Hi everyone, how do you make digital synth patches sound less dry and spacious like in this track? I've tried different reverbs with shortest settings like late reflection only, 0.10 s decay, room or plate module but the audio source remains either too dry with just a little extra width or too roomy and it doesn't sound cohesive. I don't get about long tails reverbs as I got good results using softube tsarverb For short reverb I got closer to what I want with waves rverb.

Do you know how to get it right?

 

Try filtered delay, ducked to the source.

 

Hey, thanks for replying. Can you write down specific settings?

 

No. But try tempo-sync'd delay (in parallel) with subdivisions and feedback to taste. Roll off highs and lows to taste. Duck the parallel delay (all wet) with a compressor, with the synth on sidechain input of the compressor and set the compressor to fast attack and medium release, high ratio (limiter) and set threshold (reduction) to taste.

 

I'll try that, thank you

 

No problem!

 

Listening to your reference, I'd go in the same direction Baxter pointed to: parallel processing.
In my learning process, wrapping my head around this aspect was a big step in the right direction. It opens up so many possibilities to get creative and - yes, the term is overused - can get you to way more "professional" sounding voices. I know the issue or feeling, that my Serum or Diva never sounded like the sources I was referencing, too. My first thoughts was like: "oh, it's just the internal FXs of Serum and Diva don't sound as good as dedicated plugin xy". But no dedicated plugin alone brought me to more convincing results. It really was this well known technique - parallel processing - which got me closer. I have to admit, I underestimated this topic for a long period of time.

In this particular case you can try to process the parallel channel even further. Maybe some modulation to widen it, like a stereo-heavy chorus. In addition to the ducking you can remove mid information from the channel, which leads to space for the main synth sound. With parallel processing it is way easier to dial in the sweet spot of wetness, so to say.

 

There's also either a long hall or convolution hall there too 16secs in onwards on the moogy bass jabs.
It isn't perpetual and is mainly on the tails. You can automate that to only come in at specific places.

 

thanks for replying. I don't care about the reverb tails atm, but thanks for pointing it out

 

Hey, thanks for replying. I forgot to mention that I'm doing it all in parallel already. Can you write down specific settings for reverb, delay etc?

 

I like to use a stereo widened reverb with a very short decay on certain instruments to make them sound bigger, but not roomy like an actual reverb.

 

Yeah, that's what I'm trying to fix. I get width etc but it sounds roomy.
Can you suggest specific settings?
Which plugin would you use?

 

Personally I'm sucker for shimmer reverbs in that genre, use Valhalla one, but pretty much Eventide Blackhole or Adam Szabo Solaris would fit the bill.

 

Hi, I got it, but my question isn't about making the sounds you hear in the reference track. I'm asking about a mixing thing regardless of the sound source.