I’m planning on prepping a bunch of my favorite drum samples to use with my RYTM, and was thinking I should EQ out the bass frequencies to make layering them with the analog engines more effective.
Has anyone tried this, and have any insight/suggestions with regards to what frequency/frequencies would be best to cut at?
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Maybe obvious too but normalisation I find is key.
Not tried it yet, been very lazy, waiting for the bass width filter , pleaseeee @elektron
though its really depending on the samples your going to use, like i wouldnt cut too much out of a snare as your loose that woody sound ie (250h)z, too much cutting from hats and they will loose body, too be safe just cut out @ 80hz?, but its all depending really, the bass width filter would be bloody awesome for these boxes , ie rytm/digitone
Hi Prints !
I will let you know my way.
MACHINES (folder) :
I carefully selected some classics drum machine sample as whole kits
I have two versions of each one. Processed (where I handle dynamics with Favorite DAW chain) and Dry (as it was Recorded nothing else)
SAMPLES (folder) :
is everything one-shots Drums content & Melodical content
WAVEFORMS (folder) :
Single Cycle waveforms and Raw Synth Waveforms
LAYERING-TOOLS (Folder) :
Coming Back to your question, EQing is not the only stage of preparation… there’s also timing regarding how you layer your drums. If we take a Kick for instance you can have 2 or 3 layers.
3 Layers is maybe easier to understand.
(1) CLICK sound :
A very short (5-30ms) mid-to-high frequency click sound.
You can extract this sound from hihat, tambourine, rimshot, shaker, woodblock or another kick drum but with the bass frequencies removed. You can process that sound with reverb, reverse reverb, distortion, vocoder… everything to make it your sound signature…
(2) PUNCH sound :
A relatively short (300-600ms) low-to-mid frequency range punch sound. For this you can use a kick drum with a strong attack. You will also want to make room for the next sound (the tone) by removing the lowest frequencies of this sample. (So remove all frequencies below 30 Hz.)
(3) the TONE :
A longer (3-9 sec) sub bass tone. For this you can use a the RYTM machines. Or, you can use a sample from 808 drum machine. Or from another Kick sample and remove the mid and high frequencies. Generally we tune this element to match the key of the track. Also, you need to fade in this element over 50ms to 1 sec. If you arrange your layers this way by EQing and place the 3 elements in Timing you will make a better blending in terms of Drum Layering, you will produce a kick drum with a quick attack and lots of punch that is shortly followed by a long sub bass tone that really thumps and you can adjust that with ADSR… of course
Then, for the RYTM you will bounce CLICK and PUNCH blend together and use it with the TONE generated by RYTM own machines
EQing and Timing for other percussive elements you should deduct from my post, by opening up in audio editor and watching ADSR regarding time and nature of the Layering Elements
Think that you will benefit greatly if you cut it. I’d go as far as 400-500 hz, there aint a lot of room for all the bass pouring out of the AR, and the bassy engines don’t have a lot of stuff going on in the upeer mid range and beyond. You can always generate the body of the snare or hihats with the analog engines…
Nothing much to add other than a 24db hpf at about 100hz applied to samples will make layering a bit better, also using a hpf on the Rytm itself can scoop out a lot of low end clutter, but of course this ties up the filter so isn’t a good solution in all cases. Another point to consider is to have some samples dedicated to being used without the analog engines, filtering, driving and effecting samples using the Rytm can be great.
You’re getting a rytm mk II right? Why not do the low cutting inside rytm itself and resample the resulting sample layer? You’d be taking out the guesswork as you could hear the result before committing the resample.
Thanks for all the replies. I’m basically considering these two routes.
Most of my samples are variations of classic old-school drum sounds (i.e. processed Goldbaby 909, 808, Linndrum, DX, etc. sounds). I do have the RYTM MKII, but I think I’d rather EQ out what I know I won’t want there for sure so I don’t have to go through that filtering/resampling process everytime. I have 250 samples I could load up into Audacity all at once, and process all at once knowing exactly what frequency things were cutoff at.
It’s that 100hz I’m not sure whether or not to keep in the samples. I’m pretty sure I’d want to remove at around 400-500hz (as suggested) for sure for all the kicks. Not sure about the snares, hats, etc. though. I’m leaning towards wanting to remove that much for them as well.
I’m trying to do something similar to help mix things a little easier.
Bass drums , snare , hats etc.
Bass synth , chords , 303 etc.
Mostly doing it in ableton and resampling with multi band comoresssion etc ( not entirely sure what I’m doing )
And still being cautous once they get mangled into ‘music’.
And then also consider eq if reverb . Delays .
I played with trk1 app , some great punchy sounds from that. Great stereo separation on some of the bass drums and snares , mostly why I’m looking at stereo sample playback. Makes a massive difference.
400-500hz might remove too much of the body for toms, snares, rimshots etc, try 100hz on your kicks, 150-200hz on snares, toms, rims, and 400-500hz on hats, claps, cymbals. A 24db hpf can really scoop out a lot of clutter, maybe at times too much so you could also try a 12db, as always though it is probably a good idea to experiment as preference and other sounds in the mix will undoubtedly be factors, sometimes it can be helpful to get say an 808 sample kit and try different filter settings, load them in and play around, you might find that one specific set works great for everything you want to do or you might find that a mixture of settings is the way to go. To my mind these kind of techniques can really go a long way to defining your own sound, personally I’m not too big on layering drums unless they are ‘comped’ in this way or they can lack clarity and sound a bit ‘wooly’ or ‘flabby’ certainly a lot of drum machine sounds really shine without layering, so there is that to consider too 
Yes, such high pass might consume too much of the body of the sample but that is also a good thing, since you can design your own body with the analog machines. There is of course no preset good solution, but I’d still hipass it to bits. There’s ample room in the rytm headroom for all things non bass. And I might be mistaken, but I think the analog machines output is more defined in the sub range on mk2. Need to check some more 
maybe find a track you like and isolate the drum sounds , theyre already mixed…especially if its trap or something else that can be quite sparse sound wise.
what was your tactic to get it sound right? what kind of music are you into (and what kind of samples?). I struggle with this too.
I’m into techno and hip-hop with aggressive drums. For me, it’s necessary to layer samples with the analog engines to get the RYTM to sound the way I want, and it’s essential to prep the samples by EQing out the right amount of low-end frequencies.
It’s also very important to get the gain staging between the overdrive, master distortion, and master compressor just right. I always end up with the overdrive at about 10 or so on the kick, but much higher on the snare. The master distortion is usually set at around 20, and the master compressor has the volume maxed out with a liberal amount of makeup gain, and is about 75% wet.
I like using classic XOX drum samples; it’s important to tune them correctly, and to tweak the analog engines just right to complement them.
Great answer! thanks! i also use xox samples. Which ones do you layer and what (in your experience) settings compliments them? thanks!
I’ve been using 909 & Oberheim DX kicks layered with the Silky BD, 808 snares and claps layered with the Natural SD, and all types of hi hats layered with the metallic Hats.
After a bit of experimenting, I found the best frequencies to EQ out for me were Kicks-200 MHz, Snares/Toms/Claps-300 MHz, and 400 MHz for everything else (hats, rides, perc, etc.)
Mostly mess with the decay and tuning of the analog engines. I like using the filter subtly too sometimes. Maybe a bit of LP or Peak on kicks, HP on hats, Peak on snare.
Good stuff. Thank you.
Would you be so kind to update that original post with your findings. I’ve bookmarked it and will come back / contribute when I get back to playing with my AR.
Maybe it would be best if a mod could move these comments to that thread. They’re much more relevant there @PeterHanes
Prepping samples by cutting bass?
[Mod Edit] : moved 
I was going to say something similar.
I’ve learned from HPF on various plugins the 70-100hz is where you can clear out the mud. Then print the finished product out to a mono wav file.
Also by the time you layer another RYTM sound you may need to HPF again during your mixdown.Tracking your set should be fine but mixing is another day’s worth of thoughts. Getting to low end to sit well in the track takes a lot practice to get down. You can also ask yourself during the mix down if you should put very light compression on a low end track that takes too much prescence or drop the volume by -2db.