Excesive Filtering

[Dr Teeth]

Hey, I am learning synth programming. I wanted to make a really soft pad, and i could. But, i filtered so much to get it softer that now the volume of the patch is very very low. How could i resolve this?

[Dave Bryce]

Subtractive synthesis has three basic components:

 

1) Something generating a pitched tone of some sort

2) Some type of filter

3) An amplifier

 

To make your program louder, it's probably just a matter of increasing the output of the amplifier.

 

dB

[Dr Teeth]

No, it could not be a solution because it is at max.

[Shiver]

Have you gone through ALL the gain stages in your sound? It's not just a matter of having your synths' volume all the way up.

Depending on the synth, you should have a separate volume parameter for just about every stage of the sound: Patch volume, relative volume of different oscillators, filter output, amplifier envelope output, fx output, etc....go through all of those and see if any of them are down low.

Cheers,

Shiver

[marino]

If you REALLY need it louder at the source, here are a couple of 'emergency' ideas:

 

1) Create a second layer (Tone, Element, Oscillator... You don't tell what instrument you're using!) by copying your sound exactly. Detune the two layers a tiny bit, and pan them left and right. Maybe not HARD left and right.

 

2) If you have a choice of filters (again, what instrument are you using?) try to switch to a filter with fewer poles. If you're using a 24db/octave filter, try to use a 12 or 18db instead. This will open the sound a little bit, but also will increase the perceived volume.

[Tusker]

Just to add to the nice ideas.

 

Depending on the filters on your synth, you may want to change the waveform (or sample) a bit. For example, on my Roland, the filters are pretty weak and if I cut back enough to make the sound mellow, I can end up reducing the volume in the fundamental. This might happen on a saw wave (rich in overtones). So I might switch to a triangle wave (less overtones, relatively strong fundamental) to reduce the burden on the filter.

 

I am not familar with your patch but (paradoxically) in some circumstances, you can get the mellow sound you want with less reduction in volume, by making the filters steeper or by using two filters in series. The steeper filter may enable you more accurately target the overtones you want to excise leaving the energy in the fundamental intact. If you took this approach you would raise the cutoff to compensate.

 

If you think that the filter is what is taking the volume out, make sure you tune the filter settings very carefully (filter cutoff, filter keytrack and filter envelope settings). You may be able to get the mellowness you want without filtering quite as much as you are doing.

 

Regards,

 

Jerry

 

[ 12-27-2001: Message edited by: Tusker ]

[Dr Teeth]

Thanks for all your useful posts. Well My key board is a 01/W And I am using two wave forms:

 

osc 1: Sine

Osc 2: Ana Strings

 

All i can do to get the volume i want is to raise the master slider, because if I modify(in my little ability and knowledge) any of the parameters of the program the sound changes and is not what i want any more. Any Ideas?

[Dave Bryce]

Originally posted by LatinMusic:

All i can do to get the volume i want is to raise the master slider, because if I modify(in my little ability and knowledge) any of the parameters of the program the sound changes and is not what i want any more. Any Ideas?

 

Adjusting the Amp Env level/output should not change the sound at all...it should just make it louder.

 

dB