Well, I know I said I was done for the year, but what the hell. Besides, who doesn’t love to use “Coda” in a blog post title? Really, these two are very cool little gifts, and neither will set you back anything (depending if you own either of the products I’m discussing).

First up, another Digital Lo-fi favorite, for the mighty Zebra2, some kind muso posted a bank of just stellar sounds. I mean, really remarkable. If you spend any time downloading soundbanks for your soft synths you know what a gamble it is, sometimes little more than seemingly randomly generated and randomly named patches; or there’s the huge, elaborate one-finger patches that are all but useless in a real-world context. Anyway, these are playable and inspiring, not to mention aptly named and well organized. Not only are these sounds you’ll be able to use in your music easily but they are a real testament to the depth and breadth of Zebra2.

You can pick it up here: Zebra Food by Menno Meijer

And if you heeded my advice, you picked up the new SonicCharge Synplant. Well, do yourself a favor and fire up your DAW at some point before the clock rolls over today. SonicCharge are already known for the literal “easter egg” in microTonic. Well, this does that one better by, giving a whole new dimension to an already beguiling plugin. I won’t bother trying to explain it, and I’m not sure how “musically” useful it is ultimately, but it sure is neato.

I guess I’ll give a happy ending here.

As is news to no one but still such a cool gift I would be remiss to let it go unacknowledged, everyone’s favorite Goldbaby has fed digitallofi favorite µTonic onto his (one of his…?) tape machines. Man, I dig the way this cat thinks. You can pick them up at his new blog here.

Also, another Digital Lo-Fi favorite, and subject of one of my most popular posts to date, Dusted William Super Funky Ass Drum Loops are the subject of a good December discount. As I wrote back when these were first released, these are a powerful good collection of sliced beats. Just the right amount of sugar soundwise, and absolutely slamming grooves that lend themselves to all kinds of messing up, you really can’t go wrong setting these loose in your sampler sequencer of choice. And if you’re a sucker for breakbeats such as myself, these are the tits.

And, what the hell, KvR regular, synth patch proprietor and McCain supporter¹ Pro-Sounds is running a deal on a huge swath of his soundpatch product line – banks for such popular favorites as Albino, Korg Legacy Collection, Vanguard. I haven’t bought any of the banks – though I have and occasionally use the PS-1 softsynth – the demos I’ve tried have been top-notch. I may well have to pick up the PPG Wave 2.V bank. The details can be found on this KvR thread.

Edit: Oh, and SonicCouture have extended their holiday sale. So go nuts with that check you get from, erm, Aunt Matilda.

Anyway, Happy Whatever. Unless something monumental happens in the world of digital audio production, or I’m particularly bored with the girlfriend away, I probably won’t post between now and my birthday. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with this blog over 2009, but the time for introspective soul searching is later.

^{1Edit: I should have known that joke was doomed by the ephemeral nature of the internet. This was a lame jab at a leftover McCain ‘09 banner on the Pro-Sounds Homesite.}

Here’s another good one that will set you back under a sawbuck. Plus all the proceeds go to a good cause¹.

Nine Volt Audio: Chroma Rex: Electronic Edition

Basically, an extrapolation of their recently released Melodic REX: Electronic Edition; sort of the bonus ep that comes on the heals of the full length album. 350 loops, built from 33 different sounds, “based around octave and octave+fifth patterns, making every loop ‘chordally-ambiguos’ and flexible enough to create leads or tonal backdrops.”

If you’ve never used a NineVolt sound library, do yourself a favor and check them out. Absolutely the top-notch stuff, which particularly shines if you use StylusRMX. Seriously, their expansions are better organized and assembled, and vastly more unique, then the Spectrasonics’ expansion packs. (I’ll do a full “review” someday.) But you get all loop format flavors, so everyone gets to play.

What I’ve explored so far are as good as I would expect of NineVolt. And, as always, they lend themselves well to all kinds of cutting and mangling.

Good cause, good price, great product. You’ve bought these already, right?

^{1“Proceeds from all sales of Chroma Rex during this time will be donated to HomeSafe – The mission of HomeSafe is to work to end domestic violence by providing a safe place for survivors and their children, by helping survivors explore and develop alternatives to living in violent homes, and by working to change the systems and institutions that condone and support violence. HomeSafe is located in Tennessee.”}

Let’s keep this going with a couple of donationware plugins that are a wonderful little present to yourself.

the ((vacuumsound)) plugins.

Over at KvR they’re raving about the ADT – Artificial Double Tracking plugin, and indeed it looks to be potentially fun/useful. I actually haven’t tried it yet. However, the other night I dicking around with some of my new tools/toys, and was floored at the excellent sound of the Poor Plate Reverb.

I ran a drum loop from the Homegrown collection, through this and the ColorEQ, and the results were pure Portishead circa Dummy. I freely admit I don’t know my ass from elbow when it comes to the finer points of reverb. But this little piece of code that was designed to match the plate reverb algorithms of an earlier age, well, it just shines. My go-to room reverb will likely remain smartelectronix Ambience, but I imagine this will be my go-to plate.

These both come in all the essentials flavors, so everyone can play. There is no GUI. No problem for you Mac users, but we Sonar users are hosed in this regard. I can’t speak to other Windows DAWs but the Sonar host plugin GUI is fuggly beyond belief. It really looks like some engineer spent a day or two on it back in 1999.

But that’s neither here nor there. The point is that Poor Plate is a deceptively simple plugin that is fantastic.

Now, this is how it’s done: Create Digital Music » On Demand: CDM Winter 2008, with Gift Guide, Bending and Slicing Tutorials, More.

Rather than just assembling a collection of gear porn, deals and curiosities for his year-end/seasonal/holiday post, the estimable Peter Kirn over at CreateDigitalMusic.com has put together a full-on publication that covers some of his favorite topics.

This is the real deal. Fonts and design and print resolution and real articles. Free pdf and $19.99 for a print-on-demand publication.

So, thanks, Peter. This looks really wonderful. Thanks for another year of a great site.

Here’s a cool one for the Gift Guide that has nothing to with holidays, or specials or Q4 sales incentives. **** DDMF-The home of Equalizers-DDMF ****.

Try as I like, I’m not an EQ geek by any means. I respect the hell out of those that really understand this shit on a deep level but not only are the nuances lost on me but so is a lot of the science. I’m kinda a masher when it comes to EQs. I don’t use presets, but I just shape and sweep until it sounds like I want it to.

Nevertheless, I tend to follow these discussions like a good trainspotter. And I pick up little bits here and there. And fortunately there are developers and engineers out there that *do* get this, and who make this stuff available to punters such as myself.

In recent months a lot of discussion has been going on here and also at gearslutz about how all IIR equalizers are basically the same. While the topic is still not completely settled, it is clear that the differences are at most rather subtle and that the basic ingredient of basically all IIR equalizers is a variant of the good old RBJ cookbook formula.
This was the reason I’ve assembled ColourEQ: it is a 4th order IIR equalizer and follows a completely different approach to generate its frequency response. Nevertheless it is zero-delay and almost-zero-CPU. Due to it’s higher order there are more degrees of freedom to play with, which is why it is (to my knowledge) the first “super-parametric” EQ: basically there are four knobs per band instead of three!

What really makes this project a thing of wonder is that the developer has adopted a Pay-What-You-Will policy that is a total gift to we users. Sliding scale is something that more software companies should factor into their pricing plans.

A lot of minds and ears way better than myself are gushing over this new addition to the DDMF line. I bought it and tried it sight unseen and it’s a great EQ.

Well, it’s that time of the year. Companies start running specials, cutting prices on gear you’ve been looking wistfully at all year; we punters day dream about whatever toys we would really like to receive as gifts. And just because some of us are immune to the, erm, charms of Christmas doesn’t mean we can’t rejoice.

I won’t go into my jah-humbug routine again. Suffice to say, not a huge fan of Christmas, secular or observant. Oh, I do like some of the traditions and trappings, and the lights are awful pretty. But it seems even more garish and unnecessary now that we’re all about two paychecks away from selling pencils out of a cup. And since Grandma isn’t likely to get us NI Komplete or that FNR preamp, let’s look, over the next, oh, week and a half, at some of the smaller gifts you might be able to afford no matter your employment prospects or gift list.

Last year I sort of stumbled into what I called the Digital LoFi Holiday Gift Guide for the Disenfranchised. So why let a good name go to waste.¹

I’m gonna start off with a gimme:
Soniccouture’s seasonal offering is particularly excellent, especially if you’re getting in on the ground floor. Buy one get one free. So a couple of top-notch, inspiring musical sample sets for under a hundy. Really, I can’t recommend these sets enough.

Ends the 23rd.

^{1Before I’m reduced to posting “Top Ten Ways to Market Your Pencils in the New Economy.”}