Bass Boost Files

[Brian]

Bassboost settings in a phone are a part of the playback/speaker/headphone system, not the music file system. I use them to change between different headphones when I go walking. Audacity has no way to do that. All we can do is change the music file before the phone gets to it. That and Audacity will not apply corrections and filters in real time.

Is there a way to add bass so that it can be heard on every device? I am not looking for the best bass on just one device but on every device, even if this means it is not the best bass for a particular device.

However, as you know there is a digital upper limit of 0dB. (Your digital-to-analog converter is hard-limited to 0dB as are WAV files and CDs.) And, most commercial releases are already maximized (normalized) so usually you cannot boost the bass (or anything else) without clipping. You can however, boost the bass and then use the Amplify or Normalize effect to bring down the levels to below clipping before you export. In effect, you are turning-down everything except the bass. If you have an external amplifier or amplified speakers you can turn up the analog volume so that the bass actually is louder.

The first time I listened a song on my Hp laptop, I was very disappointed! The bass sounded much less powerfull and the kicks were not as defined. I though I was doing something wrong or that my laptop had very bad quality speakers.

Yes, you can feed back processed audio into the same system that processed it originally, again and again. However, whenever you feed back audio into a non-idempotent system, the audio will always degrade over time, especially over many repetitions. The nature and rate of the degradation will depend on the system you're feeding back into. Whether this degradation "sounds good" will be subjective. See I am Sitting in a Room for an "artistic" example, or Re-uploading a video for a similar technical example using video.

Applying an equalizer twice gives (to a good approximation, at least in case of digital EQs) the same result as applying it only once with the controls cranked twice as far from neutral. I.e. there's not much point in actually doing that, just do it once and use the controls stronger.

Specifically bass boosting however is generally speaking a rather counterproductive thing to do, and certainly not a good idea to apply too strongly on a complete mix. The reason is that bass frequencies need to have a stronger amplitude to achieve a given loudness than mid/treble frequencies, so they're typically already maxed out on the mix to begin with. If you then boost them further, you run out of headroom, i.e. you either need to reduce the overall gain (in which case the procedure is better described as a mid/treble attenuation rather than a bass boost), or you need to apply extra compressing/limiting/clipping, all of which leave certain artifacts. (Which can be a valid artistic choice: pumping excessive bass into a compressor is essentially how the ducking effect works.)

Here then it does actually make a difference whether you use two EQs or one EQ twice as strong: in the presence of other effects. Indeed, if you're determined to boost as much bass as possible out of a record, it can make sense to do it in stages: first boost the bass slightly, then bring back the peak levels with a slow compressor and/or soft clip. Then boost some more, and again bring it back with a compressor and final limiter. This combination will typically leave less obvious artifacts than if you handle the same amount of total bass boost in a single step.

But an even better approach may be to not use a standard EQ at all, but rather a multiband compressor. These allow you to strongly compress the bass, thus achieving a higher average bass volume without either exceeding the master peak level or pumping the rest of the spectrum too much.

Yet there's no free lunch: compression always comes at the cost of less dynamic range, less snappy peaks. The only way to truely get much more bass is to use more capable speakers. If you're limited by the speakers, then it can actually be more a effective strategy to remove low bass frequencies that the speakers can't transmit at all anyway; this way you get more headroom and can then turn up the signal louder and boost the lower mids. The final result can thus sound fatter despite actually having less bass frequencies in it. It probably won't sound better though.

Since an effect can be used both on the player and on the output mix, the effect on the player is considered an auxiliary effect to the output mix effect. The SLEfectSendItf controls how much the auxiliary effect will contribute. The default level is 0.

I suggest you look at the example code in B.6.1 Environmental Reverb in the 1.0.1 spec for an example of how to use SLEffectSendItf. Since you mentioned you first tried with environmental reverb, you might try to to implement example B.6.1 (stripping out the 3D effects) to see if you can get it to work, and then add the bass boost.

I exposed reverb on output mix to identify reverb effect on button click(i am calling enableReverb) i.e enabling reverb.Here i am not facing any effectsend errors which are mentioned in previous post.So please resolve the issue by checking the code.

Hi Erik,

Based on your reply I tested the unmodified code on HTC ONEX,NOTE1,NOTE2 android 4.1.2 version unable to get reverb effect for buffer queue playback.Unfortunately I tested it on tab android version 4.1.1. There I am able to feel reverb effect.So what is the problem in other devices and the other things I need to ask which are mentioned below.

I wanted to bass boost a song so I imported it into Audacity and added all the required effects needed to bass boost it. I've used Audacity many times to do this and I made sure that the Audio didn't travel into the red area. I then exported it as a WAV file at 41hz with 32-bit PCM. Then I imported this file into After Effects and made a cool music effect to go along with the song. I didn't mess with the audio but after I rendered I noticed that the audio had become really distorted on the bass parts of the song. So I went back into after effects and noticed that the audio was red lining under the audio tab. No matter what I do the audio still redlines. I've tried different formats, i've turned the gain down, i've checked the settings for after effects and all of the sound settings seem to match up correctly in Audacity with After Effects. I don't know if there is a problem with my Macbook audio settings or even my Audacity or After Effects settings. So I really need all the help I can get.

If you have creative cloud I would strongly suggest that you use Audition. I know that it is properly calibrated and produces video compliant files. I don't have experience with Audacity but suspect that may be part of the problem right there.

You should also spend a little time learning about equalization and audio production. It's not something you can just grab the knobs and tweak to your liking. There are rules that must be followed if the audio is going to playback on all devices as expected

Cropped screenshots are not very useful for diagnosing a problem. The first thing you should do is deselect or select all layers in your composition and then press the U key twice to find all the modified properties. In your case you want to check for additional audio tracks and audio adjustments. You should also select the layers that contain audio and press the U key twice to check the waveforms.

The Boosting audio can be tricky. There is a lot more to audio production than just listening to the speakers. I should strongly suggest that you dive into Audition to do your audio mixing and stay up a bit.

The Audio panel does not change the gain of a Audio levels of a layer unless a layer is selected. You need to check the levels values in the timeline. Changing the gain of the audio track will not change the height that Audio Spectrum or Audio Waveform generates.

I'm not sure what you want here. If the waveform in the timeline looks clipped then your audio is clipping. I would check the track in Audition. If you want a different look to the Audio Spectrum effect then you need to monkey with the settings in the Effects Control Panel.

BTW, the standard for video (and audio by the way) is 48 kHz 16 bit stereo PCM WAV uncompressed. You can use 32 bit if you like but 44.1 is only the standard for legacy CD production. AE prefers the audio in this format.

Also, when using audio to drive animation I will often do a custom mix of the audio to isolate certain frequencies or levels and render that audio track just to drive the animation. A normal audio mix is used in the production for the sound, the special track is only used to generate data for the animation.

If you can't figure it out show us a full screenshot with the modified properties and the levels and waveform of your audio layer or layers revealed and maybe we can help. I suspect that the biggest problem is your bass boost.

Sorry for the cropped screenshots, I'm pretty sure there aren't any additional audio tracks or adjustments and I don't own Audition, this is why I use Audacity. When using the Audio Panel I made sure the layer was selected, but it still seemed to distort, even when turned down. By the way the video is fine i'm happy with that, it's the audio that I need help with. I'm also happy with the audio spectrum effect. I've also re-exported in Audacity with 48kHz 16 bit stereo PCM WAV uncompressed and that didn't seem to help anything. My bass boost sounds fine in Audacity and doesn't distort or even touch the red zone. What do you mean by Audio clipping? I just want the Audio to not distort at all so it will sound good inside the program and when I render.

Recommended average level for digital audio is -18 to - 12. Your audio should never go above -6. It looks like you need to do a little studying on audio production. If you want to really drive up the bass and still get audio that will sound good you need to learn how to use multi band compressor limiters. Audition is a good tool for this. I don't know much about Audacity but I can tell from looking at your waveform that your audio was not correctly mixed. There are also loudness (a technical audio characteristic) values to consider when mixing and equalizing audio. It looks to me like you need to do some studying.

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