Faithful model of the rare tube-powered Aural Exciter®
Waves has released Waves Aphex, the vintage aural exciter developed in association with Aphex.
When it was originally introduced in the mid-1970s, the Aphex Aural Exciter® brought its distinctive sound to select sessions by leading recording artists, traveling from studio to studio as an exclusive (and expensive) rental unit.
A true groundbreaker, the original Aural Exciter was highly regarded for its ability to increase and enhance presence, brightness, and vibrancy on vocal and instrumental tracks alike. It was even credited as a “session player” on best-selling albums by the likes of Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor, engineered by Val Garay, who worked closely with us on the development of the plugin.
Modeled on one of only a few tube-powered units ever made, the new Waves Aphex Vintage Aural Exciter plugin delivers all the unique character of the rare original hardware unit, with all the advantages of software.
Waves Aphex features
- Faithful model of the rare tube-powered original.
- Adds brightness, vibrancy and depth.
- Increases presence without raising levels.
- Perfect for vocal and instrumental tracks alike.
- Mix and AX modes for insert or send configurations.
- Mono and stereo components.
- Up to 24bit/192kHz resolution.
- Supports TDM, RTAS, Audio Suite, VST, AU.
- PC and Mac compatible.
Waves Aphex is available to purchase for $240 USD (Native) / $500 USD (TDM).
More information: Waves / Aphex Vintage Aural Exciter
Crashfaster – Grind
Video from Crashfaster’s new album called Disconnect
For all you chip fans out there
More on Crashfaster can be found here >>
How the Octatrack actually works
On CDM a couple of people mentioned that there were not enough videos just showing simply how the Octatrack works and breaking things down a bit. Heres a quick run through of the basics, and the scenes functions.
Via Genjutsushi
The Octatrack is an 8 track performance sampler. Recording of sounds is a breeze thanks to the intuitive user interface, but the fun really starts once the samples are inside the machine. All audio content can be heavily processed and radically transformed. Loops do not have to be restricted by tempo or tone and can always stay in sync no matter if they are pitch shifted or if the tempo of the sequencer is changed. The inflexible nature of samples is finally a thing of the past.
The Compact Flash card compability allows for huge amounts of samples to be constantly accessible. The USB port is ideal when transfering sample libraries between your computer and the Octatrack. The optical fader can be assigned to any of the parameters, adding a wealth of live control possibilities.
The producer will be able to treat samples in radical ways. The extensive audio mangling capabilities paired with the user friendly interface make the Octatrack an outstanding studio tool.
The DJ can sample in real-time, add effects and blend in pre-recorded loops to really add a twist to a set. The Octatrack can be regarded as an extremely flexible turntable.
The performer needing gigabyte large backing tracks during a live gig will appreciate the sample streaming functionality of the Octatrack. Streamed samples can still be subject to time stretch and effects processing.
48 Buchla 259e Complex Waveform Generator Scoped
Just to be clear because “permission” sounds a bit harsh. Since this is a wavetable device, I thought I’d respect the creative work of the good Buchla people and kindly ask them if it was ok to show the waveforms. I guess you can’t really copyright that kind of thing and I guess it’d be hard to copy anything from a skewed scope picture on a YouTube video. Still, better safe than sorry. I’ve emailed a bit with Jon at Buchla and Associates and he’s been extremely helpful and very nice. So, “permission” is my words and Buchla provides great customer service and is a great company.
Also, I have an older firmware, I think version 7. So the remarks on noise in upper wavetables should be taken as is. Thanks to boobtube for pointing this out in the comments.
The 259e is an amazing device. Since last time I’ve had a few requests to show the waveforms better on the scope. I was a bit hesitating so I asked the very nice people at Buchla and they sad no problem. So here’s a video where I try to show how the module actually works and what the waveforms look like. It’s a bit longer than usual and may be boring to some but I thought I’d offer this for the interested. For the rest of you, just skip through and you’ll find some examples of just how amazing this fine module can sound. I’m being impressed every time I play it and this video is just the tip of the ice berg on this one!
Modulate any device parameter, dubstep style
New! Ableton m4l tutorial: modulate any device parameter, dubstep style, with Max for Live!!
Watch this in full screen in HD to really follow what’s happening!!!!
Use this quick max for live device to modulate any device parameter dubstep and dnb style! Add as many LFOs (low frequency oscillators) to Operator, or any other device as you like!
Home studio tutorial
How to Connect up Audio and Midi to a PC in a Small Studio
Just the basics that might prove helpful to other musicians looking to expand their setup beyond one or two instruments into a larger more permenant setup. I take you through what I use in my own studio to connect up the audio and midi to a PC.
Via Yorkshirelad69
Free plug-ins from Soundhack
Soundhack’s Tom Erbe has released new versions of all of his plugins for Mac, in Audio Unit and VST forms.
The free plugins include:
- +spectralcompand – Performs smooth timbral filtering. Can be used to tame resonant frequencies or for radical changes of tone. In expansion mode, +spectralcompand becomes a highly tunable broadband noise remover, capable of removing hiss, hum and machine noise, without damaging the original sound.
- +morphfilter – Holds two filter shapes. These shapes are set by drawing, or by capturing the spectra from the incoming sound. You can morph between these two filters. +morphfilter’s depth control can change the strength of filtering, or even invert the filter for an “anti-filtered” sound.
- +binaural – This filter places a sound at a specific position around the listener’s head. Use it with a reverb to create a virtual environment. When used with it’s LFO, +binaural can place various beats or parts of a loop in specific repeatable positions.
- +spectralgate – A spectral version of the noise gate/ducker dynamics processor. Combines a noise gate/ducker and a multiband processor to give you a plugin that can used both as a frequency dependent gate or as a level dependent filter.
- SoundHack Delay Trio – a group of three plugins derived from the same basic delay algorithm: a hermite interpolated delay line with variable modulation, and a feedback loop with dc blocking and saturation. Pitch shifting is achieved with a dual head crossfading delay (ala Eltro Tempophon/Dennis Gabor/Pierre Schaeffer phonogene) and is decidedly low-?. The saturating feedback also allows them to be great drone and noise generators.
- +chebyshev – a distortion unit which uses various low-order chebyshev polynomials to add even or odd harmonic distortion.
- +compand – a combined compressor/expander plugin. It has a softknee control as well as a switchable rms/peak level detector.
- +decimate – bit depth and sample rate reduction for added aliasing and decimation noise. a very noisy plugin.
- +matrix – a mid-side to left-right encoder and decoder. for mid-side microphone arrays, but also useful when needing to apply effects to only the center or the sides of a stereo mix.
- +phasescope – the standard studio tool for seeing the phase relation between your left and right channels. also includes a bit meter.
New version of SynthMaker is out
Outsim has released version 2.0.2 of SynthMaker, an audio programming tool for Windows.
This release contains some final corrections to the automatic stage conversion.
Most of the changes apply to Assembler components so if you’re not using these then you won’t be affected. The main point of the corrections made is to ensure that older files containing Assembler components will have any stage1 declarations automatically changed to the new default of stage2.
Also in this update they’ve brought in a new component which was previously on the R&D list. The Save Wave component allows you to save to a wave file. They’ve improved this component compared to the R&D version by adding sample format options and fixed the few remaining bugs too.
Finally the automatic update check had a few issues with the last release. These should be resolved now although anyone moving from version 2.0 or those who grabbed an early 2.0.1 may see an incorrect product name on the update dialog box. This has no effect on the process and has been corrected in 2.0.2 ready for 2.0.3.
SynthMaker for Windows is available to purchase starting at £95 GBP for the Enterprise edition. A free version is also available to download from the Outsim website.
More information: SynthMaker
Playing with Kirnu
Kirnu is a free VST arpeggiator:
Kirnu is very easy to use MIDI arpeggiator VST created with real-time tweaking in mind.
This video shows some of the Kirnu’s controls and how to use MIDI learn feature.
More information from http://www.kirnuarp.com.
New hot video from Diffuzion
Diffuzion, 2011
OFFICIAL SITE: diffuzion.org
MYSPACE: myspace.com/diffuzion1313
FACEBOOK: facebook.com/diffuzion
This video showcases the first new material from this female fronted act since their 2008 debut “Body code”. Expect catchy technoid music mixed with the rather sensual voice of Xev.
DATAMASKIN
