Could've add so many more tools lol, but then the video would've been an hour long.

@@artfxdnb i think its perfect how u did this. Im learning sound design by myself and here i got some important extra information, thank u very much 🙏

@@artfxdnb do you know if tone Boosters multiband compressor is a good alternative to Fabfilter for this purpose? I can’t afford ProMB unfortunately but Tone Boosters has all the same features as far as I can tell. I’m not sure about the phase issue though.

literally same ahahah

Many more coming!

That's is true, when people go for Disperser they go for that specific effect. OTT however, is most often used by people to bring out details in the high frequencies, since that is what OTT does most (next to the shift in phase). However, I very rarely see people actually addressing how to deal with that shift in phase or what that means for their mix down the line. OTT's task is not to phase shift, but to do heavy compression (hence the name), so if there is a way to do it with less of a phase shift, wouldn't that then be preferable?

@@artfxdnb i agree people should definitely know about the phase shift but i think the phase shift adds to the character of the ott. if you want to preserve phase, dont use ott for sure. but that snappy character is part of the ott sound

@@marscrasher What people most often like about OTT is also the thing that is most audible, it's the very aggressive +30dB upwards compression that brings out a lot of detail and artifacts from the sound. That is the effect that OTT is so well known for and you can easily achieve that same effect without the phase shift with for instance Pro-MB. I mean go on as much as you want, but I don't see a phase shift that gives me issues down the line as a thing that 'adds character', it's more cumbersome than anything else tbh. If I want character I'll run my sound through some analog gear or through some emulations of analog gear.

@@artfxdnb i respect your decision. the character im on about isnt analogue character im referring to the all-passed effect that ott adds along with the upwards compression. if you just want the upwards compression then yes dont use ott. but the all-passed sound comes from the phase shift

@@marscrasher Yeah sure if that is what you are looking for then go for it, but I rarely find that I need that kind of sound and find it often does more harm than good in most cases. Allpass filters can be cool, but I would use them for really specific purposes (which are quite rare).

You're welcome mate!

breaking the law, breaking the law!

A lot of pro producers use ott just sayin..if ur bass sounds good with ott, thank ur bass sounds good with ott :)

@@benishark Lmao I was joking. As a newbie producer, I like to use OTT a lot on many basses. It feels like magic to me and I find it extremely helpful to give coherence to drops. Obviously I know the downsides of it, so I always use an external subbass and never use it with 100% drive but still, as a guy who is in his first steps I find myself comfortable with it

Only real chads like us use it on the master 😎😎😎

"just on the master" lolz

bro 3 ist just the absolute minimum. I always have at least 100 on the whole song in the end. Also 3 on the master. and then after exporting you master the mastered song with endless OTTs. In the end everything is drowning in OTT.

@@Fabi-es1xy Have to respect a man that plays it safe, haha!

well it sucks for some things and is good for others. say, you're experimenting with a sound, throwing ott's, distortions and filters on it and the result is some great neurofunk wub-wubs. and you don't really care about the phase shifting messing up your stuff because through this phase shifting you've achieved the desired sound.

@@arrtemfly Mehh I don't agree with that, that phase shift is by no means needed for Neurofunk sounds. Phasing caused by detuning is though, but that is a dynamic kind of phasing that modulates over time, the phase offset by OTT (or most multiband tools) is just purely static, and it's different for the individual frequency bands as well. That is a potential problem, it offsets high frequencies from the low and mid frequencies, making it harder to actually mix it properly. When it comes to loudness, having the high frequencies saturated into the right area of your bass for instance is very important to get it loud, by putting OTT on something you destroy that balance and thus you are kinda sacrificing loudness that way.

@@artfxdnb okay. i mentioned neurofunk because it was the first thing that came to mind with regards to using ott in sound design. i understand your point.

​@@artfxdnb To solve this problem why don't you just turn off the other two bands on OTT , because all you done in PRO MB is use only one band, so your only going to get phase shift happen in one place. Your always going to get some phase shift with multi-band processing even with a natural phase mode. EDIT: Actually I take back my comment. You are right. The phase shift definitely alters the waveform drastically compared to the same amount of bands in PRO MB. XD

@@itikus5114 I was just gonna type my answer but then I saw your edit haha.

If you put voxengo (free spectrum analyser) on mid/side mode, you can actually see them both on the same window ! It saves some space =)

Yeah EQ changes phase too but it really depends on the settings you use, thus you can minimize the effect or easily work around it. OTT does a much more aggressive phase shift and does it all the time, with no real way to control it (except for on the Ableton OTT because then you can change the crossovers between the bands). I rarely use OTT, the times I did in recent streams I was mostly just testing things with it in preparation for this video. Before only a few weeks ago, I would very rarely use OTT to begin with. So yeah, I would probably grab Pro-MB instead, it gives me more control and I can dial in exactly what I need, without getting any extra unwanted artifacts.

​@@artfxdnb Thanks for the detailed answer. It will be interesting to check how Multipass from kHS changes the phase with factory preset OTT there. I heard many times, that Multipass is doing it very insignificantly, but never tested it. Their description on site sounds like "leaving the phase as minimally harmed as possible". If you checked it already ART, pls let us know your opinion :)

​@@artfxdnb Just for the rescue of the Vital comp: it has a high band mode, too. Thus, the phase shift can be avoided here as well. 😅

@@mahoney666 I know, I never discarded the Vital compressor, just that the multiband mode itself is not really ideal for most sounds. The high band is better, but because you don't have control over the crossover frequency it really depends on the sound you run through it. If the sound in question just so happens to have a lot of activity around the frequency that is the crossover between the bands, then even the High Band setting will introduce a massive phase shift, but if the crossover is in a position with less activity on the frequency spectrum it will introduce less of a phase shift. Ideally you want to have control over the crossover frequencies so you can 'tune' them to whatever sound you put the compression on.

Yeah I saw that, I'll try keep it in mind. The thing is that the stream in question I had no plan going into it, so the title reflects that. If I would be doing a planned Halftime stream then I would probably put that in the title. To me Halftime is just another subgenre of Drum & Bass though, hence why I like to just group it all under the name Drum & Bass. Finally, applying information about Halftime to Drum & Bass and vice versa shouldn't be that hard, the only thing that really differentiates Halftime from Drum & Bass is the tempo the drums are playing at.

@@artfxdnb Thanks for the response. Yes, we all agree that Halftime is a sub-genre of Drum & Bass. However, that difference is worth noting. Halftime & Drum & Bass may share similar principles, however, they don't sound the same because of the Tempo, which has implications for the culture. I come from Drum & Bass, Dubstep and Hip Hop, and all these genres are derivatives of something else, and I think it's worth highlighting. As far as the stream in question, I did note that you were just jamming, and whatever you came out with was what it was. That's why I suggested just a 'Playlist', which would come after the publishing of the video. And I'm hoping this doesn't impact your flow or anything. I would really appreciate an easier way to find the Halftime stuff without going through so so much uptempo Drum & Bass. It's also your channel, so you could do what you wish. It's just a suggestion from 1 follower. Thanks for responding. You are doing great work.

Not really, by replacing the sub you are not fixing the high frequencies that got shifted in phase a different amount than your sub bass, and thus you can replace the sub, but that won't fix that phase offset in the highs.

It's not the same but it's similar. Nova is a dynamic EQ while Pro-MB is a compressor. Pro-MB will alter the level by increasing or decreasing the dynamic range, while Nova will simply cut and boost frequencies like an EQ always does. The results can be similar though.

@@artfxdnb After testing, it did boost in the exact same area as Pro-MB, but definitely not as heavily. Still WAY cleaner than OTT. This specific video was 100x more effective at communicating "why", and not just how. I greatly appreciate you sharing your knowledge in such a understandable way.

High passing the distorted OTT bass and adding a separate sub is not fixing the phase shift unless you also manually delay the high frequencies until they are back in phase again with the new sub.

I would recommend to not put Multiband Dynamics on your master at all, it will shift the phases of the bands around throwing everything in your track off, which is the last you want to do on your master.

@@artfxdnb Yeah I have noticed it while experminenting, thx for the quick answer!

Totally, that is very correct. Phase first of all is way more important in the low frequencies than in the higher frequencies due to the length of the cycles the waveform has at lower frequencies. Second that highpass filter, unless it's linear phase, will change the phase around the cutoff frequency. This causes both a shift in phase plus often an increase in volume as well. I find this also depends a lot on the type of highpass filter used, a 12dB per octave filter will preserve the phase more than a 48dB per octave filter.

TDR nova is free

The Patreon has only just launched! Every month I will add more stuff to it, I already added a Vital preset pack, a few individual presets and a pack of noises to use in the Serum/Vital noise oscillator. More stuff coming later.

@@artfxdnb I know man. But would be cool if you have a few go to/ premade Ableton racks to get a few on there. Just saying. Thanks.

@@phantom_him I get ya, but I can't launch a Patreon and then post 15 different things on it at once, and then have nothing to post the months after it because I posted everything at once... Like I said, every month I will add new things to Patreon and I need time to make the things I post on there. Don't worry, there will be other presets, but I would have to make them first before I can share them.

True, but Pro-MB also has a 'linear phase' mode and a 'dynamic phase' mode, which perform way better than the default 'minimum phase' mode. They have their own drawbacks like added latency and potential "pre-ringing", but those modes are there for the sole reason of doing a band split without affecting the phase as much as a regular band split would do.

@@artfxdnb i need to buy fabfilter..

Because it has specific phase accurate and linear phase modes who's purpose it is to be less destructive to the phase.

Nobody said it is always a problem, but depending on the use case it can be. I also did a follow up video which goes into it even more.

Yea, he could have at least mentioned others, like that Maximus can do the same

I mean I am going to mention what I use, which in this case is Pro-MB. I do have Maximus, but hardly use it so I don't know how well it behaves for doing this in regards to phase.

@@artfxdnb you have to turn on Linear Phase mode manually but it works

It's not always a problem though, with sound design I wouldn't care when it does weird stuff to the phase, but when mixing I would.

Both sounds slightly different, also not everybody uses Ableton so I decided to demonstrate it with not only the native Ableton OTT but also with the Xfer one.

I could try making an OTT equivalent preset for Pro-MB 😄

There is no right or wrong way to do things, they are all tools. What matters is the context. You can perfectly fine use the sub that is part of the sound if that sub sounds good. Same with sidechain, if you want to create space there are multiple ways of doing that, one is not better than the other.

Sure mate, you do realize both have done loads of production-related content and I haven't seen them drop 3 or 4 OTTs on the same bass in any of those. Mefjus has done production videos, in one of them he had a huge project and showed a full list of all the instances of plugins in the project, OTT wasn't one of them. I do also know Martijn from Noisia talked about the effect in an interview one day, but irrc he was saying how he sometimes uses it, but how Nik and Thijs don't like that rofl. So what did you say again?

@@artfxdnb Mefjus done a 1h30 masterclass few months ago, he showed how he makes few of his basses, and majority of the time, there is an OTT on serum, + 1 or 2 more on the Cubase effect rack ^^ Nik also use the OTT inside Serum on his Patreon videos. I can also talk about Emperor, OTT everywhere on his Patreon tracks breakdown. Synergy.. Same. So i say it again : Best producers in the game use OTT everytime :D But for sure they know the issue it can cause. Oh, and what about Skrillex ? :D

@@artfxdnb Also, who fucking care about phase shifting if it's on the process of the sound you are making ? Generally, you check all the phase issues when the track is quit done. OTT is like cuting low frequencies with a fast curve or using linear EQing : You know it can cause damages, but take consideration of them, and everything gonna be fine. If you KNOW what you are doing, OTT is wonderful. If you put it in a stupid way without knowing the effect, yeah, for sure, you are going in the wrong direction.

@@bookingbooking2017 Well isn't that what this video is about? It shows the issues OTT has and what to look out for, which is a thing many producers are not aware of (and in that case I'm not talking about the big names). People like Mefjus or Noisia are probably well aware of the phase shift and have learned to work around it, that is different from let's say your average Riddim producer who just throws OTT on anything because he saw Virtual Riot do it (just to give an example). You already said it yourself as well, they are probably well aware of the issues it causes, hence why they are able to work with it in a way that minimizes those issues, but to do that, you first have to understand what OTT is really doing under the hood. I don't watch their Patreon content, so don't know what's in those.

@@artfxdnb For this point, i'm 100% with you dude ! My first comment was for Fox Stevenson, the way he talk and think "i'm better than you because i don't use OTT", it's why i said, "well, better producer than you use it, so learn from the masters and STFO :D" It wasn't for you, it was for him !

Not really and the reason why is fairly simple: the frequency split in OTT happens separately from the compression itself. The "dry/wet" (which isn't actually a dry/wet but an "amount" control (called depth in the case of Xfer), does not morph from a dry signal into a wet signal, what it really does is that it changes the compression ratio and 0% equals a ratio of 1, which means in simple terms, you don't get any compression. What this amount/depth knob does not affect though is the phase shift, because that phase shift has already been introduced into our signal by the frequency split, not by the compressor. This is the same reason why the threshold will not affect the phase shift either, or why the compressor time also has no effect on it. All these parameters you are talking about are affecting the compression itself, but the frequency split (which is done using filters and thus causes the phase shift) happens before the audio even reaches the compression stage. The compressors on the individual bands are just compressing or expanding the already phase-shifted frequency band and thus affect its dynamics, but not its phase.

TDR Nova is a good dynamic EQ which has a built in compressor mode, however there are some major differences. For instance, TDR Nova does only downward compression, no upwards compression, and it's that upwards compression that OTT is so well known for. It also doesn't do linear phase like Pro-MB does, so when we are talking about preserving phase like in this video, TDR Nova won't help you achieve that. Don't get me wrong, it's a good dynamic EQ but it lacks the features we need to recreate the OTT effect more phase accurately.

@@artfxdnb Thanks for the advice 👌

Great way to instantly fuck up your kick and sub phase correlation

No clue, but if he does then oh boy... Like OTT on single sounds can be fine as long as you are aware of the phase shift and make sure it doesn't cancel things out after adding OTT, but putting it on your master?! Why would you even do that I wonder? It completely throws off the phase of your low end compared to the mids and highs which is the last thing I would want to do to my tune after I have crafted my perfect mixdown. Plus, if he uses it on his master for the compression it adds, then again I don't get why he would grab OTT and not a compressor and frequency split that doesn't alter the phase but only adds the compression. So yeah, long story short, no clue why he does that. For somebody who likes to get as technical as Joel, you would assume he tries to minimize phase issues as much as possible when he gets to the master of his tune.

I think you might have to read the Pro-MB manual a bit better, straight from the manual: _"Using Compress mode in combination with a positive gain does the opposite of normal compression: instead of reducing peaks above the threshold, it adds gain as soon as the level drops below the threshold. So this reduces the dynamic range from the noise floor up instead of from the peaks down."_ What you are saying is incorrect, you don't need to switch to expand mode for upwards compression, it's the RANGE knob that controls if you do upwards or downwards compression. With a negative range setting, anything going over the threshold will be brought down. With a positive range value, everything below the threshold will be brought up. If you switch to expand mode and have a negative range value, it will attenuate the signal when you go below the threshold. If you use a positive range value in expand mode, it will attenuate the signal when going over the threshold. So no, you are not right and in this video I am using upwards compression, the manual of the plugin describes it clearly. Also, coming back at what you said about the crossovers, that is also not entirely correct. Pro-MB does the band splits cleaner than the regular OTT does, OTT actually shifts the high frequencies around in phase due to the high crossover, the low crossover shifts the sub in phase (and both the low and high crossover also affect the phase of the mids). Pro-MB doesn't do that or at least to a much lesser extend, depending on the settings. Plus by switching the modes to some of the more phase correct modes you can make it not affect the phase at all, even when having crossovers in the low end. I never claimed that Pro-MB is the same as OTT, but what I mean is that it can do all the things OTT can do, but more controlled. You can add just the exact thing you need without all the other extras that the regular OTT would add. I stated pretty clearly in the video what OTT does, so it should be pretty obvious I'm well aware of it and how to recreate that in Pro-MB, but that was not the topic of this video, this was a video showing the issues that the regular OTT has. Finally I want to correct that last sentence as well, because again you are plain wrong: OTT splits the incoming audio into 3 frequency bands using 24dB per octave buttersworth lowpass and highpass filters, this is why it creates the recognizable phase shift (just like many other multiband plugins do). Note, the filtering is done first, before the signal hits any compression. Then after the filtering has been done and the frequency bands have been created, that's when it applies compression. So the lows, the mids and the highs all have their own compressor with it's own settings. It's impossible that the compression on the high frequencies is affected by the lows, because at the point the high frequencies hit the compressor the lows and mids are filtered out of that band and thus they are not hitting that compressor. The low compressor reacts to the lows, the mid compressor to the mids and the high compressor to the highs, then after that it's summed back together. I appreciate your comment, but please get it right before accusing me of not knowing what I'm doing.

Why does it have to be one or the other? What if I use both my ears and an oscilloscope to double check for issues?