Starship Krupa

I have my ex' K1 in front of me, also main MIDI controller. It's compact, has a great feel. The only drawback is that I have to put the TenCrazy plug-in on every MIDI track to filter out the "nervous nellie" All Notes Off that it sends when I lift off the last key. I used to audition all these great ambient VSTi's and wonder why they didn't sound quite right, got glitches and pops in very non-CPU-hungry synths. Then I noticed that they only happened when I would pick up all my fingers.... Then I got busy with MIDI-Ox and saw that some silly bugger had programmed the thing to basically panic button every time the player lifts. Probably the same dork responsible for the joystick not being able to transmit MIDI (oh the sadness). Seems like you could get at your internal sound engine with sysex messages even with broken bank buttons? Why risk forming some weird event horizon paradox and having an army of Daleks come flying through? "I heard you liked your K1, so I installed a K1 that you could play using your K1."

Quick Grouping, indeed, one of my favorite and most often used features. It's especially useful when a mix has gotten too "hot" and I need to pull all the faders back except one.

I found your rantings literally incomprehensible. Some problem with feeling cheated buying Asian food? I've never heard of Pinao Rolls before, although they sound delicious. I don't know why you would post about your restaurant troubles here, but if you felt like this new place clipped you on your pinao rolls or any other dish, take it up with the manager if you can, and if you don't find satisfaction through that channel, hit them on Yelp. This forum is for Cakewalk by BandLab.

My usual practice is these days to load single-hits into software samplers to make kits out of them, assuming I'm going to use them multiple times per song (usually the case with drums/percussion). This would be triggered by MIDI. So to answer your question, I sometimes use samples loaded into a VSTi, a software sampler. As for which way I do it, it kind of depends on how many times I'm going to use the sound in a song, and how. I've downloaded sample libraries that contained individual drum hits and turned them into drum kits by loading them into VSTi's, following the Standard GM mapping. I sometimes like to trigger clips of spoken dialog, and I will sometimes also load those clips into a software sampler instrument to be triggered by MIDI. I took an online course in EDM production, and for the initial instruction in "beatmaking" the instructor had us use the sample content the other way, though, by dropping the individual hits in as audio clips on tracks in our DAW's, using the copy and paste features to repeat the measures. This allows for greater flexibility as you may then use whatever clip editing features are available in your DAW to work on the clips before you start copying them. Fades, gain automation, envelope automation, filter automation, etc. Of course, some software samplers have those features, too. It can also matter how well-edited the hits are to begin with, if you need to work on them at all before using them in your beats, adjusting gain, envelopes, or whatever. If you find yourself with samples you regularly need to do work on, then get good at using them as clips. If it's faster and easier for you to think in terms of MIDI notes and drum machines, load 'em into a sampler.

Yeah, so far I wouldn't put predictability of results high on their list of strengths. 😄 They're the sort of processor that one fiddles about with, comes up with something really interesting-sounding, then quickly saves a preset, because there ain't NO way of retracing those steps. Not like "I hear some slapback on this, let's see, about 75mS, 20% feedback...." More like, "I'd like to blow the mind of someone listening to this on a good sound system in the dark. Let's see what happens if I put Fracture on it and start twiddling knobs."

I think for this project I'm just going to go with TAL Vocoder II and use its internal oscillator. If you do that, it becomes dead simple, you just insert the TAL Vocoder as an effect on the track you want to use as the modulator (traditionally the voice) and route a MIDI track to the TAL Vocoder. Whatever you play or program on the MIDI track is whatever MIDI note the Vocoder's oscillator will play. I had been trying to feed it both the carrier and the modulator as external signals, and I would still like to get that to work fully at some point, but the internal VCO is versatile enough and also allows me to feed it a stereo input as a carrier. It gets a much better "vocoder" sound than any of the presets in the AIR Vocalizer Pro.

Eventide Anthology XI for$1799!

Thing is, Chuck, they're actually giving you money. 😄 With me, it's more mostly just me volunteering to be the one who mixes the project or whatever. It's more of an investment of curiosity than money. iZotope notwithstanding, the beauty of the algorithms is not always proportional to the beauty of the UI's. If it were, SoundSpot's processors would mostly sound amazing and Exponential Audio's would mostly sound unexciting. Unfortunately not the case with SoundSpot, fortunately not the case with Exponential Audio. The planet-killer reverb in my collection is Exponential Phoenix Stereo, which also has the dowdiest beige-on-greyscale UI. I think even Sonitus fx Reverb, a 22-year-old design, has a slicker look. The shecksiest throbbing neon-on-black UI is on Oracle by SoundSpot, which is known for having the nastiest algorithm in all of Reverbdom, the redeeming thing about it is that it's really an "effect" reverb, if you try to use it to get a natural sound, abandon all hope. On the other hand, SoundSpot make my favorite bus compressor, Cyclone, which sounds/works better than it looks (and it looks really good). A few of my go-to (also cutting-edge tech) plug-ins are Meldaproduction, who are known for their....utilitarian UI's. They probably wouldn't win any beauty contests. I happen to love Meldaproduction UI's myself, mostly. Then there's Voxengo's plug-ins, great-sounding, so useful, I've been trying for years to come up with a custom color scheme that doesn't make my eyes want to shut tightly at the sight of them. I think they picked Meldaproduction's ugly stick out of the dumpster after it broke.

My fallback for whenever anyone questions anything I use is raising one eyebrow and flashing a mad scientist smile and saying "ah, that's my secret ingredient!" My hope is that they'll think that they're getting something that other mix engineers don't know about or whatever. 🤨 Or that they'll at least just relax and let me handle it.

Bump time, 'cause I discovered a couple of sweeet FX for free. Glitchmachines, makers of fine tools for sound design and EDM production, have a free bundle that includes a couple of plug-ins that do very strange things to audio. Fracture (buffer effect) and Hysteresis (delay effect). I am assuming regarding Hysteresis, because I have only tried Fracture, and there was basically no way I could get it to sound anything less than extreme. I was trying it on some vocal phrases, just for fun seeing if I could maintain intelligibility while still having Fracture process them, and....not quite. A word here and there perhaps.

Funny, isn't it? The same clients would probably think it's totally awesome if you had a 50-year-old hardware compressor racked up, or a similar vintage guitar or drum kit in the studio. But software processors with a 20-year-old UI are yucky. The Sonitus fx suite code is part of the IP that BandLab purchased, and as you noted, it's still signal processing powerhouse, so there's no reason other than time and resources that these FX wouldn't get the facelift you (and I) would like. I would use them more if I didn't have to squint to see them. Also, if there were some way that they could be made into PC modules, hey, why not? And thanks, personally, for reminding me that they are there. I frankly haven't explored them much because of their tiny UI's. But when I tried the dbx compressor preset I was pretty pleased with it.

Did you watch past the first 5 minutes of the video? The first part of the video was solely a comparison of Leslie spin-up and slowdown. The drawbar settings were all different on the various instruments. I found the video in general to play pretty loose in regard to settings, which are so critical with Hammond emulations. As much as I like AIR's DB-33, their distortion modeling is pretty poor, and is what likely accounts for your perception of "static" in the sound. When I want a distortion sound with it I just use an external effect, problem solved. Tonewheel organs seem to be a tough thing to model, and IMO, AIR do a decent job. Just be careful with the distortion. The ability to use the Leslie as a separate FX module is a nice bonus. After that, I like the CollaB3, although it's not as fancy as some of the others. You can compensate by using external FX.

Oh, forgot to mention, in my list o'cheap and cheerfuls, Initial Audio Reverse is a nice does-what-it-says-on-the-tin plug-in. Yes, we all know how to do what it does without the help of a plug-in, and yes, I rebelled against dropping a dime for it because of that, but in the end, it's a great timesaver and encourages me to use a cool effect that I might otherwise blow off as being too much hassle. You tell it how often you want it to reverse, from 1/8 measure up to 4 measures and it does it. $10 They also make another plug-in, SolwMo, that half-speeds your audio, also $10.

My personal suggestions from the current crop of deals, for anyone who doesn't already have them: Hybrid 3 for five bucks is obviously the standout deal. Vacuum Pro turned out to be a sleeper, I think I got it in order to also get a license for Ozone Elements or something, but I use it second only to my AAS packs. The vacuum tube oscillator thing might seem gimmicky, but it just sounds really phat, good basses and synthwavey things. When I get stuck for a synth bass, it's there. $10 Xpand!2 for $15 is all you need for working out arrangements before loading up your "real" sounds, and I've used its sounds in final mixes. When I hear the sound in my head and need to get it down fast without getting distracted looking for the perfect patch, this is it. W.A. Productions' Sphere Series Bundle Crossgrade is a heckuva deal at $9.90 for 3 plug-ins. The Sphere Compressor was a PB freebie a while back. An adequate compressor, IMO, versatile. Achilles heel is non-scalable UI. However, if you snagged it when it was a freebie, you qualify for the upgrade to the bundle, and the Sphere Delay and Sphere Quad are off the dang hook if you're into EDM production or psychedelic sound warping. I'm not sure how much verification goes into whether you already own one of the plug-ins. I did, but at no time did they check for verification of that. Might have been in my PB account. They do suffer from the same squinty unscalable UI syndrome, though. I've been thinking about Glitchmachines' Convex, which is on sale for a tenner until tomorrow. How many glitchy plug-ins can I acquire before I figure out how to use Break Tweaker? It's $9.

I have been chinscratching the past few days about Sonivox Vocalizer Pro for $10 and this seems like a good excuse to just get it. The thing is I want an actual real vocoder, and I have read at least one review that said that it wasn't one, that it was a really cool vocal processor that could get vocoder-ish sounds. Also, Sonivox are kind of....ugh. I've downloaded the trial for it, and for this hugely complex processor, what's missing? A manual. So far I can't find any documentation for it. It looks pretty powerful but what good is it if it just sits there like an alien artifact? The point in paying for a commercial vocoder is to get something I don't have to be a wizard to figure out. So far I put it on a vocal track and it sat there killing all output until I clicked on some piano keys on the UI. Can't figure out how to route MIDI to it. Not inclined to. Too bad I already own every Soundspot plug-in I want. BTW, for anyone looking for an under 10 euros/dollars plug-in in order to side load the Reason freebie, Soundspot Cyclone is a certified monster for bus use, especially when I put it in Mid-Side mode and start processing them a bit differently to mess with the stereo image. Try that and stand the fsck back, jack, 'cause it sounds huge and ear-tickly. Quite sexy UI, too. It has that Bioshock look like their Overtone EQ.