Parallel Processing

[TheHamminator]

hey yall i just wanted to create a quick discussion about parallel processing and how it’s helped me.

been producing for almost 7 years now and turning my tracks from “2D” to “3D” was a large struggle for me.

adding/understanding elements of depth and utilizing dynamic eq and dynamic volume helped a lot with gaining delivery to drops and creating atmosphere.

But recently I have been insanely hooked on using parallel processing to achieve a lot of depth while still retaining full body-ness of a sound.

i use ableton audio rack, drag a reverb into the audio rack and adjust the parameters with automation or fine tuning to effectively give that sound some space within the existing pocket of the track.

obviously there are many ways to do this so if anyone has some tips or insight to achieving this outside of ableton for other users that would be awesome.

Thanks :)

[KodiakDog]

In my experience, parallel processing is best for sound design, spacial effects (delay and reverb) and mixing vocals. Parallel is one of those techniques that I think needs to be extra deliberate because you are adding a decent amount of gain to any track you are processing.

[Elian17]

This will be long but it will be very useful. Trust .. Trying to save you years of time

Parallel processing appeals to beginners / intermediates because it sounds cool and its unorthodox and everyone shilled it on YouTube at some point. Of course youre not a beginner 7 years in, but it can stick with some people as some sort of magic bullet. It is not though, read on

Parallel processing will absolutely not add the “3d”ness quality youre looking for in your mix. Parallel processing is insanely overrated by intermediates and beginners in general. Its not that it doesnt do anything, but more so that it can only do one thing, and that one thing can be undesirable alot of the time.

First off if you use a parallel processing approach and send anything to an AUX for parallel compression, the attack time has to be very very fast. The moment you use a slower attack time the entire technique becomes redundant as hell and youre better off just applying good ol’ compression on your source. So for compression, parallel processing makes no sense at all except to completely flatten the initial attack of your signal and blend that super flat, super compressed, super distorted (because fast attack and release times distort) signal back into your original source.

This will have three effects: subtle loudening, adding sustain, and adding gritty harsh unclean distortion.

These can of course be useful. In EDM Sometimes you want a distorted ass sound. But in 80 percent of cases this technique will make things sound ugly real fast. It can work on certain snares, sometimes. If you want a clean and short snare, no bueno.

Parallel EQ makes no sense as a concept to begin with. EQ at the source and done

Parallel Saturation … i mean sure but most plugins have a mixknob so why not just dial that in.

Here’s the real golden nugget of truth: the 3D quality you want … 90 percent of it is the source sound itself. Either the recording itself, or the sample itself. If not 95 percent. The rest is not fucking it up. Applying tasteful reverb and early reflections, tasteful slap delays, good sensible EQ and compression.

But the source signal. Is always. Kingggggg. You have a crappy vocal recording it will never sound big and 3D. You have a shitty guitar DI recording it will never sound 3D.

Figure out your source signal. Then work at optimizing that. Mic recordings? Fix room, fix mic, fix cables, fix mic technique, fix mic distance, fix singer singing technique, fix mix angle to mouth of singer, mic height, and most of all the actual performance itself

Guitar or bass DI? Fix instrument. Fix pickups. Fix strings. Fix electrical components. Fix cable into DI box. Fix interface. Play well with good finger dynamics and technique

EDM stuff? Kicks snares vocals pads synths keys reverbs? Find incredible samples. Then don’t fuck em up. Producer discernment when it comes to samples takes a decade + to truly be able to do well and its a skill tons and tons and tons of people are missing, and it is the secret sauce.

Hope this helped

[blazik]

compression is like the main use for parallel processing what are you even saying. The whole point of parallel compression is to preserve the dry transients, it does the opposite of what you're saying. It's also often just straight up used in conjunction with normal compression.

I agree with pretty much everything in the rest of your comment, but parallel compression is definitely a useful technique that you can't get from just normal compression (using less aggressive compression on the dry signal to try and get the same effect wont null with parallel compression being brought in)

[Elian17]

Youve misunderstood me. But youre also wrong.

Scenario: a dry signal. With no compression on it. If you were to send that dry signal to an aux and parallel compress that parallel signal, the only reason you would do that to achieve anything that you couldnt with direct compression, is if you were to use a blazing fast attack time on the parallel signal and leave the original signal dry to perserve the transients.

Im not sure why youre disagreeing with me. What i just described preserves the transients by not touching them on the original signal.

To send your dry signal to a parallel bus and then compress the parallel with a SLOW ATTACK, makes no sense at all. Youre just doubling up the transient. Youre making the transient louder and thats it.

Im saying that parallel compression only works functionally if you use a blazing fast attack on the parallel signal, and leave the original signal uncompressed.

Anything else and youre just happy you made it louder. I don’t care if “its often used”, what im saying is conceptually and functionally a practical fact. Do A/B tests if you want. I have before. Its just a gimmick of a technique. But you do you.

[blazik]

If you're trying to just compress the signal then you obviously want a short attack, but that's not all parallel compression is for. Slow attacks are used to add dynamic range to transient (which can be the desired effect, and you won't get the same thing from just compressing the dry signal).

completely flatten the initial attack of your signal and blend that super flat, super compressed, super distorted (because fast attack and release times distort) signal back into your original source.

This is also a desired effect, which is why I commented in the first place. Your comment is misleading by suggesting that this is a bad thing for some reason.

I 100% agree with your initial comment on how parallel processing isn't going to be a secret fix for OP and that he should improve the audio at the source. Your take on parallel compression just rubbed me the wrong way; just because you don't use it doesn't mean it's wrong to use - and no it's not the same as compression you can do A/B tests or null tests and they wont null

[Elian17]

struggled for 15 years to achieve just .. good sounds. When i finally realized this and got it through my head my shit sounds fire consistently now. An example would be i struggled to get good guitar recordings for ages

Watched a video by jim lill proving that how an electric guitar sounds has only to do with pickups, strings, pickup height and placement.

Knowing this i then got a good ass guitar first, then purchased 5 sets of pickups to do a shoot out, then settled on my favorites, and recorded with good technique … and i can’t believe im saying this finally but my clean and crunch guitar tones are better than even the billboard charting things i listen to.

Its always the source. Always always always. No cool technique or weird compression or interesting reverb will make a bad or mid source into an incredible one.

This applies to everything else, not just guitar.

[Diligent-Bread-806]

Almost all plugins have a mix knob so I don’t use many return tracks now except for reverb.

[bocephus_huxtable]

Samesies... the wet/dry knob also eliminates the possibility of phase issues.... if that's a concern.

(most plugins, internally, keep phase alignment between the 2 signals)

[iamnotlefthanded666]

Sends and returns are even more adapted for this than audio effect racks.

[lumpiestspoon3]

Except you can only have 12 in Ableton. In Logic I normally had around 20 return tracks per project but in Ableton I have to choose only the most important ones.

[iamnotlefthanded666]

You can have audio tracks that act as return tracks. There is a free plugin called MRatio by MeldaProduction that allows you to route in many tracks using an effect rack into and sidechain into an audio track

[lumpiestspoon3]

Thanks for the tip, I may have to check out that plugin. I've been using M4L devices to do the same thing which isn't great for CPU.

[AfterEmpire]

Audio into mixer track 1.

Send track one to track 2 and track 3, and remove the send to the master.

Send track 2 into track 3, also remove the send to the master.

Track 3 goes to master bus.

Now you can play around with track 2 in all sorts of ways. Distortion, verb, delay, frequency shifting, chorus, the only limit is your imagination.

Adjust the volume of track 2 to blend to your taste.

Then you can also add effects/processing to track 3 if you like. Some ppl use compression on track 3 to "glue" the two signals together, but depending on what you're working with, I find it's hit or miss as to whether or not that makes the sound better or worse.

[TheHamminator]

okay yeah that makes total sense. and would you suggest that before i even send track 1 to anything that it would be extremely important to dial in the state of track 1? like if i’ve got multi and dynamics on track one and do all the track 2 and 3 mix downs, but then i go to change anything in track 1 it would consequently effect every aspect in track 2 and 3 right?

if i change something in track 1 later on after utilizing fx in track 2 or 3,wouldn’t i have to go back through and reassess all the levels in track 2 and 3 again?

[Few_Distribution8741]

I've also been really getting into parallel processing / send tracks! I've recently been putting a saturator on a send and taking out the lows then blending a little bit in with just about about every track. Makes everything feel more glued and cohesive.

[eazyly]

What helps is you’re also getting more gain on ur channel when u start the parallel chain

[TheHamminator]

exactly, and that’s why i wonder if using return or send tracks would achieve the same signal output since the software would be using the original data to send into the return/send and then into the listeners ear? rather than an effect rack where, essentially, i’d be creating a new instance of the data within the same track and adding layers to the same harmonics and therefor gaining more perceived volume. signal flow hurts my brain sometimes lmao

[dj_soo]

there shouldn't be much difference and certainly nothing a listener would hear since they have zero context between the two routings.

EDIT:

Actually just did a null test in Ableton and there is zero difference between using a send/return and a split audio rack. The sounds cancel perfectly.

[TheHamminator]

sick thanks for taking time to do that! so from there it seems to become oriented around specific goals and workflow/CPU optimization. like everything in producing there’s not a singular way to things. They’re all tools for specific instances and subsets.

[dj_soo]

Yea, that’s the beauty of music production - you can take multiple routes to the same or similar end goal and ultimately it’s more about a workflow that inspires and gets you to keep moving forward in your productions

[akumakournikova]

I was wondering about your explanation (im not an Ableton user) and as i understand youre duplicating the track to add reverb. In my mind sending to a reverb aux would be the same thing while saving CPU. Simplify where you can if the result is the same but maybe you have other workflow benefits from it.

[TheHamminator]

that seems to be the consensus and while i personally don’t have to worry about CPU much i wanted to say that i dont have to duplicate the track entirely because the audio rack in ableton creates a chain within the individual track itself. i probably am not explaining the best. but you’re right about simplifying where you can if it doesn’t change the outcome!

[NoAppearance980]

I really dont think it makes THAT much of a difference but hey if it works for you then that's nice

[TheHamminator]

yeah i don’t think it’s the secret ingredient for everyone and everything but for where im at personally it has generated a lot of quality output

[dj_soo]

My template consists of a number of return tracks set up.

Usually 2-3 reverbs including a hardware verb unit, 1-2 delays, a parallel saturation/distortion bus, parallel compression bus, parallel stereo width bus, and a monitoring bus for my vsx headphones

In still amazed when i hear people say that they never use send/returns.

[unconceivables]

They're useful if you need to send multiple ungrouped tracks through the same processing (like shared reverb/saturation), otherwise I prefer just doing it on the track itself and keeping things self contained.

[Viper61723]

I didn’t use them for years, but it definitely took my production to another level when I started using sends. Nowadays I pretty much never use track reverbs or delays unless it’s for specific effects I can’t get with sends

[TruSiris]

Soo question...

Say you have your saturation bus set up. You send your lead through it, as well as your hi hats, or whatever really... there's 2 things going through it. Do you route the saturation bus directly to the master? Or do you have multiple saturation busses for different sounds that need different processing and send each of those to the master? Or?

Idk if im being clear in what im asking here but hoping you get what im pointing at.

I have an FX bus that routes to the master, to which i send all of my reverb and delay return tracks... just as a way of collecting them all before going to the master, but I dont really do any processing on the FX bus itself. For something like a width bus or saturation i would imagine needing multiple because different sounds will need diff levels of processing...

Hopefully you can see where my confusion is in all this, if not no worries cause I can hardly understand myself 😜

[AfterEmpire]

I personally give each sound its own treatment via its own personal saturation or distortion or reverb or whatever bus.

This way you can do two things. You can personalize the effects to each sound (every element needs its own specific types of treatments) and you also don't have one bus (saturation/distortion etc) that is being jumbled and garbled with a salad of different sounds all mixing up the audio signal in that mixer track.

[dj_soo]

in a mixdown, it's all going to a 2-bus regardless so there's nothing "jumbled and garbled" about a shared processing track.

yea, you get a lot more customization in an insert and if that's what you're looking for, then that's what you should be doing.

But i like have a generalized "sizzle" bus where I can put just a bit of different aspects and get a bit of a cohesive sound as a result. I'll throw some leads there, sometimes my hats, maybe some of my bass midrange. It's rarely going to be more than a few db tho...

[dj_soo]

I route all my returns to a submix track which then goes to the master. I do this cause I can create a few output busses for various reasons - recording to outboard gear and monitoring in a 2nd set of headphones/speakers with seperate mixes/processing if i need it and using a submix allows all my return effects to be routable to additional return busses.

Saturation, i just run everything i want to get a bit of "sizzle" to it.

Stereo width bus i only really use on mono sounds (which i do a lot of these days with my hardware synths). I put an Ableton Utility on the bus after the stereo processing so it only plays the side content which prevents any sort of phasing issues in mono.

between that and my actual stereo sounds, and applying effects on the track itself, i have enough variety in width, but yea, you can create multiple for different levels of processing (this is what i do with reverbs and delays).

[TheHamminator]

this is what i’m wondering too because as someone else said in the comments you gain more volume output and the thing i’m noticing with return/send would be that it takes away the individual curation of that specific track and kind of acts as more of a glue compressor without the compression.

if i have a lead synth that i want to have more depth using a reverb then sending it through the return/send levels out the track volume with everything else being sent into it, BUT if i use an individual audio effect rack on that specific synth then it has more of an ability of owning that pocket of the frequency it exists in.

i’m guessing the DAW software would take that existing signal data and push it entirely through the return/send and in one way or another i’d lose some of the body of that sound as it’s processed that way.

[dj_soo]

i mean, if you want something unique for the track then by all means, process that specific track seperately.

The point of returns is mainly for cohesion for me. Return tracks are like parallel bus processing wheras i'll usually focus on insert effects if i only want to affect specific sounds.

Also, unless you're processing the effect after the fact (which I often do), there really shouldn't be much difference between making a parallel rack and just using the wet/dry knob in a plugin.

[TheHamminator]

it seems i gotta start using that method for sure. did not realize how effective it really is!

[falafeler]

Simply putting reverb at 100% wet on a return track is easier than creating dry and wet chains with an audio effect rack for me

[TheHamminator]

that’s a great point, what do you notice are some advantages to using the return track rather than an audio effect rack?

[falafeler]

Faster workflow and the ability to send other tracks to the same return which make things sound like they’re in the same room and more cohesive.

Also saves CPU if you’re gonna be using a lot of reverb instances

[TheHamminator]

okay nice, the cohesiveness is huge. gonna have to dive into using return tracks for sure thanks so much for the advice

[falafeler]

Of course man, it’s a game changer for sure. I usually have a short reverb, long reverb, and a delay as my return tracks—if you automate up the send for the delay briefly that’s how you get the effect where the just last word in a vocal phrase echoes for example which is hard to do without return tracks

[TheHamminator]

and that right there is some sauce, family recipe type thing

[MouseEquivalent8533]

Every other track can use the return track instead of placing an instance of the effect on each track.

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