I just wrote an article on adding warmth to your synth and wanted to share it with poeple. Also wondering what you might do to get that analog sound.

To start lets define Warmth:

Warm comes from electronics and synths that have tubes in them. When you play the instrument it always sounds different and has varity because as the tubes, which is part of making the synth, warm up there are slight changes in sounds. Warmth has come to refer to dynamic changes in your synth as well as a solid fill mid range that is not over driven in the highs. Warmth also refers to a natural and analog sound.

Now lets move on to techniques for warming it up.

Adding Analog sound to your Mix

Amp Modeling is one of the simple and amazing tricks is to add warmth. Programs like Live's Amp, Native Instruments’ Guitar Rig. Also Wave's does a good job with a there guitar plugins as well. Images below of those three programs.



Ideally you can actually send your music out of a cabinet and then record it with a microphone. That adds a really nice quality and "air" to it. If you can't then these plug ins help. Giving just that touch of distortion will give your music a realistic touch.

Equalizing is another technique to give your synth a warmth. Cutting back the top end can add more mellowness. Also using a low-pass filter with a resonant peak can add a nice touch. Adding a a hump or different strong Q cuts can make it sound unique as well.



Tape Distortion can be another cheap and rad effect. By taking your synth and running it through an 8 track, tape cassette, or even VCR you can add a nice warmth. Then run it back into your DAW. If you want to get more experimental you can even record at 1/2 speed and then record back in full speed and such. Will make really cool effects.

Reverb is also something that adds a nice quality. Using a good IR Reverb can give that realistic quality. I have also seen some nice gear emulations with IR as well. Here is a list of free IR library of gear emulation http://irlibrary.org/index.php?cat=amps_preamps

Layering techniques can also be used to fill out your sound. Take one synth and maybe another synth that has a more wispy top end, or deeper low and and mix them together. I have a tutorial on Layering Drums, and the same concepts apply.

Final Touch with Compressing By adding a good compression to the mix it will mellow out any frequencies that are hitting to hard and smooth out the sound. There are tons of ways to compress, so just play around with it. A golden rule to keep in mind is: If the gain reduction meter doesn't return to zero several times a bar, you’re almost certainly using too much compression This means that the signal is being compressed all the time, and will probably sound squashed or flattened as a result. Try a higher threshold, and then higher ratio if it’s not doing enough.

Final Thoughts on Warming your Synth Sounds

By using a mixture of these techniques you can give your synths a much fuller and realistic sound. Remember at the end of the day though, what sounds good is good. Don't get to lost in what you can do, and just do the right amount to make it good and move on.

I also have an article on adding a crunch to your drums which can be applied to your synth to give it a cool quality as well.

Got any other techniques you like to use?

Thanks for putting this up cotec! Very interesting, just added to my collection of notes. I have not really used Amp and Tape distortion in my tracks, so will give that a go next time I fire up Ableton.

There are several tricks I have learned recently to warm up my sounds and phatten up my drums. Parallel Compression (NY Compression) has definitely been a useful tool, and I have been applying it to almost everything now (Perhaps a little too much now lol). Also use of saturation and distortion seems to give a nice effect for bass.

Look forward to hearing more tricks as this is something I have been trying to learn more about.

- Zeus

Excellent contribution, thank you very much.


I havent went very far with this, but for me the key is to use only the sounds that dont sound very electronic from the start of the track creation process This is just my way of producing, though. Subtle distortion tends to help the overall sound, so do the samples of random, subtle analog noise. EQing in non-orthodox ways, like you mentioned can give the instrument the holy thing called charisma.

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my little tips about this specifing a bit further in what you say are:

-About eq i think that a slight boost on the mid range frequencies is all you need to make the synth stand out of the rest of the track.

-I put around a 20% reverb with some stereo delay and cut it with a filter at the high frequencies.

-Compression i use a multiband compressor, decrease bass frequencies and boost mid like a 25% high like a 20%.

-About layering i do 2 things:

When i want to make an electronic sound such as the used by W&W Jochen MIller Ummet Ozcan, AvB etc... i put a delay before the compressor and use 3 synths in one, one playing the bass notes with a bandpass at 500hz another warm sound with eq color and a pike in the upper octaves, this works wonders, it's the technique used by Arty and Avicii for example in almost all their tracks

Haven't read through it yet, but you should definately edit the thread title, so more people will understand it's an article and not a noob asking "how to addz the warm basslines tiesto sound".

Edit: Good article. Could be a little bit longer, maybe?

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Last edited by itsamemario on Sep-08-2011 at 19:54

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Originally posted by Rodri Santos When i want to make an electronic sound such as the used by W&W Jochen MIller Ummet Ozcan, AvB etc... i put a delay before the compressor and use 3 synths in one, one playing the bass notes with a bandpass at 500hz another warm sound with eq color and a pike in the upper octaves, this works wonders, it's the technique used by Arty and Avicii for example in almost all their tracks

interesting, do you have more sources explaining this technique?

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Originally posted by PlasticSoul interesting, do you have more sources explaining this technique?

+1


Lately I've been using Pultecs and Fairchilds to add warmth and realism! Amazing what it does! Apart from that I've tried all the other techniques described except maybe the bandpass to add a special character.. thanks for that tip.

Excellent thread!

Last edited by lenieNt Force on Sep-11-2011 at 09:42

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Originally posted by cotec Tape Distortion can be another cheap and rad effect.

This is usually the first thing I do when utilising the somewhat mediocre sound of Reason's Subtractor synth. Push it through Scream4's Tape mode and you'll get a lovely warm(er), throbbing sound.

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In this track the layer is noticeable:

-Main lead is a piano (listen carefully), and it is what gives body to the sound, if you look closely it has some kind of high pitched pike in the upper octaves.

-After that comes the bass at 1:47 (and you see that follows the same pattern)

-Finally go to 3:40 to find the not so obvious part of sound.

A lot of people fail to reproduce this kind of sounds because they think it's just one special saw or something but not, it's pretty generic you just have to layer different sounds, 4 instruments in this case.

Same for Jochen Miller w&w sounds, they admit it's a layer of different sounds , get a similar lead sound and put delay before the compressor, you'll see that the sound you get is similar, if you add that extra layer they use it will sound alike.

What i'd recommend you to practice is to download the Sander van Doorn - Daisy remix pack (it's free and legal) because you have the main riff dry and wet so start tweaking the dry version and when it sounds like the wet version you'll know how to add the warmth to this kind of sounds.

humm.... got it... thanks rodri...

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