Some prominent representatives are the Ibanez AD202, the Dynacord VRS-23 and the Ace Tone EH-50 just to name a few. But why is their frequency bandwidth so much limited? Just as an example, the Ibanez AD202 specification states 2kHz as an upper frequency limit in it’s delay mode. Let’s have a closer look at the AD202 technical design. In the Ibanez AD202, there are 3 BBD chips utilized in series to obtain the delay line: Two Panasonic MN3005 and one Panasonic MN3007. The MN3005 is a 4096 stage long delay and by using a clock speed of 10kHz a maximum of 4096/(2*10kHz)=204.8ms delay time can be obtained. Similar, with the MN3007 – which is a 1024 stage device – there could be delay times from 5.12 up to 51.2ms achieved.

Since a BBD based device is discrete in time, the aliasing effect has to be dealt with. This means that frequencies above the Nyquist frequency (which is half the sampling frequency) needs to be eliminated. So, aliasing and reconstruction lowpass filtering (LPF) has to be used and in the digital domain one would use a rather steep digital LPF at equal or slightly below Nyquist frequency. But since we are in analog land with the AD202 to that time, a common practise was to use a 2- or 3- pole analog lowpass filter (e.g. in a Sallen-Key topology) which is not that steep by far. Therefore a good conservative design was that the clock frequency should be no less than 3 times the roll off frequency of the reconstruction filter which, in the case of the MN3005, immediately implies a corner frequency somewhere below 3.3 kHz.

This comes down to a tradeoff between sound quality and the length of BBD delay line. A longer delay time implies a further limited frequency response. To compensate this, two or even more BBD chips could be setup in series but this comes to a price too: The more buckets involved, the more gain loss (and other unwanted side effects like distortion) occurs which results in a higher noise floor just as an example. In case of the AD202 this results in a noise floor at around -85dB.

Real artists ship. - Steve Jobs

The internationally celebrated Greek composer talks about the role of music in times of chaos, crisis and uncertainty.

(via synthtopia.com)

(via freecabinporn.com)

Definitely a must see Blog – check it out at itishifi.blogspot.com.

The Arturia Minibrute

Videos after the jump…

If the controls are not cheap plastic and the sound delivers then this is definately the NAMM highlight for me. Whats yours?

As the 90s came to a close, the business of music began to change profoundly. New technology allowed artists to record and produce their own music and music videos, and the internet became a free-for-all distribution platform for musicians to promote themselves to audiences across the world. The result was an influx of artists onto the cultural scene, and audiences were left wondering how to sort through them all. In this episode we discuss these massive changes, and reveal how music blogs and websites have arisen as the new arbiters of quality.

(via kraftfuttermischwerk)

The brand new and upcoming Variety of Sound Thrillseeker audio plug-ins series is going to be a plug-in collection premiering Stateful Saturation which is a sophisticated DSP core system for musical harmonic distortion generation based on authentic and truly stateful non-linear models.

Stateful Saturation takes advantage of some sought after analog qualities and preserves them accurately during their transfer right into the digital domain:

• high frequency shimmer and sheen without digital harshness
• depth and ’3d’ imaging side effects before distortion itself becomes apparent
• audio transient dynamics that remains vibrant and alive
• natural and impressive bass response

Stateful Saturation opens the door for quite a number of amazing applications ranging from smooth harmonic exciters up to convincing amplifier effects and the DSP core can easily be set in context whether it’s a compressor output stage or a preamplifier circuit, just to name the two.

First encounter: ThrillseekerLA

Based on an opto-electric circuit model, Variety of Sound’s ThrillseekerLA will be an audio leveling amplifier with amazing analog like qualities. It offers sophisticated and deep gain riding full of musical character and attitude but with virtually no inter-modulation (IM) distortion artifacts!

Instead, it implements a convincing non-linear amplifier stage based upon an accurate stateful non-linear model. This way, harmonically related distortion products can be dialed in separately and to taste which enables sonic texturing and creamy signal coloration duties “on demand”. The processed audio stays alive and vibrant and the subtle detail in depth as well as the spatial image perception will be the icing on the cake.

ThrillseekerLA represents a stunning combination of way smooth and artifact free gain riding altogether with the weight and dimension one typically associates with a stellar analog audio signal path. ThrillseekerLA will be available as a VST plug-in for Windows compatible systems and is going to be released during the first quarter in 2012. Stay tuned on varietyofsound.wordpress.com for more and detailed information which will be available soon.

Related links

• the side effects of intermodulation in audio processors
• towards stateful saturation
• towards stateful saturation – very first audio shots
• I do believe in feedback

(via Dangerous Minds)

On my very own I’m probably going to lean more towards the creative things like making music or photography back again. But don’t worry, there is already some exciting plug-in stuff in the making too and more on this later during this month.

So, what are you up to in 2012?