Synth Effect vs external effect

[himalaya]

But the factory presets belong to the real world and are used by real people.

Except they aren't. As someone else pointed out in another thread yesterday, it can be very hard to fit those sounds into a mix and that's because they are designed to sound good on their own. It's often quite time consuming trying to tame them so they play nicely with the things around them in a mix. Usually the quickest fix is to turn off all the on-board effects, which probably leads a lot of people to discount them entirely.

I work with several producers, very close friends, who do in fact use presets, just as they are. I know because I have seen their projects, or mixed a few myself. Of course, they may add or remove varying amounts of time based effects (reverb, delay) but that is a given. They may also add EQ that brings focus to the preset or cuts some specific frequency range. But, the actual preset, that which makes the main sound, is very often intact.

There is that Computer Music video with Avici showing his workflow. He is seen browsing through a list of presets, auditioning a few, and then settling on one he likes. Another example of 'real world, real people' using presets as they are.

In fact, the prevalence of various 'player' editions of different synths or samplers tells us that people do in fact use presets 'as they are', with perhaps making mix-level decisions in a DAW as to what effects are used.

However, I do understand the larger theme in your post that some presets may not fit a mix easily and may need to be edited, with perhaps the internal effects being heavily edited or removed entirely or in the end the preset may be abandoned because it's so overpowering in a mix. That may happen. However, this can not be treated as a de facto situation, a 'de rigueur', something that is always the case, because it isn't, as I've illustrated above.

Moreover, I know of producers using very complex presets, those presets that some may find overpowering in a mix, where they use them with their full original complexity.

So as always with these topics: anything goes. Some use factory presets with no tweaks, some may edit basic elements in the preset, some other will remove the internal effects, deeply customise it or change it completely, yet some other will get frustrated with the preset not fitting in he mix and abandon it in favour of an own creation.

[chk071]

I don't know any synth which has effects which are on par with good dedicated effect plugins though.

DUNE, RePro-1 and Thorn all have excellent effects, easily as good as most dedicated plugins.

Oh, that's a great example, because i know and own(ed) both of those.

Let's take Dune, because i haven't thoroughly checked out the effects on Thorn (even though i'm well familiar with - Diversion, Tantra, and DiversionFx, whose effects aren't on par with good external effects). I assume you mean Dune 3, and it also has the best fx of the 3 anyway. The reverb is good, actually pretty nice, one of the best i heard from any synth i tried. Is it as good as the best external effects i tried? Nope. Let's take the phaser. Sorry, but absolutely no cigar here. About anything external is better than the phaser on Dune 3. Delay - it's OK. Doesn't sound as good, or has as many options as Replika XT though. The Chorus is also rather OK. The Chorus of my choice is usually Choral from the Mod Pack from NI, and that one is better IMO. I can't really judge the EQ. I tried it briefly, and it didn't seem bad. Not enough experience to be able to judge if there's better stuff out there. The compressor didn't sound very good, but, that could have been related to the sounds i made. As i'm not an expert, i'm not really able to judge that too. For the distortion fx, there's definitely better stuff out there.

Gotta try Thorn, but, again, i know Dmitry's fx. Their mediocre to good. But not great. I can only repeat my lament. External fx ARE better than most, if not all synth internal effects. That's my experience, and even when people tell otherwise, probably because they want to sell their soundsets, it's irrelevant to me, because i have no idea which external effects they ever used in their life, and how much bias there is towards their own abilities *cough cough*, or, that they THINK they make the best out of everything.

BTW, Dune 3 is already one of the better example, because it has some good fx. Again, those are NOT better than some external effects i tried.

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

External fx ARE better than most, if not all synth internal effects.

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

[Seriously? How does a delay "sound"?Shouldn't it just sound like whatever you input to it? That's what it's for, after all. If it doesn't, might you not consider it broken?

Some delays have a 'sound', by design, or just due to limitations of the technology involved e.g tape delays which will always present a somewhat lesser, 'degraded' representation of the original sound. However, what once might have been seen as a flaw i.e not being able to present a facsimile of the original sound, is now a desired effect in it's own right - Seemingly, the more artefacts the better.

Just one example of how a delay may have a "Sound"

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

The biggest advantage to using internal effects is that once they are stored within the preset and the synth, the same preset will work in whichever DAW or OS you choose to use, and won’t suddenly break if the effects become unsupported or you decide to sell them

A bit of a non-issue, really, as the effects that work in one piece probably won't work in another anyway.

Well, that might be your experience. It's not mine

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

But the factory presets belong to the real world and are used by real people.

Except they aren't.

Again! Your experience is not my own

I only ever use presets. I do sometimes tweak a little, but I rarely switch off the effects (Sometimes, Gasp!, I'll even add my own on top. And rarely do 'well-chosen' sounds need much more than eq'ing to sit into place

[chk071]

External fx ARE better than most, if not all synth internal effects.

That's my experience. If i knew at least one synth where one of the included effects would be better than the best external effects i tried, i would maybe think different about it.

[Lotuzia]

I thoroughly agree with Himalaya. 'effects' are parts of a synth from day one : My Juno 60 chorus is ... noisy, but nothing can replace it (though a lot of people have spent a lot of time to reproduce it, in the hw or sf world). Filters are part of synths, but can aslo be found as individual 'effects', and you'll even find separate tremoloe effects when a simple LFO can get the job done in almost any synth. Obviously filters can range from stellar to crap, but among the stellar/goods ones, everyone can prefer this or that filter, because they are all different -at least the good ones-. And this applies to chorus, overdrive, tremoloe, reverbs, delays etc.

Then, Bones have one point : One have to distinguish between modulation and temporal effects (reverbs mainly, and delays). If you want it classic in a mix, you will not want to use a lot of different reverbs, to get a unified acoustic scene. So the idea of getting rid of the reverb effects on most synths isn't vain. This is what I tend to do often. In this case, putting external reverb(s) on aux bus(ses) and simply tweaking the sends of each channel and EQing the reverb makes sense. But here again, reverb choice is strictly up to one's taste, be it hw or sw. Otoh I've heard some good mixes with plenty of different exotic reverbs thrown in, probably including synths internal ones, and the strange blend was probably just what the track requested.

All in all, a synth is a synth is a whole. External effects can be more detailed, and may offer more options, and a different vibe that you might prefer on case by case basis (and not as 'an automatic process because it's 'better') but if the internal effect is good, then it's simply good. Just use it, and you won't loose time and energy to replace something that is already good by something that is different but possibly also good, and you'll be able to focus on the real thing (... music).

[AdvancedFollower]

[Seriously? How does a delay "sound"?Shouldn't it just sound like whatever you input to it? That's what it's for, after all. If it doesn't, might you not consider it broken?

Some delays have a 'sound', by design, or just due to limitations of the technology involved e.g tape delays which will always present a somewhat lesser, 'degraded' representation of the original sound. However, what once might have been seen as a flaw i.e not being able to present a facsimile of the original sound, is now a desired effect in it's own right - Seemingly, the more artefacts the better.

Just one example of how a delay may have a "Sound"

Another advantage of using an external delay is the additional processing you can do. You can pan and EQ it independently of the actual synth, duck it based on the source sound or something completely different in the mix like the kick, you can add various effects like tape emulation, saturation, a filter, phaser or whatever else comes to your mind. Plus, you can keep browsing presets while keeping the delay, which you've already tweaked to work well in the track in terms of the arrangement and mix.

You wouldn't do that on every sound that has a delay on it obviously, so many times, the built-in delay is perfectly adequate. You don't have to choose a side and defend it to the death

[himalaya]

Another advantage of using an external delay is the additional processing you can do.

Absolutely. External effects allow for infinite possibilities, and I don't think that anyone would question that. I myself love long effect chains in my DAW, where I use them as a kind of 'modular synth' - using just effects as a kind of 'synthesis'. This works especially well with some spectral effects, which I haven't seen yet in a synth (but maybe there are examples).

In fact, I've come in to many threads where peeps were asking about what synth to buy (for ambient music, for example), and I'd suggest that they look at their effect plugins, which can be used to completely transform a simple sound and perhaps that could be all that's needed.

Pitch-shifter> Chorus>Reverb>Phaser>Delay>Reverb: This simple effect chain transforms a plain and boring sound into something truly special. But, I can accomplish that same result in a good synth like Alchemy, Omnisphere, Spectral, Cypher2 etc, with ease as well, since such synths make it possible to have effect-chains consisting of multiple FX modules. And the benefit here is that I can quickly and easily modulate the effect parameters and make it part of a patch/performance, which is accomplished faster if I were to fiddle with automation in a DAW (discounting Bitwig which is built for such automation).

So my point in this thread has always been: don't discount internal synth effects. A lot of them are of very high quality.
(and for one specific user, the secondary point is: don't critique synths you haven't used )

[tasty tatsyn]

exactly what i was going to say, to himalaya and chk071 when i read this post earlier but was doing other stuff..

why not both!?

summing it up.... i should add that in many cases external FX can expand the sonic pallete to who knows where and that internal synth FX both give a nice base AND! in some cases you can assign them to envelopes, LFO's, etc, etc of the synth sound itself; you can also do that with some external FX but it's much more complicated, so i think they complete each other

[himalaya]

exactly what i was going to say, to himalaya and chk071 when i read this post earlier but was doing other stuff..

why not both!?

You don't have to say this to me.
I'm not fighting a fight for one or the other side. I think some have lost focus of what I was driving at with chk071

I use both. Always have.

[inkwarp]

the reason for why i would use external fx is because i bounce down tracks a lot so it's easier to leave the synth source dry. i can use those wav files in other progs. and only have to save vst presets...

[BONES]

And rarely do 'well-chosen' sounds need much more than eq'ing to sit into place

How does a sound designer know how you will use a sound? They can't possibly so by looking for a sound you can drop straight in, don't you think you are restricting yourself quite badly? I usually start with a preset, either a factory patch or one I've created myself but, by the time I've made it fit the mix, the person who created it would no longer recognise it as his own. If I use the same preset again on a different song, that instance will sound different again.

There are all sorts of parameters you need to change - mod depth that sounds OK in isolation often makes the sound disappear and reappear because it's too heavy-handed. Envelopes need to be adjusted to work within a given tempo, adjusting resonance or oscillator octaves often works much better than EQ to make a sound sit in better, too.

I tend to think of EQ as a bit of a last resort for synth parts. I use it all the time on drums, vocals and other sampled sounds but if I think I might need to turn up the bass on a bassline, for example, that feels to me like I've failed to find the right sound. That's not to say I don't do it sometimes but it still feels like a failure of my own ability when I do.

[BONES]

Here's another interesting sub-question - how many external effects do you use? I tend to use very few. Up until the point I add vocals, which with my voice require a lot of processing, I probably only use half-a-dozen effects on a whole arrangement - reverb in Send 1, delay in Send 2, some distortion or other in Send 3, brickwall limiter on the master and maybe one or two insert effects. Mostly I find effects tend to muddy up a mix so I deliberately keep their use to a minimum. I feel that if you have the right sound, it shouldn't need a lot of dressing up with effects, although these days I do tend to leave on-board effects on a lot more than I used to, mainly because their quality is so much better these days.