epicPLATE released

epicPLATE delivers an authentic recreation of classic plate reverberation. It covers the fast and consistent reverb build up as well as that distinct tonality the plate reverb is known for and still so much beloved today. Its unique reverb diffusion makes it a perfect companion for all kinds of delay effects and a perfect fit not only for vocals and drums.

delivering that unique plate reverb sound

• Authentic recreation of classic plate reverberation.
• True stereo reverb processing.
• Dedicated amplifier stage to glue dry/wet blends together.
• Lightweight state-of-the-art digital signal processing.
  

Available for Windows VST in 32 and 64bit as freeware. Download your copy here.

The former epicVerb audio plugin is discontinued.

everything just fades into noise at the end

When I faced artificial reverberation algorithms to the very first time I just thought why not just dissolve the audio into noise over time to generate the reverb tail but it turned out to be not that easy, at least when just having the DSP knowledge and tools of that time. Today, digital reverb generation has come a long way and the research and toolsets available are quite impressive and diverse.

While the classic feedback delay network approaches got way more refined by improved diffusion generation, todays computational power increase can smooth things out further just by brute force as well. Still some HW vendors are going this route. Sampling impulse responses from real spaces also evolved over time and some DSP convolution drawbacks like latency management has been successfully addressed and can be handled more easily given todays CPUs.

Also, convolution is still the ticket whenever modeling a specific analog device (e.g. a plate or spring reverb) appears to be difficult, as long as the modeled part of the system is linear time invariant. To achieve even more accurate results there is still no way around physical modeling but this usually requires a very sophisticated modeling effort. As in practise everything appears to be a tradeoff its not that much unusual to just combine different approaches, e.g. a reverb onset gets sampled/convoluted but the reverb tail gets computed conventionally or – the other way around – early reflections are modeled but the tail just resolves into convoluted noise.

So, as we’ve learned now that everything just fades into noise at the end it comes to no surprise that the almost 15 years old epicVerb plugin becomes legacy now. However, it remains available to download for some (additional reverb) time. Go grab your copy as long as its not competely decayed, you’ll find it in the downloads legacy section here. There won’t be a MkII version but something new is already in the making and probably see the light of day in the not so far future. Stay tuned.

ThrillseekerLA – released today

introducing ThrillseekerLA

ThrillseekerLA – digital stereo leveling amplifier with truly analog qualities.

At a glance

• Sophisticated and deep gain riding full of musical character and attitude but with virtually no inter-modulation (IM) distortion artifacts
• Feedback compression design w/o any samplerate based delay in the loop
• Classic input level driven two knob design with additional manual attack and release time interventions
• Highly program dependent envelope timing adoption offering attack times ranging from “instantaneously” up to around 100ms and release times from 30ms up to several seconds
• Mix level switch to adopt the plug-ins internal gain staging to mixing levels at around -18dBFS
• Custom SC filter option to attenuate the SC bass response while slightly boosting the HF spectrum
• Additional one pole (6dB per octave) SC low-cut filter adjustable from 20 to 500Hz
• External sidechain support
• Switchable Input/GR/Output metering display
• Variable compression range control from 0 to 100%

announcing the “Thrillseeker” audio plug-in series

I’m bringing sexy back

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.