Adding more bass to songs

[Mr. Lennon]

I just bought Condensed 21st Century Guide to King Crimson: 1969-2003. Two of my favorite songs 21st Century Schizoid Man and The Court of the Crimson King make my 3 grand car system sound like a damn am radio. Whats a good free progam to edit these songs so I can give them more bass?

 

[Tiamat]

first, you have to narrow the problem down to:

1. Is the source material at fault
2. Is your car speakers at fault
3. Is your car amplification / associated electronics at fault.

If you have plenty of amplifier head room and speakers that can withstand the bass, and you are sure that your source material is the best you can find, use an graphical equalizer and apply a 'house curve' to enhance the entire bass range.

Ive done this with just an Sound Blaster Audigy soundcard. Load the file into foobar2k, play around with the equalizer, set the SB recorder to "record what I hear" and trial and error as required.

If your source material is just shoddy in quality, not much you can do on the cheap (time/money-wise).

 

[Mr. Lennon]

Source material is perfectly fine. The system sounds amazing with 99.9% of the songs I play on it, its just these 2 songs. I'm going to try loading the song into garageband and see if I can tweak the EQ from there.

 

[Tiamat]

Originally posted by: Zeppelin2282
Source material is perfectly fine. The system sounds amazing with 99.9% of the songs I play on it, its just these 2 songs. I'm going to try loading the song into garageband and see if I can tweak the EQ from there.

This may sound dumb, but have you tried the 2 pieces with good headphones to make sure? It just seems weird that 2 songs would sound like crap while the rest of the album sounding balanced...?

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: Tiamat

Originally posted by: Zeppelin2282
Source material is perfectly fine. The system sounds amazing with 99.9% of the songs I play on it, its just these 2 songs. I'm going to try loading the song into garageband and see if I can tweak the EQ from there.

This may sound dumb, but have you tried the 2 pieces with good headphones to make sure? It just seems weird that 2 songs would sound like crap while the rest of the album sounding balanced...?

I think he's saying that other songs(from different albums) sound fine. But the songs on this album are not to his liking.

 

[BD2003]

Hate to be captain obvious but, umm...try turning up the bass?

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: Zeppelin2282
Source material is perfectly fine. The system sounds amazing with 99.9% of the songs I play on it, its just these 2 songs. I'm going to try loading the song into garageband and see if I can tweak the EQ from there.

Sounds like a crappy recording then or maybe they didn't want heavy bass.

If you really want to change what the artist wanted then use your tone controls or EQ.

 

[hans030390]

Make the bass sounds with your mouth!

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: Zeppelin2282
Source material is perfectly fine. The system sounds amazing with 99.9% of the songs I play on it, its just these 2 songs. I'm going to try loading the song into garageband and see if I can tweak the EQ from there.

Sounds like a crappy recording then or maybe they didn't want heavy bass.

If you really want to change what the artist wanted then use your tone controls or EQ.

Agreed. I always stick with the way the recording was made. The closer to that I can get, the better. However, most people set their bass more than 15dB higher than it should be. If that's what they like that's fine. However, most don't even realize they have it set way too high.

 

[Mr. Lennon]

Originally posted by: PurdueRy

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: Zeppelin2282
Source material is perfectly fine. The system sounds amazing with 99.9% of the songs I play on it, its just these 2 songs. I'm going to try loading the song into garageband and see if I can tweak the EQ from there.

Sounds like a crappy recording then or maybe they didn't want heavy bass.

If you really want to change what the artist wanted then use your tone controls or EQ.

Agreed. I always stick with the way the recording was made. The closer to that I can get, the better. However, most people set their bass more than 15dB higher than it should be. If that's what they like that's fine. However, most don't even realize they have it set way too high.

I agree. I have an equal amount of bass set in my car. I hate stepping into some of my friends cars where all I can hear is the damn bass. I know the artist probably wanted to keep the track like that, but it seriously sounds like a tin can when these 2 songs play. I just want to add a little more bass so the bass speaker actually picks up the low frequencies. Check out these songs on myspace if you really want to hear what I'm talking about.