You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
Hissing/static with 808s
- Thread starter supremeTw
- Start date
localspace
New member
What exactly do you mean by 'my 808's?
Any 808 sound is tricky because they're so brutally simple. There's almost no harmonics.
That subby kick is just a sine wave getting pitched down with a fast decay, so all it is is a click (transient) and then a sub (tail) with almost no body.
Most drums have more body and less tail. On it's own it sounds great, but in a mix it can get buried. On a lot of speakers the low end doesn't even register.
Your instinct would be to boost it, with a compressor.
But because it's a simple 60-ish hz sine wave all you end up doing is simply changing the amplitude.. and ruining your transient.
You might as well just turn up the gain then.
Because there's very little to no harmonics, an EQ will not do much either: you can't boost or cut something that's not there.
The trick here is to inject some life and warmth into it, before you boost it. Without it'll usually just sound clicky and nasty, or you end up bringing out unwanted noise.
You can either add more body by adding some distortion or saturation (same difference), or if you want a cleaner sound by adding harmonics to the sub with an exciter or
something like that. This is precisely why everybody loves old analog kit, or vst's that emulate it. They add subtle harmonics and distortion.
Any 808 sound is tricky because they're so brutally simple. There's almost no harmonics.
That subby kick is just a sine wave getting pitched down with a fast decay, so all it is is a click (transient) and then a sub (tail) with almost no body.
Most drums have more body and less tail. On it's own it sounds great, but in a mix it can get buried. On a lot of speakers the low end doesn't even register.
Your instinct would be to boost it, with a compressor.
But because it's a simple 60-ish hz sine wave all you end up doing is simply changing the amplitude.. and ruining your transient.
You might as well just turn up the gain then.
Because there's very little to no harmonics, an EQ will not do much either: you can't boost or cut something that's not there.
The trick here is to inject some life and warmth into it, before you boost it. Without it'll usually just sound clicky and nasty, or you end up bringing out unwanted noise.
You can either add more body by adding some distortion or saturation (same difference), or if you want a cleaner sound by adding harmonics to the sub with an exciter or
something like that. This is precisely why everybody loves old analog kit, or vst's that emulate it. They add subtle harmonics and distortion.
... or if you want a cleaner sound by adding harmonics to the sub with an exciter or
something like that. This is precisely why everybody loves old analog kit, or vst's that emulate it. They add subtle harmonics and distortion.
Any suggestions on how to do that? Maybe you could give me some examples of those vst-s
By my 808s I mean all the 808s ive been messing around with. Ive tried to make my own from scratch on 3x, Massive, Sylenth - they sound clean but they dont have the oomph or depth and i cant seem to get that with mixer plugins either. Ive also tried lots of 808s from various drum kits, but they mostly sound too muddy or weak and again I keep on endlessly messing with dists, compressors, sidechains, eqs and other plugins.
Basically what im reaching for in terms of kicks and 808s:
And where im at now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zla0EPfHeUM /cant include more than 2 vids
localspace
New member
Yeah for these kind of drums, and I assume you mean the bassline as well, distortion is your friend, it really doesn't sound like anything fancy.
You could get some mileage out of using simple clippers, like the fruity soft clipper.. seriously, it's pretty good.
There's many more ways to get it.. and better sounding. Tbh I know it's the style or whatever, but the distortion sound kinda cheap to me
The whole idea with those VST's that model old analog EQ's and comps is that they add that distortion and harmonics.
Guitar effects and amps are an old go-to, and again a whole range of VST's that simulate it. Waves and NI have a bunch, pricey though.
Lots of free ones too... just google 'free saturation vst' or 'free tape vst' and just check out a bunch of them to hear what they do.
It's pretty impossible to describe what tape saturation does versus tube saturation, or clipping.
Usually you'll want to add distortion fairly early in the chain because it'll almost always introduce artifacts or frequencies you don't want.
Definitely check if you're not adding a lot of subharmonic mud and remove it with a high pass filter. Filtering works better than EQ'ing here.
If you want to have the grit of the distortion without losing the weight and dynamics of the original sound, use the distortion in parallel. I would
probably split the sound across two mixer tracks: one clean and one distorted. That way you control the precise balance.
Another thing you might want to look into is using gates to make sure every bass sound and kick is completely killed before the next one comes in.
It's a bit tricky to get a hang of balancing it, but it'll give you a lot more control than sidechaining compressors.
Secret 'shit I only have a sampler' trick from the 90's: render your drums and downsample them in a simple audio editor. All the old sampler machines
people used back then (and people now still try to sound like) had pretty low quality sound. It would be like 33.1khz/12 bit or worse... it would have a good filter
and some effects to clean up the sound. Everytime you resampled something, you'd lose a bit of definition and add some kind of distortion..
You could get some mileage out of using simple clippers, like the fruity soft clipper.. seriously, it's pretty good.
There's many more ways to get it.. and better sounding. Tbh I know it's the style or whatever, but the distortion sound kinda cheap to me
The whole idea with those VST's that model old analog EQ's and comps is that they add that distortion and harmonics.
Guitar effects and amps are an old go-to, and again a whole range of VST's that simulate it. Waves and NI have a bunch, pricey though.
Lots of free ones too... just google 'free saturation vst' or 'free tape vst' and just check out a bunch of them to hear what they do.
It's pretty impossible to describe what tape saturation does versus tube saturation, or clipping.
Usually you'll want to add distortion fairly early in the chain because it'll almost always introduce artifacts or frequencies you don't want.
Definitely check if you're not adding a lot of subharmonic mud and remove it with a high pass filter. Filtering works better than EQ'ing here.
If you want to have the grit of the distortion without losing the weight and dynamics of the original sound, use the distortion in parallel. I would
probably split the sound across two mixer tracks: one clean and one distorted. That way you control the precise balance.
Another thing you might want to look into is using gates to make sure every bass sound and kick is completely killed before the next one comes in.
It's a bit tricky to get a hang of balancing it, but it'll give you a lot more control than sidechaining compressors.
Secret 'shit I only have a sampler' trick from the 90's: render your drums and downsample them in a simple audio editor. All the old sampler machines
people used back then (and people now still try to sound like) had pretty low quality sound. It would be like 33.1khz/12 bit or worse... it would have a good filter
and some effects to clean up the sound. Everytime you resampled something, you'd lose a bit of definition and add some kind of distortion..
hollandturbine
New member
Even if you had a TR-808 back in the day you would most likely sample from it and then switch it off, I know of a few cats that worked like that and yeah when it comes to outputting low frequencies from weak ass speakers the best you can do is honk them shits with overtones.
Purewitness
New member
hate that shit i feel u