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  • Preserving Dynamics with Saturation

    By Anderton |

    Adding dirt doesn’t have to destroy dynamics

     

    by Craig Anderton

     

     

    Saturation can help beef up sounds, but I find that with percussive audio like drums, the “flattening” of the waveform and general muddiness can reduce dynamics dramatically. You can always try the “mix in some straight signal” option as you would with parallel compression, but then you start to compromise the saturated character.

     

    The following technique uses phase cancellation to help retain dynamics (this is something you'll just have to try to hear why it's cool). This works because saturation affects the highest level signals the most, which of course, are the percussive peaks. The lower-level saturated signals are much more like the dry sound, so combining the saturated signal with the phase-flipped dry signal tends to cancel the lower-level signal while leaving the percussive peaks intact. Here’s the procedure; to get a feel for how this works, load a drum loop or other drum part.

     

    1. Clone the audio from your primary track to create a secondary, identical track. Turn its level down for now.

    2. Insert the saturation effect in your primary track. The saturation options within hosts varies considerably; if you’re using Sonar, try the Pro Channel’s Tube Distortion for this application (Fig. 1), because (depending on the source audio) being able to choose between the Type I and Type II saturation options can make a big difference in the overall effectiveness. However, this technique also works with the Softube Saturation knob, a variety of amp sims, and other signal “warmers” and tape saturation plug-ins when cranked up.

     

     

    phase-distortion-3a8267a0.png.f3a482706ccb1fbb3907e7f2c2a1d9b3.pngFig. 1: The original drum track (left) and copied drum track (right) are identical except that track 1 has saturation added, and track 2 is flipped out of phase (phase switch circled in red for clarity), with its fader providing the desired degree of dry signal cancellation.

     

    3. Start playback, and adjust the saturation controls for the desired saturation character. Don’t worry about piling on the distortion—we’ll tighten it up.

    4. Now flip the secondary channel’s phase, and turn up its fader. As the level gets closer to matching the first audio channel’s level, the individual drums will become more distinct. Note how the channel meter indicates a more dynamic signal.

     

    The greater the cancellation, the more the level will tend to drop. As it takes some tweaking to get just the right balance of phase-flipped to processed audio, it’s helpful to group the level controls for the two audio tracks so they track each other if you want to change the level. How to group faders varies from program to program, but it’s a common enough function it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.

     

    You might want to increase the bass a bit to compensate for any thinness that occurs from the partial cancellation; distortion affects the high frequency content more, which means low frequencies will have more of a tendency to cancel. You might also find the highs excessive with some settings. The remedy to any of these issues is to send the track outs to a bus, then insert EQ in the bus to do any final tone shaping.

     

     

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    Craig Anderton is Editor Emeritus of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.

     

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