BPM Matched Perfectly that bass cancels eachother out!

[baller95]

Do you guys ever find that when you guys match up the beats of songs together so perfectly that the bass cancels eachother out?? It's gets a little annoying sometimes when you're mixing and the bass slightly drops but I usually slow down one of the tracks a tiny bit so theyre not cancelling out.

[DougMore]

wouldn't it have to be an exactly opposite waveform to do that (invert-phase cancellation)?

[Marc S]

phasing happens quite a lot actually, i had it happen more often when i played trance/hard house than house music, probably because the kick samples were often less varied perhaps?

[baller95]

wouldn't it have to be an exactly opposite waveform to do that (invert-phase cancellation)?

I'm not sure, it just sounds like they're cancelling eachother out :s

[Era 7]

use the EQs?

[ilya]

wouldn't it have to be an exactly opposite waveform to do that (invert-phase cancellation)?

for a perfect cancellation, yes. but i think that as long as sounds in certain frequencies are in both the phase and its invert, some degree of cancellation still occurs.

when you're working with similar kick samples between two tracks (say two 808s with relatively close tuning) or basslines playing notes close to one another in the same octave, you'll still get some of the effect. this isn't because your beatmatching is spot on -- it's because you're in fact a little off (i think). it's a pretty minor difference (can probably be measured best in milliseconds) but the attacks on your kicks for example are slightly misaligned and are asking the speaker cone to retreat and push forward at the same time (i.e. track A's kick drum wave is going above the x-axis at the very moment track B's kick's waveform is going below the x-axis in its cycle).

the more waveforms that exist in that particular frequency range, the more likely this is going to happen. so, if you're using delay or reverb or whatever other effect that duplicates sound, you'll notice cancellation more often. you can usually fix this by nudging your track a bit or just working the EQs so that one sound is still sitting at a higher db where it's able to poke sufficiently despite parts of it being phased out.

i could be wrong but i'm pretty sure this is the basic idea behind phase cancellation.

[ChrisHynds]

use the EQs?

What ^^ he said

Ive noticed this quite a lot, but only when Im lining the two tracks up in my headphones, as soon as you eq the low end of one of the tracks its fine,

[DJNR]

use the EQs?

Or set them off phase. When this happens to me it gives me quite a few options because you can actually change the way that the kick sounds based on how far forward or how far back you set the beat.

[DJ Nutty]

Yeah I do notice this alot. Eq'ing doesn't always help completely, as the mid part of the kick still gets cancelled out. If you just slightly nudge the other one forward a tiny amount the phase cancelling often disapears and still sounds fine.

[drop1]

phasing happens quite a lot actually, i had it happen more often when i played trance/hard house than house music, probably because the kick samples were often less varied perhaps?

I found pretty much the same thing. I also noticed that it used to happen to me a lot more when I was using vinyl or.maybe it.was.just.more noticeable.