quote:

Originally posted by aNYthing Looking for opinions - read in many places a recommendation not to throw FX directly on a patch, throw it on a buss in mixdown. I got tons of patches awash in all sorts of reverbs, delays, etc. - sound great stand alone but do tend to create some mudiness in a mix. The problem is turning the FX off changes the nature of the patch, to the point where it doesn't sound as good as before, doesn't even work "naked" at times. This is especially noticeable when synths' internal fx are used, as external FX or plugins may miss a certain characteristic introduced by synth's native FX Whats your thought and what do you do?

I donlt think it;s neccessary in all cases to remove all patch FX - but the more FX per patch (and more patches) the more problems you're going to have managing them (and the mud that can come with many combinations of discrete patch FX).

The composers that I've worked with all give us their sessions with the temp track (how they like it to sound - which will have both bussed FX, patch FX etc) and the bounced dry or wet audiofiles.

We would then mix the tracks to the point it sounds like the temp (but obviously better due to the resources (hardware, software and mix/engineering expertise) we have over their composing rigs.

I'm not saying they don't keep the FX on patches for some - there's not point stripping it all away for the sake of starting from scratch but a lot of reverbs are removed, along with delays and often they don't have much compression (if any) on the tracks.

I have one EDm producer friend that makes the track with FX patched included, then takes everything off (either once they've got the sound selected before really using it in the compostion or once the track is roughly composed and mixed) and builds/recreates all the patch FX from new on bussed sends and inserts.

Personally, I do a mix or patch and aux/inserts - sometimes the patch will have something that's too hard (and pointless) to recreate and sometimes aux/insert FX on busses or discrete channels lead to much better results and control.

Thanks for some insight. So, what's the best way to manage the patch that you do want to keep an FX on? The biggest issue is on a virus, I have some patches where I may have a delay that I tweak real time, that tends to muddy the low end hard, to the point where kicks disappear. So what to do?? Sidechain?

___________________
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate

i like sends, saves cpu and allows you to bounce tracks without loosing edit-possibilites, and it keeps the project clean, im all about keeping it clean (makes remixing and future edit easy). i usualy only have one reverb and one delay lately. this also makes the track sound like its in a place somehow (as all ch use the same setting). i usualy eq them on the lows. i dont sidechain them.

This is just one of the reasons I never use reverb/delay/EQ on my patches. You can take the same patch and make two completely different sounds changing only the FX.

___________________
Youtube || Soundcloud || Synth Patch Banks