As I mentioned a while back, long-time plugin developer Voxengo have undertaken an overhaul of their product line. Starting with the somewhat baffling, gorgeous sounding totally free OvertoneGQE, they followed up with the VariSaturator and the Voxengo Crunchessor.

Since I was in the market for a new compressor, I took advantage of a new release special offer (now unfortunately passed) and got in on this last one. If you’re familiar with Voxengo you know that he never stops working on his product, and we’ve already been treated to a couple of bugfixes. You’ll also know, even without a discount they’re well reasonably priced.

So, I’ve had a while to use it and I’m relying more and more on it. I’m not one of these gearslutz who can discern between a Fairchild and Pultec¹ but this thing works great. It can be as transparent or characterful as you’d like. Though I don’t think anyone would have argued that Voxengo haven’t always produced top-o-the-line DSP.

What’s most impressing me about the new Voxengo plugins is how vastly better looking they are. As much as I relied on them in my productions - Voxformer and GlissEQ are particular favorites - they were functional looking at best. Well, while they were overhauling their development platform, someone over there also spent some serious time thinking about the GUI. Not only are they smartly configured to respond to your interaction, and softened with a nice “Web 2.0″ sheen, if you don’t like the color scheme you tweak it to your liking.

So, not as singularly unique and characteristic as the Audio Damage GUIs, or with the gear porn gee-whiz photo-realism of, say, the new offerings of Waves. But nevertheless, a real feather in the cap of one of the best deals in DSP.

^{1Yes, that’s a joke. Though feel free to point out how wrong I got that.}

_{Awesome yearbook photo uploaded by Kristin Smith (her mother), via stock.xchng.}

I don’t think I’ve done much writing about GForce Software on these threads. Which is odd. GForce Software are, without question, among the elite of commercial independent audio developers - along with fxpansion, SonicCouture, Audio Damage, Ohm Force - that are cool beyond all reasoning.

I know, “cool”… what does that mean, right? A word so overused as to be meaningless, a verbal tick slightly better than people who stammer “you know” every three words. But I feel about these developers the way I felt about certain independent record labels during my formative music years, labels like Homestead, Touch & Go, SST: creative, adventurous, with a lot of attitude and the taste to back it up. In some ways, as a fan, it felt you had a relationship with these companies because they were run by a few individuals who knew their shit. I didn’t always like everything they were putting out, but I was almost always interested and had respect for their choices.

Imperfect and over-thought analogies aside, you get the point.

The first GForce product I procured was the MTron, which I still love, though, let’s face it, has limited use. (Disclosure: I don’t have the 3rd Tape bank, so I’m about 20 sounds short of the full sounds. I’m holding out for the promised MTron Pro.) But I’m fascinated by vintage sounds so this was one of the first VSTs I bought. Then I got impOSCar, which is still my go-to softsynth. Really, I can’t stress enough how much I love that software. The beauty of GForce products is that in addition to sounding great they seemed to be designed by actual musicians. While sometimes it’s fun to tuck into a multi-page synth that makes you feel like you’re trying to solve a rubic’s cube, the amount of milage GForce get out of a single screen on impOSCar is truly impressive. And, yes, it screams like a bastard.

(I just bought Oddity; I haven’t really had a chance to explore it or utilize it.)

So I was very excited when I heard that GForce were producing a sample-based instrument of the great string machines of years past. I was listening to M83 a lot at that point, so I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. Unfortunately, when it finally was released I was skint, so it wasn’t until a few months ago that I finally got around to ordering it.

Not that GForce products are expensive; they’re really cheap compared to a lot of other synth makers, especially considering the quality. I was just really broke and short on work.

And, yep, it’s already been used on a few tracks. I’ve heard some people write it off as a “one trick pony” on boards and a few bone-headed reviews. This couldn’t be more wrong. The depth of sound is perhaps not all-encompassing but it’s certainly not limited. It is very versitile. And with the additional control built into the smartly designed but still classy GUI it can do a hell of a lot more than just lush pads.

Though, if you like lush pads this shit is a no brainer.

Here’s something cool and unexpected.

Our heroes over at Soniccouture.com have gone and whipped up another product that makes you wonder why no one had thought of it sooner.

Scriptorium.

Rather than just produce another of their fine sample instrument libraries, Soniccouture have tucked into the guts of Kontakt and give us a toolkit for taking Kontakt to the next level. One of my favorite things in the Soniccouture libraries is giving us access to the hidden goodies that help power their masterful sound design. And now they’ve really gone to town and programmed up a whole 35 Kontakt scripts that range from “You’re fucking kidding me, right? Awesome!” (Group Sequencer) to, “Huh. Interesting…” (Morse Code). A few are borrowed/upgraded from some of their other product, so I can attest to their quality. And I’m damn excited to try the others: if you’ve ever hunted for useful Kontakt scripts on the web you know what a score this is.

So, if you haven’t played around with scripts in your copy of Kontakt you’re missing a whole lot of time-wasting fun. They’re dead easy to work, really; if a dilettante such as myself can use them then certainly most others can. And these look to open up a whole world of possibilities. Plus there are 60 instruments included to get you started, along with 3 demo 4 tutorial videos.

I have a great idea for re-building a certain discontinued softsynth that I missed out on buying, and this is just the ticket to get me started.

And, although this is both version 2 and version 3 compatible, it’s perhaps another argument as to why NI should allow for other upgrade options.

From what I hear, these don’t retain their settings between sessions… I’m sure there’s a joke to be found somewhere in there.

Gentlemen, the KammerlAudio Plugins.

Oh yeah, I guess I should mention, NSFW, if black and white cheesecake shots with animal heads digitally graphed on is something that offends you or your co-workers.

(more…)

Sweetwater’s patented Superficial Appearance Demarcation (SAD) technology…

Further my post concerning BeatBurner, I got around to installing it onto my DAW. Figured if I was gonna run my mouth off…

Though I downloaded the full package, I haven’t yet installed the included beats. While BeatBurner only processes 16bit wavs - we’re digital lofi so we don’t let that stop us, do we? - I have plenty of fodder for this thing. More than a few folders full of my early ACID loop collections, various freeware loops, stuff culled off Brit music mag cover disks - a bunch of crap to be sure, but some that have stood me well over the years - mostly shopworn breakbeats, but some other oddball stuff I’ve picked up. I thought I’d run them through it, let me evaluate the ‘burners potential on material I am well familiar with.

And it is indeed very cool. So, yes, not a beat-slicer. More like a very musical audio modulating filter synth wave-shaper thing. Every loop I loaded up sounded great and made me want to squirrel it away for later use. With just a bit of fiddling you can coax some unique sounds out of it, depending on what you’re feeding it. It’s a one trick pony, more or less, but it’s a great trick that sounds fantastic once you know what you’re doing, more or less.

It seems petty to fault the program’s shortcomings since it’s a few years old and, you know, free. They are what they are - off the top of my head I can think of 4 things I wish it did or did better - but since we’re all more or less in agreement that what sounds good is good no matter what goddamn bit-rate it was recorded at, it is a nice tool for getting some new use out of old sounds, and has a lot of inspiration potential. Tip: Disengage the sync on the delay and lfo for instant dub fun.

So I’m definitely going to kick into the coffer once the next paycheck comes in.

EDIT: Okay, so I’ve spent some more time with it, and not so right with the “one trick pony” thing. It actually has quite a few tricks up its sleeve. It would be great if it did 24bit samples, just for the breadth of shit you could throw at it. So, it’s not Kontakt. But it’s way more capable and interesting than a lot of commercial synths.

• I’ve said before, I’m not inclined to fault companies for what they didn’t put in their product - I generally know what I’m getting into when I fork over for a license and trust that it will meet my expectations. I’ll even be pretty forgiving for “bugs” and what I see as over-sights/blunders in the execution - to a point of course. And, as I’ve also said, most of the companies we’re talking about in the independent audio software world are benign to very cool. But indulge me in climbing on my rackety and feeble pulpit and address my benefactors over at Native Instruments.

Greetings Native Instruments Co.,

Congratulations on all the great products you’ve been releasing lately. I hope you’ve been having a lot of success with them. However, I want to specifically address your upgrade policy on your Kontakt line of products.

I’ve been using Kontakt since literally the day it arrived at a local Mega Lo Guitar Mart and upgraded to version 2 because of all the fine work you put into improving and expanding the product. It’s been great. I even purchased the tutorial DVD to more fully utilize it’s deeper features; to what extent this is actually the case is sorta besides the point. Suffice to say, I’ve acquired (legally it should be said) a lot of soundware that does fully utilize Kontakt’s deeper features.

The latest version Kontakt 3 looks pretty swell also. Looks like you improved a lot of the features. Perhaps not a whole version upgrade. But, you know, it’s your product you can give it what number you want really; who am I to judge the work that went into it? I look forward to trying it out.

My problem is this: Why do I have to buy the whole library that comes with it? Honestly, I don’t really use the 2 NI Kontakt libraries I have as it is. And while I’m sure you’ve done some stunning work on improving the included library, and the reports seem pretty favorable, I don’t see this being a whole lot different. I’ve got a lot of these sounds well covered, and the last thing my sample drive needs is more redundancy.

I’m guessing it’s because you want to keep it a boxed product, no? That even with your very well implemented registration management, and your high profile, a boxed product is more like a “physical thing” - shelf space and all that - and thus somehow less prone to being ripped off or dismissed as not worth the investment. Okay, I may well be grasping, but, seriously, couldn’t you offer an “engine”-only download update for users? Well, I know you *could*, but for some reason you don’t. No offense to the many sound designers and editors who put together your library. But I just don’t need it. And it seems a waste for me to buy a whole lot of packaging and content for what probably comes to about 20MB of program and plugin files.

And, yes, I know it’s only around $130.00 street. It’s not really the price so much as it is the waste of it all. Offering it for under 90 bucks from you website seems a reasonable amount to pay considering what you’re charging for the boxed upgrade.

I’ll just give in and get it I suppose. I’ll get sick of manually exporting MIDI files, or trying to built multis will finally drive me batty and I’ll get the packaging then go ahead then download the latest build. Either that or you’ll release Kontakt 4 and just upgrade to that. Or, considering how I’ve wound up with a lot of your products, just before the next version is released you’ll blow out the remaining stock of 3 and I’ll just pay what it would theoretically cost me for a download now. And then start the cycle again…

Do you see the folly?

Cheers,

Your Customer,
Digital Lo-Fi

Of all my posts over the last year, by far the most viewed has been my post on the open-source-ing of the DiscoDSP Highlife sampler. People love the open source. The project is not without its controversy - for a lot reasons I don’t understand and have no opinion about - but is still something I think is a good move for the alternative audio software world.

Since that post both the commercial version and the source code have been updated. Not in tandem; it appears there is a fork in the project, and the commercial version exists independently of the open-source version, i.e. features and improvements in the new commercial version do not necessarily appear in the source code. But the source code now has an official update with some new features. And I like to believe that somewhere a developer or neophyte is tinkering away and will release something none of us saw coming.

I’ve mentioned it before, Rayzoon Jamstix is a great value for the Windows-based project studio. It has another update that adds a boat-load of new features and fixes. I’m not using it much these days because I’m not doing much composing or creating, but when I start writing again I’m hoping to get some good use out of this.

And here’s a new old one: Beatburner, possibly one of the best names for an audio production tool, is now Free. As in lunch, erm… beer… erm… well, free software.

I haven’t had the time to install and give it a whirl, but that the developer turned what was, he says, a commercial “meh” into a hotly downloaded piece of software that will be powering thousands of users’ digital lofi tracks for the next few years is a Great Thing. And he’s supporting the swarm all on his own time and dime. There’s a new torrent which should ease some of the burden, and I’ve badgered him into putting up a PayPal donate. Give the guy a few bucks if you’ve downloaded it, or are planning to. He said something like 20,000 (!) downloads; if everyone gave one or two (insert currency here) he’d have made a nice little return on his investment.

And, as always, to stay up-to-date on all things computer audio related, soundware and software, rekkerd.org is a great blog. And his “short links” roundups are always interesting.

Okay, as long as Antares still produces hardware units that can keep aging popstars in tune during the national anthem or the American Idol Tour on something resembling pitch night after night, Autotune isn’t likely to go anywhere. Besides, the name Autotune as entered the vernacular, like ProTools or Q-Tips, where people use a brand name as shorthand for the task performed rather than a specific product.

But in terms of the software used for pitch correction, Autotune is about to be totally pwned.

I’ve been using Melodyne since it’s first version (in its cre8 iteration), when it still didn’t integrate into other software but at all (lots of exporting and importing) and have kept up with the updates as the software has progressed, despite the fact that I don’t actually use it that much. (Not because I sing that well, just that most of the music I’ve been working at present on is sans vocals.) I didn’t buy the plugin version but I did get their “Medolyne Bridge” working, more or less (tempo changes tend to throw it for a loop).

I avoided Autotune mostly because of its PACE copy-protection, and because once I tried the demo of Melodyne, the Autotune plugin felt cramped and fiddly. And I couldn’t get nearly the same quality of results. I just grokked with Melodyne. Even if you’re not using it to tame woolly vocals, it’s great for mashing up samples and loops, or taking uninteresting spoken vocal samples and making them melodic.

And now Celemony has announced the next generation of Medolyne with something their calling DNA: Direct Note Access. Which means you can take polyphonic material, say a guitar or piano chord, and split it up into its constituent notes and tune those individual notes. Here, watch the video. If it works 3/4 as well as that video we’ve moved into a whole ‘nother level of musical deconstruction.

Before you get too excited, keep in mind it’s scheduled for fall of this year, so it’s actual appearance is a ways down the line. The first of the Celemony Melodyne line to get it will be the plugin, and if you register between now and when this is released the update is free. The plugin is on sale at various online shops and at Mega-Lo Guitar Mart so now is a good time get in on this. They also offer many upgrade paths for all their products so visit their web shop and see what you qualify for.

I guess it’s time for me to buy the Melodyne Plugin.

Well, after a few posts of looking at and celebrating cross-platform plugins, I’m going to whip the wheel back and bring up a Windows-only environment that I think has some pretty brilliant moments, thanks to a few individuals.

I speak of course of SynthEdit, the loved/hated/bashed/celebrated plugin development environment. It’s hard not to get into the pro/con argument even though it’s really fuckin’ tiresome. It’s easy enough to bash considering some of the crap it’s spawned - a vast field of gewgaws that is distracting to the uninitiated, many of which are barely indistinguishable, as well as the occasional dodgy developer who uses it for some sort of VST Three-card Monte. The latest round of bluster has to with the well-documented and over-discussed multi-core bug (multiple instances of the same plug will take down its host). And I suppose it could shoulder some blame for the user who thinks that DSP development is as easy opening an object-oriented software program. But every time I’m fully over it I am reminded of some of the brilliant things some people can do with it. Because so much of the environment is open to raw DSP coding, in the right hands, even imperfect as it may be, it can be truly inspiring.

First up, developer Ugo has released a few new goodies that promise to be as good to look at as they are fun to play - I say without having actually played any of them. No demos, you ask? I don’t download demos any more unless it’s something I might be able to afford. So when I’m skint why torture myself, or why try something just because? If it endures and it’s something I might use when I have the funds then I’ll download the demo… But I digress. I’m not sure which of these I’ll eventually buy because they all look so unique and interesting. M-Theory, the 2nd coming of his popular String Theory synth, promises to be gorgeous and useful. But the loop mangler Disturbance is really unlike anything I’ve seen produced with SynthEdit, and looks like it would fuck shit up but good. And the beefed up Ironhead looks tempting, better sound, more control. Additionally, we Metallurgy users got a nice update on that as well, though to be honest I haven’t really used my Metallurgy all that much. (Note to self…)

Also on my radar is KvR favorite xoxos who has a great imagination when it comes to synth design. His new CIRCUIT plugin, “probability based MIDI sequencer that joins short phrases together to create natural feeling rhythms” looks especially clever. I love tools that generate MIDI data you can throw at tracks to, create sounds you wouldn’t otherwise come up with bashing on the keys and tweaking the filter. This looks to be a very nice addition to energyXT.

And I would be remiss when talking about commercial SynthEdit creations not to mention ChordSpacePlaya. Have I written about it before? Who knows. Nevertheless, it’s a brilliant piece of programming. I use it mostly as to develop melodic ideas. And for strings and pads it’s dead useful. And it’s author, or at least his/her public KvR persona, is one entertaining mofo. I don’t use it often but when I do it always helps me come up with things I’m too feeble to do on my own.

What have I missed?