Love this thread! Not sure these are mangly enough but hey:

Old-school backwards Reverb tail riser thingy

Do the classic thing where you feed a snare, a word from a vocal, the first chord after a break ot whatever, into a long-ass reverb. Bounce the reverb tail 100% wet so you get no direct signal at all, just the feel of the sound washing into eternity. Reverse the audio and place it before your dry snare/chord/whatever so you get that backwards sucking effect. Put a gater like Xfer LFOTool on the backwards sound to give it some motion, or just automate a highpass or lopass filter sweep on top. Great effect to put where you'd normally place a riser or an up sweep.

Sidechain Vinyl crackle

This is something I sometimes do to make sampled vinyl noise sound a little less fake when added on top of a non vinyl sound/loop. Edit your vinyl crackle to remove or weaken the really prominent pops that stick out and form almost an audible rhythm when looped, you want more of a vinyl fizzle than a series of clicks. Now sidechain the vinyl noise using the sound you’re adding it to as input. This way your noise will breathe in time with your loop. Takes some tweaking of your vinyl noise sample to get it right but usually sounds pretty convincing.

 

Thanks @maximoman . Nice one with the reverse verb buildup - I'm sure there are people who dont know that one yet. The vinyl trick is a cool idea too

 

big thanks for this thread...
gotten so tired of the bitchy back stabbin over at audioz (no offence meant) i dont really bother anymore
but seeing the new layout here (thx CAT )and getting back to what its all about with this sort of input....makes me well happy

 

@temple23 Glad to see you around... Yeah.. all the dissidents of Audioz are here...
There's no drama in this place.
Have a nice stay

 

Just found some really cool techniques! Not sound mangling but damn they're useful.

Wet/Dry Sends - If you need a send to not increase the volume, here's what you do... Send the original track at 0dB to a return track and invert the phase. Now you shouldn't hear anything from the master channel. Send that send to another return track (in Ableton this is done by right-clicking the send knob on the return track that you're sending from and selecting enable send). Again you'll probably want 0dB. Now the volume fader on the first send track should act as a wet/dry knob for the send effect. So cool!

Frequency splitter (Ableton) - A common technique among Abletonians is making an effect rack with three chains of EQs, high and low pass filters, etc. to allow for parts of the spectrum to be processed individually. Problem is, this always messes up your sound a little because the crossovers are messy. Easy solution: drop a multiband compressor on there, select your frequency range and solo it or disable the other bands. The crossovers are much much cleaner. To think I've been using LP/HP filters on EQ8 this whole time

 

This is great! These are all great ideas. I can already see how useful a few will be. Thanks for everyone and their input!

 

Thought I'd pop in with a few gems I use. Being drawn to Dark Ambient, Soundscape Work I love tools that can alter or mangle everyday sounds I record when I'm out and about. (Real fan of field recording and found sound). I stumbled on this site a year or so ago and have found a few of the tools here immensely useful in my work.

https://tonecarver.wordpress.com/

These tools are free and thats a plus.

1st is TCstretch: (Description from website)

TcStretch is a Windows VST 2.4 plug-in for time stretching, pitch shifting, and blurring. Time stretch can be up to 1 million times slower. Pitch shift is plus or minus one octave. Blurring blends nearby spectral material to make the output less static.

Playback is sensitive to transients in the source material. Playback rate and blur amount are automatically adjusted according to the transient contour of the material being stretched. Playing transients at a faster rate than non-transients tends to make the output sound less obviously stretched. Playing transients more slowly than non-transients emphasizes the stretchiness [good when playing in reverse mode with highly transient material]. Adding blur brings in some subtle (or not so subtle) randomness which helps to keep the output less static.



Not sure how many of you are familiar with paulstretch. (http://hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paulstretch/)
but this is similar to that except with paulstretch it is a standalone program.

TcStretch is a VST. You can achieve some absolutely amazing drones with this vst among other effects with your audio. well worth exploring as it is very cool!

2nd is Regen: (Description from website)

Regen is at its heart a looper plugin (a la Frippertronics) that is well suited for ambient/textural/soundscape type layering. It can be a simple looper but also offers deeper dive controls to modify playback of recorded material.

It features four independent loopers (“tracks”) that are built up from individually recorded audio segments (“layers”). Recorded material in the layers and tracks can be manipulated (playback rate, direction, blend, pan, level, start offset) post-recording for creative playback. Regen accepts stereo input and supports up to 4 stereo outputs. Regen allows Undo and Redo of recorded material and supports control via MIDI.





I love looping parts of my audio back over parts and on until achieve what I'm trying to and along the way I often find many happy accidents I'm able to chop up and use in different aspects of my productions

3rd is Delay8: (description from website)

Delay8 has eight individual modulated delay lines which may be combined in serial or parallel chains. Individual modulation, EQ, panning for each delay line. Global scaling knobs to adjust the overall character of the effect. Stereo in, stereo out. Good for choruses, diffusion, modulated delays. Windows VST 2.4, x32 and x64.



Very complex delays are possible with this.

4th is Grainmaker: (Description from website)

GrainMaker is a 32-bit VST plugin for granular processing. Lots of modulation options.



I absolutely love granular synthesis techniques and while this is only 32 bit it is still very useful.

Hope these provide useful to you in your works.

 

nice share... those plugins look really good.

 

yeah agree with tits... i will be grabbing a couple of those...

 

The reverse reverb tail also works wonders on Piano Chords! Just feed the first chord of your chord progression into a long ass 100% wet reverb, resample and reverse, and put it before your first chord!

 

@ned944 thanks for sharing the info! Those plugs look really nifty. I'm especially a fan of granular stuff and I love that the dev used Ableton's knobs!

I'll come back here later and add everyone's stuff to the main post


ps. Cat, Artic, Mykal, etc. - thanks to whoever changed the thread title

 

These might depend on the genre of music, and not be new to many, but some things for which I use Audacity:

Removing inhalations and other sounds from vocal tracks:
Export dry (including no EQ) vocal track from DAW; import them into Audacity.
Select the pauses between vocal phrases and convert them to Silence.
Apply Amplification and/or Leveling if desired (see the following).
Export/import back into DAW.

Pre-compressing/leveling/boosting:
Export a dry audio track from DAW and import it into Audacity.
Apply Amplification to max without allowing clipping.
Apply Leveling (at least at Moderate setting; sometimes higher than that for vocals)
Export/import back into DAW.
(Not just for lead vocals, but also for pre-mixes, such as of background vocals, orchestral backings, uneven stereo drum kit recordings, acoustic instruments in need of sustained presence in the mix, and so forth.)

Note: Leveling tends to emphasize lower frequencies; this can be exploited for improving thin-sounding audio or boosting bass presence, or rolled-off when back in the DAW. However, the same process can tend to distort audio, especially when a considerable low-end is already present – hence:

Brutality: Deliberate mis-use of Leveling, especially on exported/imported drum and/or bass tracks (dry-exported) can result in the very sort of overdriven harshness which some costly plug-ins are made to produce.

Removing peaks (or "spikes") from mixes no or little compression on them (laborious but worth it):
Import audio into Audacity.
Apply overall Amplification, if necessary for working or desired for result, though not permitting clipping.
Individually select each outstanding spike in the waveform and apply a negative value of Amplification such that it levels-out with the neighboring waves or remains appropriately higher but "tamed."
Apply Amplification again, to boost the level, or moderate Leveling + Amplification to add greater presence.
This will remove distractive or distortive spikes in level, and enable raising the overall level without clipping; even making the track seem "louder."

Other effects of personal interest in Audacity:
Bouncing-Ball Delay with Pitch Shift
Dual Tape Decks
Ring Modulator

 

Thanks @stevitch! I will add these to the main post later

 

You can do this with bx_solo too which is free

 

you can also use Precision De-Esser Plug-In
if you don't use UAD : i believe there is alternative like Waves DeEsser
​

 

Great thread, I'll try to come up with some of my favourite techniques, but let me see whether someone else posted something similar. Really great idea! Kudos x 1000!

 

This can also be done with Edison which is available as a VST (even for mac in beta stage)
and it has simple drag and drop functions

 

Thanks for this.. it will help me alot. for sure..

 

Yessir. Man I made this a long time ago when I was just starting my journey in sound design. Maybe I'll give it an update

 

Awesome ideas here, i'll bookmark this myself.

Thanks so much!