Recommend a substitute for waves renaissance bass plug?

Recording Techniques, People Skills, Gear, Recording Spaces, Computers, and DIY

Moderators: drumsound, tomb

Post Reply
percussion boy
carpal tunnel
Posts: 1512
Joined: Wed May 07, 2003 5:51 pm
Location: Bay Area

Recommend a substitute for waves renaissance bass plug?

Post by percussion boy » Thu Apr 19, 2012 10:36 pm

I'd like to find a vst plug for pc (cubase, sonar) that does the kind of bass enhancement that the Waves Renaissance Bass (and MaxBass?) do. The plug seems to create higher harmonics somehow, so that bass instruments show up better on small speakers that don't have much low end extension.

I may end up buying Waves products again, but would really rather not. Not comfortable with how they do things.

Suggestions? Thanks in advance.
"The world don't need no more songs." - Bob Dylan

"Why does the Creator send me such knuckleheads?" - Sun Ra
.
.
.
.

ashcat_lt
tinnitus
Posts: 1094
Joined: Thu Jan 04, 2007 1:54 pm
Location: Duluth, MN
Contact:

Post by ashcat_lt » Fri Apr 20, 2012 9:18 am

Lowpass>Distort>Bandpass. You probably have a number of flavors of each already. If not, there are thousands out there.

User avatar
Nick Sevilla
on a wing and a prayer
Posts: 5555
Joined: Mon Mar 03, 2008 1:34 pm
Location: Lake Arrowhead California USA
Contact:

Post by Nick Sevilla » Fri Apr 20, 2012 5:11 pm

A different bass guitar?
Howling at the neighbors. Hoping they have more mic cables.

User avatar
Snarl 12/8
cryogenically thawing
Posts: 3510
Joined: Sat Dec 20, 2008 5:01 pm
Location: Right Cheer
Contact:

Post by Snarl 12/8 » Fri Apr 20, 2012 5:51 pm

I was going to say distortion, but I'm not at all familiar with the plugin you're referencing. I love distortion (not to the point where you say, "woah, that's distorted, but subtle-like) on kick and bass to give it more definition and "air" in the mix.

When I used to mix ITB, so it was really easy to throw it on there, I'd use Craig Anderton's "Quadrafuzz" plugin almost every time on kick and/or bass. I don't know what formats that plug is available in, but it's a great low-end enhancer/booster. "Quadra" refers to the number (4) of bands of distortion/gain/boost, etc. you can apply to a signal and I felt it had a very intuitive interface for how powerful and tweakable it was.
Carl Keil

Almost forgot: Please steal my drum tracks. and more.

User avatar
Brett Siler
moves faders with mind
Posts: 2518
Joined: Fri Dec 05, 2003 12:16 pm
Location: Evansville, IN
Contact:

Post by Brett Siler » Sat Apr 21, 2012 11:33 pm

Izotope Ozone has a good sounding multiband harmonic exciter. I've never put them back to back with the Waves ones (I have both I should do that), but both of them haven't let me down when I needed them.

User avatar
joninc
dead but not forgotten
Posts: 2099
Joined: Mon Jun 09, 2003 5:02 pm
Location: canada
Contact:

Post by joninc » Sun Apr 22, 2012 10:51 pm

mda sub bass synth?
the new rules : there are no rules

percussion boy
carpal tunnel
Posts: 1512
Joined: Wed May 07, 2003 5:51 pm
Location: Bay Area

Post by percussion boy » Mon Apr 23, 2012 7:11 pm

Thanks for all the good ideas -- it's especially interesting to see how Mr. Cat "reverse engineered" the process without using a specialized plug.

Gotta admit I caved and just bought the Ren Bass plug. Simple, sounds good, and $64 was workable.

Had a couple scares and annoyances already -- for example, at one point the license seemed to temporarily disappear. There's no tech support of any kind from Waves without buying an update plan, so I'm glad I solved the problems on my own. Luckily that company has nothing else I want.

Anyway, thanks again!.
"The world don't need no more songs." - Bob Dylan

"Why does the Creator send me such knuckleheads?" - Sun Ra
.
.
.
.

mrc
re-cappin' neve
Posts: 620
Joined: Sun Nov 23, 2003 5:07 pm
Location: Dead Center, Bible Belt, USA

Post by mrc » Mon Jun 25, 2012 4:20 pm

UAD Hz

User avatar
fossiltooth
carpal tunnel
Posts: 1734
Joined: Sat Mar 24, 2007 3:03 pm
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Contact:

Re: Recommend a substitute for waves renaissance bass plug?

Post by fossiltooth » Wed Jun 27, 2012 7:40 pm

percussion boy wrote: I may end up buying Waves products again, but would really rather not. Not comfortable with how they do things.
Not uncommon at all. I sympathize.

For the record, there's also something called "The Lowender" that people seem to like: http://www.refusesoftware.com/lowender.html

And dbx still make their hardware units of course.

User avatar
Marc Alan Goodman
george martin
Posts: 1399
Joined: Tue Oct 28, 2003 7:57 pm
Location: NYC
Contact:

Re: Recommend a substitute for waves renaissance bass plug?

Post by Marc Alan Goodman » Sun Jul 01, 2012 4:46 pm

fossiltooth wrote:Not uncommon at all. I sympathize.

For the record, there's also something called "The Lowender" that people seem to like: http://www.refusesoftware.com/lowender.html

And dbx still make their hardware units of course.
Heya Justin!

The lowender and dbx 120 series are both awesome, but they kind of do the oposite of the ren bass plugin :)

Ren bass adds upper harmonics so you can hear the bass more clearly in smaller speakers. Those two add sub harmonics that are even less likely to be heard in small speakers, but more likely to destroy susceptible buildings when played through the trunk of a ford explorer.

The lowpass->distortion->bandpass setup should do the trick, though I must admit the waves plugin does a pretty good job of it. It's one of the only waves plugins I actually miss. Maybe the only one.

percussion boy
carpal tunnel
Posts: 1512
Joined: Wed May 07, 2003 5:51 pm
Location: Bay Area

Re: Recommend a substitute for waves renaissance bass plug?

Post by percussion boy » Sun Jul 01, 2012 11:15 pm

Marc Alan Goodman wrote: It's one of the only waves plugins I actually miss. Maybe the only one.
Yeah, that was why I (reluctantly) caved in and paid them -- that plug is a real simple way to solve a recurring problem.

Thanks again to everyone for their thoughts!
"The world don't need no more songs." - Bob Dylan

"Why does the Creator send me such knuckleheads?" - Sun Ra
.
.
.
.

User avatar
fossiltooth
carpal tunnel
Posts: 1734
Joined: Sat Mar 24, 2007 3:03 pm
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Contact:

Re: Recommend a substitute for waves renaissance bass plug?

Post by fossiltooth » Mon Jul 02, 2012 12:06 pm

Marc Alan Goodman wrote:
fossiltooth wrote:Not uncommon at all. I sympathize.

For the record, there's also something called "The Lowender" that people seem to like: http://www.refusesoftware.com/lowender.html

And dbx still make their hardware units of course.
Heya Justin!

The lowender and dbx 120 series are both awesome, but they kind of do the oposite of the ren bass plugin :)

Ren bass adds upper harmonics so you can hear the bass more clearly in smaller speakers. Those two add sub harmonics that are even less likely to be heard in small speakers, but more likely to destroy susceptible buildings when played through the trunk of a ford explorer.

The lowpass->distortion->bandpass setup should do the trick, though I must admit the waves plugin does a pretty good job of it. It's one of the only waves plugins I actually miss. Maybe the only one.
D'oh! That's right. I totally forgot that's what RBass does, and clearly didn't read this post in its entirety.

FWIW, I used to have RBass as part of the Renn bundle. I definitely used it on a couple of mixes, but often had better luck with parallel lowpass>distortion kind of approach.

To be honest, I kind of wrote Waves off as a company when they recently told me that they wanted $100 to update the $300 worth of software I bought from them. If it was 5%, 10% or even 20%, I would have paid it in a heartbeat. But 33% doesn't seem like a sensible scale to me. Are any other companies charging this high of a percentage for version updates? I may have given them the benefit of the doubt, but they were pretty unresponsive as well.

There are so many other great tools these days, and I kind of look forward to forgetting what all of their other products do as well. :)

Oh well, if any plugin developers are listening and are thinking about adding something to their product line, apparently there's a decent demand for this kind of thing, and not much supply.

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 66 guests