Ya, it's a fantastic tool! I helped work on the plugin. I beta test for BABY Audio which acquired Denise last year. Lots of exciting things coming from both companies soon!
I used Waves MaxxBass and Rbass and LoAir and SubMarine before... But for some reason this plugin really did it right for me. I don't know why. But I end up using it a lot, and it always does the thing I need it to. What I do is use Sonarworks to simulate a phone speaker, and I tweak it to where I can just hear the low bass stuff. Very sweet.
⭐️⭐️ I actually came here to the comments JUST to say that I think you have really been choosing excellent music examples that really display and highlight the capabilities of the plug-ins to a much better degree than most plug-in reviewers seem to be doing these days. Excellent work, Sir. Carry on! 👍😎👍
I instantly bought this, weeks ago. Just as effective as RBass, (which I still use because it sounds different) but personally, I like Bass XXL better because of the extra features. I always crank up the harmonics to the max and manage intensity with BOOST. For me, the OVERSAMPLING feature helps maintain clarity in the mix. Thanks for sharing your opinion, I enjoyed the video.
Didnt notice great difference on mobile speakers lol. But yeah. I mean these plugs are cool but it would be cool if it also had something that would be more aggressive. Cuz otherwise what stops me from having a parellel distortion/saturation filter which will become just as audible after downstream processing
Apple do that by default on their speakers…. Try this to amplify the effect, go to settings then apple music, then equalizer and select nighttime, night mode, nocturno (depending on your ios version) and the low ends will be upscaled a bit in order to hear bass on the device but by default iphones do that by itself but if you want more bass try that setting
This is one of the few plugins that immediately found its way into my template. It's in all my mixes since I bought it a few weeks ago ... very effective tool!
wytse: talks about how acoustic bass is more audible on small speakers compared to electronic bass. also wytse: demos plugin to make bass more audible on small speakers using a track with acoustic bass. but the plugin sounds really good in this context. nice warm bass without adding muddyness.
@@marcusdelictus lets your bass is a midi track. Route that midi output to the bas xxxl plugin and set frequency to follow the midi input. Now the base xxxl plugin will adjust the processing to each incoming note and hence align the processing with the current note
This seems redundant. Wouldn't the plugin be processing the sound based on the frequency content of the note anyway without you having to tell the plugin what note it is?
Imho this is a essential function of any subgenerator in order to create harmonic subharmonics. I use MBassador from Melda, as it analyses the Base frequency in Realtime and can generate a signal that is -1 octave... It is much more convenient for me as I mix mostly acoustic material and save a lot of time by not having to create a potentially faulty Midi track from the material...
@eccentricworx I just thought if the note changes then naturally the harmonics will change with it? But maybe I'm misunderstanding how the plugin works.
Listening to this right now on my phone and I can hear that subtle difference that makes ALL the difference........ for a quick small speaker solution maxxbass is usually my go to. You can go much further, but i love having these tools on hand. I've enjoyed everything from Denise so far, so this is joing the toolbox 😉👍
It seems to me that no one mentions that this plugin can look and help a lot in midi mode, but applied to a natural bass, that is, to an instrument. The steps would be the following: 1- Record the Bass 2- Bass XXL plugin the Bass channel Insert 3- Convert the bass audio to midi (in Cubase 12, using Vari Audio) 4-Open a midi channel, whose output is BASS XXL In this way, the Bass with the BASS XXL inserted will receive the benefits of the midi note following.
This may be doing more, but I can’t help but feel any saturation that produces a lot of even-order harmonics (for instance anything that claims to emulate tubes/valves) will do pretty much the same thing. There’s a lot of free stuff out there.
Really low notes that are a little out of tune sound much worse when their upper harmonics are emphasized/more exposed. That stuck out in the sample track you were using. So yes, this kind of plug-in can be helpful, but if I have to pitch correct the track first anyway, might as well use the same feature in Melodyne and do both things at the same time.
Soooo. Watching this on my phone and through it's speakers the plug in did the opposite of it's intention. As you added harmonics the bass got less pronounced. Bypassing brought it back to life.
Even if one use square wave for a deep sub bass. It’s very interesting to achieve the deep bass tone by closing the filters and then bringing some of the upper harmonics with something like this.
maybe we should make a new type of lossless compiler which contains several master versions made for different platforms and autoplays the correct one, which it identifies itself, so it's just like playing any other audio file 🤔 that way we could have optimized masters for each platform 😁
Have you tried the midi version of the root note? I would love to hear your thoughts on that. The plugin seems like a nice alternative to Rbass, which is my main go-to to achieve bass sound on small speakers. As always great review 🤗
Good review... one thing was to let us know that we could switch from frequency mode or note mode or midi mode and midi mode creates harmonics that follows the root note when the bass changes its key
One thing I wish all these kinds of psychoacoustic bass plugins did would be gain matching the total amount of perceived bass. They always ADD MORE bass, leading you to have to pull down the total amount of bass somewhere else via EQ. Ideally, all I want is to do is shift where the perceived bass is coming from. I do not want it to make the overal mix bassier, where I have to then correct it with EQ. To put it another way. I would like to reduce the 50hz sine wave at a rate that makes it feel like the total amount of bass is not going up, as I add 100hz and other harmonics. You can do something like this in Maxxbass, but it's all manual, when I feel like there's a way that this could be done automatically and achieve a much nicer result.
Have you tried the SSL X Saturator? It's not specifically made for bass and maybe isn't the best for full mixes (although it has a lovely tone if you do) but on bass channels / busses it's excellent at thickening and doesn't raise the volume, at least not the actual dB of the signal. I mix a lot of electronic music from stems and have tried just about every saturator out there and the SSL is a rare one that I actually kept and I end up using it on almost every mix I do. It adds presence, helps the low end cut through the mix and adds no additional weight. In fact, you can get a relative presence and reduce the overall level of the low end by up to 5dB with the perception of equal, or louder bass.
I will look into that. That sounds better than what many of these other plugins do. I like what Maxxbass, and other plugins do, but I really feel like if you have a mix just-about-right. Then applying Maxxbass, should feel very transparent. You should feel like you have almost the exact same amount of bass, just that it's coming from 100hz+ and not 30-99 hz. Just shifting a percentage of where the lowend is coming from. That, imo would be ideal. Thanks for letting me know about that. I'll really be checking that out.@@juliehoggs7713
Wonder how this compares to basslane which seems to do the exact same thing on the free version. Also I wish I had a quick way of hooking up mobile phone speakers from my sound card.
It really reminds me of the right side of Subloom from mixland, with less controls and an added mono knob. Subloom is made for drums, but I can see this plugin working great if you are looking for the same effect in a mix. In fact, I had to do something similar just a couple weeks ago. Great plugin and very fair priced (both Denise and Mixland!)
Unfiltered Audio Bass Mint does something similar, may be more fully featured, at least because it has multiple ways to thicken it. I've yet to try this one, must do that today
Nice. A different approach to boost bass. I was wondering if a negative boost would add value to this plugin. Right now it only boosts up, not down. This would help if you have a lead that needs a lot of presence for example. Thanks for the overview!
Yeah, but saturation can do this pretty well, I'm sure. This is confusing. The old Waves Maxbass would add a high passed and heavily compressed duplicate signal, that gave the same effect. I bet this plugin does pretty much the same things. It's no secret.
Since you are my favorite audio-guy on yt for years now because you more than often kept me from falling into the plugin aquisition syndrome trap (ok, I bought UA Sound City Studio...but it is a great plugin) would you consider to review Silencer by Black Salt Audio ? They claim to do the best gate to remove cymbal bleed from drums without harming the signal at all...
If it creates the root and it's harmonics, when the bassline changes it will create a weird tone, a million plugin like this one and no one implemented a root follow feature.
it has a root follow function.. guessed he missed it cause he didnt show it off.. but where you see the word freq. on the plugin you can click it and it will have an option for midi.. which basically follows the root note anytime it changes
@maxterwel, I don’t understand what you mean by „the root of the next line“. The root note keeps the entire song the same unless you modulate to another key. Believe me, with the root key you are good to go. I mean it’s great because you can control with this plugin. Other Saturaters have fixed overtones.
Well, I saw it at a super discount price, know Denise reputation, already have nice products from them, tried the trial... and was unable to get anything usable from it, so probably not for me... I wanted to love it, but hated the sound it produced, I guess it is user error, but it means it must not be for me I guess :) Well, at first I was happy at how it enhanced my perceived bass on smaller speakers, but I was destroying the sound for normal speakers. So for now I'll stick with BassMint (yes, I know it does not do the exact same thing)
would be much more interesting on synth bass/sine. i also noticed that a lot of effort i put into sounddesign does not survive trash audio codecs when buried in streamin services like yt etc. since i did not noticed that big change in your example i doubt this will. so maybe we should accept that people without bass device cannot enjoy base. 😮
That's my question too, to me MBassador is superior to all of the usual suspects: RBass, Maxxbass, Bassmint (meh), Lowender, etc. After a 10 min comparison with XXL, so far Melda's still winning, but I've got more testing to do before I pass on this one.
... been through many bass plugins and I can not do without mbassador for low end mixing . I am curious so , probably worth a look if I can try for free@@Childhoof
White Sea, I have a technique that I have been using for couple weeks on mixes that I am curious to get your opinion on. Reaper’s Delta Solo feature lets me make a compressor act like it’s on the master when it’s not. I have been delta soloing an aux ducking compressor and sending any track that needs the same effect to say duck the kick or vocal. I use melda plugins for this in Logic but in Reaper you can do this with anything. I would love to see if you find this technique useful and if you as an experienced audio engineer forsee any pit falls with this method that I might have missed. So far if I am careful with my levels, the phase of my tracks doesn’t get messed up. Thoughts?
Can you make a video? I have difficulties to understand how you mean that. The delta solo outputs the difference between input and output, if I got you right, you add that tiny time window to the original signal of the sending tracks, correct? I just don't understand the effective difference to normally compressed tracks. Can you elaborate that?
@@Mansardian Yes that is correct. The delta compression signal once mixed in with the tracks will "compress" as if you summed the tracks and put the compressor on it. One use would be if you have a huge mix with lots of layers of kicks and bass and you want to glue kick to bass together, you dont need to sum their output and then add a compressor. You can send them to a delta compression track. It lets you excude anything that you dont want compressed. Also if you forgot to add a layer you don't need to change its out put to glue compress it.
Yeah all those tempting plugins that are lurking on my savings, nope 0 investment on plugins this year all saving up for some great hardware. The plugin candy store is hard to resist maybe quit smoking is even more easy 😂
Honestly i was listening to this on a phone an barely could hear a difference. Im not sure if my phones speaker is that poor or it just wasn't doing enough to come through on my device.
