ive been trying to get that really eerie lead synth sound thas skream uses alot and i found a preset that sounds similar the balinese one in subtractor in reason. After looking at teh preset i think getting that eerie distant sort of sound is from hooking the lfo up to the phase. but i dont no what the phase is so im not quite understanding it.
Im not asking how to make the lead, just what does putting an lfo on the phase of a synth do and what is the phase.

anyhelp would be greatly appreciated thanks

Phase is sending the signal Left or Right in stereo.... Chuck a set of headphones on and find the Phase slider/knob, and manually slide/turn it all the way left, then right... You'll see

phase can also refer to the phase of two different oscillators - that is, their periodic offset in the time domain.

thanks eprom
just wondering if anyone could elobarate on this, like what does this do the sound, is this whats adding that eerie darkness to the synth

ShifteQ: that is not what phase is...


what eprom said is right.

to make it simple, read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_(waves)


i'll try and explain it in a way that should make sense to a beginner.
phase is the time relationship of a waveform in relationship to another waveform.
things being out of phase can give really sickening sounding results and cause a "thinning" in sound quality (loss of bass etc)

imagine that you're mic'ing a guitar cabinet with 2 mics.
1 mic is 1" from speaker and another is 1.5" from the speaker. obviously, the sound doesnt hit each mic at the same time, so the 2 signals (1 created from each mic) will be slightly out of phase and the waves will be moving at a slightly different time.

e.g. mic 1" from speaker will be the red line and 1.5" from speaker is the blue line.
as soon as you get 180 degrees out of phase with identical signals the signal will disappear and there will be no noise, as the signals are canceling each other out.

modulating the phase will shift the time delay between oscillators, its pretty much like adding a sample delay to one channel of the signal. it can create the feeling of the sound coming in and out or thickening and thinning.

thanks for explaining that tobius
really helped

What they said.

If you want to use phasing as an effect, there's tons of plugins for that. They're all callled phaser and do the same thing with some variations in filters and stereo settings.

Some just create phase (delay a copy of the signal onto itself),
some create stereo phase (delay 1 of the 2 channels in stereo so your ears perceive the signals at slightly offset times).
And then there are the circulating pan phasers.

There can be multiple instances of delayed signals, added filtering and stereo spreading etc.

Note: be VERY careful when using phase effects as if you dont know what you're doing, there is a good chance that on mono playback (like a lot of big soundsystems) sounds will completely disappear or the mix will radically change.

words to mix by right thur. first time my tracks came out of a big mono system i was more than disappointed. took a bit of fixing and a lot of hair pulling.

Coming from a recording background i don't know how i let that slip.

yuuup. soft synths are the WORST for mono compatibility. its brutal but pretty honest in saying that most soft synth patches that sounds amazing and have a lot of depth are horribly phase coherent...