Making Synths sound Right/Professional/Natural/NotLikeThey'v

[ChekOneTwo]

Making Synths sound Right/Professional/Natural/NotLikeThey'veBeenMAdeOnAComputer??

Hey Team, Its been a while since I’ve posted, a LONG while, new house, baby etc… all get in the way… new Mac as well though so happy days

I’ve got pretty competent these days on synthesis, I know my Massive in and out, got a good grasp of Sylenth and playing around with operator more but there’s one thing I REALLY seem to struggle with…

Even AFTER I play around with note timing, with envelopes, add movement, reverb etc… I’m still struggling to obtain that lush polished sound that top producers get out of their synths. Mine still sound like they’ve been made in my bedroom, my a child, and put through a “Make me sound more like I’ve been made on a computer” effects unit.

I’m assuming its something to do with effects chains, maybe resampling but I really struggle with this and end up with a muddy mess at the end of it all…

Are there any tips to get that lush production sounds that we’re so used to hearing from the likes of the big bass dubstep producers?
Are there any effects chains that you can recommend or Resampling chains that give you that professional sound?

I’m struggling to find articles, forum posts or video tutorials on the above and wondered whether anyone else has come across this hurdle before?

Thanks in advance,

[Banesy]

I think that it is a summation of a lot of good skills in sound design and mixing so it isn't like a single FX chain will magically turn anything into a full colorful sound. I have been really working on my sound design at the synth level and I have been finding that as my sounds are improving, my FX chains are shrinking so it looks like everyone is right when they say get the best sound as early as possible.

One thing that I just figured out was how to work with unison settings in FM8 and Massive. If you setup panning and unison correctly, you get a really nice stereo spread sound that is powerful and full. Once I figured this out, I felt like my synths were sounding more on par with pro sounds.

In massive, leave the restart via-gate unchecked, move your voices up to 2, pan from the center only about ~30-50% of the max and move the pitch cutoff just by 2-3% to the right. Your sound will spread and fill the stereo field and sound about 5x bigger. Enable dimension expander but use it very very sparingly and design away.

This is a good read on unison.
http://music.tutsplus.com/articles/the- ... audio-3628


For the FX chain, I think you need to have a goal in mind rather than just throwing FX at your sound. I have been making chains lately that more so aim to enhance the sound in a transparent way rather than try to change what is coming out of the vst. The goal will be different for what ever kind of synth you are making though…there is no one chain to rule them all kind of setup. Mixing is another beast. If you can't mix your sound, you can make something really cool sound like poops.

Hopefully that helps a bit!

[NinjaEdit]

Why do I think you're after EQ?

[test_recordings]

Put up a track on Soundcloud with an explanation of how you made it. That way we can help you get where you want to be by giving a few pointers to change stuff around or something

[nowaysj]

Put up an example of a big bass dubstep producer.

[KRONIKAL]

Man i know there are 1000 ways for mixing a signal in a consistent way but imho the real plugin you need to focalize on are eq saturation and reverb then it comes the oter one like delays chorus filtering ecc...but one you get the resonance of the eq to work perfectly with the saturation ( if nedded) or compression you can make wathever you want without let it sound muddy or shitty in general...and then of course the biggest mixing weapon ever : VOLUME