MULTIEFFECTS SOUND DESIGN

Join us on an adventure in sound creation as we put today’s creative channel strip plugins through their paces

How to transform a single loop into an entire track

When processing audio signals in your host software of choice, it’s likely that you turn to the same particular devices time and time again, whether it’s those bundled with your DAW or trusty third-party offerings. After all, each plugin is generally designed for a specific purpose, and familiarising yourself with a collection of streamlined tools is one of the best ways to speed up your workflow in the studio. Furthermore, your DAW’s mixer facilitates quick and efficient stacking of plugins, device reordering, effect grouping and more, giving you ultimate control at every stage of your signal chain.

However, just like guitarists looking to expand their guitar-processing abilities, studio-based sound designers already familiar with signal flow and effects can benefit from today’s breed of multieffects. These are self-contained virtual processing environments presented in a variety of different ways, and comprising all sorts of mixing widgets and creative sound-manglers, which can be loaded up within a host ‘shell’ and reconfigured in any order you like.

These purpose-built behemoths invite a deeper level of creative experimentation by providing features such as internal modulation routing, modular-style patching, global ‘macro’ controls and exciting presets designed for maximum sound design flexibility.

So join us on a fun, creative adventure in sound design, as over the next few pages, we morph, twist and mangle a bunch of simple source sounds into weird, wonderful creations as part of a trackbuilding ‘challenge’. Let’s do it!