We’ve recently been using Waves Renaissance Bass and we’re quite impressed. We think it’s one of the best tools out there for making your bass fuller. You can take a mid to low bass sound and essentially morph it into one with a deep low end. The plugin uses psycho-acoustics to determine related harmonics. These harmonics are combined with the original signal creating the effect of deeper frequencies.
Easy to Use, Yet Powerful!
Ren Bass has four main controls, In/Out, Intensity, Frequency, and Gain. These four controls offer a huge amount of control, with detailed ability to tune the added harmonics. You can also remove the input signal and have it act as a carrier for the harmonics which is also a highly useful feature.
The included presets are awesome starting points for thickening your bass. We liked the PA Default, Small Speaker Prep, and Dave Pensado ones. It’s spectacular how capable this simple plugin is. Always start by adjusting the frequency first so you can dial in the harmonics before adjusting the intensity of the effect. However, this effect did sound good sometimes on low voices and instruments. We’ve also read quite a bit online about people using Ren Bass for other purposes than bass. We recommend keeping your “intensity” setting below +2dB for a clean effect. Make sure your sub is in mono so it really punches through!
We haven’t tried the more expensive MaxxBass yet. However, Ren Bass has proven useful in a variety of genres and sounds especially good on kicks, 808s, and electric bass. Waves Renaissance Bass is extremely affordable at the moment (only $29 dollars). It also sounds great, like most Waves plugins. MaxxBass seems to offer more control on the other hand. We expect to try that plugin soon as well!
We’re always looking for new plugins and hardware to review – please leave us a comment on Facebook if you have any suggestions!
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