The constant lasting heat and humidity in the Rhein-Main area are driving me nuts atm and everything seems to be slowed down a little bit. Anyhow I’ve just managed to update the VST effects page with the missing preFIX entry including tips&tricks which might be extended over time. As a reminder, if you want to contribute some of your very own usage tips then please don’t hesitate and post here or eMail me and I will include them over there.
Beside that, some bugfixing efforts still takes their time for the preFIX plug-in. It will cover some fixes for reported denormal issues and will lower some signal path simulation side-effects in the LF department of the filters. Maybe more. As a side story, working with program dependent envelope curves catched my interest again quite recently when I’ve re-discovered some older unfinished work on that topic. This is really fun but complex as hell since the possibilities are nearly endless. Choosing the right concepts (which are devising a musical impression at the end) is the ticket.
Working further on my stateful saturation concept is constantly keeping me busy. The DSP concepts are still getting harder and harder the more I deep-dive into the non-linear math behind it. Quite recently, I’ve managed to evolve most of my previous work into a “Wiener-Hammerstein” (LNL) system. It exploits some neat properties without the common drawbacks of other nonlinear systems with memory, such as high latency in combination with very high computational expense. Very promising. Maybe there will appear some more background info on that topic here in the Blog sooner or later but the implementation itself right into a usable DSP plug-in still remains just a longterm outlook.
Way more concrete and likely might be a very first VoS plug-in release solely dedicated to mastering purposes.
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Variety Of Sound 
Mastering you say ? I love that. Keep it coming.
I hear you on the heat and humidity – I usually came from Heidelberg to Rhein-Main and it was even worse – now in the last weeks I heard from a swedish friend that she couldn’t bear the wet hot air even up there^^.
Your plugins are so incredible that people should instantly donate a nice very good “Ventilator” to you. We put one as far out of the (attic!) window as possible here and let it run on “step1” through the night. Another idea (also born in wet’n hot Heidelberg) is to use bottles with water made to ice near your head if you want to get sleep. Feels like “Garmisch Partenkirchener Fallwinde”, at least for a while, i assure you^^. You know, master developers need all their little grey cells in best shape! Cheers, Georg.
A plug for mastering?? Go all the way!!!
Yea, heat and humidity sap the life from me, was over 100 deg and high humidity here too.
Can’t wait to hear more about the mastering plug!!! Wonder if it will be like Endorphin or maybe VintageWarmer2. I would also love to see you make a dynamic multiband eq (or comp) with mid-side mode and seperate external sidechain per band.
Re DSP math – over my head. 😦
Re weather – a musician needs fan. 😉
Fantastic news! I’m loving this! Thank you soooo much for your work and dedication. I’m a lifetime fan. Variety of Sound rules! I’m a Booty Guy Forever!
Hey we’re all Booty Guys here, ha ha. But anyway…
I look forward to you creating a Mastering plugin! All of your plugins are really amazing. What are your concepts/ideas for the mastering plugin? Linear-phase EQing? Limiting that doesn’t audibly squash the sound at all, even when pushed really far? Other great ideas?
@Exeris: separate side chain for each band ??? That’s WAY too much! I don’t think there’s any plug in out there for that, or is there?
Thanks Bootsy
There is one that was supposed to and hopefully will in the future. http://platinumears.com/iq4gui.html
But the external side-chain inputs didn’t work. Developer said “new version of IQ4 I’m working on (with full MS control plus external sidechain inputs)…Don’t hold your breath though: I don’t seem to have much time for plug-in development at the moment. :/”
Guess I can just use one compressor per side chain input, or as I have been doing make my own mulitband using Ableton’s multiband comp, turning the compression to zero, soloing band and chaining for other bands. And then for each band a comp that has mid-side mode. Btw, wish Density could do more then 24db reduction when I really need to clear the way for something else.
Can’t wait to hear more about your mastering plug! Love your current ones especially Ferric, BootEQ and Density, VCS too! Thanks!
Didn’t know about that IQ4 plug in. Is it good?
I guess you can make yourself a Multiband compressor with side chained bands but, to do it manually wouldn’t that be too much of mingling and fiddling with the audio? (too much phase distortion) ?????
Well I haven’t really used IQ4 since the external side chain didn’t work. I did use a similar plug Equinox (also in the KVR Developer Challenge 2009) but only 1 external side chain and if I remember no mid-side mode.
I am open to better ways to do dynamic eq’ing. What do you propose when one wants to duck a freq range on Track 1 when Track 2 hits and then duck a different range on Track 1 when say Track 3 hits? Thanks!
I have no idea! That’s a really complex situation, I’ve never felt the need to do that, but it sounds really intereseting. When do you usually perform that kind of processing?
Well I haven’t done it that much yet, but it seems like a good way to have what seems to be a dense mix but not sound overly dense. Here is an example, my brother and I did an un-official remix of the TRON Legacy theme by Daft Punk. NOTE that it was done with just the trailers released online, not best quality at all, our official remixes and original music are of higher sound quality! http://youtu.be/kF4AhtVJ9vk
So we didn’t have the individual tracks like a real remix., and so we wanted to duck their kick when our new one hit, so used that Equinox plugin. But then wanted to duck another sound/freq range of Daft Punk’s mixdown but were out of external side chains. Granted can use another instance of the plug, but seems like extra external side chains is a better answer.
But even when doing our own music or a real remix, dynamic eq’ing seems like a way to make dense mixes not sound dense by ducking competing frequencies. For example, one trick is have two different kick tracks, one which is hipassed and only plays when the bass hits at the same time. Seems like a lot of extra work especially if patterns change a lot over time, when you could just have a dynamic eq with side chain that would hear when to hi pass and when not too, and if using a plugin could also vary not just on or off.
Since that TRON remix sounds so bad, I had to post something that shows we can produce well, http://soundcloud.com/grainsofsound/grains-of-sound-eager-fingers
that mix is very well executed – respect!
Hehe don’t worry about it Exeris !!
Seems like some nice tricks. I guess not many people are doing that kind of double side chained trick. Would love to hear Bootsy’s opinion on that one.
As a tip: I use Ferric as a nice Snare slammer, Turn up the limiter dynamics and saturation all the way up for a whip-lash effect on snares. Works great on High-Hats too.. This is an over all plugin, as a must on all drums and things that seem to “digital” just adds enough grain w the limiter turned all the way to make things sound great.
Rescue is my go to vst for making things come alive turning the depth all the way up and adding some punch, really brings digital synths to life, giving a nice warm tone.