Good Flanger/Phaser

deccard · Post by **deccard** » Thu Mar 17, 2011 4:19 pm

phase mistress from soundtoys is very powerful and d16 fazortan.

i like the effect alot. reason why i bought the analog phaser (moogerfooger).
it can bring life into some sounds. additonal depths or just color the sound. doesnt need to use the lfo for modulation for that cliche flanged hihat sound.
i use them for subtle modulations for a more organic sound or part of the general sounddesign. especially the analogphaser.

Phurniture · Post by **Phurniture** » Fri Mar 18, 2011 1:10 am

Although phasing and flanging are very similar effects, I've yet to find a flanger that I really like or have really used. Compared to the nice wooshing of a phaser, I find that most flangers are just metallic and too obvious. It's ok if used sparingly as an occasional effect, but it easily overstays it's welcome.

If someone can post an example of the cool use of a flanger I'd love to hear it. Every once in a while I break out a flanger pedal, but after a bit of tooling around it goes right back into my effects case.

pafufta816 · Post by **pafufta816** » Fri Mar 18, 2011 2:07 am

good examples are countless grunge rock songs. phase, flange and chorus operate on the same concept, a wave modulated pitch change. they use an lfo to do this.

oblioblioblio · Post by **oblioblioblio** » Fri Mar 18, 2011 2:17 am

not a big fan of flanging or phasing really. never really did anything for me other than 'oh right that's kind of fun i suppose'... and then get bored of it a bit later.

Phasing is a really interesting concept though... here's a fun fact... a pulse wave is created from a standard square wave mixed in with a negative copy of this wave with adjustable phase (i.e. with a different "middle" relative to the first). This is why when pulse width is at 0% or 100% you get no sound, becuase you are subtracting the exact wave from itself... but in between these 2 point you are left with a square wave with adjustable width So in fact a pulse wave is a form of phase modulation right from the start of your synth.

This was easy to achieve on analogue synthesisers becuase it's easy to make 2 square waves with adjustable phases (it requires much more circuitry to apply this concept to the other waves, although it is possible)... it speaks volumes about the innovation in software synths that 100% of vsts didn't take advantage of the possibilties of digital... they just carried over the limitations of analogue and didn't ask any questions.

Another interesting fact... it's been said that Kevin Shields played with phases when creating the epic "Loveless" by playing guitar tracks into 2 amplifyers facing each other and recording in the middle with varying phase.

miro pajic · Post by **miro pajic** » Fri Mar 18, 2011 8:43 am

For simple (not too metallic) flanging I really like the TAL flanger. I read most people don't like it, while I think it's super cool.
It has a certain dirtyness I really appreciate + it reminds me of some hardware units I used in the past.

MeldaProduction Multiband Flanger is next and awesome for complex and crazy special stuff (as most of their MB effects) the MB Phaser is nice too allthough not using phasers that often.

deccard · Post by **deccard** » Fri Mar 18, 2011 4:09 pm

oblioblioblio wrote:it speaks volumes about the innovation in software synths that 100% of vsts didn't take advantage of the possibilties of digital... they just carried over the limitations of analogue and didn't ask any questions.

what are you talking about? doesnt make any sense...a vst is in principle the same as digital synth/sampler without dedicated hardware.
so if you blend out all the digi synth/sampler of the last 30 years, ignore granular synthesis and a lot more than you might could be right

deccard · Post by **deccard** » Fri Mar 18, 2011 4:09 pm

doublepost

oblioblioblio · Post by **oblioblioblio** » Fri Mar 18, 2011 4:39 pm

deccard wrote:
oblioblioblio wrote:it speaks volumes about the innovation in software synths that 100% of vsts didn't take advantage of the possibilties of digital... they just carried over the limitations of analogue and didn't ask any questions.
what are you talking about? doesnt make any sense...a vst is in principle the same as digital synth/sampler without dedicated hardware.
so if you blend out all the digi synth/sampler of the last 30 years, ignore granular synthesis and a lot more than you might could be right

Please read the rest of the points that I made. You just took one thing I said and ignored the rest.

P.S. don't take my views about vsts personally... use whatever tool you like to get the results that you want. There are digital machines without any limitations, and that are plenty innovative.

The important part of my point is fuckall to do with analogue versus digital. It's about sound, let's discuss that part instead.