LOL... I independantly invented electro funk music 20 years after Zapp & Roger... Bastards :) Experimentation is your friend... Quick some-up: * Compressor Is used to decrease the dynamic range of music. Given a certain peak level, the music will sound louder if you compress is. The price is you will have less dynamic range. Is used heavily on dancefloor tracks to make the sound more aggressive. * Limiter Good for shaving off the five or six peaks in a track that keep you from making it louder. Similar use than compressor but more radical. * Chorus Is used to make one voice sound like several chipmunk voices. (actually only several voices, the chipmunk effect can be a side effect) * Phaser Is used to make guitars and other instruments sound like 60s space movie sound effects. * Flanger A type of phaser that makes the signal sound new-agey... often used to make guitars sound more fluid (or by ill-timed guitarists to mask where one note starts and the other ends) * Bode Frequncy shifting Hey I'd like to know that one myself! * Filters Mutes or severely reduces certain frequencies out of a signal. Low pass: Mutes the higher frequencies and lets the lower ones pass High pass: The opposite Band pass: Takes a given frequency (band) and mutes whats much lower or much higher Comb: Like a band pass with lot's of very steep bands Are often used to make electronic sounds less sterile * Equalizers A very weak filter used for fine-tuning the sound of music while preserving the basic sound * Vocoding: Translates a signal into mathematical values with which it can be re-constructed later. Altering the signal while it's mathematical can change the signal a lot. Extensively used in dance music, especially by male producers with high squeaky voices. This is only my own experience that comes from playing with stuff a lot, nothing authoritative... As for books I'm not aware of anything on-line but studio engineers want fame too sometimes so there's plenty of books around on the subject if you don't mind buying one :) Carlo

On 2/21/06, Tim Howard <tdhoward(a)gmail.com> wrote: Nothing Linux-specific, but check out http://www.theprojectstudiohandbook.com/directory.htm. Of particular interest would be the Digital Audio, Effects, and Synthesis sections.