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A New Player In DAW Saturation Plugins – Slate Digital

Big Al — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 23:46:39 +0000

I’ve been a believer in adding saturation in the DAW via special plugins ever since becoming acquainted with the idea via Charles Dye’s Mix It Like A Record interactive video mixing course.

As I learned there, I’ve been using McDSP’s Analog Channel, several of the DUY plugins (including DaD Valve, DaD Tape, etc.), Steven Massey’s TapeHead plugin and the Waves SSL bundle to achieve this.

Now there’s a new player in this interesting niche, Slate Digital. (You might be familiar with Steven Slate from his famous drum sample collections and drum replacement products.)

Here’s the official lowdown from the company, and in the latter half, Steven Slate himself:

The Slate Digital “Virtual Console Collection” brings the sound of six of the most legendary mixing consoles in to your digital audio workstation.

“When you mix through an analog desk you get this life and body to the sound that just doesn’t happen when you mix inside the workstation. The separation and imaging from the analog summing is very apparent, especially when your track count gets high” remarks mixer Jay Baumgardner (Papa Roach, Evanescence).

Steven Slate made his mark on analog summing by conceiving the concept of the Folcrom passive summing, which was expertly designed and manufactured by Roll Music in 2001. Now he brings analog summing to the digital world.

“Slate Digital CTO Fabrice Gabriel and I studied these consoles inside and out. We meticulously modeled the entire circuit path so that we could recreate every subtle nuance that makes these consoles the legends that they are”.

The VIRTUAL CONSOLE COLLECTION consists of two plugins, Virtual Channel and Virtual Mixbuss. Each plugin allows the user to choose from one of six modeled consoles. Virtual Channel is applied on individual mixing channels. Virtual Mixbuss goes on the first insert of the master fader.

When using the Virtual Console Collection, your DAW instantly takes on the personality of a real analog mixing desk. The imaging and depth improves, instruments sit better in the frequency spectrum, and mixing becomes easier and more musical. You can even push the DAW faders up to find each mixer’s ‘sweet spot’. This is due to the algorithms being dynamic, just like a real console.

From Slate Digital Co-founder Steven Slate:

The Virtual Console Collection has been a dream of mine for years. I’ve always mixed on analog consoles because I love the color and sound that they provide, and I missed it while trying to mix “in the box”.

The Folcrom allowed me to get the best of both worlds, and I’ve used it on hundreds of mixes and productions with great results. However, after creating Slate Digital with Fabrice Gabriel almost two years ago, one of the first things we looked into was recreating the sound of analog mixing, but with digital.

This first lead us to the question: What is wrong with digital summing?

To answer this question, we first built our own digital summing buss. In fact we built three of them. Our conclusion?

NOTHING. Nothing at all is “wrong” about digital summing, whether it be fixed integer or floating point, dithered or undithered. None of these things had an audible effect that any human could pick out in a blind A/B test.

No, actually the problem is with analog summing. With an analog console, the audio path contains a lot of circuitry. By the time a mix is summed in an analog console and gets passed to the outputs, it contains varied degrees of harmonic distortion, phase distortion, and noise. However, it is these nonlinearities that sound “musical” to the human ear.

Fabrice Gabriel is not only a genius at audio DSP, but he has a degree in electrical engineering. He was able to carefully analyze the schematics of all the great mixing consoles and produce individual DSP modules that reproduce various parts of the circuit path, from line input amplifiers to fader buffers to summing amps. Over the past year, we then tweaked the modules by EAR in a mastering room to precisely match the hundreds of test files that were processed with each console.

Keep in mind, that an analog console is a dynamic instrument. As you begin to push the faders into the mix buss, the amplifiers start to reach their threshold and various changes occur in the harmonics and overall sound. This is all recreated in this plugin suite.

In conclusion, I’m so proud of this plugin, and I think it will change the way many people think of “mixing in the box”. As we’ve been developing the Virtual Console Collection, we’ve been pleased to see other digital models of analog mixing pop up (such as the Harrison Mixbuss), showing us that this was an important issue for the audio industry, and we’re glad to add to it.

The Virtual Console Collection is RTAS, VST, AU on both Mac and PC, and along with the whole Slate Digital line, will now be available very soon with a 14 day demo. I’m eager for you all to try them.

A New Player In DAW Saturation Plugins – Slate Digital is a post from: Home Recording Studio Guru

An iPhone “Must Have” Music App – From McDSP? Wait…What?

Big Al — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:56:36 +0000

McDSP, maker of some of my favorite plugins (like Analog Channel for one), has gone and jumped into the iPhone app fray (say that five times fast). I must say, I didn’t see this one coming.

It sure looks and sounds cool! When I finally get my new iPhone it’ll probably be one of the first apps I actually buy, considering there are so many cool FREEeeee ones in the Apple App Store.

It’s called Retro Recorder – Enhanced Mobile Recording.

Here’s the lowdown from McDSP.

_________________________________

The highly stylized yet simple interface of Retro Recorder makes recording easy on any iPhone. Patent pending Audio Level eXtension (ALX) technology improves recording quality beyond the capability of handheld recorders costing many times more.

Even without an external microphone, Retro Recorder can capture detail other recorders cannot – up to 32 times more signal level.

Recorded files can be exported individually or in batches. Exported files may then be downloaded to a PC or Mac, using a Wi-Fi network.

Supports iPhone and second generation iPod Touch. An external microphone is required to use Retro Recorder on the second generation iPod Touch.

Feature highlights:

Up to 30 dB (32 x) more signal level with ALX technology
Audition ALX processing instantly during playback, the original recording is preserved
Export original recordings or ALX enhanced versions in WAV format
Wi-Fi download page allows downloading to any Mac or PC with most web browsers
Batch rename, delete, and export makes organizing a snap
User interface rotates 180 degrees for better iPhone microphone orientation when recording
External microphone support
Record short ideas or lengthy meetings for hours, even in sleep mode
Pause, fast forward, or rewind signals during playback
Filter list of recordings by keyword to find your recording fast
Recorder page allows quick review of last clip recorded, great for level checks
Supports mono signals only, up to 22,050 Hz sample rate
Developed and supported by a professional audio company with over ten years experience

Check out the RetroRecorder.com web site for more info and to hear audio demos of ALX in action.

Get Retro Recorder From The Apple iPhone App Store

McDSP Company Web Site

ALX (Audio Level eXtension) – What Is It Exactly?

McDSP Audio Level eXtension (ALX) algorithms improve audio recording and playback performance using patent pending techniques derived from McDSP’s experience in professional audio software development over the last decade.

Recordings using ALX can capture up to 30 dB (32 times) more signal than standard recordings. ALX can also isolate close proximity signals from background noise during recording, and minimize volume variations during playback.

Audio playback using ALX provides a better listening experience by maximizing audio fidelity and minimizing volume changes. Playback benefits of ALX algorithms include:

Minimized music track volume variations
Noisy environments no longer impacting listening enjoyment of music and movies
Television and movie manner mode for listening at reduced levels, while keeping loud and quiet parts audible

Because ALX algorithms are highly optimized and have little latency, they can be used for other realtime audio applications such as:

Maximizing signal levels between cell phone callers
Better audio fidelity in laptop and desktop computer speakers
Improved fidelity for internet audio streaming
Better audio fidelity in computer games and game consoles (XBox 360, PS3, others)

The McDSP Retro Recorder is the first consumer audio product to incorporate ALX technology. Stay tuned for more developments using ALX. Contact McDSP for licensing information.

An iPhone “Must Have” Music App – From McDSP? Wait…What? is a post from: Home Recording Studio Guru

McDSP Analog Channel – Analog-Style Saturation On The Mix Bus

Big Al — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 08:05:38 +0000

Earlier this week I was asked a question via Twitter (by @hackerhaus) about which version of McDSP’s Analog Channel was worth buying (there are basically two, Analog Channel Native and Analog Channel LE). After replying with my take on the matter, it reminded me of my own story of how I first came to know about Analog Channel.

I believe it was the winter of 2000 . . . {cue Wayne’s World flashback effect}

My mixes on my new Pro Tools rig sucked. No matter what I did, there was that certain something I just couldn’t seem to achieve. “It must be me,” I thought. “I’m just never gonna’ be good at this. I might as well give up.”

And then my creative life changed forever.

The first time I heard about, and saw McDSP’s Analog Channel was in the Charles Dye’s instructional DVD, “Mix It Like A Record.” He had it strapped across the stereo mix bus for the purpose of adding analog-style saturation to the digital mix bus. He was actually driving into it without overloading and digital clipping.

This was my first step towards becoming happy with the sound of my mixes in Pro Tools. Up until then I was chasing something that was always just out of my reach. I have no doubt that I probably would never have reached it on my own.

While it’s not a silver bullet, this very cool plugin is certainly very powerful and valuable.

As I mentioned, there are two versions available: Analog Channel Native (included in the Classic Pack bundle – $795.00; occasionally available on special by itself for $295.00) and Analog Channel LE (included in the Project Studio bundle – $295.00; occasionally available on special by itself for $79.00).

There is a significant difference between the LE version and its bigger brother. Here’s the breakdown on each straight from McDSP:

Analog Channel Native

McDSP Analog Channel AC1

Analog Channel emulates the sounds of high-end analog tape machines, tape, and channel amplifiers.

Analog Channel is actually 2 plug-ins:

• AC1 – Emulates analog channel amplifier circuits

• AC2 – Emulates analog tape machines

The AC1 configuration acts as a digital pre-amp allowing even excessive amounts of gain without digital distortion. A drive control determines where the audio “sits” in the saturation/compression region, and even the attack and release times of the distortion character are adjustable.

McDSP Analog Channel AC2

The AC2 configuration emulates analog tape machines. In addtiion to standard tape machine parameters such as bias, playback speed, and IEC1/2 equalization, AC2 offers controls well beyond the limits of the reel-world devices including adjustable low frequency roll off and head bump – independent of playback speed. The user can select from several playback head types, tape formulations, and even control the tape saturation recovery time.

Features:

Library of presets emulating analog mixing systems
Real-time display of saturation curves and calibrations
Analog Saturation Modeling
Double precision processing
Ultra low latency
Mono and stereo versions

Analog Channel LE

Analog Channel LE features the Playback Head control from the TEC Award nominated original Analog Channel.

I think it’s obvious that the LE version is a MUCH younger brother (maybe third cousin twice removed) of the venerable Native edition. If you want that signature analog-style saturation as well as a full-featured tape machine emulator (albeit not as aggressive as DUY Tape or Massey Plugins TapeHead), there really is only one choice, Analog Channel Native.

Whenever they run the special where you can buy it on its own for $295.00, grab it.

If you have any questions or would like further info feel free to e-mail me or leave a comment.

http://mcDSP.com

McDSP Analog Channel – Analog-Style Saturation On The Mix Bus is a post from: Home Recording Studio Guru