Baby Audio SubCulture

Baby Audio’s take on bass enhancement is both sophisticated and versatile.

Baby Audio’s plug‑ins might tackle some common problems, but they all seem to take a slightly different approach from the competition and their latest release, SubCulture, fits that pattern. Yes, there are a number of other ‘bass enhancement’ plug‑ins out there but, featuring three distinct engines that each include pitch tracking to optimise their processing, a combination of saturation, compression, EQ and limiting, and some very helpful visual feedback as you dial the processing in, SubCulture is both a flexible and a powerful tool.

Bass On Track

SubCulture is designed to process a monophonic (ie. single note at a time, not chords) audio source, and while the obvious candidates for treatment are bass instruments (bass guitar or mono bass synths, for example), the supplied presets encourage you to explore well beyond that, with options for drums, guitars, synths, vocals and effects. VST, VST3, AU and AAX plug‑in formats are all supported.

The GUI is divided horizontally into three main sections. The upper toolbar accesses Global Settings, the Pitch Detection configuration, the Preset browser and the usual undo/redo buttons. Below, a display provides a real‑time frequency spectrum of the audio signal. The dry signal is shown in the background, while the content added by SubCulture is highlighted in the foreground. You also get a real‑time display of the fundamental pitch that’s detected by the plug‑in, and if you hover your mouse over one of the three modules there’s visual feedback on the specific frequency range that that module is acting on, and how it tracks the incoming signal’s pitch.

The lower half of the GUI contains the three bass enhancement modules, called Sub Layer, Root Boost and Resonance. These are on the left, while on the right you have access to the Saturation, Compression and Output sections. The last of those includes controls for a three‑band EQ, the wet/dry balance, a high‑pass filter, input/output gain and, helpfully, an Auto gain button. That last one adjusts the output level to match the input signal, so that your ears aren’t tricked by any loudness being added, and the processing won’t impact on any threshold‑based plug‑ins further downstream in your signal chain.

In use in Cubase, SubCulture added 46ms latency at the default 5ms look‑ahead setting, but you can adjust that and, at the cost of a little increase in CPU usage, choose a low‑latency mode in the main Settings panel. So SubCulture could be used while tracking if required, and possibly even when performing live.

Sub, Root &...