Best way to bass boost with Audacity for every device

Hello,
I have recently subscribed to this forum because I have a problem with bass boosting songs. I point out I am not a mother tongue, so I am sorry for any mistakes. I am not even an expert in sound. I used to bass boost songs with my Android smartphone. It sounded incredibly perfect both on my smartphone and my Ipad Air. The first time I listened a song on my Hp laptop, I was very disappointed! The bass sounded much less powerfull and the kicks were not as defined. I though I was doing something wrong or that my laptop had very bad quality speakers. I tried using Audacity. The equalization settings I used to use look very bizarre if you compare them with Audacity ones. I have followed Youtube tutorials, but I have never felt satisfied with the results. The basses get too distorted and unpleasant. What I am looking for is a way to raise the bass without too much distortion (I like slight defined distortions that highlight the beats) and without lowering the voice. I tried in so many ways to get what I want, but I am never satisfied. What I liked about the first settings I used is that they made the kick pretty loud. Is there a way to bass boost songs for every device respecting the criteria I listed above? I can share my first equalization settings, but I don’t know how to add an attachment.

Thank you for your patience

Bass boost settings in a phone are a part of the playback/speaker/headphone system, not the music file system. I use them to change between different headphones when I go walking. Audacity has no way to do that. All we can do is change the music file before the phone gets to it. That and Audacity will not apply corrections and filters in real time.

Unless you played it yourself, most music is created to be as loud as possible without damage (and sometimes even with damage). That means there’s no room to pump the bass (or any musical tones) without overload and clipping distortion. The digital system assigns numbers to each musical tone. If you make the music too loud, the system runs out of numbers.

Once the laptop turns the digital music into sound, the volume is only limited by the power of the laptop. Or sound system. I have done a simple club dance with a crusher sound system in a large room…and my iPod. The iPod kept the digital sound undistorted and the analog music sound system moved your shirt and pants.

Most laptops I ever used had tone and music effects buried in the control system. Are you sure your laptop doesn’t have controls for this?

I got burned with a laptop under quality testing where someone left the musical tone boost controls running and didn’t tell me.

Koz

Kozikowski, thank you for answering.
What I would like to get is a distortion that highlights the beats without it to be unpleasant or too strong (at least for an average listener). I don’t want to lower the voice. The equalization setting I used had peaks at 250 hz and 1800 hz and frequences between 2000 and 400 were lowered. When I learnt about clipping, I realized that that eq may introduce it and that’s not that good. Besides, it is that not effective on my computer. Is there a way to add bass so that it can be heard on every device? I am not looking for the best bass on just one device but on every device, even if this means it is not the best bass for a particular device.

Is there a way to add bass so that it can be heard on every device? I am not looking for the best bass on just one device but on every device, even if this means it is not the best bass for a particular device.

With Audacity, you can modify your music files to boost the bass (or to apply a variety of effects). You can adjust the bass with the Equalizer effect or the Bass And Treble effect.

Of course, if you boost the bass in the file it’s going to have more bass wherever it’s played.

And of course, it’s best to modify a copy of your music files.

However, as you know there is a digital upper limit of 0dB. (Your digital-to-analog converter is hard-limited to 0dB as are WAV files and CDs.) And, most commercial releases are already maximized (normalized) so usually you cannot boost the bass (or anything else) without clipping. You can however, boost the bass and then use the Amplify or Normalize effect to bring down the levels to below clipping before you export. In effect, you are turning-down everything except the bass. If you have an external amplifier or amplified speakers you can turn up the analog volume so that the bass actually is louder.

What I would like to get is a distortion that highlights the beats without it to be unpleasant or too strong (at least for an average listener).

… When I learnt about clipping, I realized that that eq may introduce it and that’s not that good.

The distortion you hear when you boost the bass is clipping. If you like a little distortion, that’s fine, it’s YOUR music for YOUR listening pleasure! Guitar players often like distortion, but in that case it’s usually “soft clipping” and it’s only the guitars so the vocals & other instruments remain clean. Tube amplifiers are often preferred by guitar players because of how they sound when overdriven.

Yes, distortion is considered “bad” because the concept of high-fidelity is to faithfully reproduce the sound. In the old says, that would have been the sound of live acoustic instruments. With modern recordings high-fidelity means reproducing what’s heard in the recording/mixing studio. Ideally, there should be enough bass on the recording and your speakers would be capable of reproducing that bass accurately.

People who are into high fidelity (or audiophiles) will use EQ to adjust the playback system for accuracy (mostly correcting for speakers and room acoustics). Then, they may occasionally use EQ to “fix-up” an old or poorly made recording. Although, most “audiophiles” are going to feel guilty if they use EQ . )

I don’t want to lower the voice. The equalization setting I used had peaks at 250 hz and 1800 hz

I’d say 250 Hz is “mid bass”. It’s not deep bass and it’s getting into he male vocal range. If you listen to an 1800Hz tone, you’d probably perceive/describe it as “high pitched”, although it is (logarithmically) in the mid-range.

…This isn’t necessary because you should EQ by-ear to whatever sounds good to you, but just for fun you can use Generate → Tone → Sine and make a 250Hz or 1800Hz pure tone, or any other frequency you wish just to see what it sounds like. (Note that a pure-constant tone is going to sound a lot louder than music at the same peak level.

Probably the latter. I’ve never seen a laptop with good bass response from its built-in speakers - there is just not enough room in a laptop for big enough speakers. You can’t get good bass from tiny speakers.

In regard to DVDdoug’s point about some clipping being OK with certain genres of music and instruments used the linked thread below will show a screenshot of a commercially released CD file showing clipped full sounding bass kicks that sound great on all my devices including large box speaker home stereo system without subs, my subwoofer equipped car audio system and my Sony MDR V6 headphones connected to my Mac Mini.

https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/sound-clipping-whilst-recording-track-mix-within-guidance/45068/1

And as been said you need to edit the bass vs vocals by ear and then listen on all your devices to see if it sounds right.

I recently bass boosted some Rhino remastered Chicago V album CD files in Audacity where the bass sounded great on my Sony headphones adding nearly 12db to the 50Hz region but not the rest because I wanted to preserve the clarity in the vocal. Played the saved and burned to CD aiff file on my sub equipped car audio system and got these bomb sounds in my trunk where I had to reduce the bass EQ by…take a guess… 12db to keep it from damaging my subs. I didn’t hear this on my headphones. Just an FYI warning. I’m back at the drawing board on what to do to make Chicago sound like a bigger than life big band as they really are instead of a small band like they’ve always sounded since the '70’s.