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4. Enhancing sub bass harmonics with limiting

1 Start by loading the Tutorial Files named “Trap…” on new audio tracks in a new 140bpm project. The low end in this track comes from two sources: the kick in Trap Drum Loop.wav provides the initial kick transient and ‘punch’, while Trap Sub Tail.wav mirrors the kick’s notes, ducking up after each note to create the kick’s sustain, filling out the low end of the mix. Let’s use excessive limiting to enhance this clean sub tail. 2 Duplicate Trap Sub Tail.wav’s channel, giving us an identical parallel copy of the sub signal, then rename this copied channel “Sub Harmonics” or similar. Next, crush the signal’s dynamics with heavy limiting: insert Toneboosters’ Barricade CM limiter on this new channel before setting Out ceiling to -20dB, In gain to +20dB, Attack to 0s and Release to 0s. 3 As in our other tutorials, our heavy dynamics processing is causing distortion and adding plenty of overdriven vibe as well as flattening the signal’s dynamics. The distortion caused by the 0ms Release time sounds a little bloated, so insert Philta CM after the limiter then set 195Hz Lowpass and 120Hz Highpass to isolate the low-mid harmonics with precise filtering. 4 Raising Philta CM’s Output to +6dB pushes up the level of these ‘pocketed’, band-passed harmonics, filling out the low mids of the mix to give the impression of extra bass weight, thickness and power without actually adding any extra mixswamping subsonic frequencies. This method of enhancement works especially well, as the core kick ‘punch’ layer within the loop isn’t being distorted at all. 5 However, our assertive limiting has completely flattened the parallel signal’s dynamics, making the layer sound dynamically ‘disjointed’ when layered over the original sub tail. To fix this, we render our Bass Harmonics channel to a new audio file before chopping out each note and applying volume fades to carefully match the midrange notes’ lengths and dynamics with the sub.