This tiny Ableton rack is absurdly powerful.

[@benjamonpookoo2741]

My algorithm has overestimated my audio production intelligence, but I’ve subscribed and I’m gonna wrap my head around this in time. Peace ✌🏼

[@2L3L]

if you want any more detailed explanations just lemme know and I'll answer here!! ty for the sub :)

[@jyack]

@@2L3L can you make tutorials for explaining how these devices work, like routing and all?

[@benjamonpookoo2741]

That’s super kind of you. I’ll first try to understand as much as I can through a few rewatches and a fk about on Ableton.

[@2L3L]

@jaecheff I was thinking of maybe doing something like that, or potentially rather covering some of the basics of how audio works which would allow a more intuitive understanding of tricks like this! but for now here's a quick explanation: these racks work by using phase cancelation to isolate only the differences an effect causes. the easiest way to visualize this is with a clipper and the second rack in the video. the second rack in principle is very simple; one of the chains has the clipper on it, and the other has the clipper AND the original signal, with the clipped signal phase inverted. the routing only serves to bring that clipped signal into the other chains of the rack. this leads to just the parts of the wave getting clipped off coming through. for example, with a triangle wave, the clipped signal would look like trapezoids, that is to say triangles with the tips cut off. the "differences" signal with the phase inversion would look like those tips that got cut off; little triangles with blank space between them where nothing got cut off. the first rack works in a really similar way, but it phase inverts one of the original two input chains AFTER both have already gone through the effect. practically you can think of this as putting effects before the split instead of after it! it's a bit of a hard to explain process if you aren't familiar with how phase cancelation affects signals; I would recommend playing around with the racks while recording the audio in another track and looking to see how the waveform itself has changed!!

[@vitamindminormusicalwander6630]

@@benjamonpookoo2741 I feel I’m in a similar position … . I only grasped enough of the concepts to be inspired and curious enough to try some new things I haven’t even considered while continuing to explore his videos to learn more along the way 🎶☮️🎶💟🎶☯️🎶.

[@ezenelex]

this is the kind of thing a plugin would do but no, you figured it out with free stuff and posted it for free. love it, and you're a genius

[@bexiexz]

yess

[@ghvstraid]

i've actually found ways to recreate expensive plugins by usingn a ton of free effects lol

[@infektdubstep]

this is HUGE. thanks for sharing! took me a bit to wrap my head around it, but it got me thinking about so many possibilities

[@2L3L]

yoooo no way infekt! glad it was helpful, ive been loving weird processing techniques like this that allow effects to kinda have a new use

[@artemetra3262]

the man himself

[@Death_Rave]

No fkn way 💀

[@TheArcticKitten]

really i love how powerful ableton is and im glad people like you are pushing it to do just insane shit like this. obviously anything is possible but this is doing that in cool interesting ways.

[@2L3L]

there's a lottt more insane shit than this in ableton this is possible with pretty much every daw i think I've been getting into max for live as well tho and that's where the real insane shit happens 🔥🔥 especially thinking about doing a tutorial about the built in modulators ableton has buried deep in like the m4l demo packs that are super powerful

[@PanopticMotion]

@@2L3L Please, make that. tutorial. Thank you!

[@2L3L]

will happen when I get time!! it will be the next tutorial I make for sure 🙏

[@dariokonstantin]

One of the first videos on KZbin where I have to slow down the speed instead of speeding it up! So much knowledge in so little time. Thank you for creating this!!!

[@LoydBE]

I didn't know I needed to spectrally pan in my life before this

[@2L3L]

oh my god it's so useful there's so many times I'll have a sound and just like the low end is randomly to the side of something and it'll never sound centered unless you can spectrally pan lmaoo

[@LoydBE]

@@2L3L Totally ! No more using Utility to shift some low end and wreck the rest of the stereo image, your trick is super cool

[@perevelasco8682]

This is so clever! All the investigating behind all of this is mind blowing. Today I learned new things about noise cancellation aplications that I could not imagine before. THANK YOU SO MUCH.❤

[@2L3L]

thank you for the kind words!!

[@zionjaymes4415]

This is a great technique! I figured this out years ago with distortion (exactly like the first part of the vid) but never thought to try it with other effects! I call it “dry nulling”. Btw, you can do the distortion version of this with a single plug by subtracting waveshaper curves instead of the audio

[@vitamindminormusicalwander6630]

You have inspired me to play around with effects and processing more in the last 2 weeks than the rest of KZbin has in the previous 2 years . THANKS SO MUCH FOR SUCH DEPTH ON WORKFLOWS & TOOLS!

[@2L3L]

YEAHHH that's really good to hear, thank you!! I can't wait to make more stuff, on a trip rn but everyone liking the tutorial will give me so much motivation when I get back 🙏🙏

[@ShinyShinyBlack]

Hey friend - I've been in business as a mixer for 21 years, and I am totally blown away by what you are doing here. I've always prided myself on creative signal flow, but this is like thinking you are really good at basketball, and then seeing Michael Jordan for the first time. Great work, and thank goodness, I still have a lot to learn!

[@2L3L]

thank you so much!!! 21 years is crazy you probably have some tricks I don't know about as well haha but yeah true, the longer i make music and do processing and stuff the more I realize there's an infinite amount to learn and there's always massive new things to discover

[@alva-alva-alva]

You indirectly taught me to do feedback looping on a single track (which I will proceed to use for physical modelling). Thank you so much

[@2L3L]

yeah! love using gate for that as well! i recommend using the stock delay plugin in the loop for delay time, can't go over 1khz but it seems like vsts and m4l devices have a small weird delay compensation that stock devices do not which makes the minimum delay time a lot higher

[@henriquematias1986]

after 20 years using ableton it's not every day someone impress me :D even having done loads of tricks with phase inversion before i still got surprised by some of the ideas you brought here. like spectral panning with built in efx. sick stuff brother

[@2L3L]

damn 20s a lot yeah! only at 11 myself here thank you !!

[@henriquematias1986]

@@2L3L keep ‘em coming, I’m subscribed to the max ( :

[@paulammon9746]

super cool. love when you try to spectraly blend between two very different sounds.

[@TREMORAGAS]

you're a maniac , please continue

[@vitamindminormusicalwander6630]

💯🎯

[@MadNoisy]

🤣🤣🤘

[@prodigalretrod]

Hahahaha

[@Ninjjadog]

😂

[@PenroseBunnington]

Thanks for giving me two years worth of experimenting.

[@ChuckSutton]

That blending mode is BEAUTIFUL!! So excited to see what kind of sounds I can make with that, thank you 🙌🏽

[@2L3L]

appreciate it!! if you make anything and decide to post it hmu id love to hear 💪

[@TheArcticKitten]

fucking sick video bro. love how technical yet fast ur going thru things. hate when ppl over explain but u get the point and effect across so well and seamlessly. more pls!

[@2L3L]

thank you so much! def will do more tutorials in the future i have a lot of ideas, although idk how frequently I'll be able to make em since I want to spend the majority of my time making music still (which I think also leads to better tutorials anyway bc I actually am putting the stuff to use)

[@TheArcticKitten]

@@2L3L dope bro im here for whatever you got. gonna go check out the music now!

[@israelCommitsGenocide]

was just gonna comment that too, hes very articulate and to the point.

[@KonkaBass]

Hell yeah, I've done basic stuff with this technique but you've taken it to a wild level and I'm stoked to experiment later.

[@octaneuro]

MIND BENDING I'm gonna try to implement these ideas, but damn most of this is getting over my head. I'm gonna try to learn better from this video.

[@lorddulort]

these is insane dudeeeeeeeee. so glad the algorithm gods send me your channel

[@LineKernel]

dude this might be the most important sound design video on youtube ! i ve found a eurorack that inverts (Malekko INVERT MIX) , i ll have to grab it when i m not broke anymore .Cheers

[@2L3L]

oh awesome, are you thinking of doing this physically? ik that some speakers for example you can swap the two chords going into the speaker to invert the phase, i wonder if an easy solution would be possible in a rack setup. im pretty clueless though lmao i have not messed around with hardware at all thank you for watching and the comment!!!

[@LineKernel]

@@2L3L i m thinking about not doing physically at the speaker level but electronically before mixing back both signals together : split 1 signal with a Y , invert one and feed it into various effects and or filters , then mix them back together , and see what happens

[@skawt]

this is nuts man, never seen anything like this before. pat on the back for this one.

[@intevolver]

This has mixing applications of blending two tracks together is crazy

[@eter93-b9h]

that's really impressive, both technique and your delivery, like... damn good luck and don't stop!

[@2L3L]

thank you so much!! definitely not ever stopping with music 🔥

[@vwvwvwvvw6143]

that's amazing, I love these mysterious vids which scratch absolute new level of using familiar plugins

[@2L3L]

mysterious vids 😭 thank you sm!!! i bet there's a lot of things like this floating around which are virtually undiscovered except by a few of the cutting edge sound design folks, i have a couple similar tricks myself that im excited to share when i have more time :)

[@willowevergreen7577]

this is so cool! what a cool technique. im definitely gonna go try this out. thanks for the video. i do have to say, i wish you spent a little more time on showing the signal routing, as even though ive done somewhat similar things with gates in ableton before i still kinda got lost with which chain was doing exactly what after a point, and didnt totally follow the structure of the other racks on a first watch. i think a slower explanation of the signal flow would probably help people using other daws or who want to experiment with using this technique in other configurations. still its such a cool idea and im so glad youtube recommended me this video

[@2L3L]

agreed agreed, i have been thinking about doing a more in depth video and having like an infographic with the signal flow although im not sure if ill get around to it there's always so many things to do in life lmao thank you for watching!!

[@bubtheloop]

@@2L3L please follow up :D I'm definitely gonna try to implement this in Bitwig, too

[@demonicrooster69]

Fantastic! I've been looking into utilizing phase in creative ways and this was an absolute masterclass in that, bravo and thank you!

[@xX_dash_Xx]

4:18 I follow everything ur saying and doing, but this factoid hit me out of nowhere lmao. I had no idea -6 halves it!

[@2L3L]

took me a long time to figure it out too I actually think I found that out while making this very video 😭

[@metikmusic6066]

Absolute banger of video, using phase cancelling for dry wet signals is gonna keep me busy for the next few months haha

[@metikmusic6066]

That Reese bass at 8:05 is so heavy haha

[@sauce_aux]

This is great, and has been fun to mess with. Thanks for sharing. Been using it for making transitions between motifs, in full mixes, then resampling. Also the sample fodder has been great for stretching and granulating. Well done 💪🏽

[@BigBruhh]

I feel like an idiot for not coming up with this myself, its been right in front of me this whole time haha. Brilliant video, thanks for putting me onto a new processing technique to become obsessed with for a year lol

[@2L3L]

lmaooooo this is how i felt when i first tried it too fr. but I guess it's just one of things that sits there with most people not using it for a while thank you!

[@zerorun4426]

cool video man, i've been bored with sound design lately, haven't even thought about using phase cancellation like that

[@2L3L]

thank you!! i feel there's still so much unexplored with sound design it's just hard to find the new things haha

[@tyronesampson2654]

Slick moves. I got so many ideas from this. Thanks

[@FluidBlow]

This is quite advanced, will have to watch more than once. thanks for sharing.

[@h3adsh0t2]

I would really love a detailed breakdown on everything done here. How sidechain works in a gate versus others. Why u make so many parallels when processing, theres just a lot to cover. Thank you!

[@2L3L]

The routing scheme itself is actually really simple, it's just that ableton's rack based format makes things more confusing compared to the same thing in FL's patcher or Bigwig's grid. I'd recommend grabbing the rack yourself from the description and messing around with it, but I'll quickly answer those two questions! The sidechain with a gate works the same as sidechain with any other default ableton device. The only special thing going on is clicking that headphones icon, which listens to the audio coming in the sidechain. The fact that it is a gate doesn't matter at all since the audio bypasses all of the gates processing, only the button existing. I'm using the gate device specifically because it's the smallest and simplest Ableton device with this option. External routing tools like VSTs also work, but due to the way Ableton handles routing, the routing is reset when you load he device from a rack. Stock Ableton tools don't have this problem. The parallel chains are used both to mix 2 signals together and to make the resulting rack easier to use by exposing only the necessary sections. This is where looking at it yourself will probably be more effective, but the exposed Dry and Wet chains are just blank boxes for effects to be inserted. The audio from those chains then gets mixed together with the wet track phase inverted (requiring another parallel chain setup), goes through the splitting effect, and then the original version of the wet signal is brought back in (requiring a 3rd parallel chain), canceling out the unaltered parts of the wet signal.

[@darrellhicks9024]

Straight to business without the constant like & subscribe bs. My guy.

[@2L3L]

🙏 appreciate it! I've had sponsorblock auto skipping like and subscribe plee sections for so long now I kinda forgot how annoying it was lolll

[@bubtheloop]

oh wow. I guess I'm gonna have to watch that again. dude's thinking with portals

[@edeltobi]

Great content, keep it up and this channel will explode! Thank you for the racks, I was looking for something like this, but also wanted to learn how it works. So this is perfect.

[@2L3L]

glad you found it helpful! im constantly torn between making tutorials and music lol and currently the music is winning but at some point there will be more !!

[@JoshTenMusic]

It's so exciting to see you take a bunch of the basic concepts we've been using for years and then launch them into space like this. Some Virtual riot level big brain that has the potential to make an actual difference to the sound design landscape. Please continue sharing your ideas !

[@2L3L]

thank you so much! i love little tricks like this where one day you just try something and it clicks

[@shmackydoo]

So much cool stuff to do in one rack, very cool ideas throughout

[@gavinpeters9531]

Awesome, really cool idea I hadn't considered

[@iamvcrx]

For the texture example, if I understood, the final mix you hear is the dry kick clipped + noise only on the clipped transient part. Personally, I prefer to (1) isolate the clipped part and add noise on it using a more readable rack (dry phase reverted + dry clipped) and (2) add the dry in a new parallel rack so you end up with dry + noise on the clipped transients. You have further control on what level of clipping you want on the dry signal (if you want clipping) and what level of clipped noise you want. You also have a more readable chain.

[@2L3L]

from your explanation here it sounds like that method would also make the clipped parts twice as loud (unless you are clipping the dry signal in both instances, in which case it's the same method as the second rack in this video) it's pretty close to what you said for the first rack, but it functionally subtracts the clipped part of the noise from the input wave, leading to no decrease in headroom, which is not possible otherwise. Not really a big difference though except for more technical uses haha

[@marcus268]

Really intresting idea, i played more with this rack than with Zynaptic spectral morph lol. (Which i payed for.) Kudos, the explanation could be a bit slower, but as one gets to play around with it, it gets a bit more obvious what to do. You offerd also very cool ideas, where to go with it, and opend it up quiete abit.

[@abcdefg-ln4uk]

9:27 reminds me a lot of tim hecker very good and inspiring video :)

[@2L3L]

yoooo love tim hecker hell yeah ty

[@Death_Rave]

Vids like this are why I am so stubborn with buying plugins and not relying on stock ableton 💀

[@volpir4672]

The panning dynamics is really neat thanks

[@2L3L]

no problem! although I'd recommend mspectral pan which is free and does this type of thing better for more complex spectral panning, this is great for just a quick 0 latency method tho

[@Oxxygen_io]

I would love to see a more basic tutorial of this. Seams almost like magic 😅

[@djebrayass]

awesome to see you tackle tutorials!!!!

[@2L3L]

ty djeb :D

[@alaeifR]

It's akin to working with "blending modes" in Photoshop in a way. Very clever. Never thought of it. 4D chess.

[@2L3L]

I can see it that way yeah! A lot of visual concepts can be applied to audio and vice versa, it's often productive to watch a video tutorial and think about what the auditory equivalent of the effect would be, sometimes you get some great new techniques out of that!

[@KaidonUK]

That reese bass man fucking hell, quality of the video is very high, great stuff

[@zonashi8645]

This is sum sound design final boss shit

[@antonkuzmiankou5540]

bro im already hyped up for what you gonna come up with next cause thats already very creative and actually useful

[@liam_iam]

will be keeping an eye on this channel!

[@gIfEnK22]

Great video! I cant wait to watch more sound design videos of yours

[@2L3L]

thank you! more will come hopefully 🙏

[@egorgurov5870]

I need to come back to this. game changing sauce

[@DeepDishCoffee]

This is next level madness 🎉 love it

[@lotusshrine]

need more of this!!! ur cool keep making music dude!!!

[@2L3L]

more to come for sure!! ty

[@monat_son]

bro, sick knowledge. instant sub. thanks for sharing.

[@2L3L]

hell yeah ty for the sub! glad it's useful for u

[@prod.fayella]

Dude absolutely incredible tips! Thank you for this

[@2L3L]

appreciate it! and no problem, glad the vid is helpful:)

[@HeadUnderHeels]

2024 is the year of difference splitting. I hope it's remembered as an era-defining technique. You've done more with this in a single video than I've ever thought possible.

[@2L3L]

thank you so much! we'll see i guess, it'll definitely shape my personal era if nothing else haha

[@artificium_]

frequent has a similar video as well

[@auraldecoy]

Thank you for all of these neat tricks, never would have found them on my own. I like how you explained it as well. Subbed!

[@2L3L]

thank you!! glad I could help 🙏

[@Cam-on2jw]

Nobody let virtual riot see this

[@trancodingertranscodinger387]

Well…that was… super cool! Thanks for sharing.

[@2L3L]

thank you for watching!!

[@denisbrodovskyi7135]

thanks man. thats was mind blowing

[@p.985]

This is absolutely wild.

[@joelwanner5799]

Nice idea, looking forward to the series 🔥

[@PRLCKLY]

This seems so cool but i do not know enough for this to not go in one ear out the other

[@2L3L]

just grab the rack and mess around with it! important takeaway is that funny rack make weird noises when you put different effects in the 3 slots

[@pheymee88]

Yoink! Much thanks for making it free, my rules are "if I'll be using it frequently, I'll pay for that later" :)

[@2L3L]

of course!! this is such a simple thing that it would feel so weird to make it a paid thing 😭😭

[@somedude4728]

Absolutely insane stuff! This should be possible to do in other daws aswell using Airwindows Flipity.

[@2L3L]

true yes! airwindows + mchannelmatrix should make it possible in any daw with vst (and sidechain) support

[@harrismadeit9757]

huge for the program

[@larslyd1627]

next level stuff. thanks for teaching

[@thisisgunkel]

Such a good method and explanation, thank you!

[@2L3L]

you're welcome!! glad the vid could help

[@BEAT_NEAG]

a lot of cool stuff to dive into, cheers for sharing 🙏

[@2L3L]

np!! have fun exploring 🙏

[@postingmybeats]

this is so sick, big props!!

[@drummerboyfarr]

Amazing work!! Thanks for sharing❤

[@ItisJev]

Whoah, next level ideas here!

[@technizite]

THIS IS SO INSPIRING WTFF, AWESOME VIDEO I use FL so I can't get the racks, but I wonder if I can make some similar stuff in patcher!! rarely ever touch that thing but I wanna start messing with it so bad lol

[@2L3L]

thank you!!! and yeah it seems quite possible to make in patcher given the simplicity! I think you could theoretically make it with just like routing between a few parallel tracks in FL although I'm not 100% sure how you'd do it bc i haven't used fl lol

[@yanasitta]

Bro just casually dropping bombs.

[@luisinhobr]

phase is awesome

[@2L3L]

true

[@GenocidePanda]

so sick but i’m confused af def gonna have to watch multiple timesss. or idk if i should even take the time to dive in fr but def sick to know this is possible

[@2L3L]

id recommend just grabbing the rack and throwing effects into it to see what happens! with more complex stuff it just becomes hard to conceptualize what the phase canceling is actually doing and just easier to go by sound haha

[@vjmcgovern]

Holy night you just blew my brain

[@whoskryo]

this is so cool! thanks for this video! :)

[@bexiexz]

wow this is amazing

[@ishi...]

So I got the part about using a phase inverted parallel signal to isolate the change between two signals. I zoned out at the part with the sidechain gate.

[@2L3L]

the gate is just for audio routing! any device in Ableton with a sidechain set to listen mode can be used for audio routing, and the gate is just the most simple one and likely has the lowest cpu load. the gate itself is not doing anything!

[@bass_therapy]

Very nerdy. great tutorial.

[@2L3L]

tyty lmao

[@artificium_]

check out the frequent video about doing this with a transient shaper. he does things to match the latency which you might be having an issue with. ie, you might have to be putting each effect on each chain but phase inverted/dry so each chain has the same amount of latency. you can hover over the title bars of each effect to see how much they're adding. video explains it better. cool stuff tho

[@2L3L]

Ableton compensates the latency in parallel chains automatically (as long as the plugin properly reports it, for situations where it doesn't I use mutility) but agreed frequent is the goat

[@artificium_]

@@2L3L ah good to know. and true haha

[@organsmoothie6186]

incredible

[@kess410]

this is cool and you are ovbisouly talented at sound design but quick question... what would you say were your sources when you were learning the fundamentals of these complex Ableton concepts? did you have a mentor or go to a music school of some sort or buy a online course or is it all self taught?

[@2L3L]

I'm 100% self taught! I started using Ableton around 11 years ago so I'm very comfortable with it, but most of my learning about sound design and the more complex stuff was within the last 3 years. The main driving factor is every day I do a few short practice sessions specifically to try new things or test out concepts I've thought of, and doing that for long enough you kind of start to discover all these techniques on your own!

[@vooo5711]

this is brilliant

[@_tjoeaon]

Yo this is nuts

[@lotusshrine]

wow i love this

[@netwatcherer]

the processes are reminded me off the Uzumaki vst

[@axiomcrux]

Very clever, I dig it.

[@krisissupercool1]

yoo very nice! where'd you get that crisp plugin if you don't mind me askin, and keep up the good work!!!

[@2L3L]

look up nih-plug!! you'll find a github repo with crisp and a bunch of other free plugins by the same person 🙏

[@IsotonikStudios]

Massively cool!!

[@TheColourAwesomer]

Love it! More videos like this would be awesome

[@2L3L]

there will be more in the future for sure! not sure the exact timeline as I'm also busy finishing up an album rn but I want to get a few out as like a way to get some traction right before the album itself haha

[@lillymiller5658]

best tutorial on yt!?

[@2L3L]

😭😭😭

[@arcerionmusic]

✅

[@juju_be]

this is great. thanks for sharing! you go a bit fast over some concept demos. i've never seen this trick before. def will try implement!

[@2L3L]

agreed yeah, was pretty on the fly. might to another tutorial going more in depth if I get enough time but I got so many projects rn loll

[@AyKenDuu]

You are a genius

[@agushtheboi7870]

This is genius!