Rendering effects

Something I like to do sometimes, once my effects returns are stable and haven’t changed in a while, is to render them out as audio.

Because then you can do some really cool things with them, which can be clunky or even impossible to do when they’re still running in real time on auxes!

For example:

• Using clip gain to create little pokes or pullbacks on the reverb on individual words. In theory it’s possible do do this with volume automation on the reverb return? But being able to see visually where the reverb is actually happening is key — reverb never comes in immediately.

• Separating out subsequent taps in the waveform on a long delay and doing weird stuff to them. Pitch-shifting subsequent delay taps up or down in a precise way? Increasing the stereo spread on each tap in an iterative way? Huge pain in the ass with automation, trivially easy with rendered audio.

• Dividing reverb waveforms into clips and putting fades on the end of some of them — effectively creating custom reverb envelopes on a per-instance basis.

• Dividing reverb waveforms and putting fades on the beginning of some of them, to create fade-in reverb effects in strategic places.

Chop chop — jamie