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Help Test Our Speakers


Phil Starr
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As many of you know I've been building speakers and sharing the designs on BassChat, many more to come I hope. My problem is that I'm not the worlds best bass player and me giving a cab a work out is about as testing as if I went in the ring with Anthony Joshua. Pre Covid IĀ took the cab to people I knew could play and then I also got a good chance to listen. What IĀ need is a few good recordings (at least CD quality) of bass played fingerstyle, with a pick and slap which IĀ can cut down to 10-30 second clips. They'd need to be recorded straight from the bass with no eq or fx and clean of any other sounds, just bass. Ultimately I'll use anything longer for the speaker development process and the clips to demonstrate the speakers.

I suppose that if I put the test track up here we could also put up recordings of everyone's bass rigs with a dedicated BassChatĀ  test track

So if you are stuck at home bored but with decent recording facilities I'd love to start putting this together. All donations gratefully received

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Hi Steve, I've looked at those, well some of them anyway plus some of the YouTubers especially the ones who teach the bass courses. The big problem is that they are often not clean recordings and usually you have little idea of what eq/effects have been applied. There are also copyright problems. I'm thinking that a lot of Basschatters have home studio equipment and probably already have clean recordings of themselves playing bass.Ā 

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I see what you'd like to do, BUT (yes it's a big but) you'll have tracks without the real dynamic of a live player, so the final result will be biased. For instance the transient response and the whole dynamic details of the bass will be totally lost, because of the recording process itself even if it's in wave 24 bits at 96 kHz. This means that in the real world, the speakers may start to distort or fart way more earlier than with a bass plugged straight in and I'm not even starting the whole impedance matching problems, which can highly bias the final judgement. Tough and straight answer, I know, but it will really help you.

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1 hour ago, Phil Starr said:

I suppose that if I put the test track up here we could also put up recordings of everyone's bass rigs with a dedicated BassChatĀ  test track

I'm not the level of player you are looking for perhaps but I am sure to benefit from what you're doing.

I wish you success with your venture.Ā  I've been lurking on one of your topics for a while.Ā  It's great to see how it's done for real having built many cabinets using guesswork in my youth.

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12 minutes ago, Hellzero said:

I see what you'd like to do, BUT (yes it's a big but) you'll have tracks without the real dynamic of a live player, so the final result will be biased. For instance the transient response and the whole dynamic details of the bass will be totally lost, because of the recording process itself even if it's in wave 24 bits at 96 kHz. This means that in the real world, the speakers may start to distort or fart way more earlier than with a bass plugged straight in and I'm not even starting the whole impedance matching problems, which can highly bias the final judgement. Tough and straight answer, I know, but it will really help you.

I think it'll be fine provided that there is absolutely no compression, high-pass or EQ applied to the recording. There then needs to be various different players contributing as some people are naturally very compressed and even sounding and that would be much more forgiving than someone that was more heavy-handed.

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I'm currently in the throes of a lockdown collaboration of Don't Give Up. I've just cut out 2 snippets of the main, muted, fingerstyle riff on a J type and the outro riff played fingerstyleĀ on a Rob Allen fretless (deep, almost upright tone). You're welcome to these if they'd help. There's no EQ or anything on the clips and they're not huge files.Ā 

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1 hour ago, Jus Lukin said:

PM sent.

I could do with a break from DIY, selling equipment, and getting tipsy! šŸ˜„

Ā 

57 minutes ago, ezbass said:

I'm currently in the throes of a lockdown collaboration of Don't Give Up. I've just cut out 2 snippets of the main, muted, fingerstyle riff on a J type and the outro riff played fingerstyleĀ on a Rob Allen fretless (deep, almost upright tone). You're welcome to these if they'd help. There's no EQ or anything on the clips and they're not huge files.Ā 

Ā 

33 minutes ago, stewblack said:

Happy to contribute @Phil Starr.

Ā 

thanks to all of you, I'll respond properly tomorrow. today is my birthday and I've a three line whip to enjoy myself and not go on Bass Chat. How does that work? :)

Ā 

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2 minutes ago, Phil Starr said:

Ā 

Ā 

thanks to all of you, I'll respond properly tomorrow. today is my birthday and I've a three line whip to enjoy myself and not go on Bass Chat. How does that work? :)

Ā 

šŸŽ‚šŸŽšŸŗ

Happy cake day!Ā 
Ā 

Whenever works for you.

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1 hour ago, Phil Starr said:

Ā 

Ā 

thanks to all of you, I'll respond properly tomorrow. today is my birthday and I've a three line whip to enjoy myself and not go on Bass Chat. How does that work? :)

Ā 

Happy birthday @Phil Starr šŸŽ‚šŸ»šŸŽ¶

And good luck with this project!Ā 

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20 hours ago, nilebodgers said:

I think it'll be fine provided that there is absolutely no compression, high-pass or EQ applied to the recording. There then needs to be various different players contributing as some people are naturally very compressed and even sounding and that would be much more forgiving than someone that was more heavy-handed.

Thanks to you and @HellzeroĀ we areĀ aware of the problems of compressionĀ but remember the recording will be just part of what we do. the advantage of our own recordings is we will know that they've been recorded with no fx or eq. Thanks toĀ Ā @stevieĀ Ā we can measure the frequency response of all our designs.Ā WeĀ do road testing with our bands in normal times and we all play through the cabs when they are in development. The missing bit under lockdown is getting the cabs out to other players and then being able to give people who are interested a decent recording to listen to so that they can make their own assessment of the tonal qualities of the cab. Hearing other people play even from a recordingĀ adds a lot of extra information.

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19 hours ago, ezbass said:

I'm currently in the throes of a lockdown collaboration of Don't Give Up. I've just cut out 2 snippets of the main, muted, fingerstyle riff on a J type and the outro riff played fingerstyleĀ on a Rob Allen fretless (deep, almost upright tone). You're welcome to these if they'd help. There's no EQ or anything on the clips and they're not huge files.Ā 

Thanks, can you pm me to get them across :)

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Thanks for all the birthday wishes everyone. I not keen on fuss at homeĀ but on the plus side I did get a nice pair of closed back AKG headphones for practice and recordings. I'll miss the gaffa taped Sennheisers I've used for years but these are great :)

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