Here a reverse sound design threads. Instead of post your favourite effect, go for your least favourite one.
Someone else might give some tips on how/why they use it…
I’m going first.
Flanger and Phaser: both completes useless for what I do, can’t be arsed to look into them to find a use for them.
(Btw: listing Distortion in this thread might get you banned)
ditto on phaser, I don’t use a tone of traditional flange fx, but I do use the following VSTs often…
the Interruptor’s Wow n Flutter for tape fx
and DLYM https://www.imaginando.pt/products/dlym I like that some of the new software and even hardware are approaching time based FX like delay, flange and chorus from a “why is it not just one unit that does it all?” approach where the end result is in the gray area between the traditional fx.
I do a decent amount with pahsers and flangers (I mean, french house got me into EDM, how could I not be into that sound?)
But what I don’t do very much with is glitching. I’ve only started using the occasional reversed sample in the last year or so, but that’s pretty much it. No stutters, no reversed stutters, no granular. It’s not that I don’t like it, it’s just that if I WERE going to do it, I’d pretty much only know how to use it as a novelty and it would probably sound super outdated.
I’ve been getting better at synthesis so as of recent I barely use phasers or flangers… and when I do I make them mono and have the effect mix at below 50%…
I usually used to incorporate the phaser and flanger effect in my fx chain in conjunction with distortion to either clean up the distortion or make the distortion dirtier…
But Also…for me I’ve only begun to use multiband compression…being that I have rarely used it previously…
But now I’ve found a use for it…in distortion and as a limiter…I’ll be using it more…
Maximus I tend to use a transient shaper to destroy transients…but I rarely use it…
I use phaser, chorus, and flanger effects on short decayed noise to create drum textures that are similar to using resonance , but also very different.
Resonator banks. I don’t know why, but having to re-tune my instrument just sounds like a fundamental flaw that I should have discussed with myself long before I pulled out a resonator bank. There are probably some great uses for it, but I haven’t found any on a personal level yet.
Flanger. Yeah, maybe if I’m trying to do some shitty classic rock solo. But I’ve never used it.
Phaser. As everyone else seems to agree, see flanger. Cool for guitar, if you’re 50+
Looper. Live has one of these and it seems redundant because the whole DAW is a god damn looper. I’m not Bruce Willis, and neither are you.
I’m sure there are more, but adding in loads of these that don’t apply to me because I don’t ‘jam’ or play live would get monotonous.
They’re actually the rare back up to layering for me. Mix sitting stuffs or background elements. I can also see them used for individual instruments, layered through the spectrum. Like, low end, mid, high with one or both on the the upper stuffs. About it really, for me.
Woof, I probably use a phaser on every kick drum (genre tech-house) that I do these days.
In ableton if you set it to
single pole - Earth
~75% wet - freq 400-800 (to taste) / feedback ~0.6
with the lfo oscillating a sine on quarter beats you can simultaneously add a lot of low end weight to your kick while the lfo creates a nice punch when it sweeps through the frequencies.
It can really take an uninspired flat kick and give it some dynamic movement.
Put your phaser before a distortion and you might change your mind.
That’s how I use my phasers, before my guitar drive and amp makes it much more subtle and cool sounding
I used to use D16’s constantly and now I can’t get it to work in my DAW. I really, really don’t miss it. But I’m pretty spartan with FX use these days anyhow.