Sub woofers-good or bad for bassists?

[Freakbassman]

As a player for more than 40 years I've used many different basses for different songs as needed. Sometimes Chris Squire-ish. Sometimes Jack Bruce-ish. sometimes very bottom-ish. But I've noticed with the use of sub-woofers more and more the sound difference to on-stage sound and FOH( front-of-house) is dramatic. If I'm midrangie like Jack Bruce there's always lots of bottom on my FOH sound. Does this bother anyone else?

[Happy Face]

I've wondered about that as well. It may be a function of the crossover point on the PA. As i understand it, the subs are just only picking up the frequencies below the crossover point. That would explain why you sound all boomy through the subs?

[the mojo hobo]

I think it has more to do with the guy twisting the knobs than the equipment used. We had a sound company here that did all the festivals and the bass was always all bottom, often indistinguishable from the kick drum. The last time I saw them was at a blues festival with a famous artist headlining. A bit before they were to come on their knob twisted took over the board and very soon after the bass was coming through in the mix like I thought it should all along. I think many sound guys these days mix so the kick drum is prominent and don't really care about the bass guitar.

[Basvarken]

I think it has more to do with the guy twisting the knobs than the equipment used. We had a sound company here that did all the festivals and the bass was always all bottom, often indistinguishable from the kick drum. The last time I saw them was at a blues festival with a famous artist headlining. A bit before they were to come on their knob twisted took over the board and very soon after the bass was coming through in the mix like I thought it should all along. I think many sound guys these days mix so the kick drum is prominent and don't really care about the bass guitar.

+1!

Somehow many sound engineers seem to get a kick out of causing small earthquakes with their sub lows. Rather than projecting a decent balanced sound.
I'm not interested in a bass drum sound that can grind kidney stones. I want to hear what the band is playing.

[gearHed289]

This is a point that's been annoying me a lot lately. A lot of sound guys, especially younger ones, have no idea how to mix bass, or how much a boost in volume and highs can help the sound of a band. Especially a 3 piece where there are literally only 2 melodic instruments in the band. A lot of it comes down to laziness and wanting to homogenize every band. Keep the bass buried - no need to worry about it. It just needs to be a dull thump in the background.  Sometimes I just wanna tell these guys to stick their head in front of my amp and tell them "THIS is what it's supposed to sound like!" Or maybe buy them a copy of Live at Leeds or All the World's a Stage.

Having said all that, there ARE guys who get it, and really do care. But unless you're paying a guy to mix all your shows, it's a crap shoot.

[Happy Face]

Yep all around.

I was at a ZZ Top show last Sunday night. The bass sounded great when we were standing. But when I sat down and then leaned over to fetch my beer, there was that boomy thump of bass and kick drum.  (The subs were below the stage.)

So the crossover was working but the sound crew was good enough to compensate with a lot of mids and high frequencies through the array.   

[Pilgrim]

I think subs are the most grossly misused speakers.  Too many sound guys think bass equals thump at  extreme volume  with no musical quality. The result is that you can't hear the bass - it's covered. Sux.  I'm not a fan, and would rather they were left out.

[Highlander]

... Or maybe buy them a copy of Live at Leeds or All the World's a Stage...

I vaguely remember Uwe mentioning using an 18" cab on stage FOR sub lows...

[wellREDman]

I think it's a reflection of  more and more sound guys having come up through rave and EDM where that's where a lot of the tune's identity lives.
also having worked extensively in that scene there is very much a culture of the bass not being right unless you can feel it in your sternum(bowels?)

[66Atlas]

I think it's a reflection of  more and more sound guys having come up through rave and EDM where that's where a lot of the tune's identity lives.
also having worked extensively in that scene there is very much a culture of the bass not being right unless you can feel it in your sternum(bowels?)

This, and trying to recreate the bass thumping sound of a car stereo or overpriced low quality headphones with a built in bass boost.

[Psycho Bass Guy]

IMO, it's a result of the lazy incompetence that soundguys have always had coupled with the fact that modern speakers can now have huge output in low end.  Mixing electric bass guitar properly is one of the most difficult instruments to deal with in a live situation and rather than learn how, the easy thing to do is overpower the low end and make the bass, along with the kick drum, into a gigantic drum machine sound. Most distorted guitars are also chainsaw buzz capable of inducing earbleed at 4kHz and the lead vocal is generally buried under a repeating delay mistimed with the actual acoustics of the venue enough to make it mostly unintelligible even though its being produced at threshold-of-pain volume.

[slinkp]

I've also noticed that subwoofer design is not at all bassist-friendly.  The typical folded horn has very uneven response with very loud peaks. Great for getting the kick drum to knock your head off at a hundred paces.  Terrible for communicating a melodic idea with any dynamic control.
It's even worse in indoor venues. Either the space is small, in which case there are usually strong peaky room resonances at frequencies that will make the bass boom way too loudly on some notes, or the space is big, in which case the low end has long reverb time at nearly any frequency, turning everything into mush. Both problems are very impractical to fix with acoustic treatment - lows are hard to absorb.  If the room wasn't designed for good lows (they never are), you only get good low-frequency acoustics by miraculous accident.   Your best hope is a very articulate and flat-as-possible low frequency speaker system, so at least the sound at the source is clear. And as a rule that is not what subwoofers are.  Bad acoustics plus bad speakers has predictable results.

It's also true as others have noted that a bad engineer can ruin any venue or gear no matter how good they are. I remember that back in the day, CBGB's was the first venue where I ever actually heard decent live sound. I had heard some pretty awfully amplified local live music growing up on Long Island, but my first real club show was Living Colour at CBGBs in 1987, just before their first album came out.  They were amazing in that small room and I could hear everything with perfect clarity.  Most times that I went back there, it was excellent sound from anywhere in the room. There were one or two notable exceptions, where the usual clarity and power turned into painful booming mush. Same exact gear - I don't know about board, amps, etc. but they didn't change the PA cabs for literally decades - so I can only assume it was a particularly bad engineer.

[Chris P.]

I hear it a lot on festivals. You see a bassist play a melodic line and you just hear one low ooomph... In normal clubs and venues it's better I guess. I even think the worst part is over and some sound engineers try to let you hear the bass lines again. It also depends on the sound engineer and the band of course.

[rahock]

I find it interesting that on a forum of bass players there are so many that agree that there is such a thing as too much bottom. When you get mixed in to major sub woofer bottom you lose all note definition and it makes your head hurt. If you play nothing but root notes it can allow you a real strong bottom end, and that's good , but it still makes your head hurt, and that's still bad.
Rick

[Pilgrim]

I find it interesting that on a forum of bass players there are so many that agree that there is such a thing as too much bottom. When you get mixed in to major sub woofer bottom you lose all note definition and it makes your head hurt. If you play nothing but root notes it can allow you a real strong bottom end, and that's good , but it still makes your head hurt, and that's still bad.
Rick

That sums it up pretty well. Bass needs to be musical, not just impact and thump.