Bass dilemma

Engine DJ Hardware Mixers
1

i ran into a catch-22 situation with the x1800. if i set the low crossover frequency to anything else but 100hz, i lose pressure as soon as i take a little out. so for just playing a track with some permanent adjustment 100 is fine. for the transition however that’s a bit too low because despite iso mode it’s still too heavy for mixing with one or more additional tracks. the low mids in particular.

now thinking about how a shelf eq’s curve looks like that makes sense. however, the kicker is that neither with my analog mixers nor traktor’s own eqs i ran into that issue before. if i take some bass out there, i don’t lose pressure but it’s still taking out enough when i turn it all the way down for a transition.

at first i thought that’s the general behavior of digital mixers but since it’s fine with traktor’s own eqs as well, which are digital of course, that’s obviously not the case. so what am i missing here?

2

Firstly it’s probably only you that would notice. You’re tuned in to it and therefore overly responsive to the slightest thing.

Also, how it sounds on one type of speakers will be different to how it sounds on other speaker. I changed my mixers eq crossover points depending on which of my speaker setups I’m using - it’s the way of ensuring that I’m send bass to bass cabs and midrange stays the flute away from my bass cabs lol

What your headphones make of such changes could well be different to what your bookshelves speakers or pa speakers make of it.

We play to humans - I don’t remember the last time I had a floor full of spectrum analysers on a stag night - don’t worry about it - you’re the only one who ever might

3

sorry, i should probably have mentioned that i encountered this at home. nothing else but the mixer changed, i did side by side comparisons and i know the sound of the home studio very well. this is not just some detail that doesn’t affect the bigger picture but unfortunately a major issue which makes the x1800 not very useful.

my workaround so far was to use the high pass filter in addition but that’s not a solution.

4

We’ll agree to disagree ardently there then. If every owner was running around yelling major major major about this, myself included, then it might be something, but that’s not what’s happening / not by a long run

Even different tracks or different remixes of tracks can get affected differently by eq and crossover points.

But have a look in the suggestion sections, see if anyone else has mentioned it - if they have , vote for their idea for a adjustment, if they haven’t , fill out the 7 question form and start that revolution.

5

thanks for the suggestions but i’ll wait for a bit more productive replies :wink:

1 Like
6

Sure. No problem - happy happy

It’s always good to have a search in the suggestion and also the bug fix section.

Every behaviourism can only have one person who mentioned it first lol so it’s worth searching to see whether anyone else beat you to it - either sos you can add your “Me too me too” to their post and/or to see if someone’s already posted the remedy in response to their post already.

7

Define “lose pressure”. You are talking about EQ, not steam engines?

8

hehe yes, bass pressure of course.

9

Bass pressure in a home studio? What speakers are you using? Do you have no neighbours?

10

Do you mean depth?

11

You mean bass reduces too much with just a slight left rotation with most crossover settings or EQ mode?

12

I noticed a problem in prime 4 when during the transition to the second track my bass is completely cut out, mid and high tones are at 9 o’clock and the master boosts the sound by 10db haha. I always try to keep the master volume at 0db, which is impossible during track transitions

13

100hz is very low for a low eq. Mine are set at 300hz (my Rane 2015 has just two settings, unfortunately). In an ideal world, I’d have 225-250hz as my setting.

Maybe your home sound equipment is very sub bass heavy? Do you have a separate subwoofer that you enjoy using and therefore lose the pressure from the very low end, that more flat monitors would not pronounce that much?

1 Like
14

haha yes i do but i can still crank it up quite a bit. i do have a PA in the basement :smiley:

iso mode of course. the crossover settings don’t work in eq mode.

see above and no, not the very low end but rather roughly around the 150hz mark somewhere. that’s what i mean by pressure. the very low end would rather hum.

maybe it’s best i record an example and share that.

15

On the X1800, the problem occurs in iso, which is a summed crossover network, at most crossover settings, and also in EQ mode that obviously isn’t affected by the crossover Utility settings because this other mode is just a fixed-parameter parametric EQ.

On a normal parametric EQ, the amount of phase distortion increases as you move from the zero for each knob, while an iso has a fixed amount of distortion. It’s important to note that both modes of the tone control knobs do nothing to the sound on the X1800 when the knobs are all zeroed on a channel… even the iso mode. The iso completely turns on for a channel when any of the knobs is moved from center even the slightest. The iso bypass is a canned, artificial trick the X1800 does in digital and is not something that can happen on an analog mixer without a special bypass button or switch. If you tweak any of the isos out of center on a channel on the X1800, you will get the constant amount of group delay phase distortion on that channel as you would on an analog iso. You may or may not be hearing this, but it’s worth mentioning since it is a novel (and I think welcome) feature of the X1800 and has a measurable effect on the sound.

At 100hz and in iso setting, that crossover point is so low that you’re mostly cutting the lower bass even though the rotation curve (think joystick curve, not the crossover curve) is very clunky to the left – the reason you can sorta kinda not overdo the bass cut with the slightest motion to the left when using 100hz in iso mode even with the crude curve. That’s obviously an imperfect mitigation, as you’ve discovered. I have a feature request on this topic:

https://community.enginedj.com/t/slightly-more-nuance-in-the-curve-just-to-left-of-12-oclock-on-x1800-bass-knob/

I would also suggest this problem may be related to the sweep effect deadzone issue, which tends to usually occur to the left, as well. Hard to be certain.

https://community.enginedj.com/t/slightly-enlarge-left-side-of-sweep-effects-knobs-deadzones/

The left side of some (or all) X1800 pots’ digital curve models that have a 12 o’clock center notch might be commonly messed up somehow, like perhaps the right side is correctly log curve while the left side is inappropriately anti-log? That’s a guess, though. It’s certainly worth InMusic double checking it. Obviously some of the dead zones on the pots, like the sweeps, need to be slightly bigger or, better yet, adjustable, especially if we ever get a rotary mode which would require adjustable dead zones for the use of the sweep FX on the faders. I don’t notice any dead zone problem on the tone knobs, though, as I can definitely see the isos turning off and on properly with a scope display and test waveforms. With two X1800s, that’s 24 tone control pots that don’t have a single dead zone issue on any of them on my end. So that’s a positive.

1 Like
16

much thanks for the (as usual) great reply. in this case however i don’t think it’s the deadzone because it gets worse the more i turn away from the center.

anyway it would be great if somebody could share a short recording with me. whatever digital mixer you have except for the denons of course. pick a track with a fat kick and record it with all eqs at 12 o’clock i.e. off. just a few seconds. then record the same part again but this time with the bass at 10 o’clock. that’s really all i need for tracking this down. would be great if anyone would be so kind to do this :+1:

17

I suspect it might not be the dead zone, either, but are you or are you not having an issue with a unexplainable inability to subtract just a small amount of bass on the X1800 when in iso mode and the low crossover is higher than 100hz and also an explainable inability to subtract the upper bass and low mids when using the abnormal crossover point of 100hz? Or is this more an issue that somehow the quality of the bass is changing that you perceive? If it’s the former, it’s definitely at least a curve issue on the pot to the left in that it’s not gradual enough. If it’s the latter…

Remember that at 12 o’clock on all the tone controls for that channel, the iso is completely bypassed on the X1800… as in exactly the same as if you had it in EQ mode and centered, and this is different than every other mixer with an iso that I’m aware of.

Do you hear this issue when you turn any knob on that channel out of 12 o’clock when in iso mode? For instance, do you hear this if you turn all the knobs on that channel slightly to the left the same amount and just leave them there? Because when you do that, it’s like turning the trim-gain knob at the top down a little, the iso is still on, but the tonal balanced should still be pretty flat… just with all the funky group delay distortion in the signal. If instead this doesn’t sound any different than the iso actually bypassed to you (adjust the trim-gain to compensate and all the tone knobs back to center), then the group delay is not what you’re hearing.

18

i don’t think you got me right. this is not a sound quality problem but rather a frequency range issue. having the crossover at 100hz, things are fine as explained in my first post.

could you make a recording for me as described in my last post? nxs2 would be preferred but whatever other digital mixer you have would be a great help already :slight_smile:

19

I thought you said 100hz eliminated the problems you were encountering with not being able to do just a tiny amount of bass reduction that you were experiencing with higher crossover points, but you instead encountered at this very low 100hz crossover point a new understandable problem during transitions where you now still had too much lower-midrange warmth combining between the two tracks.

If that is indeed the case, that very well might be a curve issue to the left of rotation that’s not as noticeable at 100hz because it’s such a smaller range of low end you are attenuating on that iso’s band. The pots on an iso (other than the X1800’s unique bypass mode when they’re all centered) simply act as their own trim-gain knobs for each filtered band. If the pot’s curve’s a little wanky, it can be difficult to do fine adjustments around the 12 o’clock notch.

20

it’s not about the amount of reduction but the kind of reduction. if i had to guess the hz i’d say proportionally it takes out too much between 150hz and 250hz compared to what’s removed below 100hz at any given knob position. hence i lose pressure.