wasn’t an FM processor. For a fair comparison with VL, set BBP to 15us pre-emphasis, and set final drive (with Plutonium) to about -3! Then they’ll be roughly the same loudness, and bass should be just as clean.
When pushing for loudness, you can win a lot in the treble and midrange by having a good clipper, like BBP does. In the bass region, however, there’s not that much you can do, because the bass takes a lot of space, and will end up pushing other things into the clipper, causing IM distortion. The only way to avoid the IM distortion is to clip the bass itself lower, and that causes dirty, unimpressive bass.
In short, it’s impossible to squeeze 2 gallons of bass into a 1 gallon jug. Plutonium is loud even default settings, +2.7dB on that preset is simply over the top — the controls have no limitations, your ears must be the judge. If it gets distorted, Final Drive needs to come down. Turning final drive up without turning bass down is essentially *asking* for distortion 🙂
You could try to apply bass cut. This is not actually a filter or EQ, instead it lowers the thresholds for the B1 and B2 AGCs, thus causing less clipping and cleaner bass.
///Leif
[quote author=”Leif”]You could try to apply bass cut. This is not actually a filter or EQ, instead it lowers the thresholds for the B1 and B2 AGCs, thus causing less clipping and cleaner bass.[/quote]
Thanks for that clarification Leif. I had thought the bass boost was some sort of post-multiband bass enhancer.
So that raises a question: What does "Bass Shape" modify? Does it change your B1 and B2 crossover points or something? Thanks for any info you can provide.
Bass boost, when turned up, will:
Apply Parametric EQ before the multiband
AND raise the b1/b2 agc thresholds
AND raise the b1/b2 out mixBass boost when turned down will only:
Lower the b1/b2 agc thresholdsShape adjusts the shape of the PEQ as well as how much of b1 vs b2 to adjust.. shape minimum will adjust more of B1, shape maximum will adjust more of b2.
The crossover frequency (-3dB) point between B1 and B2 is 36hz, however the filters are nice and gentle, so in reality B1 is sub bass and B2 is mid bass.
🙂
///Leif
Sweet, thanks!
That info will be so helpful in trying out different settings. Awesome customer support.
Very usefull to know how the bass boost/shape parameter works inside of BBP! thanks!
I experienced the bass distortion too, especially on Flo Rida ft. T-Pain – Low ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okQE9kv-kE8&fmt=18 ), very difficult bass to process. Maybe usefull for testing!
I just tested that song. There’s plenty of distortion already in the master — it falls apart every single time the kick hits.
What settings are you using?
At Plutonium with everything at default (bass normal), the bass clipper does add some harmonics (filtered distortion) to the sustained bass notes. It’s already beyond full scale low frequency sinewave, there’s just nowhere else to go. I personally didn’t find the bass harmonics at default settings objectionable, as it substantially fattens up the bass sound in small radios. Any more boost, though (if neglecting to turn down final drive to compensate) would certainly make the bass closer and closer to a (filtered) squarewave.
One way to remove most of those bass clipping harmonics on this song, while still fattening up songs with less bass, would be to load the BASS-EFX plug-in, and set BBP’s bass cut to -10 (with the plutonium preset).
Let me know if this helps 🙂
///Leif
I find the defaults in Plutonium (I’m using Live at the moment) still lead to some audible distortion too when playing bass heavy content. I’ve since just lowered the drive to -1.3 dB at the expense of loudness even on songs that don’t cause distortion. I also put the bass cut at -11 and bass shape to -23 (I believe the lower settings affect lower bass more?) Should the clipper in Broadcast allow me to turn up the drive more than Live before audible distortion appears or is that 2.5 dB of extra loudness already there for equal drive settings?
Thanks,
StuartThe extra loudness in BBP is already there with equal settings. Also, BBP gives you 2-3dB more mids and treble — but not bass. With bass, there is truly no way to have the cake and eat it at the same time — once you have a full scale sinewave, the only way to get louder is to flatten out that sinewave, and Breakaway Live does that just as competently as Breakaway Broadcast. 🙂
///Leif
[quote author=”Leif”]The extra loudness in BBP is already there with equal settings. Also, BBP gives you 2-3dB more mids and treble — but not bass. With bass, there is truly no way to have the cake and eat it at the same time — once you have a full scale sinewave, the only way to get louder is to flatten out that sinewave, and Breakaway Live does that just as competently as Breakaway Broadcast. 🙂
///Leif[/quote]
Okay, so my audio will be 2-3 dB louder in the mids and treble if I use BBP? I guess I’ll wait until a full bandwidth clipper BA comes out because BBP does not give more treble in the 16-20K range 🙂 .
Thanks again,
Stuart
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