Boosting Bass Levels In Final Cut Audio

francheezie

Active member
Just got back from a shoot and it looks our sound guy had the bass levels turned down too much. I'm pretty sure we can fix this right in Final Cut, does anyone know which Audio filter to use to boost the bass?
 
Maybe copy the channel, and add a Low Pass filter to the copied channel, then play with the settings till it's where you want it.

Or use an EQ...

Just off the top of my head.
 
The "duplicate audio" method of boosting the gain is a BAD choice. It is unfortunately "taught" in some classes. The reason you don't want to do this has to do with phasing and noise addition. Every time you add a track you add it's noise. If your trying to boost a low signal it already has a bunch of noise so your compounding your problem. The phase issues will do strange things to your audio. This occurs when one track is shifted in very small amounts relative to it's duplicates. "But I'm keeping them together" you say. Well almost all processing will shift the audio in minute amounts. So putting EQ on the clip will also put it out of phase. FCP is "frame accurate" but DAW's are sample accurate, you can't adjust audio in FCP with enough resolution to fix phase problems (30/sec as opposed to 48,000/ sec).
There are gain plugins in FCP that can boost the gain on that clip, then EQ can help remove some of the added noise. Or you can try the Noise reduction plugin, it works pretty well on many things. If your having someone do audio post just use clip automation to boost the clip so you can hear it and let audio post do the fixing, they have better tools, better speakers and better trained ears.

Reading the original post, my answer is good info but a little off. EQ is your friend, doesn't sound like your levels are low. But be careful in adding bass in a non calibrated room. It may be your speakers that are lacking. If your sure it's not your system then EQ is probably your fix. STP has a plugin called "sub bass" that might be more effective than EQ.
 
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Just got back from a shoot and it looks our sound guy had the bass levels turned down too much. I'm pretty sure we can fix this right in Final Cut, does anyone know which Audio filter to use to boost the bass?

How did the sound guy "turn down" the bass? Was this recorded through a PA mixer or something?
 
But be careful in adding bass in a non calibrated room. It may be your speakers that are lacking.

WOW -- NO Kidding!!!!

I just about lost a $30k project when I 'trusted' my mastering engineer on a cd projct and - against his wishes took the glass master to my system and it sounded like butt!! But at least we fixed it before it went to replication!!

CaptM
 
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