WHERE'S THE BEEF?

Your tweaking some sounds for your next master piece, yet they are sounding a bit thin.

How do you remedy this? Do you squash them with even more compression? You could add more low end but that may muddy up your sound. So, how do you add that little extra juice, aka, "The Beef".

There are a wide variety of tools that add, subtract, raise, lower, squash, squish, shine and mangle your sound. That extra oomph can be achieved by using a distortion effect. Yes, distortion. There are countless varieties of distortion, from smooth to utter mayhem. We are talking about the subtle use of this magical phenomena in audio and sound. Distortion can add "The Beef" tout de suite (that's French for immediately). Dial up an overdrive or distortion effect and start tweaking, you will quickly hear your sound transforming. You are looking for the sweet spot of saturation to add robustness to your sound. Experimentation is always the best method. Try positioning the effect in different placements within your inserts or effects chain. Remember, the key word here is subtle for you may only need to tweak the parameters ever so slightly depending on your effect of choice.