If you’ve been doing all of your audio processing “in the box” lately,
today is a reminder to try sending audio outside of your computer to
process it, even if you don’t have fancy studio hardware.
Guitar pedals are a great way to go here: if you don’t have any,
borrow a few from a friend. Even if you have plugins that will
generate similar effects, you’ll find the process of working with
hardware to be different which will lead to different
results.
Also, working with hardware tends to force you to commit to sounds –
never a bad thing in a world of infinite possibilities. In other
words, dial in a sound with your guitar pedal or other effect box, and
then once it sounds good, print that sucker to a new audio track and
move on.
One of the great things about the External Audio Effect device to do this is that
it supports Track Freeze.
Just select Freeze from the context menu…
…and your hardware effect will be rendered in real time:
Now you can use the Flatten command…
….to turn the track into a standard audio track containing the hardware processed sound.
