sound affairs & audio effect design
Changes made within the 2.1 update:
As a side-effect it introduces 8 samples latency now. More and detailed information is included in the manual.
Rescue MK2 is a Windows x32 freeware release for VST compatible applications and you can grab your copy via the download page.
It’s so important to get the non-linear modeling right if we would like to have a sort of analog feel in the digital domain. I can’t stress this ever enough since it still seems to be a common practise in todays audio plug-in design to just throw in a static waveshaper, oversample it and hope this will make everything alright. Not! Even worse, in a recently released plug-in I saw the static waveshapers curve not being continuous again and I’m not going to talk about the sound.
But what should one expect to hear if the analog modeling is just done right? Only by driving the gain of the unit but way before we notice the obvious distortions there appear different by-products caused by circuit side-effects. Depending on the actual device, circuit and components, it might be that the signal starts just getting thicker and more mid-focused, as an example. Or, the signal might appear much deeper and bigger in other cases.
Whatever it might be in particular, I do call this the “Mojo” of the device – it’s not the primary intention of the device but turns out to be a sort of an added sugar. Such effects are highly frequency, transient and gain structure dependent and this is what makes the processed signal to be much more vibrant and alive. Furthermore, the obvious harmonic distortions are not introduced abruptly but they emerge gradually.
Bringing mojo back – Thrillseeker VBL is an emulation of a “vintage broadcast limiter” following the classic Variable-Mu design principles from the early 1950′s. They were used to prevent audio overshoots by managing sudden signals changes. From today’s perspective, and compared to brickwall limiters, they are rather slow and should be seen as more of a gain structure leveler, but they still are shining when it comes to perform gain riding in a very musical fashion – they have warmth and mojo written all over.
Thrillseeker VBL is a “modded” version, which not only has the classic gain reduction controls but also grants detailed access to the amount and appearance of harmonic tube amplifier distortion occurring in the analog tube circuit. Applied in subtle doses, this dials in that analog magic we often miss when working in the digital domain, but you can also overdrive the circuit to have more obvious but still musical sounding harmonic distortion (and according side-effects) for use as a creative effect.
On top, Thrillseeker VBL offers an incredibly authentic audio transformer simulation which not only models the typical low-end harmonic distortion but also all the frequency and load dependent subtleties occurring in a transformer coupled tube circuit, and which add up to that typical mojo we know from the analog classics. This would not have been possible with plain waveshaping techniques but has been realized with my innovative Stateful Saturation approach, making it possible to model circuits having a (short) sort of memory.
Release date is not yet confirmed but most probably will be in May this year.
If you did not tried this one out yet but are looking for an absolutely clean and transparent compressor then do check this one out!
The TDR Feedback Compressor II is a major design update of its critically acclaimed predecessor. The compressor is dedicated to the highest fidelity stereo program (2-buss) compression, but shines equally in classic mixing tasks. – Fabien from TDR
It features detailed control of compression behaviour, extremely low distortion and it’s compression is almost “invisible”. Download the freeware over there at tokyodawn.net.
Updates and a brand new release, basically. Since there is a minor issue with the latest TesslaPRO and Rescue versions concerning higher sample rate compatibility, I’m currently into bug-fixing and both will probably make it upfront the summer break. As the next major update you all voted FerricTDS to be the object of desire and I’m already sketching things on the drawing board but developments might not start before Q3.
I’m constantly extending and improving my Stateful Saturation approach and the next incarnation will bring authentic analog style distortion into VST land. It is basically a Variable-Mu based broadcast limiter design from the early days but which is modded to have detailed access to the amplifier distortion – it has warmth and mojo written all over it! Patrick also joined in again and will perform his magic user interface artwork. An official announcement will appear very soon, so stay tuned.
Unfortunately, there are no news about 64bit support atm.
Related links:
Rescue MK2 is the major overhaul of the analog style modelled signal designer already introduced back in 2007. It is a sophisticated mid/side based transient processing device which not only allows detailed ’3D’ imaging control but also fancy transient compression and distortion with dynamics that remains vibrant and alive.
Changes at a glance:
More and detailed information is included in the manual.
Rescue MK2 is a Windows x32 freeware release for VST compatible applications and you can grab your copy via the download page.
Changelog for Release 1.0.1
The update is available in the downloads section.
In summer 2007 I’ve once started my very first VST plug-in developments and soon afterwards there was an initial release called Rescue – an audio plug-in premiering envelope dependent signal amplification and analog style saturation in a mid/side configuration. This was unheard-of to that time and its success was motivation to me to continue my very own efforts in coming closer to what was still missing in the DSP audio land: All those subtle mojos that we were o-so familiar when working in the analog domain.
While the initial Rescue implementation was a little bit quirky concerning transient handling, I’ve managed to develop a ‘stateful’ approach over the last years which turned out to be way smoother not only in terms of transient response but also in terms of signal saturation. All this comes down now and there is almost nothing to change to the original concept other than the underlying technology which had been emerged and improved.
Rescue MK2 is going to offer transient handling ‘smooth like cake’, stateful saturation and an authentic analog signal path emulation 2.0. Rescue MK2 maintains a super realistic stereo image, increases depth perception and works great as both, mixing tool and summing on the 2-bus. The new Rescue version will be available by end of January as a freeware VST plug-in.
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