What makes a synth warm?

C

Conor

guest
Is it something that that an audio software developer has to do as far as programming or it something that the end-user has to achieve through sound design skills.
 
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K
[...] something that the end-user has to achieve through sound design skills.

Knowledge of sound design plus adding tasteful small amounts of harmonic distortion and a little bit of attenuation with a first-order high cut at say 3.5 kHz or 5 kHz by -1 dB or -1.5 dB can make a virtual synthesizer sound warm if you will. But then again one man's version of warmth is another man's interpretation of digititis.
M

Munonoki

guest
Generally speaking, "warmth" means a sound that has the top frequencies gradually attenuated and the presence of even harmonics with a slight bump in the lower midrange zone e.g., 320 Hz or 380 Hz.
 
K

Kofi

guest
[...] something that the end-user has to achieve through sound design skills.

Knowledge of sound design plus adding tasteful small amounts of harmonic distortion and a little bit of attenuation with a first-order high cut at say 3.5 kHz or 5 kHz by -1 dB or -1.5 dB can make a virtual synthesizer sound warm if you will. But then again one man's version of warmth is another man's interpretation of digititis.
 
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J

Juuko

guest
Just to add to what Kofi said. You can make whatever sound you want or use any synth presets of your choice followed by a pultec high-self (i.e., attenuation selection) to cure the digititis as much as you desire.
 
G

Guntrisha LaShondra

guest
Just to add to what Kofi said. You can make whatever sound you want or use any synth presets of your choice followed by a pultec high-self (i.e., attenuation selection) to cure the digititis as much as you desire.

What about using a DAW's stock EQ plug-in?
 
J

Juuko

guest
What about using a DAW stock EQ plug-in?

As long as you use a 6dB/octave high shelving filter that's fine. However, you will still need to add harmonics with something like iZotope Exciter using the warm mode because it generates even harmonics. BTW, on average most pultec equalizers (including the hardware versions) use these break frequencies for HF attenuation:
  • 11.46 kHz
  • 5.81 kHz
  • 1.80 kHz
  • 1.60 kHz
Gain staging is also extremely important when it comes to the harmonic saturation of every audio signal processor be it analog or digital. A rule of thumb is to make sure your source material is peaking between -20 dB and -15 dB. The more you drive the source material the more harmonics or distortion you will get.
 
C

Conor

guest
As long as you use a 6dB/octave high shelving filter that's fine. However, you will still need to add harmonics with something like iZotope Exciter using the warm mode because it generates even harmonics. BTW, on average most pultec equalizers (including the hardware versions) use these break frequencies for HF attenuation:
  • 11.46 kHz
  • 5.81 kHz
  • 1.80 kHz
  • 1.60 kHz

What is a break frequency?
 

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