Denise Audio revamps its cult bass plugin into supersized Bass XXL

Denise Audio has unveiled a supersized version of its cult Bass XL plugin, fittingly called Bass XXL.

The plugin is the first Denise Audio product to have been released since Baby Audio completed its acquisition of the company in September. The company claims that the plugin is the “be-all-end-all” bass enhancement tool and now offers a more effective way to get a thick and consistent low end.

Per a press release, Bass XXL uses a proprietary algorithm that generates additional harmonics which are actually
above the bass frequencies. This concept takes advantage of a psychoacoustic phenomenon where the brain interprets sub bass audio largely based on its harmonics more so than the lowest sounds being produced.

Consequently, even without there being any sub bass frequencies, our brains fill in the blanks and still perceive the low end as long as the proper harmonics are present. Furthermore, the plugin also does not introduce any of the phasing issues that can sometimes occur with these effects and promises to enhance bass in a way that modern earbuds and speakers are unable to do.

Denise claims Bass XXL is especially suited to “adding presence to anemic drum recordings, dynamically control inconsistent bass performances, or to elevate and refine the low end of an entire mix with surgical precision” via an “intuitive and clutter free interface”.

Users are able to dial in their target frequency manually by root note, or via MIDI control. The plugin also makes it possible to gain clinical insight into your track’s bass frequencies with a spectrogram zoomed in on just the low end frequencies.

Bass XXL also has a pre-delay feature to preserve the transient of the dry signal and a mono knob to give the flexibility of preserving a track’s stereo image. There are two other knobs too – a slope knob to shape the harmonic signal by setting the curve at which Bass XXL’s frequencies roll off, and a range knob to set how many octaves Bass XXL’s harmonics will be generated over.

Denise Audio have stressed that Bass XXL is not a sub-synth, the main difference being it derives the harmonics from the original track. It gives a more natural bass enhancement that the company says feels more like “adding extra magic” than adding another instrument.

Bass XXL is available at an introductory price of $39 and will rise to $69 when the introductory sale is over.

For more information, head to Denise Audio.