🎛️ Serum 2's Secret Weapon: Drum Resynthesis with Minimum Phase Convolution
Most producers think of Serum as just a wavetable synth for basses and leads. But hidden inside Serum 2’s new convolution engine is a technique that can completely revolutionize how you process drums.
We’ve all been there: you find a kick or snare sample with the perfect tone, but the envelope is just... wrong. Maybe the tail is too long, the transient is "flammy," or it just lacks that modern punch.
Traditional compression or transient shaping often ruins the character of the sound. But with Minimum Phase Convolution, you can surgically reshape a sample's envelope while keeping 100% of its original tone.
At lostaud.io, we love techniques that blur the line between sampling and synthesis. Here’s how to turn Serum 2 into the ultimate drum resynthesizer.
🔍 The Concept: Impulse-Driven Convolution
Instead of playing a sample directly, we are going to trigger it using an Impulse Response. By feeding a raw click (impulse) into a convolution reverb loaded with your drum sample, you get complete control over the playback characteristics.
🔧 Step-by-Step: The Setup
1. Prepare the Trigger
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Load a "Pure Impulse" or "DRX Spike" sample into Oscillator A (Serum's Noise oscillator works too if it's a short click).
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Important: Right-click the tuning section and disable pitch tracking.
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Set Envelope 1 Attack to 0ms. You want a raw, instant click.
2. The Convolution Engine
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Go to the FX tab and enable Convolve.
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Set the Mix to 100% and turn up the IR Gain.
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Drag your target drum sample (kick, snare, hat) directly into the Convolve window.
At this point, it just sounds like the sample. But here is where the magic happens.
🪄 The "Magic" Button: Minimum Phase Mode
Inside the Convolve window, enable Minimum Phase mode.
What is it doing? Technically, it "frontloads" the magnitude energy of all frequencies. What does it sound like? It instantly snaps the transient of your sample to the very beginning. It removes flam, tightens the tail, and makes the drum sound incredibly punchy—without altering the frequency response.
🎧 Result: You get the exact same tone as your original sample, but with a perfectly synthesized, razor-sharp envelope.
🧠 Advanced Shaping: The "Diffuser" Trick
Sometimes Minimum Phase is too tight—it can suck the "body" out of a snare. Here is how to dial it back in.
1. Add a Filter Pre-Convolve Place a Filter effect before the Convolve unit in the chain.
2. Select "Diffuser" Mode Set the filter type to Diffuser. This reshapes the phase response of the impulse before it hits the convolver.
3. Dial It In
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Tweaking the Diffuser parameters allows you to "smear" the transient slightly.
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This effectively gives you a "Body" knob for your drum.
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Pro Tip: Crank the Drive on the filter and add a Hard Clip at the end of the chain for perfect gain staging and loudness.
🎨 Creative Applications
Once you have this set up, you can do things standard samplers can't:
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Snare Tightening: Take a loose, acoustic snare and turn it into a tight, modern pop snare in seconds.
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Procedural Hi-Hats: Instead of an impulse, feed White Noise into the Convolve unit. Use an LFO to modulate the noise level. You can now "draw" your own hi-hat loops that sound like they were cut from the original sample, but with infinite variation.
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Kick Resynthesis: Fix a kick with a messy low-end phase by forcing it into minimum phase alignment.
🧪 Tools Used
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Serum 2 (Sampler & Convolve FX)
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Any Drum Sample (Kick, Snare, Hat)
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Hard Clipper (Standard Clip or Serum's distortion)
TL;DR
Don't settle for sloppy drum envelopes. Use Serum 2's Convolve effect in Minimum Phase mode to resynthesize your samples. It gives you the organic tone of a sample with the surgical envelope precision of a synth.
This entire blogpost was inspired by this video by AU5 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RZPgZ36Bus
Check it out if you would rather watch instead of read, I also recommend checking out his Patreon as well, many amazing gems on there!
