Does the order of effects impact the sound?

M

marc32123

New member
I am watching the Berklee course with Loudon Stearns, and he said that the order the effects are in (eq, compression, etc.) has an impact on them, and the sound. Is this true, and if it is, how so?
 
Yes, especially when you're dealing with compression/limiting and EQ. It depends on the source sound, and what you're trying to achieve, but in general I'd say "trust the Berklee guy."

GJ
 
Think about the flow of the signal. It begins with the source. It then goes through a plugin that alters the signal and goes to the next plugin. Try switching the order of an EQ with a low pass filter with a distortion plugin.
 
Yes, the algorithms process the input, and that process returns the output. What order you have, is - IN COMBINATION WITH THE FX SETTINGS YOU DIAL IN - always going to have some degree of impact on the audio. The best thing you can do is to learn what the impact is, but it takes a lot of experience before you remember the result of complex chains of FXs where those FXs are in a certain order. Becoming great with effects makes you a great engineer, but it takes a lot of practicing before you get a great sound, effects often degrade the sound when they are not properly applied. For instance. Reverb before or after compression. For reverbs with long reverb time, it can sometimes work well to place a compressor after the reverb and adjust the compressor release time to a quite long release time and then feed that back into another reverb followed by another compressor. This can cause resonance between the reverb tails and can be incredibly sweet when you learn that combo well. But reverb can also be placed after the compressor, in this case you might use the compressor to do some of the job of the reverb, in order to get a more clean fx footprint, what I mean is that instead of using the reverb to enhance the size, you might do that with compressors first, then once that is dialed in, then you add the reverb on a much more dry setting than would have been required without the compressor. The difference might then be a little less cluttered air in the mix.
 
definitely

First time I read about this was Craig Anderton's column in Guitar Player magazine - always put any kind of distortion (overdrive/saturation, ring modulation, distortion) before any time based delay effects like flangers and phasers and chorus pedals and reverbs/delays was the advice, because the former (distortion) adds harmonics to the signal that make the time based delay effects more gnarly in their impact on the signal

for the same reason you put distortion after eq in most cases - the exception is the wah pedal because it is a swept filter that will be activated more thoroughly by a distorted signal than a clean signal - boosting and cutting freqs has an impact on every part of the signal chain following - if your eq increases the impact of certain frequency bands then it may be beneficial to be ahead of compression rather then behind it - some pros suggest compress - eq - compress others say eq - compress (i.e. de-essing is usually eq then de-ess which is frequency based compression); yet others say compress - eq
 
bandcoach said:
definitely

First time I read about this was Craig Anderton's column in Guitar Player magazine - always put any kind of distortion (overdrive/saturation, ring modulation, distortion) before any time based delay effects like flangers and phasers and chorus pedals and reverbs/delays was the advice, because the former (distortion) adds harmonics to the signal that make the time based delay effects more gnarly in their impact on the signal

for the same reason you put distortion after eq in most cases - the exception is the wah pedal because it is a swept filter that will be activated more thoroughly by a distorted signal than a clean signal - boosting and cutting freqs has an impact on every part of the signal chain following - if your eq increases the impact of certain frequency bands then it may be beneficial to be ahead of compression rather then behind it - some pros suggest compress - eq - compress others say eq - compress (i.e. de-essing is usually eq then de-ess which is frequency based compression); yet others say compress - eq
Click to expand...

Good points. I think the best is probably to test out various chains of fx sequences with loudness perception engaged (to equal the amount of signal out) and then do a good amount of blind tests. In the first round you would try to discover musically more pleasing sequences overall, and then you would start tweaking each fx to see how that impacts on it all. Chances are that it might turn out totally setting dependent, but it would be very interesting to try it out. It should always only be done on a single source, so that potential latency impacts are excluded from the tests.
 
It does, definitely! EQ prior Compression does a lot on how your compressor reacts... Compressing prior EQ does a lot on how your EQ reacts. other dynamic gear reacts just like that. Effects also! Practicing, experimenting and listen, really listen those reactions, takes time but it will give you the know-how in the future!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top