Playing Bass through Guitar Rig 3

FatBoy

As some of you are aware, I have recently made the switch to Guitar Rig 3. I see it has a couple of bass amps and stuff in there as well. I'd like to fiddle around on bass using GR 3 but my problem is with the output. I tried briefly to play using my monitors or headphones as output but neither of these seem to like the low end.

Do I need to get a bass cab or something or is there a cheap and cheerful way of getting decent tone out of this without blowing up my monitors?

AlanRatcliffe

Basically your speakers need to be able to handle the frequencies you are throwing at them and playing bass through monitors is usually a bit of a problem unless they are designed to handle low, loud signals. Mostly, you're not going to be playing too loud for recording, but if you're trying to jam at volume... get a dedicated bass amp.

Either upgrading monitors to bigger more powerful ones is best, but you can also add a sub on to your existing system to help. What monitors are you using?

FatBoy

Hi, ah ok thanks. I'm using Yamaha HS 50 M's, speakers are rather small so I doubt that they cut it. If I get a sub, does that mean that the monitors don't handle low frequencies at all because it's all going to the sub, or will the sub just make it louder? Just worried about blowing the monitor speakers here.

AlanRatcliffe

Subs have crossovers built in so that they handle all of the bass below a certain frequency and pass only the higher frequencies to your monitors.

FatBoy

Eish had a look now and it's about 6K for the sub ?

Can one get "bass headphones" that's worth it? My current plan is to use GR3 for practise / experimenting and then once I know exactly what I want getting some gigging gear. So I don't want to spend too much cash on gear that might get replaced anyway.

AlanRatcliffe

Fritz Brand wrote: Eish had a look now and it's about 6K for the sub ?

The KRK Rokit subs show up reasonably priced on Gumtree from time to time. You just have to keep your eyes peeled.

Can one get "bass headphones" that's worth it?

Not in my experience.

FatBoy

So are you saying you can use any sub with any pair of monitors? I would have thought you'd need to use the same model / series...

AlanRatcliffe

Yes you can use different brands as long as they are similar quality and you balance the volume between them. The sub handles the lowest part of the frequency spectrum and passes the rest off to the nearfields to handle, so they don't interfere with one another - they are each doing different jobs.

Having a sub - any sub - also improves your sound quality as your main speakers don't have to try and reproduce everything at the same time. A better sub is going to improve things more than a low quality one and a really crappy one will affect your sound quality when used to supplement a pair of high quality speakers.

FatBoy

Ok cool thanks man, the bass is a bit lacking on my monitors in any case. *Adds sub to GAS list*