I make underground dubstep

I want to make my synths and drums sound really fat, huge and big, without adding distortion (or atleast without ugly artifacts from clipping or distortion)
Are there any techniques on that? I mean compression is a huge thing, but Xfers OTT brings artifacts, at least how I use it.

Im reffering to this song, in terms of fatness:

(Idc about loudness, quiet is good)

 

That's got a ton of distortion over it. Just arrange and mix straight into a limiter.

 

I can't hear any undistorted sound in this track, but you won't achieve a similar result without frequency dependent distortion.

 

Last edited: Mar 13, 2018

You can try with saturation/analog mojo/etc plugins, but they are still distortion effects. Which is similar to what @No-Avenger and @focusrite have said.

 

... and you probably have to use (several) different saturation/distortion effects.

 

add a eq balancing the frequency to looking fatter then a compressor reducing dynamic range to the track

 

mmmmm interesting. Everytime I try to use distortion, it gets very very ugly. Even if I split the frequencies and distort only the mids and highs.
Any tips on CLEAN Saturation/Distortion? (I used iZotopes Trash 2)

 

Don't know about iZotope's Trash (maybe this name is for a reason), but distortion is about input level. Plug a guitar into a Marshall amp, turn it up to 1 or 2 and it sounds clean but richier. Turn it up to 11...

 

oh i understand, didnt knew that! thank u!!!

 

Trash2 is a very good distortion plugin.
Maybe try more layering sounds.

 

Last edited: Mar 14, 2018

Many distortion plugs have a wet/dry mix knob. use that. as someone else said, use different kinds of saturation for different material on each layer.

 

Last edited: Mar 15, 2018

Trash 2 can do subtle and indeed trash and everything in between. You may need to spend a fair few hours/days/weeks learning what the tool is capable of on different soundsources. Pay attention to the waveform, filtering, drive, input level, mix amount etc... until you know how to create the intended colour / colours at will.

 

distort in multiple stages if the sound your working on needs it.
Splitting freq. and distort to better have control over whats going on.
to avoid the distortion going "ugly" or "too harsh" always eq after your distortion to cleanup unwanted freq.

 

Try to be at around 0 db VU when you hit a distortion on a sound.Either you adjust your level befor to enter in Trash or lower the input in Trash to be at around 0 db VU.You'll hear a big difference on the beauty of the distortion.

 

How to fart without distortion?

 

Only a very select group of people master that art...
.. the art of the fart?

 

Try out Ohmicide. You can dial in some clean distortion settings on that to get things sounding insane.

 

For that kind of sound I like to use Fabfilter Saturn, and also the Sausage by Dada Life can push the sound really hard without to much artefact (at least for that kind of music, the "too much" have a really high tolerance point)

Also lot of the fatness perceive here come from the mixing. The track is over compress and the bass heavily sidechained by the kick and snare so it gave more room to compress and push everything at it's limit. Heavy kick/snare are key too, as they accentuate the "in your face" sound, with a flat snare for exemple the track would have less impact and sounds like a bad 2011 brostep clone from a Britney Spears track. Transient is key.

And also separate the sub from the mid/high of your bass (one dedicated sub in mono, like a synth playing with just a sine, not using the main sound with a filter). Like that you can push the mid/high sound more with saturation (cut everything under 100/120hz) and also add some short reverb in a bus to add some stereo effect, not too loud, just to add some wideness (adding the reverb in a bus is important, so you can keep the 100 % dry signal and its impact).

Hope that help

 

Fek ya, this is flame!

 

this what you do master fader eq cut everything below 100 hz and everything above 6khz

now you can judge how fat it is and after get those mids perfect add the lows and highs back nicca.