With effects, your mix sounds more like a real “production” and less like a bland home recording. You might simulate a concert hall with reverb. Put a guitar in space with stereo chorus. Make a kick drum punchy by adding compression. Used on all pop-music records, effects can enhance plain tracks by adding spaciousness and excitement. They are essential if you want to produce a commercial sound. But many jazz, folk, and classical groups sound fine without any effects.
This chapter describes the most popular signal processors and effects, and suggests how to use them.
Effects are available both as hardware and software (called plug-ins). To add a hardware effect to a track, you feed its signal from your ...
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