With practice, you’ll know when a sound works better being processed to oblivion, and when to pull back and do something more subtle that is more like an enhancing nudge rather than a punch in the face. We’ll be covering the best multi-effects plugins at the end of this series, by which time you will hopefully have gained a greater understanding of just how powerful they can be when you forego the presets and dive into sculpting your own multi-effect combinations. This in turn will help you in developing your signature sound. Once you understand how powerful certain combinations of effects can be - or similarly, the layering together of separate sounds - not only do you have a massive advantage in your ability to choose the best tools to achieve what you want quickly, even with relatively “limited” individual plugin processors, but you’ll have a deeper appreciation for those celebrated and popular multi-effects that achieve their distinctive sounds through combining processors, and a much greater understanding of how they are doing what they do - which will allow you to get the most out of their potential, and the most bang for your buck. As noted above, the magic happens when you artfully combine effects and sounds into custom chains and layers.Part 10 – Granular Synthesis & Sample Processing.Part 8 – Step Sequencers & Envelope Generators.We’ll start with delay below, but let’s first go over a few useful tips that apply to any sound design situation.Īnd don’t forget to check out the other parts in the series: But it’s a good way of dividing up a very large field, enough that you can browse easily and make sense of all the best options available, without it being too chaotic!
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Note: The categories are admittedly fairly arbitrary in places, and many of the plugins featured could belong to two or more categories.
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We’ll be covering a single aspect of sound design in each post, such as modulation effects, layering, creative distortion, panning and stereo effects and so on, and include a rundown of some of the best plugins for those tasks for you to check out and add to your personal toolbox.Ī note on the plugin selections: I tried to steer clear of plugins which are great but have been discussed a lot already, usually in the context of conventional mixing, in favour of those processors that are still very high quality but also offer something a little different: a certain unusual approach or GUI, or that extra flourish of weirdness or combined effects that give it a certain bite or character. My hope is that by focusing on each potential process one at a time, you can build up a repertoire of techniques and tools to mix and match however you want, and create a methodology and some workflows that work best for you and your own style.
#Fabfilter timeless 3 vs valhalla delay series
In this new series of posts on sound design, we’ll break down 10 broad techniques or processing steps that you can think about when approaching your sonic sculpting in any kind of sound design project, with plenty of tips and suggested plugins to try them out with along the way. In fact, once you get your head around these few key processing options, and even more importantly, how they can be stacked or chained together in different combinations, you can leverage them with a bit of practice to achieve literally any sound you might be able to imagine. This shouldn’t be felt as a constraint, though. Whether you are designing huge cinematic impacts, weird and unique layered drums kits and synth sounds, processing foley and atmos sounds to evoke imaginary sci-fi environments, or simply looking to subtly (or maybe not-so-subtly) spice up the mix of your next electronic, hip hop, rock or pop song with some really distinctive ear candy elements, there are essentially only really a handful of core ways to push, pull, mangle and otherwise transform your audio. With this in mind, we’re kicking off a new 10-part series of posts that explore essential sound design techniques, along with the very best and most cutting-edge plugins for the task in each corresponding category.
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It’s never been more important to be able to craft distinctive and original sounds if you want to make your songs and productions shine and really stand out.įortunately, there have also never been so many tools to choose from to enable you to do just that.