Audio knowledge base
Sound Design
Producer-friendly guides to spectral processing, granular synthesis, modulation effects, and turning audio into expressive new textures.
7 visual articles
How to make cyberpunk music: sound, structure and atmosphere
The genre lives in a contradiction: warm analogue synths degraded by digital artefacts. Get that tension right and the rest follows.
Using samples with MIDI: play a recording like an instrument
A sample is a fixed recording. A sampler turns it into something you can play, in any key, with any envelope.
What is saturation, and how do you actually use it?
Saturation makes something louder and denser without making its peaks higher. That is why it works where volume does not.
Sound design explained: turning a sound into the right sound
Sound design is not making weird noises. It is deciding what a sound needs to do, then getting it to do that.
Phaser vs flanger vs chorus: what is the difference?
A phaser uses modulated all-pass filters, a flanger mixes in a very short modulated delay, and chorus uses delayed voices with enough variation to suggest multiple performers.
What is granular synthesis? From sample to living texture
Granular synthesis creates textures from many short sonic events called grains. Their timing, source position, duration, pitch and envelope determine what the cloud becomes.
What is spectral processing in audio?
Spectral processing transforms audio in a time-frequency representation, allowing frequency components to be selected, moved, held or reshaped independently.