How low can you hear?

[tmtomh]

Speaking of Led Zeppelin, John Bonham was famous for his huge bass drum sound. He played what were larger than usual kick drums for that era, with less muffling than normal, often recorded in highly reverberant rooms. You could clearly hear the big, open drum, yet there was a lack of warmth and deep bass. I guess it illustrates that the cues that make a drum sound large are not necessarily the lowest tones but more the character of the harmonics, sustain, and reverberation.

Absolutely. Jimmy Page and Glyn Johns certainly didn't invent distant miking, but nevertheless a big part of Bonham's recorded sound was that they used multiple mics to record his kit, including some at different distances, to catch some reflected sound and ambiance. And of course there's the famous intro to When the Levee Breaks, recorded in a highly ambient stairwell in Headley Grange (enhanced with reverb during mixing, contrary to legend, but still, lots of ambience in the original recording).

And that intro to Levee is perhaps the best example of what you're taking about - iconic, sounds enormous, and yet it's more or less totally lacking in truly deep bass notes from that kick - as is almost all of Zep IV and most of their other albums. The only one that comes to mind where I hear some moments of real lowest-octave energy is Zep II, where there are some prominent sub-50Hz rumblings during the theramin freakout section of Whole Lotta Love.

Relatedly, my understanding is that concert PA systems of the 1970s, like the ones Zep used, didn't have subwoofers and didn't reliably produce high SPLs in the bottom octave - so they just turned up the whole system even louder to help create the impact; apparently it's one reason (aside from general rock and roll excess) that The Who, Zeppelin, and other bands played so incredibly loud in that era. This lack of deep bass is certainly borne out in the Song Remains the Same and How the West Was Won releases, which document live Zep performances from 1973 and 1972, respectively.

An instructive contrast is the 2012 Celebration Day concert album, a recording of Zep's one-off 2007 reunion show with Jason Bonham on drums. Modern mics, modern PA, subwoofers out the wazoo - and the bass fundamentals on that recording, particularly the kick drum, are completely unlike any other Zeppelin recording, live or studio. The impact is an order of magnitude greater. Of course I'm sure all kinds of digital processing was done during mixing and mastering, and they might have punched up the kick drum's fundamental with EQ. But I highly doubt they used any fancy processing to synthesize bass fundamentals what were not already present on the recording.

It's quite fun to listen to, a great alternative live Zep sound to have available, and a very good performance by all four members - and yet, it doesn't quite sound like Led Zeppelin, and I don't think it's because of Jason - I think the sonic character is just different because of the extra low bass, for better and for worse. If you listen to Kashmir from Celebration Day and then from Knebworth 1979 (available on the 2003 Led Zeppelin DVD), the drums sound totally different, even though John and Jason Bonham are playing very similar parts. With John on the 1979 recording, though, the excitement and drama is all in the snares and cymbals, while with Jason it's almost all in the kick and snares - the cymbals on the Celebration Day version actually sound almost missing at times because the sonic character of the drums is so much more tilted towards the mids and lows than one would be used to from listening to live Zep recorded in the '70s.

 

[Yorkshire Mouth]

here is a brickwall LP at 20Hz https://drive.google.com/file/d/14IUg0S_4CJjEVe1X7fFgQIAxq1m1HFTZ/view?usp=sharing

throw it in EQ-APO convolver, and than test it with this:

you hear it? good
now double the speed in Youtube (= 22Hz) - tone should be gone.

now play your deepest tracks through it and try to find any output. you probably will find some. but how loud is it? take out the filter to compare the loudness in relation to the rest.

I just played that on my iPhone through its normal speakers.

It was an intermittent chuff-rumble, like being out in the moors on a very windy day.

I’ll try it through my phones later.

 

[Hayabusa]

Okay, I know. 20hz.

But (I presume) that’s come from listening to test tones at individual frequencies.

If I tell you an experience I had, it might help the question. I had a pair of stand mounted speakers which went down to 75hz +/-3db. And I had a sub that went down to 40. I had them set up with an A/V amp, and after a basic positioning set up, I had a listen.

It sound a bit bass-lite, and I had a quick look and found I’d not selected a setting in the AV amp correctly. Once switched correctly there was far more bass. I did a few tests, position, different tracks, flicking the setting it was clear immediately. And not just in an A/B test, you could tell which it was set to with just listening to one.

It got me thinking, I know I’ve heard lots of talk about 70s music mixed for radio only going down to 50hz, and other stories about things not being mixed right down to 20hz, and even ‘feeling’ below 20hz. And the lowest pipes in church organs (why did they do that?).

Anyway, whilst you might be able to hear a test tone at 20hz, at what cut off point would you immediately be able to spot your music being bass-lite? In normal listening, would you be easily able to spot the difference between 20hz and 50? 20 and 40? 20 and 30?

All views and experiences welcome, along with associated notes on the type of music, etc. But please remember, this isn’t about the lowest test time you can hear, it’s about what you’ve actually notice was missing in your music in normal listening.

16

 

[dasdoing]

I just played that on my iPhone through its normal speakers.

It was an intermittent chuff-rumble, like being out in the moors on a very windy day.

I’ll try it through my phones later.

it is a little problematic due to it beiing an extreme FIR filter. I will add a warning to the post since mecanical and/or digital artifacts might apear.

 

[Zensō]

Absolutely. Jimmy Page and Glyn Johns certainly didn't invent distant miking, but nevertheless a big part of Bonham's recorded sound was that they used multiple mics to record his kit, including some at different distances, to catch some reflected sound and ambiance. And of course there's the famous intro to When the Levee Breaks, recorded in a highly ambient stairwell in Headley Grange (enhanced with reverb during mixing, contrary to legend, but still, lots of ambience in the original recording).

And that intro to Levee is perhaps the best example of what you're taking about - iconic, sounds enormous, and yet it's more or less totally lacking in truly deep bass notes from that kick - as is almost all of Zep IV and most of their other albums. The only one that comes to mind where I hear some moments of real lowest-octave energy is Zep II, where there are some prominent sub-50Hz rumblings during the theramin freakout section of Whole Lotta Love.

Relatedly, my understanding is that concert PA systems of the 1970s, like the ones Zep used, didn't have subwoofers and didn't reliably produce high SPLs in the bottom octave - so they just turned up the whole system even louder to help create the impact; apparently it's one reason (aside from general rock and roll excess) that The Who, Zeppelin, and other bands played so incredibly loud in that era. This lack of deep bass is certainly borne out in the Song Remains the Same and How the West Was Won releases, which document live Zep performances from 1973 and 1972, respectively.

An instructive contrast is the 2012 Celebration Day concert album, a recording of Zep's one-off 2007 reunion show with Jason Bonham on drums. Modern mics, modern PA, subwoofers out the wazoo - and the bass fundamentals on that recording, particularly the kick drum, are completely unlike any other Zeppelin recording, live or studio. The impact is an order of magnitude greater. Of course I'm sure all kinds of digital processing was done during mixing and mastering, and they might have punched up the kick drum's fundamental with EQ. But I highly doubt they used any fancy processing to synthesize bass fundamentals what were not already present on the recording.

It's quite fun to listen to, a great alternative live Zep sound to have available, and a very good performance by all four members - and yet, it doesn't quite sound like Led Zeppelin, and I don't think it's because of Jason - I think the sonic character is just different because of the extra low bass, for better and for worse. If you listen to Kashmir from Celebration Day and then from Knebworth 1979 (available on the 2003 Led Zeppelin DVD), the drums sound totally different, even though John and Jason Bonham are playing very similar parts. With John on the 1979 recording, though, the excitement and drama is all in the snares and cymbals, which with Jason it's almost all in the kick and snares - the cymbals on the Celebration Day version actually sound almost missing at times because the sonic character of the drums is so much more tilted towards the mids and lows than one would be used to from listening to live Zep recorded in the '70s.

Great info, thank you! I'll have to give the 2012 Celebration Day album a close listen with this in mind.

IMHO, Jason Bonham is a very good drummer in his own right, but what an impossible task to follow in his father's footsteps. I saw Zep live at the Day on the Green at the Oakland Coliseum in 1979 (that was the day John Bonham and Peter Grant were arrested for assaulting one of Bill Graham's staff for being rude to young Jason Bonham.) They came on almost 3 hours late, but what a show. This was shortly before his death and Bonham was playing his Ludwig stainless steel kit. Through those massive stacks the SS kit sounded like artillery fire. I'll never forget it...

 

[DVDdoug]

For reference, the low E on a bass is 41.20Hz.

Most "pro" subwoofers used in dance clubs and for live music are also "tuned" down to about 40Hz. That's low enough for bass you can feel in your body (if it's strong enough).

As you go lower you tend to lose efficiency so you need more/bigger subs and more power and it gets "hard" to get bass in a big venue. Plus our ears are less sensitive at the lowest frequencies so that adds to the power & size requirements.

Super-low bass is more practical at home or in a studio.

On the recording-production side, you can't just "add more" deep bass unless you take energy away from somewhere else in the spectrum, and overall it will get quieter as you add more deep-bass.

And when someone with an "average" system plays it, they might clip their amplifier with bass that their woofer can't reproduce, or worse the woofer might rattle or buzz, or they might fry their woofer with sound the speaker can't reproduce (and you can't hear).

... I do like bass and actually have a sub-bass synthesizer, but I think my 15-inch woofer cut-off somewhere around 30Hz.

Speaking of Led Zeppelin, a few years ago I read about a remaster or re-mix where they retained the bass that was filtered out of the original release. But I can't find a link.

 

[Yorkshire Mouth]

I suppose this is a suplementary question (or questions), though (a) more difficult one(s).

Okay, you can hear the lower end. But to what extent do you feel you need to?

I completely appreciate that, if people have a sub that goes down to 15hz, and they can either hear, or sense something with that which you can’t get from a sub going down to 20-30hz, you’re going to miss it. And if you wouldn’t want to lose that, you have no criticism from me.

But do you feel it’s ‘necessary’?

Another point - I like to think about how things are mixed and mastered. The gold standard mastering studio in the world (we can fight about this in the car park outside later, but I’m going with this for now) is Abbey Road. They use B&W 800 D3s. Now we can discuss the pros annd cons of these speakers all we want, but what we can’t discuss is the verified fact that they go down to 17hz +/-3db, but plummet from then on in.

So anything on a CD/vinyl/cassette/wax cylinder that you can hear on a super-subbed system that goes down below that, the artist didn’t hear it, it wasn’t heard in the mixing room, and I t wasn’t heard when it was mastered.

Again, given this, is it necessary?

I’d love to find out exactly how Thom Yorke, David Gilmour, Jimmy Page, The Edge, Alex Turner and Robert Fripp listened to their music for the final mix and master (presuming they had the final say on the mix).

For me, and I’m chipping a personal opinion here which is theoretical, rather than experimental, if they didn’t hear it, and George Martin, Brian Eno and Alan Parsons didn’t hear sub-20hz (or whatever) when mixing and mastering, then whilst I might enjoy a bit more low end, I’ll probably be happy with what they heard at that time.

Put another way, if I’m not happy with what they heard, I feel I’m probably a bit up myself.

But, as ever, I’m open to different views, and am happy to be persuaded otherwise.

 

[fineMen]

But, as ever, I’m open to different views, and am happy to be persuaded otherwise.

For example, the lady calling herself Noname, title 'Prayer Song'. Alas, she got out of business because of frustration with being applauded by the wrong people ... . Nevertheless the title shows off. The bass, sure, is more impulsive, more a blurp than a tone. Hence, by Fourier's theoreme it has lots of low frequency content. To replicate that will exceed the capabilities of most of consumers' facilities. If you get it out of your system to be definitely structured in itself and not only percussive, it will prove that the system is right.

And also that you're a hifi buff not addressed by her music ;-)

 

[dasdoing]

But do you feel it’s ‘necessary’?

I would say it's a cherry on a cake.
it is not like spice in a meal without it the meal is noticably uncomplete