How to generate nauseating sub bass??

[Super Alex]

Personally, I prefer just the one frequency. Just my taste though, as I've definitely heard some huge subs with plenty of harmonics.

[Ekol]

The distortion would be there to throw in some more frequencies to the bass, and would serve to 'blend' the two waves together, in a sense. It would just give it some kind of character, I guess

I use the distortion 1; to give it more harmonics but most importantly 2; to make it constantly loud.

[soundslogical]

One consideration to think about is that if you use a simple sine, it will sound great on speakers with good bass extension, but if someone's listening to it on crappy laptop speakers, they will miss the whole thing. If you use a sound with more harmonics, you can hear the bass even when the speakers cut off everything below 100Hz due to the psychoacoustic principle of the missing fundamental.

Then again, there's something irresistibly smooth and pure about a sine wave that makes it my preference if I know people are going to listen to it in situations with good speakers (e.g. clubs). Think about where your music/sound fx will most often be heard.

[Super Alex]

Another technique that a LOT of people use is this. Take an 808 kick drum. Set the sample start fairly high so you don't get the noise, and only have the tail. Sample that as a wave. Pitch it up, down, all around, BAM! Sub bass.

[nineofkings]

That's just a really convoluted way to sample a low-pitched sine wave.

[Rmonik]

No - the 808 has some reallly subtly noise to it. Makes it a little bit warmer.

[petermennitirecords]

What Rmonik said, and if you leave the click on it rather than chopping it off it adds a little punch that sounds good sometimes.

[joe_cashmoney]

I usually use a subtractor with a sine wave on a single oscillator

then I'll EQ it to taste usually around 60 - 80Hz depending on the key of the song. Example in the song below.

http://soundcloud.com/joecashmunny/axiom-feat-arielle

[shroomhead1]

One consideration to think about is that if you use a simple sine, it will sound great on speakers with good bass extension, but if someone's listening to it on crappy laptop speakers, they will miss the whole thing. If you use a sound with more harmonics, you can hear the bass even when the speakers cut off everything below 100Hz due to the psychoacoustic principle of the missing fundamental.

Then again, there's something irresistibly smooth and pure about a sine wave that makes it my preference if I know people are going to listen to it in situations with good speakers (e.g. clubs). Think about where your music/sound fx will most often be heard.

Quoted for truth

I like subtle distortion on the sub so theres no gap in the frequency spectrum where I don't want it

[izotonik]

ableton saturator.