Especially in today's music production, there are different types of special sound effects, which were used to achieve a good end-result.

Reverb Sound Effect

At first, there is the reverb-effect. It adds the natural ambience to the end-product and makes it sound more "real". In modern effect-processors, you can find different kinds of reverb-settings. For example you can use the spring, plate, chamber or a concert hall setting. Each one trys to copy the real sound as good as possible. This can happen analogue, digital or hybrid. A reverb-effect used the right way, can e.g. let the singer sound better than he really is.

The best Equalizer

Another very important effect is the equalizer (EQ). Many people know the equalizer from their personal audio-equipment (e.g. radio). There you can adjust in the easiest case the amount of bass, middle and treble. In modern music-production the EQ is used to assign each instrument it's own frequency. This is necessary to make sure, that the instruments don't overlap themselves in the mix. If e.g. the guitar-track uses the same frequency like the vocal-track, the final mix will sound very unclean. To avoid this unwanted "effect", you could issue a boost at 200 and 2000Hz to the guitar and a boost at 3000Hz to the vocals. Now, the mix will sound more clear, because now every track has it's own
frequency.

Compressor Effect to equal volume

Speaking of special sound effects, there are effects, which are able to vary the dynamic of each track. The most important one is the compressor effect. It is able to make silent parts of the mix louder than they really are and louder parts more quiet. In nearly every song, there are parts, which were sung less noisy, and parts, which were chanted louder. Without the compressor-tool, the producer had to adjust both parts manually to the same volume. With the compressor-effect handled correctly, it will be done automatically. The compressor-usage reduces the amount of work in a very high level, because nearly every track (guitar, drums a.s.o.) contains parts which vary in their volume.

Music Production – Most used effects

These three effects are the most-used ones in today's music-production. Without them, all famous songs in the world and every music-concert would not sound like everyone expects it today. Of course, there are a lot more special sound effects, music producers are using today (e.g. flanger, chorus, gate), but these 3 effects are the basis.

A  special sound effects system is a complementing arrangement of both a receiver and several speakers to carry out the acoustic effects while watching a movie. The speakers have to be set up in a certain scheme within the room to achieve best results. The state of the art standard is usually named “Dolby X.X”.

Dolby Surround Systems

The term ‘Dolby’ originally refers to a technology to compress audio and video data that was invented by Dolby Laboratories and nowadays is used as a synonym for the current level of audio processing units in a receiver. The early and very first form of speakers could carry out mono-signals only. That means that it was possible to hook up two speakers, but to both speakers the exact same signals were sent. This way it was not possible to create any audio effects. In the 1960’s a technological breakthrough was achieved when the new audio standard “Dolby Stereo” or “Dolby 2.0” was introduced.

First Appearance of Dolby Stereo

First it was used on the music market only, but very soon the TV and cinema branch made use of it, too. By using Dolby Stereo you still had two speakers, but now each speaker got its own unique audio channel. As a result, first audio effects were made possible: the first audio effects systems were born. After a relatively long stagnation on the market of audio-visual entertainment, the foundation for most home cinemas was laid out in the 1990s. A central processing unit was invented that could split up a stereo signal and subdivide it into four different channels. The “Dolby Surround Sound” standard soon became the nonplus ultra on the home entertainment market. Now the audience got four different sound sources surrounding them while watching a movie in their living rooms: three in front of them (one each side of the TV and one in the centre which was emitting the actors’ speeches) and one in their backs (two small effect speakers that got identical audio feed and emitted background sound effects).

DVD and Dolby Digital

Only the invention of digital versatile discs (DVD) brought it to the next level. With the newly created space for data, the engineers had room to improve the quality of the audio signals further and the “Dolby 5.1” standard became true. Now the two effect speakers in the rear were each actuated with their own channels and a sixth speaker, the ‘subwoofer’ for low frequency effects only, was added.