Waves Audio Submarine User Guide

Waves Submarine

User Guide

Subharmonics Generator

2

Introduction

Waves Submarine is a plugin that enables you to add clean, natural sub-bass content to a signal. It generates subs

that are one octave and two octaves lower than the input signal. These generated sub signals can be controlled

further before they are mixed with the original signal or sent straight to the LFE buss. You can create bone-rattling

subs that highlight the low end of an instrument or use Submarine with a light touch to subtly enhance a sound.

Submarine is not an EQ; it doesn’t increase the gain of existing frequencies. Instead, it exploits the power of an

exclusive Waves processing tool, Organic ReSynthesis (ORS), to generate flawless subs. ORS breaks down an

input signal to its core characteristics: carrier, pitch, formant, and envelope. Processing is built on these four

characteristics, not on the input signal. This enables Submarine to generate minus-one-octave and minus-two-

octave subs without compromising sound quality.

Standard FFT-based pitch or formant-tuning processors are often not as effective or natural sounding since they rely

on formant shifting and resampling, which can result in artifacts.

Getting Started

Submarine is very easy to use and its interface is quite intuitive. You can likely run Submarine without reading about

it. We nonetheless suggest that you look over the next few pages, just to make sure that you know what does what.

There’s one thing that’s really important: levels. Make sure that the input level leaves some room for processing.

Plugin input level is controlled in the DAW. Adding sub frequencies will likely increase the overall signal level, so

lower the output control as needed in order to return the signal to the DAW at an appropriate level.

Components

There are two Submarine components: mono and stereo. Their interfaces are identical, aside from the number of

channels.

Submarine / User Guide

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Subs Effects

Output Controls

Subs Generator

Using Submarine

Using Submarine means controlling three things: sub generator, effects, and output.

To get started, insert Submarine on a DAW channel. Then follow these steps, in this order:

Define the Range of frequencies from which you want to generate subs.

Select Sub generator(s) and set levels.

Set Drive and Dynamics to color the sound of the subs and to help the subs “sit” in the mix.

Set Wet/Dry mix and Output level.

Submarine / User Guide