Serum by Xfer Records has become the go to sound design tool for most music producers.
The unsophisticated interface can be one of the many reasons as to why it is the tool of choice.
It is a vast tool that can make for quite an impressionable workflow that fits almost every genre and basic sound design need.
with this in mind, you may wonder if it is possible to create any sound with Serum.
Serum can create most sounds BUT not every sound, it has limitations because it is only a wavetable synthesizer.
Serum is not a hybrid synthesizer with every type of synthesis.
I.e. serum cent be used to create sounds that require granular synthesis.
Serum Sound Design features
Serum is one of the best tools you could ever go for if you want to achieve a high quality sound design output.
a few years ago it was pretty difficult to find a wavetable synthesizer with high quality sound design properties,
but thanks to Xfer Records, we now have Serum at our disposal.
it may be limited in that it cant recreate any sound but as far as sound design goes,
Serum is one of the best choices you can go for to meet your needs.
One thing you’ll appreciate about Serum is it’s highly visual and creative display that lets you see what you’re doing.
Therefore creating and manipulating sounds is much more easier and much more fun as compared to other sound design tools that have no proper visual aid to assist the user.
Importing
it’s pretty hard to develop some unique sounds that require synthesis outside of wavetable synthesis that Serum offers,
but what you’ll appreciate is that Serum allows you to import your own sounds
which means you can alter any sound that you come across in any way that you feel like using all the tools that Serum leaves at your disposal.
Serum uses a number of methods to basically analyse audio and break it down further for more design.
You can have your single cycle wavetables and many other wavetables imported at once with manual re-ordering or built in sorting options.
Furthermore, serum will allow you to morph between various wavetables using cross fading or spectral morphing.
Serum will also allow you to draw directly on the waveform with a variety of shape tools and optional grid size snapping.
Artifacts
Audible artifacts are tones that overcrowd your mix and this is very common in most wavetable synthesizers because playing back of wavetables requires digital sampling to play at different frequencies,
therefore without considerable care the mix will be over crowded and possibly ruined.
Serum is properly optimised to give you an almost inaudible signal to noise ratio.
this requires a lot of calculations on Serum’s part.
therefore the playback oscillators have been greatly optimised to allow for high quality playback without taxing your CPU abnormally.
Modulation
Serum allows for an easy drag and drop connection between mod sources and destinations.
This simplified system makes your work even much more easier and much more fun.
Wavetable manipulation
Serum allows you to manipulate the waveform itself in a separate real time process called Warp.
it has a set of over 200 wavetables,
Filters
Serum has a variety of filter types that are found in LFOTool with some additional new ones.
The dual filter types will basically allow you to control or morph between filter types therefore you can really get creative with what you can do.
Built in Effects
Serum has built in effects that can serve you best if they are utilized properly,
you can have them in any order that you want depending on how you want them to affect your signal.
one other great thing is that all effect parameters are pretty much available as modulation destinations.
Conclusion
This basic run around of all of serums features is important because it gives you an idea of what Serum can basically do.
therefore it is more important to know that the creativity lies in the hands of the user.
the ability to import your own sounds even stretches just how far you can take your sound design process.
Serum is one of the best tools available on the market right now and it will serve you best if utilized to its fullest potential.
But don’t forget that Serum will not be able to make any type of sound.
Related Articles You Should Read
Is Omnisphere Better Than Serum?
Additive And Subtractive Synthesis (The Difference)
Sources
10 Sound Design Tips: Xfer Serum – Production Music Live
12 Serum Sound Design Tips You Need to Know – Hyperbits
Serum Tutorial: How To Use Xfer Serum for Beginners
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