Bad Bass Sound, Playback sounds weird Options

[Hugo Cole]

Hi

I've been noticing that when I record real bass parts through my Firebox into Garageband on my G5, despite sounding fine monitored through my headphones, when I play it back there's a weird and unpleasant effect that sounds vaguely like there are two basses playing, and slightly out of tune with each other. Basically totally crappy sound. It seems to happen even when I try different effects (e.g. modern rock bass, edgy bass, etc). So I just tried playing my bass through input 1 on the firebox and it sounds much better. I also tried singing through input #2 and although nothing as bad as with the bass, the sound seems somewhat weaker (?). Any ideas what the problem might be?

Thanks

Ken

[rickenbacker]

You've probably already realised that recording a live instrument at the correct tempo is the simplest way to avoid any kind of artifacts. Or, indeed, sounding like ass. But it really is.

GarageBand doesn't have Strip Silence (or something similar), unfortunately. This works very nicely in Logic Pro and now BIAS' Peak Pro 5 to chop up a recorded part so you can move any notes you bodged during recording.

Trouble is, any kind of time-stretchy thing (like Apple Loops in GB) is always going to give you less than perfect results - it comes with the territory. Tools like Melodyne and Live have specialised in perfecting the algorithms to allow us to warp audio at will and still can't always guarantee 100% artifact-free results.

I'm not being a smart-arse, but practice really does make perfect. If you can play the part - even a few bars at a time and then compile the best bits into one perfect whole - you'll be much happier with the finished recording.