Try the gem, try Sphene!
HOW I MIX
To distort or not to distort?
That's the question.
For me, the answer is always "both"!
I often end up with up to 20 parallel re-amped tracks of the bass
blending together to get the right sauce for the tone I am hearing in my mind.
Crazy, right?
Some of the tracks are distorted, some of them are clean.
This is crucial for the good bass tone.
Blending the clean tone with the distorted one.
I am always searching for the right balance between my favorite re-amped tracks.
And since a song project/session can go really complicated with all those re-amping chains,
I have developed my gem plugins with Audified.
Sphene is one of them.
And Yes, it djents!
It's based on my favorite modern crunch to hiGain bass re-amping chains including
5 different amps and 5 different cabinet IRs.
So there are 25 different amp-cab combinations.
More than enough.
And I tried my best to deliver a wide palette of tones you can mix and match.
Just turn the knobs and go through pre-prepared great tones only and quickly find the right tone for your song.
Or several tones you can blend together, like I usually do.
Don't be fooled.
Sphene is not a one-trick ponny.
Yes, it's hiGain bass distortion module.
But thanks to the on-board Blend control, you can turn the distortion down to a crystal clean tone.
Or you can get really good results with Blend turned down to 0% and turning the cabinet IR on.
So you can get at least 6 different clean tones with this hiGain beast.
(1 with cabinet IR turned off and 5 different cabinet IR types).
There is also the ToneSpot control which is smart 1-knob equalization.
This knob is really powerfull.
Carefully tailored for bass, ranging from fat mid-heavy tones all the way up to heavily mid-scooped tones and everything in between.
And it's not all, there are also other filters under the hood working when turning the ToneSpot knob.
If you turn the Blend down to 0%, ToneSpot control is still available.
This saved my ass several times during the mixing sessions, mostly on non-metal songs.
So with Sphene you can dial in very good clean tone suitable for Jazz, Country or Gospel with no problems.
It's way more than an extreme distortion machine.
DANGER!
When you distort the bass, you enhance this instrument so much that it can even overwhelm hiGain guitars in the mix.
I usually find myself turning the bass down because it cuts through the mix so hard!
So if you want to kill your guitar bandmate, Sphene is your tool of destruction.
Try not to make your bass sound sterile or boring or only "just a bass", let it shake the ground, let it be heard! Not just felt in the ground.
You can try Sphene plug-ins for free!
And if you will try it, please, tell me how do you like it!
Every feedback is valuable for me.
If you are interested to find more about how I mix,
check out the full video on my Youtube channel:
May the muse be with You!