Thyrai's Handy Overview of Effects

[Thyrai]

I made some notes about a bunch of different types of audio effects, and I thought this might be of some use to you guys. I checked the music sticky, and I didn't see anything really like this so hopefully I won't be repeating stuff. It won't be super in-depth about everything, just enough to give you and idea of what they do. I'm far from an expert, so let me know if I made any errors or left anything out

Distortion Effects

Saturators
Saturators will fold the audio waveform once it crosses a certain amplitude threshold. In a sense, they function like light, non-linear compressors with distortion bundled in. It'll round off the input signal and redistribute the energy throughout the signal, generating additional harmonics.

These will add warmth to your sound.

Be careful not to over-do saturators, as it's very easy to get carried away with them and balls everything up. They'll also damage your audio signal if you drive them too much (Yo dawg, this saturator be turnin' ma sines into squares)

Common uses
Drums, Basses

Plugin Saturators
Ferric TDS (Tape Saturation) [Free]
FabFilter Saturn

*Saturators are common, and your DAW will likely have one.
*Saturators and waveshapers are very closely related
*Some saturators have a soft-clip option

Bit Crushers
A bit crusher is an effect used to intentionally reduce the quality of the audio signal. They create a metallic and often ugly sound. It typically has two functions: Sample Rate Reduction and Resolution reduction.

Sample rate reduction (or Downsampling) will reduce the sample rate of the audio signal and essentially degrade its audio quality. As the signal continues to be downsampled, the waveforms become more and more coarse until the frequencies are lost.

Resolution reduction will reduce the number of bits used (bit depth can be used to describe how accurately a sound is recorded - or how much space is used to determine volume). As the resolution is reduced, the waveforms will become more harsh and lose their volume variation. If it's overdone, your sound will become clicks and will have the potential to cause damage to your speakers.

Common Uses
Emulating old equipment, retro electronic music, sometimes lightly found in more aggressive electronic music like dubstep and electro house

Plugin Bitcrushers
Camelphat/Camelcrusher
iZotope Trash

*Many synths will have built-in bitcrushers as an optional effect. (Massive, Sylenth)
*Bitcrushers have a tendency to add extreme harshness to your high end. Always be sure to check this with spectrums and solo EQ bands
*Bitcrushers are typically so simple that they aren't sold as individual units, and are found as an option within larger distortion suites.
*Bit Crushers are common, and your DAW will likely have one.

Hardclippers
All these guys do is chop the bottoms and tops off your wave form (the settings will determine how much). The result is brutally harsh digital distortion

Common uses
Aggressive electronic music. Very common in the 'Tok' of layered hardstyle kicks.

Plugin Hardclippers
G-Clip
iZotope Trash

*Many synths will have built-in hardclippers as an optional effect. (Massive, Sylenth)

Overdrive and Tube distortion
I've found very little information on what overdrive actually does, especially when it comes to the software-based variety. They're traditionally used as a guitar FX pedal - which would provide a gain boost to overdrive a tube amp into distortion. My guess is that overdrive plugins simply emulate this effect.

Common Uses
Guitars, basses, drums, aggressive electronic music

Plugin Overdrives and Tubes
iZotope Trash
Guitar Rig

Filtering Effects

Filters
Filters come in a variety of flavours, and some of them even add pleasant harmonics to your sound. The most common curve used in filters are highpass and lowpass, which will either muffle the sound (lowpass) or remove and amount of the low end (highpass). Filters often have an envelope option, which will momentarily allow an amount of the cut sound through. This is how you get those plucky sounds prevalent in House music.

More advanced types of filters include bandpassing, notching, and combing. Bandpasses will allow a band of frequency through, while cutting an amount of high and low. Notches are the opposite: allowing everything through except a determined range. Comb filters adds a delayed version of the signal to itself, causing interference (combs are rarely used)

Common uses
Adding tension, subtly adding instruments, sound design, wubs, formant basses, mixing

Plugin Fliters
FabFilter Simion
Fabfilter Volcano
Karma Filter

*Most synthesizers will have built-in filters, allowing for more complex modulation

Equalizers
[Zero-latency] Equalizers are like a collection of filters, and are the most important tool within EDM. Proper use of equalizers is the difference between a muddy pile of crap and a speaker-shaking club powerhouse. An equalizer functions by allowing the user to cut and boost frequencies along the frequency spectrum by a degree of decibels.

There's numerous charts and guides to what frequencies you should be mindful of in relation to which instrument you're EQing around the web, so check those out.

Common Uses
Mixing, crazy automated filtering effects

Plugin EQs
Waves Q-10 Equalizer
FabFilter Pro-Q

*Always cut before boosting!
*EQ EVERYTHING!
*If you use Ableton 8 or lower, it's essential that you get yourself a plugin EQ.

Linear-Phase Equalizers
Linear phase Equalizers are best suited for mastering. Unlike regular Equalizers (which are nonlinear), these delay the incoming and affected signals at the same time, so the phase shifting (or smearing) is directly proportional to the change in frequency. This allows for theoretically infinite cuts and boosts, and is nearly completely transparent. The cost, however, is massive delay - making them unsuitable for individual tracks and busses.

Another problem with Linear phase EQing is pre-echo (or pre-ringing). It adds subtle, yet unwanted distortion/artefacts to the sound. I'm not quite sure why, but I believe it's just because of how the IIR-type filter functions. Regular EQs also have this problem, but it gets masked.

Common Uses
Mastering

Plugin Linear Phase EQs
Voxengo linear-phase Spline Equalizer
Waves Linear-Phase

*Linear phase equalizers are massively over-hyped by the companies that sell them.
*You're probably not going to need one unless you're a mastering engineer

[Thyrai]

Dynamic Effects

Compressors
These are often misunderstood and have a reputation for being complicated, but they're really quite simple. Basically (and according to settings) they will squash down the peaks of the audio signal that passes through them and leave the quieter parts unaffected. You then use the makeup gain function to raise the volume of that new, processed signal back to its original level. In essence, this will make the sharper parts of the sound more quiet, and the quieter parts more loud. The attack and release dials will tell your compressor when to start functioning (for instance, a slightly raised attack will let the initial burst of audio through, but compress the rest.) The ratio function determines how hard the signal is squashed.

Another function of compressors is side chaining. This technique is very common in steady-beat dance music (House, Techno, Trance) to create a pleasing pumping effect. They're tied to (usually) the kick drum, so when it hits, the compressor will drop the volume of whatever sound its attached to for a short amount of time. This will allow the kick to take up much more dynamic range and appear to hit harder. (For an example of a song with a lot of side chaining, listen to Language by Porter Robinson)

It's extremely important not to use too much compression, or your song will sound like mush. Orchestral producers typically do not use compressors, and often view them as the tools of Satan.

Common uses:
Pumping, dynamic control

Plugin Compressors:
FabFilter Pro-C
Audio Damage RoughRider

Multi-Band Compressors
Multi-band compressors are the same as regular compressors, but with a lot more control. They'll split your audio up into a bunch of frequency ranges (bands) - usually somewhere between 2 to 5 splits, with the most common being three bands. This will allow you to put differing amounts of compression to different frequencies on a single audio waveform.

Despite what you might think, Multi-band compressors are actually very rarely used in any other process other than mastering. Personally, I find EQing and full-band compression to be far more effective on individual channels and busses.

Common Uses:
Mastering

Plugin Multi-Band Compressors
Melda MMultiBandCompressor
iZotope Ozone MBC

Limiters
A Limiter is essentially equivalent to a compressor with its ratio all the way up at -INF and with zero attack. Limiters the essential last (often only) step of mastering a track, whether done by yourself or an engineer. Limiters will keep the peak volume under a certain level. -.03 dB is generally accepted as the safest and loudest peak volume of a finalized track. This will ensure intersample peaking and additional dithering noise will not ruin your MP3s when they are encoded from .wav

Common uses
Mastering, Peak Control

Reputable plugin limiters
Fabfilter Pro-L (Also supports K-system metering)
Voxengo Elephant
Waves L3 Multimaximizer

*BONUS: Proper use of limiters in mastering can be found in this video

Sonic Maximizers
These are devices like YOU WA SHOCK!, Soungoodizer, and sausage fattener. These don't give you much control, and tend to cause massive change to your wave forms. They function by using combination of inaccurate equalizing, distortion and compression.

It's typically not a good idea to use these on your tracks (often frowned upon by professionals) and it's an outright sin to use them in mastering.

Common Uses
...

Examples of Sonic Maximizers
Soundgoodizer and anything like it

Gates/Expanders
A gate is basically a volume on/off switch. Once a sound falls below a certain threshold, the sound is cut off (Gating). A gate can also be used as a reverse compressor, where it will increase the volume over a certain threshold (Expanding)

Common uses
Mixing, Trance pads, unfuckering shitty compression

Plugin Gates
Fabfilter Pro-G

Other Effects

Chorus
A chorus functions as a thickener. It'll take your signal, add another with detuning it and loop it back to play it alongside the original. Chorus can make your sound thicker, fuller and wider on the stereo field. If overdone, it sounds wobbly and out of tune.

Common Uses
Pads, leads

Plugin Chorus effects
Audio Damage Fluid

Flanger
A flanger will split your signal into two copies, one of them is very subtly shifted behind the other, and they are played at the same time. These create a much more rich and saturated sound than phasers, which are very similarly designed.

Common Uses
Electric guitars

Plugin Flangers
Tal-Flange [Free]

Phaser
A phaser splits the audio signal into two copies. Instead of delaying one signal as in a flanger, it will shift the phase of one of them before recombining them into one signal. This creates filter notches, which give the sound an up/down effect.

Common Uses
Pads, some leads

Plugin Phasers
Blue Cat's Phaser

*Many synths will have an on-board phaser that you can toggle


Reverb
Reverb is an effect that simulates a room, giving your sampled instruments a far more real and bigger sound. It comes in two flavors: algorithmic and convolution. Algorithmic reverb is the most common, and it uses a mathematical hypothesis on what a room sounds like. Convolution reverb takes samples of a real room sound, and sounds more natural. The tradeoff, however, is that Convolution reverb is typically more expensive and takes up a lot more CPU.

Common Uses
Mixing (leads, pads, snare drums, cymbals, chords, occasionally basses)

Plugin Reverbs
Karma Reverb (Algorithmic) [Free]
ArtsAcoustic Reverb (Algorithmic)
Lexicon PCM (Algorithmic)
Waves IR-L (Convolution)

*Always Highpass your reverbs! Reverbing too much of the low end will muddy up your mix a lot
*Putting reverb on a return channel is a huge plus
*Be careful not to overdo reverbs
*Certain genres tend to allocate more headroom to reverb than others. For instance, trance and hardstyle typically have very large amounts, whereas House and Electro tend to have have substantially less.

Delay
Delays are another one of those things that comes in many flavors and must be tuned by ear. Delays take the original signal, record it, then play it back after a set amount of time. Delays can be used to make your sound bigger, fuller and wider on the stereo field. When overdone, it will make your mix muddy and undefined.

Mono Delay: The simplest of delays. It does what is said above, but the delayed output is mono.

Stereo Delay: The same as mono delay, but the output is stereo.

Ping Pong Delay: A ping pong delay uses two mono delays, one for the left channel and one for the right. The dry signal is fed in to one of the channels, which subsequently feeds it into the next. It makes your sound appear as though it's being bounced around the stereo field. Despite common misconception, these DO NOT use panning or LFOs.

Cross Delay: Cross delay is the first cousin of pingpong delay. Instead of having the full output of the delay on a single channel, this one will have output on both. However, the volume is biased (louder) on one side, then it will bounce and do the opposite.

Common Uses
Mixing (Rolling Basses, leads, plucks, crash cymbals)

Plugin Delays
KarmaFX Dee-Lay [Free]
Soundtoys Echoboy


Misc Effects
Stereo Wideners
Stereo wideners are pretty controversial in mixing, and an absolute crime in mastering. They function by separating the mid (common) information from the left and right channels and separating it from the side (uncommon). It will then invert one side and add it to the opposite signal, and do the same with the other side.

Common Uses
Mixing

Plugin Stereo Wideners
iZotope Ozone multiband Imager
Waves S1

*Stereo widening is psychoacoustic. It will give the illusion of panning, but functions via phase
*Stereo wideners are a form of mid/side processing. The topic and methods are much larger that just stereo wideners.

Spectrum and waveform Analyzers
Spectrum analyzers will allow you to see the frequency/dB graph of your music. These are very important in the mixing process in all types of music, as your ears can sometimes deceive you.

Waveform analyzers will allow you to see what the waveform of the sound passing through it looks like. These are especially important for Hardstyle producers in the kick-making process.

Common Uses
Mixing and Mastering

Plugin Spectrum and Waveform Analyzers
Voxengo SPAN (Spectrum) [Free]
Schpecter Schope (Waveform)

Transient Shapers
Transient shapers are simple tools that will allow you to modify the volume of a transient (sideways tornado) signal. Usually with two knobs, one for raising or lowering the attack (the hit) and one for raising or lowering the sustain (the rest)

Common Uses
Drums, guitars

Plugin Transient Shapers
Flux Bittersweet II [Free]
NI Transient Master

*You can usually use compressors to achieve the same effect as transient shapers

[Thyrai]

Saving this post for stuff I missed/edits

[Rainbow_Rage]

are chorusing, flanging, and phasing not just delay effects with a very short, modulated delay time?

[the4thImpulse]

are chorusing, flanging, and phasing not just delay effects with a very short, modulated delay time?

In a way, yes, they are effects created through delay loops. However it really only duplicates a signal once, reverse phases it, delay it a very slight amount so its not completely canceling out the normal signal. The difference between them is modulation (changing the delay time), detuning and phase.


Cool guide, I like that it keeps everything as basic and easy to understand as possible.

[Nine Volt]

Wow, very thorough guide, nice job!
Looking forward to possible updates :3

[itroitnyah]

Just another part to add on to reverb, you forgot to talk about the mid/side controls. Or were you not planning to go that in depth with reverb? Well, regardless:

Mid mode on reverb is a sort of "mono" for the processed signal, and the processed signal will be more in the center of the soundstage.

Side mode is more of stereo widening parameter, to simplify it. On side mode, the processed signal plays at the edges of the soundstage. This mode can be good for mixing, as it can give a sense of space and reverberation without washing out the details.

If the reverb plugin has a stereo seperation parameter, I'm not 100% sure how that effects either of the two modes. I'm also not sure which of the two type of reverb have the mid/side modes, or if both types have them

[XXDarkShadow79XX]

Can we request stuff? I'm confused as to what a harmonic exciter does, despite the fact that I use it. (And I can usually hear the change)

[itroitnyah]

Can we request stuff? I'm confused as to what a harmonic exciter does, despite the fact that I use it. (And I can usually hear the change)

I'm assuming you mean the Izotope Harmonic Excited, amirite?

Alright, well. To simplify it, you see those colorful domes? Those work in the exact opposite way of a bandpass filter. Any frequency range located within one of those colorful domes gets effected by the distortion effect.

But what do the distortion effects do? They effect the harmonics of the waveform, hence the name.

Warm mode generates even harmonics that decay quickly

Retro is exactly the opposite, generating odd harmonics with a slow decay

Tape generates off harmonics, but saturates them a bit

Tube mode is more of "tonal" excitation with an emphasis on dynamic or transient attacks

Triode mode is modeled after a circuit using a 12AX7 vacuum tube, but only uses half the tube for a more subtle overdrive.

Dual Triode is pretty self explanatory with a more pronounced overdrive and slightly more warmth.

So yes, all those settings listed above take effect in the area that the small colored dome covers on the frequency chart.

source of information: Right here Found it simply by googling "harmonic exciter"

Also, if you don't understand harmonics in the term of the plugin, then here. Have a video:

[XXDarkShadow79XX]

Nnnnope that is not what I am talking about. Well, it may be. I'm using this free VST called Thrillseeker XTC, so I'm not sure if this applies or not. It prolly does.

[itroitnyah]

Nnnnope that is not what I am talking about. Well, it may be. I'm using this free VST called Thrillseeker XTC, so I'm not sure if this applies or not. It prolly does.

Yup, it does. The big difference is that you can't select the distortion mode. I'm not sure what distortion mode that XTC uses would be equivalent to in the ones I defined down below, but whatever. I'm guessing "Warm mode" just cause. But using your brain and the trusty internet, you could probably find out what each individual knob does.