The whole "bass needs distance to develop" thing, in english

cordura21

cordura21

New member
Hey guys, I am doing a gig and bass always sucks.
So I was reading about it and there it goes mentioned again: "bass needs distance to develop it's full sound".
So, does that mean that if I put my bass amp at the back of the stage I'll hear a better, more representative bass sound? Will that screw the phase relations? Are subs located behind other kind of speakers? Is there some math to calculate how much distance do you need for a full, representative bass sounds?

Thanks in advance, Andrés
 
I ran sound at our church for 2 years and bass guitar was the #1 hardest thing to ever get sounding right... especially when the bass player doesn't want to believe anything you have to say :-(

But here's what did seem to work the best: If the floor has any sort of acoustic response (anything other than a concrete floor type of thing), then getting the cab off the floor helps some. But the biggest help was aiming the cab toward the rear of the stage (or even the sides perhaps) and up a little. Like your post indicates, it really does help to get some distance going to even out the perception of bass on stage vs. bass FOH (front of house).

Bouncing the sound worked well on our concrete block rear wall - I'm not sure what other surfaces might do. Every venue will probably be different. You'll need to walk around to find the sweet spots - but figure 10, 20+ feet for those big-boy waves to sound right to you on stage and in the seats.

The last bass player we had would not accept this approach and we were never able to regain control of bass again.

What happens is that the bass player has to turn up the volume to feel/hear his bass guitar. It get so loud that it over powers the PA system in small/medium venues. So the bass always ends up coming directly out of their set up and the sound man has absolutely no control over the bass.

I love bass - but the muddy/standing wave/overpowered bass from a bad set up almost sent me out of the room more than once... especially when you know how to correct it and don't get cooperation from the bass player.

Ok, enough ranting.... It probably sounds just as good to God anyway. It's what's coming from the heart that really counts....

But at a dance club, that's another story....
 
Fusioninspace said:
I ran sound at our church for 2 years and bass guitar was the #1 hardest thing to ever get sounding right... especially when the bass player doesn't want to believe anything you have to say :-(

But here's what did seem to work the best: If the floor has any sort of acoustic response (anything other than a concrete floor type of thing), then getting the cab off the floor helps some. But the biggest help was aiming the cab toward the rear of the stage (or even the sides perhaps) and up a little. Like your post indicates, it really does help to get some distance going to even out the perception of bass on stage vs. bass FOH (front of house).

Bouncing the sound worked well on our concrete block rear wall - I'm not sure what other surfaces might do. Every venue will probably be different. You'll need to walk around to find the sweet spots - but figure 10, 20+ feet for those big-boy waves to sound right to you on stage and in the seats.

The last bass player we had would not accept this approach and we were never able to regain control of bass again.

What happens is that the bass player has to turn up the volume to feel/hear his bass guitar. It get so loud that it over powers the PA system in small/medium venues. So the bass always ends up coming directly out of their set up and the sound man has absolutely no control over the bass.

I love bass - but the muddy/standing wave/overpowered bass from a bad set up almost sent me out of the room more than once... especially when you know how to correct it and don't get cooperation from the bass player.

Ok, enough ranting.... It probably sounds just as good to God anyway. It's what's coming from the heart that really counts....

But at a dance club, that's another story....
Click to expand...

That's what a monitor mix is for...You can't have performers cranking up their amps at the expense of the house mix. The house mix rules. If these guys are professionals, they should understand that they'll look bad if the mix is crappy. I never gave up control of the house mix. Monitors are key to keeping the performers happy while maintaining a sweet, well-blended mix for the paying customers.

As far as bass needing distance, it's always stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb. Think about it.....what do you hear when your neighbors have a party down the street? The bass...What do you hear when a slim-shady numbskull drives by in his car with the wal-mart spinners and the lowered Nissan undercarriage? The bass...

Monitors are key to sparing the audience a musician's alter ego neurosis.
 
Cordura is right on this. But if you don't have decent monitors (or none!), then it's still an issue.

But also the monitor speaker response may not satisfy the bass player either - In fact one of the things I didn't mention before was that part of taming the bass was to replace the Fender floor monitors with smallist industrial grade Mackie "house-PA" speakers so only 200 hz on up was reproduced. So the only person that got left out of the mix was the bass player...

The idea is that you focus on the individual and amp configuration and get that set up so you optimize the mix for the bass player - BUT also reduce the amount of bass getting reproduced on stage. Believe me, that single 15" put where I wanted it made all the difference in getting the bass into the mains and close to punchie....

Part of the problem also is that I was working with a worship team who are in no-way professional musicians. Like I said before - with cooperation and patience (and distance) the bass can sound as good as you can make it.....
 
The wave length for the low E string is about 13 feet long, which means if you are not that far away from your amp, you are not hearing the fundemental. You can't feel it when you are 13 feet away (at least not in the same way) but you can actually HEAR what you are playing.

But try telling that to most bass players.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
The W box fixed that in a many cases. The wave has time to develop before being looosed in all directions in the sea of air, this gives better definition in the low frequencies at a shorter distance. I use a half W sitting under a 4x10 cab when I`m live.
 
I'm sorry but I disagree with the premise of this thread. Bass does not need distance to develop, because you aren't hearing a 13ft long wave, you're experiencing a change in pressure over time as the wave passes a given point (your ears) . The distance from the speaker is irrelevant. A simple test with headphones will confirm that.

Regarding the low E string, 13 ft is the wavelength of a guitar E string; the bass E string is 26 ft. It is not true that one must be 26 ft from a bass amp to hear the fundamental. Run a 40Hz test tone through the amp and see what you can hear.

Read the realtraps site, towards the bottom:

http://www.realtraps.com/pfacts.htm

What is being described on this thread is a standing wave problem. Moving the subs around might fix the problem at the mix position, but then somewhere else in the room might suffer.

Fix the room acoustics.
 
Some great advise given here. I don't buy the distance thing. It does not matter how far you are from the amp. My bass player always puts his amp on a stand to get it off the ground. He also uses an EQ box to get the sound he wants at each gig. Every room is different. Other then that, leave the main mix alone.
 
There is no doubt that if you move away from the amp the bass sound changes, usually gets better, but I think that has more to do with letting the room do some work on it, if you get my point.
 
so why "the bass player listens a whole different thing than the audience"?
Is it the absorption? Is it a standing wave? Why the bass on records usually don't have that problen (menaning you hear it fine even when you're close to the hi-fi speakers or the bass going thru the PA?
 
cordura21 said:
Hey guys, I am doing a gig and bass always sucks.
So I was reading about it and there it goes mentioned again: "bass needs distance to develop it's full sound".
So, does that mean that if I put my bass amp at the back of the stage I'll hear a better, more representative bass sound? Will that screw the phase relations? Are subs located behind other kind of speakers? Is there some math to calculate how much distance do you need for a full, representative bass sounds?

Thanks in advance, Andrés
Click to expand...
It depends on the location, speaker, type cabinet, and etc... not all speaker cabinets have the same throw (range of coverage)... also for example, you might not hear a front loaded 15" bass speaker cabinet on the floor right behind you very well, because your too close and the sound is just blasting pass your knee caps... with some Subs you may need to get out in front of the bass speaker cabinets some 10ft-20ft or more before you really hear the sound open up and hit you. Oh, and subs (most of the time) are located on the bottom of the stack... and also sometimes under the stage and drum riser too.

PS... if you ever want to hear some subwoofers that really kickass, checkout the ServoDrive BassTech 7's.
 
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allrics said:
Some great advise given here. I don't buy the distance thing. It does not matter how far you are from the amp. My bass player always puts his amp on a stand to get it off the ground. He also uses an EQ box to get the sound he wants at each gig. Every room is different. Other then that, leave the main mix alone.
Click to expand...


OK, go ahead and ignore the advice of generations of knowledgeable physicists. I mean hey, they only spend their whole lives studying this stuff, they can't possibly know what they are talking about, right?


:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
cordura21 said:
Heh, I am confused. Let's do one step at a time.
Does bass need distance to develop? Why is that?
Click to expand...

Put a reference mic 6 inches in front of a bass cab, and plug it into a real-time analyzer, and see for yourself.
 
Everything that has been said is true, depending upon the circumstances and that is what the problem really is.

People think that bass is simple. After all, it is just one note at a time, most of the time. They fail to take into consideration the acoustic environment, the type of cabinet that is being utilized and about a billion constantly changing standing waves as the musician fingers different notes of the scales.

I can tell you from personal experience that I have played in environments where you could not hear the bass at all from the bassists position on stage, but you were killing the room and its occupants. Of course, I have had the reverse of this happen, but very infrequently.

What is the solution? Acoustic had excellent active tone controls on their 370 bass head. You would get your tone using the tone controls with the graphic equalizer flat. Then you would use the graphic equalizer to tune out the problem frequencies that were characteristic to the room.

Did it work all of the time? No, but it did work most of the time.

In a modern scenario, such as has been described here, the bassist needs his/her own monitor and should have some say over how it is adjusted. It is difficult to get non scientific types to understand issues such as standing waves, the speed of sound, etc. So don't bother trying to explain it.

As a sound man, focus on pleasing the bassist first and ensuring that he/she can hear what they are doing when they are playing. Then listen to his/her explanation of how he/she wishes to be presented to the audience. No arguments, even if he/she is technically incorrect. Just listen and nod your head in agreement.

After that, the house mix will be your domain with no complaints.

At least that is how I would be toward the sound man. Coddle the bassist a bit. It's good politics.
 
I used to play through an old Sunn Concert Bass w/12" speakers x 2. It was always the loudest instrument even though I had a tough time hearing myself while standing next to it. It seemed to focus way out in front.

Now I play through an Eden 4x10" combo and it's much easier to hear myself and I don't have the volume problems I use to have. Plus the tone is punchier, tighter as opposed to the "omnipresent" sound of my former rig.

Your bass player may be having the same problem: cranking it up to hear himself but by the time the note focuses out front it's just too loud.

Of course, if your bassist already knows everything there is to know and doesn't need anyone's help... record a live performance and let him hear it for himself.
 
A folded horn will allow the room to be impacted in a much more efficient manner while a front loaded cabinet with smaller drivers allows the player to hear himself in context.Being a bass player means you have to move as much gear as a hammond player if you want to sound really good.There are no small portable substitutes for quality bass sound.I'm sure there will be a rash of responses to this but FYI I've been playing bass longer than a lot of you have been alive and through about everything made on this planet, and to develop a true fundamental you simply have to have a CABINET capable of doing so as well as enogh power to move it out into the world.bass does not have to be loud in this scenario only present and the physics of the acoustics will do the rest.Like I said...cabinet for the fundamental note...monitor for the player...house is happy...stage bretheren are happy....BIG sound out front means patrons are happy...bass player is subtley kikin their butts.end-o-story.
 
It is VERY true that bass gets "all over you" as you move away from your amp.

Most inexperienced bass players have no clue they are killing the mix out front. It just takes a while to "get it".

I played bass for Mac Davis for thirteen years, (kids, ask your parents) and towards the end of that gig, I didn't even have a bass rig on stage. I would have the monitor engineer set me up with a couple of good monitors at my feet and I used those. The FOH engineer loved it, the band loved it because they could now dial up however much bass they wanted in their individual monitor mixes, and the low end was not rumbling all over the stage. Funny. I used to be able to actually hear my bass out in the house too, because I wasn't overpowering my ears with a loud bass rig right next to me. That is one powerful feelng knowing you are coming out of a huge stack of maybe a dozen EAWs with many kilowatts behind you, instead of tryng to do it with your wimpy little 300 watts and a muddy SVT cabinet. I'll take coming out of a stack of EAWs any day versus ANY amp on stage. I think it's still the way to go.... Only now it's a line array! Wow, those are cool...
 
Yfoiler said:
Most inexperienced bass players have no clue they are killing the mix out front. It just takes a while to "get it".
Click to expand...

This isn't limited to bass players. Drummers kill mixes, guitarists kill mixes, vocalists want their monitors too loud because of all of the above.

What a bassist needs to hear of their own instrument is really mids, so they can hear their attack, and a bass amp on the floor close to the bassist will project those right under their waist, so they crank the amp to the chagrin of the band. I've done a number of shows in venues where the PA can't spare the power for bass, my solution was to use a Fender Bassman, the slanty model. With the cab aimed up at me, I never had any trouble hearing at a reasonable volume.

Having said that, it's great to use a PA because you never want FOH volume on stage.

Monitors accomplish the same thing, but it has nothing to do "bass needing distance to develop", because it doesn't. After all, that monitor isn't 26 ft away from you, is it? But then the band shouldn't even need frequencies below 100Hz in the monitors.

Moving the amp off the floor, tilting it up, these get the amp aimed at the bassist's ears, which helps in the perception of higher frequencies and thus perceived loudness. Moving the amp around may help alleviate problems with standing waves due to room acoustics. Moving the bassist away from the amp may help for the same reason (or you might be moving him far enough away to get within the speaker's coverage for higher frequencies). But either of the latter two may also hurt, due to the same phenomenon--you might be moving into a node just as well as moving out.
 
Light said:
The wave length for the low E string is about 13 feet long, which means if you are not that far away from your amp, you are not hearing the fundemental. You can't feel it when you are 13 feet away (at least not in the same way) but you can actually HEAR what you are playing.

But try telling that to most bass players.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
Click to expand...

By that reasoning, headphones don't work below 4000 Hz because they only have half an inch to develop their lower frequencies.

No disrespect intended, Light.
 
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