Usually when I think of layering sounds, I think of two or more sounds that are not the same.

For instance, a trance bassline. Some basslines, I've noticed, have at least two parts: a Low rumble, and a mid-ranged tremor. Especially where rolling basslines are concerned, I'll try to use two DIFFERENT kinds of synths, one with lower frequencies than the other. Making both sounds work together for the whole is difficult, and layering the same bassline over the other does absolutely nothing constructive to your mix. In a recent track, I've layered a very LP, square-ish Vanguard with a relatively mid-ranged raspy V-Station to create a nice rolling bassline.

Another instance would be the kick drum. In my very humble library of kicks, I'll get a nice low one with some good punch, EQ it, and layer another kick drum with higher buzz. I'll band-pass the new kickdrum so that there is no flanging in the bass frequencies. I might even place a highhat sample on top of it all with virtually no tail on it. It's a nice snappy kickdrum, and eve retains a newness of character if I decide to cut alot of the high-freqs on it. I've NEVER noticed anything productive about layering the exact same kick drum on another.

You FLStudio bashers will probably wave me off, as that's what I've used, but logically I still believe my illustration holds weight.

As for panning the equal parts left and right to achieve "phatness"... all you have to do is apply some stereo widening effects to achieve the exact same effect without the duplication nonsense.

___________________
Audio-s

quote:

Originally posted by Effero Don't be afraid to double, triple or quadruple your lead if it sounds good. Make sure that each stem has different effects applied-EQ, reverb, flanger, phaser...- so that when played together instruments act in a synergistic way. Each separate track needs to be compressed and slowly brought up in volume while you're playing the original unaltered lead track until you start noticing the difference. Parallel compression has been used extensively in mixing. Mix engineers do more to the mix then they'd like you to believe. Cheers

That is great info, thanks for sharing

personally i'm siding with derivative on this one. i think you just need to learn how to compress / EQ your sounds a little better to make it phatter. the only real reason i can see in needing to duplicate a synth is to perhaps for some dynamic effect like as some mentioned...panning to achieve a certain effect...

considering that you want to pan your synth left right and center...well personally sounds like a lot of space you're taking up. a phat synth isn't everything...i would be afraid of taken up all kinds of room for other sounds...

quote:

Originally posted by Floorfiller personally i'm siding with derivative on this one. i think you just need to learn how to compress / EQ your sounds a little better to make it phatter. the only real reason i can see in needing to duplicate a synth is to perhaps for some dynamic effect like as some mentioned...panning to achieve a certain effect... considering that you want to pan your synth left right and center...well personally sounds like a lot of space you're taking up. a phat synth isn't everything...i would be afraid of taken up all kinds of room for other sounds...

hmm makes sense. Althought i am pretty good with eq , one of my weaknesses is being real effective with the compressor. With EQ i tend to not use it to phatten up anything, I usually cut different frequencies to make a clean tight mix. However, I need to work on my compressor skills... dynamics is freaking hard

quote:

Originally posted by Krispy Kreme lets say if i am working on the main lead. I have 3 tracks of the same synth sound , i pan the first hard left, pan the second hard right and then keep the last one in the middle. This would also be considered phattening up the sound wouldnt it? Instead of just one stereo lead, you have 3 mono signals that makes the sound seem very wide.

I'm curious as to why you think this would make any difference, because I can promise you that it doesn't. When you pan one hard left and another hard right, it's precisely the same thing as just having one in the center (usually +3 dB louder, because that's the panning law in most sequencers). Unless you're doing different processing on the left/right channels, then you're still just raising the volume.

It's strange how often I hear this... it seems self-evident that a "center" panning is just two mono channels, left and right, with the same sound at equal volume. Of course a stereo sound could have stereo width even when centered, but that would be because the sound itself is stereo; separating the channels and recombining them will still recreate exactly the same sound. Converting the entire thing to mono and then panning them hard left/right will only create a mono version of the original stereo sound, which will reduce the stereo width.

If you want to create stereo width the way you're suggesting, you need to feed different sounds into each channel, usually by using delay or reverb or even EQ/compression.

___________________
My party schedule:
2009-02-21 - DJ Attention @ I'm So Popular
2009-06-18 - DJ Annoying @ People Need To Know Where I'll Be
2012-11-32 - DJ Insufferable ɸ Or At Least the Stalkers I Complain About
2048-06-66 - Spastic & Whocares ¶ Although I'm Actually Flattered
9999-45-81 - Tweaker Gimp ☼ I Probably Won't Even Go To This But I Have To Make Sure I Fill Up All The Available Space Here

Last edited by DigiNut on Oct-18-2006 at 02:16

I disagree with derivative, since nearly all of my lead sounds are played on > 2 soft synths.

I tend to end up with a lead sound that has the right feeling but for instance doesn't pack much in the low/mid range. Tweaking the synth sound doesn't provide the right feeling.

So I'll layer it with another synth that has the low-mids and then i'll eq them so they sit together (not doubling the amplitude).

This fills up more frequencies without necessarily raising the volume (and if it does, just lower the volume of both, duh!). More frequencies = fatter sound.

It's exactly as Four_On_Four-er said about basslines and kicks.

In fact, nowdays I also layer all of my percussion samples in battery by assigning > 1 sample to each key, and panning / filtering each sample individually. If your open hat sample lacks crunch, layer it with a some other crunchy sound. It works wonders.

___________________

Monsoon - Astrosurf

quote:

Originally posted by DigiNut I'm curious as to why you think this would make any difference, because I can promise you that it doesn't. When you pan one hard left and another hard right, it's precisely the same thing as just having one in the center (usually +3 dB louder, because that's the panning law in most sequencers). Unless you're doing different processing on the left/right channels, then you're still just raising the volume. It's strange how often I hear this... it seems self-evident that a "center" panning is just two mono channels, left and right, with the same sound at equal volume. Of course a stereo sound could have stereo width even when centered, but that would be because the sound itself is stereo; separating the channels and recombining them will still recreate exactly the same sound. Converting the entire thing to mono and then panning them hard left/right will only create a mono version of the original stereo sound, which will reduce the stereo width. If you want to create stereo width the way you're suggesting, you need to feed different sounds into each channel, usually by using delay or reverb or even EQ/compression.

I guess I got the idea from reading one of alphazones interviews. They said in one of their songs they used 3 vanguards for the main lead. I was not satisfied with my sounds and it was missing the phatness so i started layering them up and experimenting with panning and mono/stereo.

quote:

Originally posted by DigiNut I'm curious as to why you think this would make any difference, because I can promise you that it doesn't. When you pan one hard left and another hard right, it's precisely the same thing as just having one in the center (usually +3 dB louder, because that's the panning law in most sequencers). Unless you're doing different processing on the left/right channels, then you're still just raising the volume. It's strange how often I hear this... it seems self-evident that a "center" panning is just two mono channels, left and right, with the same sound at equal volume. Of course a stereo sound could have stereo width even when centered, but that would be because the sound itself is stereo; separating the channels and recombining them will still recreate exactly the same sound. Converting the entire thing to mono and then panning them hard left/right will only create a mono version of the original stereo sound, which will reduce the stereo width. If you want to create stereo width the way you're suggesting, you need to feed different sounds into each channel, usually by using delay or reverb or even EQ/compression.

Doubling something and panning hard left/right is definitely not always the same thing as having one mono sound panned center. If the sound is coming from analog or virtual analog it's slightly different everytime the note is played. So using one instance for left and another for right with exactly similar settings (or recording it twice, for each channel) WILL increase the stereo width. I've done this countless times, and even with my Oberheim Matrix-1000 with DCO's, or any of the VSTi's I use, I can confirm it widens the stereo image. That's what I most often use doubling for, and it's the best way to increase stereo width.

If the sound is sampled (playes exactly the same each time), THEN there is no reason to double it.

Stereo widening effects simply double the sound and modulate it slightly differently for each channel. They often use some basic waveform, so that every once in a while the sound coming from left and right channel is in perfect sync. So the stereo image fluctuates between extremely wide and mono. Using two instances of the same synth or recording it twice instead, makes the wide stereo image much more stable and mono-compatible.

Last edited by Mikk on Oct-18-2006 at 06:25

if your using a good synth like waldorf, virus or any of those you definatly do not need to layer.....

Recording a synth once, copying the track and panning left and right will give you mono.
If you want a wider image, delay the copied track by a few miliseconds and voila...instant wide image. Also, you can use MS processing on stereo tracks to enhance the width but be carefull of the phase issues, i.e. always check your mixes in mono.
But in most cases wide imaging comes from a carefull placement of sounds in a song. It's better to have most of the sounds in mono, give them space by using early reflections, reverb and delay and place across the panning spectrum so that they will all have their own little spot.
This mixed with one or two stereo sounds will create amazing environments.
And for the end, if you're adding reverb to pads, don't pan them all the way left or right. Pan them slightly off, and pan the reverb return all the way. This will give you an even wider image...
Trust me on this, I tried it sucessfully.
Regards
Effero

___________________

Most of the time, the oscillators oscillate freely, so youre sure to have a phase difference between the 2 or 3. However if the phase init. is a fixed value, then youll just get what derivative said. And if you have to run 3 copies of the same softsynth to get a ''phat'' sound......how about getting softsynths with unison?