your fave trick to fatten VSTi ITB?

what do you do to fatten up your this VSTi soft synths IN THE BOX? (not running out to external gear)

 

looking for more ideas.

 

I use LUXONIX EQ, and/or TAL EASY EQ, and/or, X-Cita, and or BootEQmkII, and/or various TUBE AMP emulators, ending with a limiter.

MuzikB and Carbon know the secret. Maybe they will grace us with their wisdoms...

 

... BootEQmkII ...

 

 

i'm a big fan of Bootsie's stuff, i really like his FerricTDS for this sort of thing as well. before i found those, i used something called Saturated Driver which isn't too bad either.

bacon. lots and lots of bacon

start of with a pfat synth.

I just fattened up an anemic Stylus RMX drum track considerably in five seconds using Stillwell's Transient Monster. Terrific stuff. I like Stylus RMX, but like a lot of VST stuff the sound often lacks a little presence, three dimensionality and punch, and Transient monster (along with a good compressor or two) can really be a life saver. Highly recommended, and only a laughable 25 bucks for the VIP bunch (that's Reaper users, in case ya didn't know! )

I don't use VSTs but I had to contribute to this thread

 

The trick is to create some "spatial complexity". This could be as simple as panning the dry signal hard left, and only the reverb hard right. Or add a 30 to 40 millisecond delay panned to the opposite side. Or maybe use a panning delay. Or take two slightly different EQ'd signals panned left and right. If you do something like that to make the synth sound like it's being heard in a "large room" (where the sound arriving at the listener's left and right ears have distinctively different tonal characteristics), it will sound "bigger" (and "fatter").

 

This are really just basic recording techniques. If you learn those, you'll not only get "fatter" sounds, you'll also get better mixes.

great advice in general, but i'm not quite sure that's what he's asking. (??)

I enjoy listening to samples and quality youtubes of old synths like Moog and Prophet 5, and trying to push VSTIs to sound just like them. I get real close (sometimes even better), but wonder if there are other techniques people use?

 

(I'm aware of original analog fat consisting of waves generated by VCO/VCA/VCF, caps, resistors, diodes, op amps etc have a different sound than digitally generated soft synths, but it's fun to try)

i don't find that adding effects inline with a synth makes it sound 'fatter', because oftentimes you end up removing half that crap in the mix phase anyway.

 

if you want an 'organic' sound, just stack two instances and do some mild automation of whatever parameters are important to the sound.

In the box, my favorite tools for tone shaping (other than the obvious use of eq) are the UAD Moog Filter, UAD Fatso, URS Saturation, and my current favorite, Soundtoys Decapitator.

I use Acousticas' L300 IRs in Logic Space Designer.