KVR Audio

tapiodmitriyevich · Post by **tapiodmitriyevich** » Fri Jun 30, 2017 4:09 am

Hi guys,

now there are trillions of bitcrushers and distortion effects. I am wondering if there is the opposite. Effects which aim to make the audio more beautiful. As in, e.g., "glue all the desctroyed bits together in order to tame it, to make it sound beautiful again"... Smearing.. Blurring?

I don't know exactly and from my idea I see warbling results on the horizon or maybe looong tail reverb style stuff like Valhalla Shimmer...

Your ideas please

Maybe there are interesting concepts out there.
Thx

Aloysius · Post by **Aloysius** » Fri Jun 30, 2017 4:21 am

Phaser, chorus etc...

stratum · Post by **stratum** » Fri Jun 30, 2017 4:25 am

Distortion cannot be realistically undone. Making sound "more beautiful again" is a phrase that can be interpreted in various ways, so I'm sure there are many examples of it.

Saukar30 · Post by **Saukar30** » Fri Jun 30, 2017 4:26 am

Reverb on the busses as an insert (not an aux). Short decays.

ATN69 · Post by **ATN69** » Fri Jun 30, 2017 4:59 am

Harmonic enhancers. Try it!

dark water · Post by **dark water** » Fri Jun 30, 2017 7:00 am

Yep, what you need is smooth sexy distortion which likes to seduce you with softly spoken poetry and a few dry Martinis, before slipping you the johnson aboard a yacht in Monaco.
Vertigo VSM-3 would be such a cad.

Not that rough, beastly stuff which likes to wrestle with bears down by the woodshed.

In terms of gluing stuff together, try the Glue by Cytomic, or a subtle smattering of your favourite type of effect (chorus, delay, pre-amp etc).

slipstick · Post by **slipstick** » Fri Jun 30, 2017 8:58 am

Or in some cases it's as simple as well targeted EQ to get rid of all the nasty fizzy top end stuff. Smooth it out!

Steve

someone called simon · Fri Jun 30, 2017 9:05 am

Interesting. Thinking about it, distortion implies you are taking what is in a good state and wrecking it somehow. As with anything, its easier to wreck something than to refine it. I think refining will never be as straightforward. Its always going to be best to build something right in the first place, than to take away any distortions. So maybe synthesis itself is the opposite? taking a big slab of raw sound and sculpting it.

I think reverb, delay, chorus etc is actually a distortion, a smearing of the sound. The only thing I think of that could be the opposite are filtering, EQ, maybe envelope shaping or the use of an exciter... which actually involves a distortion as far as I know to introduce more harmonic, so it's a kind of aural trick

Maybe its analogous to image manipulation. It's never as easy to sharpen an image as it is to blur, never as easy to add information is it is to take it way. There is 'unsharp masking' which is a trick (like using an exciter, perhaps) to reduce blur. But you are never going to know what the actual details would have been where there is currently a blur. Thus you'll never 'know' what the details of a sound would have been that is currently noisy or sub-optimal in some way. You can just play around with until it sounds subjectively better, which is not really the same thing.

do_androids_dream · Post by **do_androids_dream** » Fri Jun 30, 2017 9:33 am

slipstick wrote:Or in some cases it's as simple as well targeted EQ to get rid of all the nasty fizzy top end stuff. Smooth it out!

Steve

Yes, I agree. Brittle, exaggerated high end is probably the biggest giveaway of the less experienced mixer.

nonnaci · Post by **nonnaci** » Fri Jun 30, 2017 9:42 am

Mixing and mastering in short. The Photoshop analogy would be touch ups (blur/sharpening), creating more lightning dynamics, color-contrast-hue balancing/correction. In audio, this would translate to reverb/transient shaping, phase-alignment/timing, and EQ.

camsr · Post by **camsr** » Fri Jun 30, 2017 9:48 am

Filters and EQs are actually "detrimental" to fidelity, if phase shifting is considered. Like simon said, it's "never easy" to sharpen the signal yet readily tools available to blur it. EQ can be considered a blurring effect, unless a minimum phase EQ "undoes" what a minimum phase EQ had done before... since they are reciprocal. I consider EQ a form of distortion, but it's probably the least noticable form, unless obviously resonant.

Somewhere in the process, there's a sound that creates and a sound that takes away. To generate a sound based on an incoming signal, without knowing any of the qualities or mechanisms that generated that sound, is the definition of a sound effect IMO. It gets more complicated when signal feedback is considered, the definition is blurred. Distortion can both add and take away from a sound, but it has no idea of pitch or intonation, or anything regarding the "music" or "voice" of the audio. It is what it is, a transform of audio.

Not sure if reverberation or echo is considered a distortion in a musical context though. Is it a blurring yes, is it distortion, maybe. But it does have EQ like qualities via constructive and destructive phase interference. Reverb and echo can have huge effects on the tonal balance. It's not enough to say they only extend the sound, they equalize it as well.

The lines between effects and distortions are inherently blurred. Some wrecks audio, some compliments it. The ability to do more in an effect resides in the information it has about the input. De-reverberation could be many times better if there was an accurate impulse response of the recording conditions, as this is direct information about the sound and what is to be done about it (remove it).

Overall, a matter of taste. There's no rules, go wild.

Aloysius · Post by **Aloysius** » Fri Jun 30, 2017 9:53 am

Layering?

I'm thinking of 'bad sounding' distorted early digital synths and samplers layered with analog sound. Thin + fat = just right.

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Fri Jun 30, 2017 9:59 am

The opposite of distortion is still distortion.

Some distortion artefacts have the result of making things sound rougher/cruder/more destroyed. But many of the audio processes which are considered to make a sound more pleasing to the ear (eg the effects of valves and other forms of saturation) are also forms of distortion. As is anything else which changes (=distorts) the harmonic makeup of the incoming signal, which is, ostensibly, what you're basically asking for.

tapiodmitriyevich · Post by **tapiodmitriyevich** » Fri Jun 30, 2017 11:03 am

Hey guys, I am well aware "beauty" is something that is not clearly defined.

I want to tell where my question is coming from:

I am a listener of IDM, i.e. that stuff, where distortion/crackles/glitches are common, maybe necessary.
Also I experience, IMO Autechre do it sometimes too much, tons of looong reverbs tails. They are put on tracks… track is drowning in reverbs. Hiding problems under big reverbs? You don't have to work cleanly if you hide your problems in destruction fx and reverbs… Just my uneducated thoughts.

An example how I created beauty from another track was:
- Feed edgy/distorted track into Melodyne
- Melodyne spits out the midi
- some corrections to the midi
- Play via Fender Rhodes Mk. 1 Piano

Clean and beautiful!

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Fri Jun 30, 2017 11:06 am

Hmmm. That's kinda doing a cover version with different instrumentation, rather than an effect 'beautifying' the original.

Effects doing the opposite of distortion/destruction? "Making audio beautiful"?