Can you have your cake and eat it too? No, because if you eat your cake, you destroy it. But what if there was a way?
In audio there is, and it’s known as a parallel process. You may have heard of one of them, parallel compression. The idea is simple.
If you squash the living heck out of your lovely pristine signal, you can combine that signal with the original and get the best of both worlds. But parallel processing isn’t just for compression. It’s a common practice to use parallel distortion and saturation to add some perceived grit and power to everything from bass and drums to vocals or even an entire mix.
It’s a great way to get things feeling louder without sacrificing the dynamics and integrity of the source. And maybe my personal favorite, parallel EQ. Feel like adding a gazillion dB to your low bass and putting it through a potato peeler?
Go for it. Just do it to a copy. You can recombine it almost imperceptibly or you can give it its own place in the stereo field and add more effects.
Parallel effects are the patron saint of the extreme and there aren’t any rules. My least favorite way to accomplish this is with a duplicate track. That’s going to require you keep the two tracks identical.
Some people like to use a send, but if you’re saturating or compressing, you may want to set it pre-fader so that the levels don’t change. Personally, I prefer using one track as a source that feeds two or more auxiliary tracks. This allows me to create rubber stamp clones of a track indefinitely and even recombine them at the end if I want it all on a single fader.
It’s having your cake and eating it too and sharing it with someone who belongs in a Beat Kitchen class.
