Starship Krupa

Generally, yeah, the sounds themselves don't need compression to even them out or adjust attack and decay like real world drums. As the others have said, compression as an audible effect, deliberate heavy pumping with or without sidechaining to a compressor on the bass, those are the things that I hear. It's about adding things that aren't already there. The sky's the limit if you're not trying to create a virtual drum kit in a room. I've smashed the snot out of the entire drum mix using a hard knee compressor or something from the electronic-oriented plug-in houses like W.A. Production. They have a freebie called KSHMR Kick that's designed for kick, obviously, but I've put the thing on an entire drum mix and was very pleased with the results. W.A. are running a bundle sale right now. Comb filtering, like MComb from the Meldaproduction FreeFX bundle, is something I've used, delay, whatever makes it interesting. Also be sure to have Boz Digital's Bark of Dog on hand.

Trippy. CbB offers me something called "Split Instrument Track" when I click on the "+" sign above the track headers. I've always assumed that it was a proper noun, since it's capitalized, but then the dialog also capitalizes other things, and they are not the names of things so who knows. When I choose that it creates both a MIDI and a Synth track with the MIDI track already routed to the Synth track. Very handy. So if there's only one kind of Instrument track, then this command instructs Cakewalk to "Create an Instrument track, then split it before it's displayed." I prefer my Instrument tracks split, be it noun or verb. And I use Synth tracks all the time, even if they're not "basic."

Indeed, that's why I asked. It's supposed to be a "character" EQ, and oftimes those have certain sweetening tricks they are known for, like the Pultec's "bass trick," or an "air band." I figured with this thing that maybe back in the day some coked-to-the-gills hairy guy might have worked out that if you set the Low Boost on 12dB/oct. then turn the 60Hz cut to -9 it resonates with the kundalini or something. I seek opinions, because this is an area where my own knowledge and experience are lacking and there's much accumulated knowledge here. I don't know character EQ's very well. From what I read they can be kinda specialized. It could be great on bass and saxophone and weak on guitar or whatever. I ran some pink noise through it and with LOW BOOST it's putting on a slightly rounded low shelf. The bump in the shelf might be part of why it sounds so good on bass. There's something other than just EQ going on with it (which is audible). They're trying to model the response of the tubes, the transformers, etc. It has a setting for if you want to just use the pure EQ curves and bypass the analog emulation. Speaking of air bands, when playing around with the TE-100, I do kinda like what it's doing to a vocal when I hit the 4K button, switch to 12dB per octave and give it about +7. I liked what it did on bass when I set the filter to 12dB/oct. 170Hz and gave it about +3 or so. It gave it a nice presence and girth. Seems like it would also be good for "what the heck is that thing? That's my secret weapon." exchanges with people looking over the shoulder.

I twigged the thing about dragging the cursor between the buttons. So would you say that it's pretty much a bass flavorizer, or are the other nodes useful as well?

The UI looks a bit intimidating, kind of like the telephone switchboard in an old hotel. The other ones I'm considering are the Maag EQ4 and Millenia NSEQ-2. The Millenia assures me that it has a 300V tube and discrete J-FET signal path, which is pretty impressive for something that is, in actuality, a computer program.

Okay, I already have all of the Unfiltered Audio stuff I want, and then elysia mpressor, which, by the way, man o MAN. I guess it's one of these knob EQ's. I'm not that savvy with knob EQ's, but I might as well have a nice one. Lindell TE-100 has the magic pixie dust, eh?

What did you do to try this? Did you edit one of the segmented meter images?

Their site actually warns you that you already own a license when you look at the plug-in or bundle's page. There's nothing about Meldaproduction's licensing or upgrade policies that bothers me. Other companies will happily sell me bundles that contain things I've already paid for at full price. The only purchases I've ever regretted are when something better or less expensive comes along before I have time to get enough use out of it or if it turns out to be a CPU eater. And for both of those, I present Gain Match. Not an expensive plug-in, but I started noticing playback burps while using it, then shortly thereafter snagged a bundle that happened to have MCompare. And someone else recently came out with a freeware plug-in that is supposed to do the same thing. Something that does what Gain Match does shouldn't be a CPU eater, so I didn't even notice it when I was demoing it. Checking levels on two different tracks and then setting a knob so that they match shouldn't bog down a DAW. There are some that I bought years ago that I no longer use due to having gotten ones that do their job better, but they helped me learn. I can't blame SoundSpot that my ears have developed and now I want more precise controls and metering (Cyclone is still a favorite mid/side compressor).

That is a lovely piece. The flute is a great lead instrument. I like the beat, it gives it a New Age/Techno flavor. Armchair mix suggestion: push the drum machine back in the mix a little with some reverb with predelay. Freebie suggestion: Orilriver.

Okay, separate then. Different commands for undo last editing move and undo last control move. That would be great.

I suggested this when the Tempo Track was added, but then recently I noticed that Piano Roll View already has it for the Articulations Map and Drum Pane. It might not even be intentional, rather an artifact created by the presence of scroll bars, but it's at least some visual indication that there are hidden screen elements that can be pulled down to open. Looks kinda slick, actually. I'd like to see these added at either or both ends of the Track View Time Ruler.

I don't see why not. Anything you get would be able to handle that, as long as it has 8G of RAM and an SSD. You don't mention having a zillion FX or huge sample libraries.

Yes, it would be nice not to tie up double the number of i/o's when using mono processors (which I understand is becoming more popular).

What I want ain't rocket science: I want any action that would set the "dirty" bit (that is, put an asterisk after the file name in the header to let you know it hasn't been saved) to be Undoable. I know I said "for mixing moves," but that's just the area where I most often get bitten. The asterisk tells me that the program is tracking those actions, so I would like to leverage that. @Noel Borthwick, for whom would this be confusing? I find current behavior confusing as I find it hard to remember what actions are undoable. I came from Mixcraft, where pretty much every action is undoable, including plug-in settings. No confusion: I did something. If I hit Ctrl-Z the action will reversed. Up in the Edit menu, it says "Pan adj." next to Undo/Redo. Of course, as with all such sweeping changes to behavior, for those who only want the limited set of actions to be undoable, this would be a settable preference rather than a mandatory change.

Yes, the video was odd. It only showed the UI in action for a few seconds, the rest of the music was (presumably) a full mix that if it used the processor, had no "dry" sections to compare it to. Certainly looks worth the download, though.

It's going to be the elysia mpressor for me this round. I demo'd both it and Unfiltered Audio's ZIP. mpressor sounds like it puts me in that dbx 165 zone that I've been trying to find for years. It sounds really, really good. The control that limits the amount of gain reduction was immediately useful, and it even has a few "creative" tricks up its sleeve.

Wa-hoo! Voucher reset!

Well, I'm sensitive to topic adherence myself, so I try to make sure to mention something free in every post. ReaFir, various bits of the Melda free bundle, annual freebies from A|A|S, Pluginboutique giveaways, Freakshow Industries' "steal this plug-in." I'm fine with comparing commercial FX to freebies and talking about how we use freeware FX. I think it's helpful to hip freeware searchers to the fact that certain dealers and manufacturers run regular giveaways of payware products, or that commonly used freeware suites can be upgraded for very little money. These developers do a lot of work to provide us with loss leaders to pique interest in their commercial stuff, so I don't think it's off limits to mention their other products. Besides, it keeps the thread near the top.

In freeware FX news, today we have a couple from Fuse Audio Labs, the VREV-666 Spring Reverb and RS-W2395C Baxandall EQ. Yay spring reverb, it's like spring reverb Spring lately. Also, for Glitchmachines fans, Fracture has been updated to v 1.3 with a new UI similar to Convex, and new presets. It's also VST3, so you can keep v 1.2 around for legacy projects. I don't think they have the same plug-in identifier as after I installed 1.3, 1.2 still appeared in my fx lists. The new Fracture has a more intuitive layout, so it's easier to understand what effect the controls have. There's still plenty of the stochastic uncertainty that's part of what Glitchmachines are about. Cheers to them for giving a freebie such a nice upgrade.

I, too, got Objeq Delay in that PluginBoutique giveaway. My advice: play with it. ? I know that MTurboDelay seems like it's the last delay anyone would need to buy, but Objeq Delay leverages the A|A|S physical modeling technology in unique ways. It's not just for demolition, of course, despite abacab's and my destructive tendencies. It's funny, A|A|S' plug-ins are some of my favorites (I have many soundpacks and all of the Sessions) but the only ones I've ever paid for were part of a Humble Bundle, so pennies on the dollar. I did do a service to the user community by sending them a detailed polite request email about their installers' behavior, spewing VST2's into every folder with the string "VST" in the name, 32-bit VST3's, AAX plug-ins, ad nauseum. And they've since cleaned up their act. I like to think my note helped inspire that. OB Freeware FX content: get on A|A|S mailing list. They often give out free soundpacks around the Winter holidays.

No, no, no, your critiques are most valuable. It's not possible for me to come up with a "public consumption" theme without feedback. Also, as I get better with Paint.NET, I can touch up things that were, at the time, the best I could come up with. Some of them are experiments anyway. And I can come up with a version for the public that is not the same as the one I use at home. Same with any creative pursuit, one can't please everyone with every aspect. Especially with all of the options and workflows available in Cakewalk. I had made it so that in one mode you couldn't even read clip names. And my poor clip fade lines, barely visible. I'll take another look at the EQ grids; it may have come from my tendency to want to use the same colors wherever possible, which....doesn't always scale. The goal being coherence and consistency. However, as it is said "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds." It's a fine line, isn't it, between foolish....and....clever. As for the clip backgrounds, that's part of my idea to use Theme Editor to make the program more usable for myself (and maybe to others). To me, the high-contrast background says "active," while the other ones are "greyed out." I think it's appropriate for a "dark" theme. Tungsten's Clip Pane and Piano Roll have always looked to me like "Mercury with the brightness and contrast turned down." This comes out of frustration with Tungsten: why would unselected clips be higher contrast. I get that if you're used to Mercury-derived themes and having the brightest color be your "active," that setting the darkest color as "active" seems counterintuitive. This one's supposed to be "a dark theme done right" and it might take being a daily user of dark themes for it to make sense. There's a thing that I do where knowing which clips are active and which are not that is highly critical: acoustic drum editing and comping. I have 4 tracks of drums, each take grouped. If I mess up because one or more of the clips wasn't selected (which can happen even with grouped clips), it can louse things up pretty badly. Since I darkened the active clip backgrounds (and went with higher contrast grid lines), I feel more confident about which clips are in what state, and I'm able to concentrate better and work faster, stay in the flow. I guess if there were demand I could do a "vintage" version with Tungstenesque clip backgrounds, but I have no idea whether anyone but me is using my themes. One kid on Facebook said he was using EVA 01 (probably an anime fan). That's the extent of my known user base?.

I hear ya about the "MB" thing. I understand its potential, but in practice, I've not been able to make use of it, no matter how many video tutorials I watch. LOL MModernCompressor! The first non FreeFX plug-in I bought, and the one that gets the least love from either the users or Meldaproduction. I rode that thing like a rented mule until I figured out the advantage it has that none of their others do: front-facing access to multiple detector modes, including my favorite, psychoacoustic. I have MSpectralDynamicsle, which lacks the noise sampling feature, and I want that. Fortunately, Vojtech has mentioned that he would like to add that to the LE version. Per the actual topic here, ReaFir, is a pretty amazing surgical tool (and FREE). You can sample a section of audio and then apply reduction to that spectrum, also gate or compress individual frequencies or ranges by drawing your own freehand curves. I use it to clean up camcorder audio. Oh yes I have. I'm a drummer and I like to loop my own playing and then destroy it. The first plug-in I did this with was MComb, which is one of the hidden monsters in the Free bundle. Play to a click, then sync MComb to the tempo and it's hectically Reznoresque. I have almost all of the Glitchmachines and Unfiltered Audio processors and love to tempo sync drum processing. I also like to do the ambient soundscape thing, I have all 3 of the Freakshow Industries (also free if you know the trick, but I chose to pay for them) processors. This reminds me....

At least you all got to use referral codes! After popping $25 for someone else's FreeFX upgrade, I bought my first plug-in directly from Meldaproduction before I knew about referral codes. I had my 10 credits from the newsletter. It was a half-off sale, so I got it for $15. (It was what I suspect may be the lowest-selling and least-used product in their line, MModernCompressor ?. But I rode that thing like a rented mule until I figured out some tricks it can do. If you want quick access to a variety of detector types, there's nothing better. It's the only plug-in where they're all front-facing. I'm especially a fan of the "psychoacoustic" detector on vocals)

I can't think of another one that is as comprehensive and useful. I got MSpectralDelay as a loyalty gift from Meldaproduction when it first came out, and while it sure seems like it can do a lot, I've yet to get my head around what it does. Is it like a Glitchmachines or Freakshow Industries effect where you're not supposed to be entirely in control of it? Throw it on, start twisting the knobs and see what happens? It has similar controls to Unfiltered Audio Fault. or maybe SpecOps, but while I can get pretty quick results with those, it's not so for MSpectralDelay. It's the one I point to when I make the case that Meldaproduction's documentation (and sometimes ad copy) is not informative enough. Vojtech's standard retort is that it's not his job to explain how a compressor works, but I contend that it might be part of his job to explain what a "spectral delay" does. Just a simple "try it on X material with X settings while adjusting parameters Y and Z" would be so welcome. My head can only get so far imagining what something is capable of, with stuff that goes that far off the beaten path, I need more guidance.

This. I had no idea, during the last 60% off sale I happened to scroll down and saw that the MEssentialFX bundle would cost me a whopping €17, and I had 13 credits in the account. So I posted about the free bundle upgrade, with my referral code, and sat back until enough rolled in. And BTW, for the "when will they fix that fugly UI" crowd, here's what's coming up in v. 15: The answer is: now, although I myself actually prefer flat and functional.