I would like to hear what you guys put on top of your synths early in chain to create an enriched more personalized sound.
I‘m not talking about mixing tools, more from a sounddesign point of view, although there‘s not a strict seperation of both approaches.
I’m also not talking about extreme filtering or extreme distortion , interested in more subtle coloring techniques.

But feel free to share the way you do it your way.

I actually aint got a finalized chain how to create my signature stamp on synths , thats why i‘m eager to learn what you guys may bring to the table.

Edit: i know signature sound development is based on selfcreating presets & tweaking presets to taste, i just want to explore different techniques to combine them!

 

Last edited: Feb 9, 2019

I use Erosion, it's Ableton's built-in audio effect.
The Erosion effect degrades the input signal by modulating a short delay with filtered noise or a sine wave. This adds noisy artifacts or aliasing/downsampling-like distortions that sound very ”digital.”

To change the sine wave frequency or noise band center frequency, click and drag along the X-axis in the X-Y field. The Y-axis controls the modulation amount. If you hold down the ALT(PC) / ALT(Mac) modifier key while clicking in the X-Y field, the Y-axis controls the bandwidth. Note that bandwidth is not adjustable when Sine is selected.

The Frequency control determines the color, or quality, of the distortion. If the Mode control is set to Noise, this works in conjunction with the Width control, which defines the noise bandwidth. Lower values lead to more selective distortion frequencies, while higher values affect the entire input signal. Width has no effect in Sine Mode.

Noise and Sine use a single modulation generator. However, Wide Noise has independent noise generators for the left and right channels, which creates a subtle stereo enhancement.

 

I usually put some compression on the main synths of the song (with some reverb before) to create that pumping reverb effect when the synth note stops. This way you can keep your synth clean when it's playing and get a nice tail when it's not playing. It's a simple trick but it can really make your song fuller when the synth is not playing.
Check this, it's an Ableton compressor preset I made for this effect

 

Wow, sounds pretty complicated, i like it. Seems like i should try Ableton finally. Thx for sharing