Subtractor can do wicked synth bass, and.......
Posted: 30 Mar 2024
So....
I have been playing around all day with the synth that started it all, subtractor.
I understand that it is known for certain shortcomings and is over 20 years old, but I have been studying synth sound design lately and that's a really easy synth to learn on. What surprised me is that it can sound really good for filler pads for example, or even the main bass - this is how I did it though. The bass I was using sounded "fine" but needed a bit more meat. It's kind of in between sub and low bass.
I will tell you now that the secret sauce is pretty much Softube's FET Mk1 with look ahead enabled.
There's no other 1176 plugin that can tame peaks like it can, not UAD, nada, and I have been using the Softube one for 9 years (well, besides my 5 year break in between when I stopped music lol).
But, because you can also high pass the detection circuit, you can fatten up the bass something stupid without introducing any clicks (unless you want them of course, different tools for different jobs). It also has parallel compression. Softube really said "to heck with the purists, we are going to take the best aspects of the real hardware and actually make use of digital options" - to this day it's my favourite FET compressor bar none, I am not even going to bother to upgrade to V2 even when I can afford it as V1 is perfect as it is.
Everything else I used was 100% free.
First, was a free Pultec VST (Kiive Audio Warmy EP1A) where I boosted and cut at 60 and also added a touch of high frequency, a touch, at 8K.
Then I used the free opto compressor for some slowish compression (slow attack, fast to medium release) with just a couple DB of gain reduction, Analog Obsession LALA.
(Another very good FREE one is the ADHD levelling tool and that is also one of those ones with lots of extra features).
Then I added Softube saturation knob (Plugin version is still free, go get it, although I am not sure, can you still get the RE version)?
The bias of the sat knob is set to low and I drove it to jus BEFORE you can start hearing audible distortion, then volume matched, which the Softube VST/AU/AAX versions can now do for all their plugins actually with one button press.
Then the final bit of sauce, the Softube FET with 1ms look ahead, fast attack, fast release, 200hz high pass in the detection circuit, a 4:1 ratio and about 4DB of compression.
The before and after is quite marked (and only in a positive way) at the same peak volume, and it actually sounds not only good, but great, the exact bass I was after.
I want to mess around with Wavesfactory Trackspacer (the best priced of the spectral auto duckers and I recommend it to everyone who likes easy workflow and an equally easy way to create mix space) now as I have never side chained in Reason before and have to work out how to do it, as I really need to make room for the kick. I am using EDEN trial for the drums, it's actually pretty darn good but I can't afford it right now so will enjoy it for another 3 weeks.
The main reason I created this topic is that the subtractor uses 0 cpu, hence you can go nuts and stack 20 of them and be fine on a modest PC. When I say 0, I mean 0 (like 0.01%). With Reason 12's rack device cpu load display features, even playing super long release pads and setting subtractor's polyphony to the maximum of 99 showed precisely 0%. Yes, 0%.13th gen intel laptop.
It's simply more capable than I ever gave it credit for and deserves some dedicated tweaking as it has many real uses when you need something fast. BTW, this was at 96K also. Amazing how the thing just won't use CPU! It's CPU cycle allergic hehe.
My point is, if you need something light on resources and quick to dial in, I actually think the Subtractor is underrated!
I have been playing around all day with the synth that started it all, subtractor.
I understand that it is known for certain shortcomings and is over 20 years old, but I have been studying synth sound design lately and that's a really easy synth to learn on. What surprised me is that it can sound really good for filler pads for example, or even the main bass - this is how I did it though. The bass I was using sounded "fine" but needed a bit more meat. It's kind of in between sub and low bass.
I will tell you now that the secret sauce is pretty much Softube's FET Mk1 with look ahead enabled.
There's no other 1176 plugin that can tame peaks like it can, not UAD, nada, and I have been using the Softube one for 9 years (well, besides my 5 year break in between when I stopped music lol).
But, because you can also high pass the detection circuit, you can fatten up the bass something stupid without introducing any clicks (unless you want them of course, different tools for different jobs). It also has parallel compression. Softube really said "to heck with the purists, we are going to take the best aspects of the real hardware and actually make use of digital options" - to this day it's my favourite FET compressor bar none, I am not even going to bother to upgrade to V2 even when I can afford it as V1 is perfect as it is.
Everything else I used was 100% free.
First, was a free Pultec VST (Kiive Audio Warmy EP1A) where I boosted and cut at 60 and also added a touch of high frequency, a touch, at 8K.
Then I used the free opto compressor for some slowish compression (slow attack, fast to medium release) with just a couple DB of gain reduction, Analog Obsession LALA.
(Another very good FREE one is the ADHD levelling tool and that is also one of those ones with lots of extra features).
Then I added Softube saturation knob (Plugin version is still free, go get it, although I am not sure, can you still get the RE version)?
The bias of the sat knob is set to low and I drove it to jus BEFORE you can start hearing audible distortion, then volume matched, which the Softube VST/AU/AAX versions can now do for all their plugins actually with one button press.
Then the final bit of sauce, the Softube FET with 1ms look ahead, fast attack, fast release, 200hz high pass in the detection circuit, a 4:1 ratio and about 4DB of compression.
The before and after is quite marked (and only in a positive way) at the same peak volume, and it actually sounds not only good, but great, the exact bass I was after.
I want to mess around with Wavesfactory Trackspacer (the best priced of the spectral auto duckers and I recommend it to everyone who likes easy workflow and an equally easy way to create mix space) now as I have never side chained in Reason before and have to work out how to do it, as I really need to make room for the kick. I am using EDEN trial for the drums, it's actually pretty darn good but I can't afford it right now so will enjoy it for another 3 weeks.
The main reason I created this topic is that the subtractor uses 0 cpu, hence you can go nuts and stack 20 of them and be fine on a modest PC. When I say 0, I mean 0 (like 0.01%). With Reason 12's rack device cpu load display features, even playing super long release pads and setting subtractor's polyphony to the maximum of 99 showed precisely 0%. Yes, 0%.13th gen intel laptop.
It's simply more capable than I ever gave it credit for and deserves some dedicated tweaking as it has many real uses when you need something fast. BTW, this was at 96K also. Amazing how the thing just won't use CPU! It's CPU cycle allergic hehe.
My point is, if you need something light on resources and quick to dial in, I actually think the Subtractor is underrated!