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Liz McLean Knight aka Quantazelle catches up with one of our laptopist idols: edIT, the talented solo artist and Glitch Mob member. I won’t insult what he does by giving it a dumb name (”Glitch Hop?”). Suffice to say, edIT is adept at bringing insane musical chops to live laptop performance.

Liz got to geek out with edIT about the details of his live setup, which now drops the M-Audio Trigger Finger for the visual feedback and fluid multi-touch flexibility of a JazzMutant Lemur. (All due love to the Trigger Finger. But I think that would have been like, when I was a child, trading my Knight Rider Big Wheel for the full-sized KITT.)

edIT tells Liz just what this is all about, how he puts together his live set, and what the technical setup means for him musically. He also talks strategy. Sometimes, that means keeping the integrity of the tunes by loading changes into Ableton Live’s pre-composed Arrange View rather than triggering relatively mundane changes of loops manually. At the same time, that frees him up to work with more radical changes with effects and the like – stuff that may actually be interesting. So, no, just glimpsing the Arrange View will not land edIT on deadAct.com — in fact, edIT and Glitch Mob are just the kind of antidote we need.

Interview audio quality is low, but it’s well worth the listen for all the details.

While we’re at it, here’s more insight into edIT’s unique IDM and Hip Hop-inspired world, including the greatest anti-electronic music quotes of all time.

XLR8R TV in one of their nicest episodes ever got to play a street gig in San Francisco on Haight with the Glitch Mob. Now, playing outdoor gigs in San Francisco isn’t exactly that big a deal – hey, it’s not New York City, where you’ll last about 2 bars before meeting the NYPD. But it’s fantastic to see what the Mob are all about, and the performance is terrific.

Most importantly, this video includes this poetic diatribe by An Angry Man, which I will transcribe here in the hope that someone puts it on a t-shirt for us:

Nobody is playing an instrument.
You have technicians here, making noise – are you taping this?
No one is a musician.
They’re not artists because nobody can play the guitar.

For more insight into edIT’s thoughts on music in general, here’s an extensive video interview. This comes from an apparently defunct show called The Craft. The show title has certain unfortunate associations with bad girl-witch movies, and pops up odd bits of trivia that make it seem as though it was targeted at old people or kittens. (Turntables, associated with hip hop? Who knew!) But the production itself is lovely, and edIT has some great things to say. And the show producers got one thing very right: edIT is part of the future of music.

More on edIT’s music and edIT and Glitch Mob touring to a town near you (NY tomorrow, LA 4/30, Arizona, Detroit, Alberta…):

edIT

Ever wished you could pack the sonic goodness and programming power of a soft synth into a hardware box? Dreamed of software that lived in a road case and had the stability and power-on capability of your outboard gear? You’re certainly not alone. That meant many of us were intrigued when soft synth emulator house Arturia showed off the Origin, a DSP-based hardware box that put their emulations in a box that wasn’t a PC.

Dave Dri knows touring with gear, as the founder of Seque and a live electronic festival vet. We got his impressions from across the Pacific in Australia. He’s upfront with everything he loves and everything that annoys. To bring a different perspective to Planet CDM here, I’m pleased to welcome Dave as a guest.

An Origin Of Sorts

Founded in France in 1999, Arturia has gained a solid reputation for the quality of its emulations of classic analogue synthesizers. If the soft synth emulations of the classic Moog Minimoog and Yamaha CS-80 have made Arturia a name in the industry, the news of its development of a hardware DSP system made for enjoyable speculation and furious Google searches for videos, news and reviews. While units in Australia are somewhat scarce at present, an Origin was supplied for review by Musiclab in Brisbane, Australia. Where the initial review was for music press print media, there is so much more to this module that we can take a deeper look and share with the CDM community some of the issues and notable features of the Arturia Origin.

Man, Meet Machine

The initial impression of the unit is typical of any large synth module with a host of knobs and blinking lights. The Origin can be rack-mounted or run as a table-top unit, with supplied wooden ends screwing in for the all-important retro aesthetic. There have been comments about the time it takes the unit to boot up, which takes a while. Once you have booted, though, it’s a treat to use, and the LCD screen is both large and bright. As ever, first impressions gained by scrolling through the individual and multi presets give a feel for the possibilities and examples of programming inside the box. A range of usable bass and synth sounds nestle amongst the abstract sweeps and blips, showing plenty of sonic diversity. The Origin is, after all, billed as being “the most powerful synthesiser on the market”.

Origin is essentially a modular environment for programming custom synth modules with a collection of oscillators and filters. It draws upon Arturia’s stable of analog gear models, adding new, original content from the Arturia team. With those synth sounds now in a physical case, boasting external signal inputs and a three-layered step sequencer, the Origin is impressive on paper. Its sound is equally impressive, but one would expect no less from Arturia based on the quality of their software. The presets might attract the same “heard it all before” criticisms from anyone who has been around analog synths for a while, but that can be perhaps considered a complement to the analog modeling. One needs only to play up and down the range of notes of a Minimoog patch to realise that the coherency of the lower and higher notes is superior to lesser Virtual Analogue products. This is especially pronounced in the lower note ranges, though the manual goes into details about avoiding upper frequency aliasing and a “no names” criticism of some other “leading softsynth”. If you’re a soft synth developer, it might be you! Uh oh!

Get With The Program

The first issue that one is likely to run into is delving into the much-talked-about modular programming environment. Whereas the similarly modular Nord G2 includes robust programming environments in computer software for their hardware synth, Arturia have chosen to limit the Origin’s programming to be an entirely inside-the-box affair. Indeed, the USB port and supplied software are merely for archiving and transferring patches. Quite why this process takes such an excruciatingly long time is a mystery, but the lack of any ability to edit file names of archived patches is simply lazy programming. At the time of writing, Arturia haven’t replied to confirm if there is an editor on the way, but one would consider it likely that such a revision will be released with an OS update shortly.

Not that programming on the Origin is anything near impossible. Merely annoying. There are two modes to view the programming process, which amounts to dropping modules into slots and opening each module to connect to another. Frustratingly, there appears to be no way to intelligently “insert” modules into the signal path. This, in addition to no method of “swapping” modules in and out, slows down the rate of programming and limits the kind of creative and random experiments that make actual modular synthesis interesting. Similarly, deleting a module inline will break the signal path, and require re-patching. Despite these quirks, the process is relatively fun and the availability of up to 9 oscillator instances and 4 filter instances will surely yield some interesting results.

Ed.: This is one I’m definitely interested in following – I’d be willing to make some sacrifices for in-box programming, which is an impressive feature, especially with this modular structure. But these do sound like significant obstacles. Other folks want to chime in? -PK

These modules are sourced from the modeling of the Moog Minimoog, Yamaha CS-80, ARP 2600 and Sequential Circuits Prophet 5, as well as additional Arturia originals. Each has its distinctive quirks and allows for some interesting combinations, with features like self-oscillation on the Moog and the smooth response of the Jupiter filters. The manual becomes useful here, with examples and reference points for understanding the characteristics of each.

Better Living Through Synthesis

Beyond creating your own patches, the unit comes packed full of preset programs. Each program contains one synth structure as well as up to three effects settings and one sequence. Up to four Programs can be combined as a Multi, allowing for multi-timbral sound module use with MIDI note, channel and split functionality. The synth structure can be either a user-built modular environment or a template synth. At time of writing, the Origin is shipped with only the Minimoog supplied, with no clear date from Arturia when they will supply the rest. This does seem a curious omission given not only the cost of the unit, but the idea that all these units are already modeled in other Arturia software, requiring only a programmer to port the modules to the Origin. Add another thing to wait for in “the future”.

Room For Improvement

There are quickly a list of issues and concerns a programmer will have with the unit. Where the Arturia software emulation of the Minimoog shows numeric values for tuning settings, the Origin does not. Indeed, all parameters are merely displayed as a graphic representation of a knob, leaving only a visual cue as to the settings. This becomes an issue when tuning the semitones of a number of oscillators for instance, which coupled with the lack of editing software or a touch screen, makes programming the same patches on the Origin a slower affair then Arturia’s own Minimoog V.

Other issues include the use of only a single instance of the Delay, Chorus, and Reverb effects, out of a maximum of three effects able to be run at any one time. The limited palette of effects including Distortion and a Phaser are similar to those found on a Novation X-Station at five times less the expense, and pale in comparison. The Delay and Reverb lack depth of character, and one might find themselves checking that the Distortion is, in fact, actually turned on. The restriction to singular use of the more CPU intensive Delay and Reverb is an indication of conserving processing power for the actual synth patches, but these issues quickly creep into the potential capacity of a Multi patch. In an era where the cheapest entry level laptop has processing power to spare, it is relatively disappointing that a module advertised as “the most powerful synthesizer on the market” would have any processing restrictions whatsoever. If you intended to run the world’s most ultimate 9-Oscillator Trance super saw Multi with full effects and blazing filters, think again. Outside of CPU and “I can’t believe it doesn’t have a touch screen” interface issues however, much of what currently detracts from the overall desirability of the Origin could well be fixed with a timely OS update.

Things Are Looking Up

Those niggles out of the way, it’s time to reaffirm that the unit does in fact sound fantastic. As said before, so it should. It’s Arturia doing what Arturia do. Coupled with the rather interesting, if quirky, step sequencer, the unit has the potential to become a boutique brain for a relatively well-funded live act. Where programming may feel like a festival of clicks, the Origin is perfectly suited for performance and allows for an incredibly well-planned customization and mapping of knobs to this end. External inputs offer the chance to create inspired filter programs and the unit hasn’t neglected a healthy array of midi ports. The unit is heavy at around the 8kg mark, but the build is impressively solid and all the knobs have the same smooth feel that makes units like the Waldorf Blofeld such a joy to tweak, grab and perform on.

It is, however, the quality of the sound that will emerge as a common point of conversation regarding the Origin. It is very expensive and will perhaps emerge as a limited and desirable boutique unit for some. For others, the comparison to the Arturia software will be a pressing factor, with all the synths on the Origin available as part of Arturia’s acclaimed “V Collection” at a price over four times cheaper than the Origin. Of course, these are not available in modular form, which invariably brings up again the question why the Origin is shipped without a software editor. Sure, the Origin sounds amazing, but the question is whether it sounds that much more amazing than the same software, and whether the potential for programming is currently worth the restricted workflow of doing it all inside the box.

To Origin, Or Not To Origin

Some of the best music technology in history has been quirky and difficult, and there is little argument against calling the Arturia Origin exactly that. For all its difficulty, however, it sounds incredible. For all the niggling feature complaints, it suggests a well-timed OS update in response. For its price though, there are no easy answers. Comparing the recommended retail prices in Australia at present, the Arturia Origin costs only a few hundred less than one would spend purchasing both a Moog Little Phatty Stage II and a Dave Smith Prophet 08. Both being genuine analogue synths in their own right. Whether the market is ready to pay this price until Arturia address the features left wanting is entirely up to the producers and acts with the money and passion for incredibly sounding and very specific modular emulations. For everyone else, the software awaits.

For another – similarly skeptical – take on the Arturia, here’s Music Thing from last year:

Review: Arturia Origin. It’s bit, it’s expensive, it’s sexy. Why don’t I want one?

How do you make the Moog legacy of instruments accessible — assuming you can’t afford a studio full of vintage gear? One choice is to model the instruments virtually, as developers like Arturia have done. That provides real-time control, but models may not be perfect, and if you want more than one instrument, you really need more than one model. Others have reimagined some of the Moog sound designs on more modern instruments, as Craig Anderton did recently with Cakewalk’s Rapture.

IK Multimedia, working with veteran sample house Sonic Reality in collaboration with Moog Music, have taken the “museum” approach — put samples of everything in a single box. And what an ambitious collection they’ve got, as we noted when the product was announced. But can you win over even someone who owns some of the real gear? We put that question to our own Lee Sherman, who’s been diving deep into the tool. Mindful of the tradeoffs, he’s got some insight into just how useful they were able to make that sampled content.

SampleMoog can’t help but be greeted with some degree of skepticism. Even virtual analog synths like Arturia’s Minimoog V don’t go all of the way in reproducing the Moog experience. How can something based on samples even come close?

Moog users have always valued pure analog sound and the ability to shape that sound in real-time — the opposite of what you get from a digital, sampled library full of presets. Moog synth layouts are intuitive and interactive, and can produce any sound you want, in real-time — a capability so respected Moog users will even consider the latest Moog model without preset memory. Sample packages, even one as extensive as this, are limited by disk space to certain pre-determined sounds.

But having recognized what SampleMoog is not, let’s talk about what SampleMoog is: the most comprehensive and up-to-date collection of Moog samples ever assembled, representing nearly every product that wore a Moog badge, from the early modulars to the Little Phatty. Historians, rejoice: there are over 1,700 basses, leads, pads and effects on offer here, including such relative esoterica as Taurus Bass pedals and the first Etherwave Theremin. Many of these instruments are quite hard to get a hold of in working condition, and they’re getting rarer by the day. There’s no question that IK are doing a service to the music community just by preserving these samples.

What You Get

SampleMoog is a 16-part, multi-timbral sample-based synth that can be used stand-alone or as a VST, AU, or RTAS plug-in on the Mac or PC. It includes a powerful synth engine with filters, envelopes, and LFOs and a competent, if not particularly exciting, effects section, with 32 effects (up to 4 effects per part).

Regular readers will know how we feel about dongles so we’re encouraged by the lack of one here. After installing from one CD-ROM and a DVD-ROM you can run the program in demo mode for a generous 10 days before authorizing it with the supplied serial number.
SampleMoog is based on IK’s SampleTank 2.5 engine, but adds a Moog-inspired 24dB-per octave lowpass filter with two AHDSR Envelopes (one devoted to amplitude and the other to filter and pitch). Combined with two LFOs (with a choice of triangle, square, saw, sine or random) waveforms, you’ve got more Moog-like filtering and modulation, without being too slavish an imitation. There are also bandpass and highpass filters with 6dB, 12dB, or 24dB slopes for variety. Velocity, Range, and Macro controls, and the ability to save layers and splits as Combis, provide more control over the final sound than is usually seen in a soundware package.

The software also looks looks great, with Moog-style knobs and switches and lots of wooden trim.

Putting it to Use

As you might expect given Sonic Reality’s involvement with the project, the sounds themselves have been meticulously sampled and the realism factor is high. Highlights here include the increasingly rare Taurus bass pedals, which are just as dark and menacing as I recall from the prog-rock of the 70s, the Rogue (the first synth I ever paid for with my own money), and an incredibly useable theremin (with just the right amount of portamento and modwheel-induced vibrato). The advantage of sampling these instruments is unparalleled authenticity — at least for the timbres sampled. While arguments rage over which virtual analog really nails the Moog sound, here that argument is moot since you’re listening to the actual sounds.

As is always the case with sampling versus modeling, though, the trade-off for having those literal recordings of a variety of instruments is control.  It all comes down to how the sounds were sampled in the first place. While SampleMoog does give you access to certain parameters, these parameters are baked into the recording and there are some you simply can’t affect. There’s also no way to capture some of the more esoteric qualities of analog synths such as the subtle detuning that comes from analog drift. This is hard for modelers, too, but at least some of these details can be incorporated into a model; samples are more static by definition.

As a concession to the tweaks, the software also includes a folder full of raw waveforms taken from the Minimoog that you can run through the filters and effects to come up with your own sounds. While welcome, it still felt limited compared to what you can do on a real Moog, largely due to the lack of routing possibilities. Ed.: that could get more interesting, though, as hosts like Native Instruments’ Kore become almost semi-modular — I could see this making an interesting sampled oscillator source.

Conclusions

Despite my initial snobbism, I have to confess that SampleMoog won me over in the end. This is clearly a package that has been put together with a great deal of love and respect for Moog’s legacy. The programmers were necessarily limited by the sampling medium. Because of that, rather than provide a completely open-ended palette for sound design as you’d found on an actual Moog synth, their choices as to how to shape certain sounds define the program. Moogs have been used in many musical contexts, funk, prog, and electro to name but a few. So a package like this must necessarily encompass the choices made several decades worth of Moog programers. Not to worry. Fortunately, their choices are for the most part excellent, and are entirely usable in today’s musical context.

All reservations aside, short of sampling my own Moog hardware, this is perhaps the best way I can think of preserving the legacy of these incredible instruments.

Sample Moog
US$329 list

Be sure to watch our interview with Craig Anderton on why it’s important to preserve the Moog legacy, and how you can help by supporting The Bob Moog Foundation.

Craig Anderton’s Tribute to Moog: Rapture Presets, and a Call to Save History (specifically, part II of our video interview)

IK Multimedia is also working with the Moog Foundation with SampleMoog, so in addition to giving money or volunteering effort to the Foundation, buying and using SampleMoog also gives support to this worthy cause. See the original announcement of the collaboration, reproduced at EQ Magazine.

This is a NuVJ, my second choice MIDI controller from Numark

As a class-compliant USB MIDI device it installed fine. I loaded my VJ software of choice, Resolume, mapped the jog wheels to scratch video, and scratched.

The video went bonkers.

A couple of moments looking at the MIDI messages in MIDI-OX told me why – the Total Control jogwheels use a bizarre schema for their endless encoder messages. All the MIDI controllers I’ve encountered in the past have used the same format for endless encoders, rotating clockwise will send out a stream of, (to paraphrase the machines) “+1″ messages. Counterclockwise gives “-1″. Spin your jogwheel or knob faster, and it sends out more messages per second. The Total Control, however, changes its message depending on how fast the wheel is spinning, so an increasingly quick movement would look like “+1 +1 +2 +3 +5 +7 +7 +8″ etc. Even more bizarrely, the values seem the reverse of what they should be, so a clockwise movement gives negative values.

So I took the controller back to the store, along with my Macbook to road test any alternatives. The guys were happy to swap my Total Control for a NuVJ, whose jogwheel behaved much better when tested with Resolume. It was still backwards, but it wasn’t causing the playhead to jitter all over the place.

I should have done a little more testing though, because it turns out that all of the knobs on this device work the same way. The only piece of software which recognizes them correctly is the version of Arkaos bundled with the NuVJ. Ableton Live does an ok job with the general knobs, and the jog wheels work ok moving clockwise, but counterclockwise has the live controls snapping backwards at 5 times the speed of forward movements.

So, sadly, I’m back at the same position I was in 17 months ago, sitting with a well made and reasonably priced controller, which will require hours of hacking and re-mapping to complete simple tasks.

Is anyone else in CDMLand in a similar situation? Or better still, have been in a similar situation and discovered a quick and elegant solution?

Composer turned sample developer Wilbert Roget, II has just released a new ‘indie’ sample library called Impact:Steel. We spoke with him to find out more about how and why he created the library and how creating his own sample libraries plays into his composition.

CDM: First, can you tell us a bit about your background, and how you got into composing and music?

Wilbert Roget, II:Well to keep things short, I’m basically a lifer with music and composition, studying piano early on and doing improvisations almost immediately (if not before). I decided on film and video game composition as a career sometime in high school, and went on to study composition, orchestration, and conducting at Yale University. I’ve been scoring films, games, ads, and various other projects ever since.

CDM:What got you into sample library creation – specifically for Impact: Steel?

WR:I’ve been making my own samples ever since I’d been scoring video games, back in the DLS era. I created Impact: Steel specifically because I had lots of musical ideas for my soundtracks that would’ve used metallic percussion, but no commercially-available libraries had the kind of instruments I wanted. Several years ago, I’d recorded a few metal objects I found in my room into a useful (albeit low-quality) soundfont, which ended up being the inspiration for Impact: Steel as it is now.

As a side note, it wasn’t until about halfway through production that I decided to release it commercially instead of keeping it private.

CDM:What goes into making a sample library? Did you just collect a bunch of noisemakers and record them, or did you have some kind of a plan before recording?

WR:Actually, I’d been collecting most of these “instruments” for years – I have a weird habit of just tapping on things and taking note of what kind of sound it makes. Since I already had the instruments, I had a good idea right away of what kinds of articulations I’d use. Each instrument is heavily multisampled, with up to 9 velocity layers and 3 round robin variations per each of the 73 different articulations (on different parts of the instrument, with different beaters, rolls, scrapes, tremolos, etc.). So I really needed a detailed outline on paper that detailed what exactly to play, in what order, specifying mixer settings and even microphone distances.

CDM:Can you tell us a bit about the process of recording your samples?

WR:Sure! As I mentioned before, it’s almost impossible to do any kind of a large-scale project without a printed cue sheet. Mine even had specifics on the number of variations, “safety” takes, exact playing position on the instruments, and so on. I’d say once you’ve done that, it’s a good idea to do several prototype recordings, not only to check levels but also to get a sense of how it’ll sound in your sampler of choice.

As for the actual recording phase, I recommend trying to do as much as possible in one take, and splitting the files up later. This helps maintain a consistent sound throughout the instrument, which is crucial for getting an organic, convincingly realistic patch. If you made a cue sheet, it should be very easy to figure out exactly what’s playing when you’re editing the large recording files.

And again I really think it’s a great idea to have a good sense of what kind of a sound you’ll want in the end. In my case, I knew I wasn’t gonna get a huge “recorded in a giant hangar” sound, and I also didn’t want a pristine and surgically-dry tone either. So instead I adjusted my mixer, EQ settings, and mic positions to get a nice room sound, not too dry and with some air/ambience. EQing at the recording stage (ie. right on the mixer) also gave my samples a clearer and more powerful bass, with high end presence as well.

CDM:From the point of raw samples, what comes next?

WR:After the recording phase, there’s the editing phase and then the implementation and sampling phase. In editing, you’re basically splitting it up into samples and doing whatever post-processing you’ll need. Sampling is where you plug all the samples into your sampler of choice.

In my case, I threw the samples into Kontakt 2 and played around with them a lot before going back and post-processing them; this helped to get a sense of what kinds of edits and effects I’d need. The final product sounds remarkably different as a result, and I almost never needed to use real-time effects in Kontakt to compensate.

I’ll also point out that I wrote demo tracks not only to show off the library, but also to get firsthand experience with it myself. This helped me figure out what kinds of tweaks the end users were likely to implement, and it gave me a lot of ideas for making the library more ergonomic and playable.

CDM:Do you find that creating samplebanks is easier in one particular format vs. another?

WR:I’m not sure how diplomatic I should be here, but, far and away Kontakt 2 was the best editor I’ve ever worked with. I’ve used lots of other editors in the past, starting off with soundfonts and DLS, and Gigastudio; nothing really compares to how powerful and easy it was to build patches in Kontakt 2. In fact, I think I’ve built new Kontakt instruments for every one of my recent film soundtracks, either editing an existing patch to fit a certain musical context or even inventing something completely new. It’s highly addictive!

CDM:What makes Impact: Steel different from some of the other ‘junk percussion’ libraries available?

WR:I think the fundamental difference is that I never really considered Impact: Steel as being “junk percussion”, but rather a library built around the concept of metallic percussion instruments. One effect is that I:S is made of detailed, organic and ergonomically playable instruments, instead of being a collection of single hits and sound effects. Additionally, its basis on an abstract concept also meant that I could include a diverse range of patches that fit the idea of a metallic sound world, such as textures, swells, colossal hits and other FX patches.

CDM:From a business perspective, what’s next for Impact: Steel? Do you plan on marketing, licensing or selling the library to a larger company, what types of distribution, etc.

WR:At the moment, I’m handling all sales and marketing through my own sample development company, Impact Soundworks. I already have some other sample library ideas in mind for the months to come, so stay tuned!

CDM:Do you have any recommendations or advice for other composers or creators who might like to try their hand at creating a sample library?

WR:I think every composer should try and make some of their own samples, or at least tweak their existing commercial libraries so that they’re less recognizable. Ultimately I only made Impact: Steel just to give my own music a new and unique sound that hadn’t been done before. My advice to people trying to make a commercial library is to choose a subject that hasn’t been done a million times already, or at least take a different approach to it.

Our take: I’ve been playing with Impact:Steel for a little over a week now and it has already found a place in my regular sample library. As the demos on the site suggest, it works extremely well to add metallic flavor and impact to your compositions. I’ve found it really wants to be ‘played’ – that is, I find it hard to not want to smash my keys while I’m playing with the samples! Those with something like the M-Audio Trigger Finger or some Roland drum-pads will be greatly rewarded with the playability and musicality of this library. Here’s an excerpt from ambient demo I’m working on now, showcasing some of the ‘Clang Ensembles’ from Impact:Steel. Be sure to check out the official site for more. Enjoy!

Demo

I have a confession to make: I haven’t had a good-quality 2-track audio editor installed on my Mac in several years. You might wonder how I’ve been doing all of my waveform editing during that time…and I might be wondering the same thing.

Back when I was still using OS 9, I ran Peak as my primary editor – it was fast, relatively simple, and, well, one of the only games in town (SoundEdit 16 and Sound Designer II were both discontinued at the time). Under OS X, I never upgraded Peak. It had become too bloated, too complex, and I honestly couldn’t justify spending money on the upgrade with the level of editing I was doing. But as my needs grew, I continued to search for something that ‘flowed’ with my workflow. So I tried demos of other apps – Audacity never worked right with my audio interface, Soundbooth was too rudimentary, Soundtrack was nice until Apple killed the app-only option and bundled it into Final Cut studio, and DSP Quattro, while very capable, just never really resonated with my way of working. I had nearly given up – and was settled on continuing to use Logic Pro and Wave Burner for all of my edits. Deep down I still hoped there was something out there that might, someday, do exactly what I needed, without putting a lot of other stuff in my way. Enter Audiofile Engineering’s Wave Editor.

At work I’ve been using SoundForge daily for the past year as my primary editor. It isn’t pretty, but it does what I need it to do in a relatively fast way and produces consistent, quality results. My hope has always been to find a Mac app that gave me the speed and quality of SoundForge, but with a more refined interface. Today, I’m happy to write, that my hope has been met.

First, let me tell you a bit about the company. From what little I know of the duo that make up AE, I can tell you that they are passionate about audio and the Mac platform, and dedicated to the pursuit of making highly functional, highly elegant Mac software solutions. If I had to compare them to any other Mac company I’ve worked with, my first thought would be the highly esteemed Omnigroup. Quite an accomplishment for a two-man organization.

I’ve been testing Wave Editor for a few months now (both the release version 1.2.x and the beta version 1.3.x), and I can honestly say I’ve finally found the app I’ve been looking for. It takes design cues from a variety of excellent applications (including SDII and even Photoshop), and offers extremely high quality algorithms and processes – all while keeping all the tools out of the way when you don’t need them. Nearly every function of the application can be assigned to a custom keyboard command, which is ideal for people who appreciate elegance, speed, and giving a break to their mouse hand.

To really appreciate the benefits of this app, one must spend some time with it. After skimming the documentation and trying to fumble my way through the app for a few days, I came across some nice video tutorials over at Razormaid, and sat down with my copy as they walked through the basic functions. As I did this, the real power and elegance of the app became immediately apparent.

Without going into gratuitous detail, I’m going to touch on the elements of Wave Editor that really sets it apart from the other apps I’ve used.

Edit Blocks/SmartEdits

Wave Editor utilizes a ‘regioning’ type system called SmartEdits. This system allows you to slice your audio file up into sections in order to customize how those sections will interact with one another. Think of it as a playlist editor on steroids (but better). As shown in the image below, I have taken a wave file, split it into four edit blocks (two blocks times two channels), and setup crossfades for each. Note that you can apply separate crossfade types for fade-ins, fade-outs, and on a per-channel basis. These are all applied non-destructively and can be changed on-the-fly, either in the edit window, or by changing values in the SmartEdit list.

Layers

Anyone who has used an image manipulation program such as Adobe Photoshop will likely be familiar with the concept of layers. Wave Editor has implemented a similar system, allowing you to composite multiple sources and apply effects in a completely non-destructive way, with the freedom to add or remove any individual layer (or process) in order to audition the effects on-the-fly. In the shot below, we have two sound layers: a large glass break and a smaller glass shuffle. The larger sound sits in the primary layer (faded blue), and the smaller sound sits in the second layer, with an audio-unit reverb on it. We can audition each layer individually, adjust the volume of each, add effects, and tweak to our heart’s content. We can then save the file as a Wave Editor native file (.wedt), which will keep all of those settings intact. When we’re ready to print (apply) the combined total, we simply ‘flatten’ all the layers and we have our final product. Wave Editor suffers from a similar issue I have in SoundForge, however: when using third party plugins, it doesn’t recognize that you may want to add the tail of the reverb or delay. When using Apple’s built-in AU for reverb, the reverb tail can be added automatically by Wave Editor, but when using a third party verb, you had better add the silence manually first to the end of the file – else you’ll end up cropping the tail of the verb at the original file endpoint. A minor annoyance -and one I’m used to working with.

Interface

I can’t say enough good things about the interface – it is easy to get things out of the way if you don’t want them. If you’re just editing a large playlist, you can maximize the SmartEdit window and view only a small window for the waveform. If you’re doing fine sample-accurate editing, you can have a giant waveform view. Best of all, you can create custom templates for all the various tasks you do – say one for region editing, one for mastering, one for general edits, etc. Each of these can be saved and applied to any new or existing document at anytime, allowing you to quickly access all the components you need, exactly when you need them.

As someone who’s chronically fighting wrist and finger fatigue from mousing, trackballing and typing, I like to keep as much of my work in front of me as possible. By that I mean: give me keyboard shortcuts over a mouse click any day of the week. Wave Editor has this in spades – as mentioned, almost every possible function of the app can be controlled by a keyboard shortcut. A helpful list shows you which commands are assigned to which functions, allows you to clear and reset the commands easily, and prompts you if the command is used by another function. All apps should be this easy to use when customizing your keyboard commands. Elegant.

Pitch and Time Shift – iZotope SonicFit

As a sound designer, I use pitch shift and time stretching all the time. It is probably my most commonly used process, aside from dynamic adjustment. As any regular user will tell you, SoundForge has functional pitch shift and time stretch algorithms, but they leave something to be desired in the quality department. Whenever possible I’ll use the functions in Cubase…

Wave Editor hasn’t skimped here, though. They use the highly regarded iZotope SonicFit technology for pitch and time adjustment, and I couldn’t be more pleased with the results.

It should also be noted that AE uses the iZotope 64-bit process for samplerate conversion. These, too, sound fantastic and are a welcome addition for those whose needs span a wide range of samplerates.

Etc.

A few other notable features:

• multiple crossfade types
• support for multi-channel audio formats
• wide variety of ’snap-to’ features (regions, markers, loop-points, etc.)
• repair for damaged WAV files
• unlimited Undo
• competitive pricing – Wave Editor is $250, SoundForge 9 is $299
• responsive customer support

I’ve always loved supporting software and hardware companies who are passionate about what they do, responsive to their customers, and still able to deliver an amazing product at an excellent price. Audiofile Engineering and Wave Editor hit all these marks and more. If you’re looking for a high-quality, elegant and dedicated audio editor for OS X, do yourself a favor – download the fully-functional demo from the Audiofile Engineering website immediately, run through the Razormaid tutorials, and decide for yourself. I’m pretty confident that you’ll agree that Wave Editor is one of the best audio editors available for OS X – or any platform – today.

Note: Audiofile Engineering also offers a robust batch conversion utility, voiceover editing suite, and a realtime audio multi-analyzer. Though I haven’t yet had a chance to run these utilities through their paces, if the quality of Wave Editor is any indication, I’m certain they are all exceptional.

How many times can you hear the same delays and filters and reverbs over and … over … again? The developers at DaevlMakr promise a more “organic” quality by employing unusual combinations of techniques and adding a little chance to the flow in their Daevl.Plugs suite. I’ve been meaning to talk about their work for some time (and, of course, they’re evidently CDM readers). I’m adding them to some projects now, but in the meantime, here’s an initial preview. And I’ve gotten some additional feedback from our recent contributor addition, Liz Knight aka Quantazelle, who has met the developers and been toying with the sounds.

First, the lineup:

Daevl.Plugs (Info, sound samples, screenshots)

1. daevl.cerberus: “Three delays in a feedback network, with distortion via self frequency modulation plus time-shifting on each channel.” Think multi-tap/delay feedback with a timbral twist.
2. daevl.cubedriver: Bitcrusher + pitch shifter + stereo delay = swirling digital mayhem. You’ll know the effect when you hear it, but it’s still not something you’ll find included in a Pro Tools bundle.
3. daevl.hilbertspace: “Three Hilbert-Transform ring modulators in a dual mono delay network.” Glitchy, digital ring mod.




4. daevl.noise: “Three channels of pitched noise and single channel of filtered white noise”, enveloped by the source. Lovely, sculpted noise, which I imagine you could mix in either liberally or conservatively and use any number of ways.
5. daevl.sixcylinder: A network of oscillators creates an effect reminiscent of ring mod and other mod effects, but more complex: “Three dual-mono amplitude oscillators in a cat’s cradle delay network.”
6. daevl.threep: “Networked pitch shifters in motion, with random pitch sweeps every n seconds, specified by portamento time.” Crazy sweeping things. Can’t really describe it more than that.
7. daevl.triad: “Three pitch class filters with selectable Q, cross-channel frequency modulation, overdriven distortion on each channel, followed on the composite out by a smoothly randomizing 5 band EQ peak synchronized to the source signal.” In other words, it either does subtler random EQ effects or, if you prefer, eats your tracks alive.
8. daevl.triphase: Phase delays with unusual routing options and audio-rate modulation for distortion.
9. daevl.triptych: Three parallel graphic multiband filters with time-shifting and feedback — arguably the most useful here, and definitely not what you normally find in your plug-in kit.

Liz Knight gives us her take on them, having worked with them a bit in FL Studio:

Everything was created with Pluggo, so if you don’t have Max MSP you’ll have to download the Pluggo runtime (free)

Win: http://www.cycling74.com/downloads/pluggo
Mac: http://daevlmakr.com/downloads/daevlplugs/pluggoruntime361.dmg

My favorites are the Cubedriver—it bitcrushes and pitch-shifts audio based on where it is in the stereo delay loop. It really gives the audio a kind of 8-bit edge, but more controlled.

Hilbertspace is also nice—it combines ring modulation with delay and adds a crunchy metallic overtone to the audio.

Triad kicks ass—it’s overdrive distortion plus a randomizing EQ that syncs to the source signal. *liz makes the rock fist

Although FL Studio isn’t listed in the compatible applications, I got them to work just fine within it.
Sometimes the variables are labeled enigmatically and it’s not clear what a modification does, and you just have to pull down every setting and sort of reverse engineer it a bit to figure out what’s going on. Most of them have easily discernible names (r_dly right delay, r_fbright feedback etc), though. I sort of wish there were more presets so that it’s easier to figure out the kind of scope of transformation you can achieve with each plugin.

The demo versions feature a burst of pink noise every minute, but registering them turns it off. For US$36 bucks, it’s pretty cheap to do so and they are neat little toys with a lot of flexibility and some nice audio mangling ability.

I think perhaps they should provide an option to turn the pink noise burst back on.

Good stuff, and an excellent demonstration of the sonic range possible with Max/MSP. (In fact, even for MSP patchers, this could serve as nice inspiration alongside your own creations.)

If you use them, as well, let us know what you think.

They’ve also created The 5 Way Path, a little invitation to use a single, 5-sample loop pack to create songs — the idea being you’ll have to overcome that limitation to see just how much variety is possible. There’s already a great lineup of tracks.

Developed a plug-in? Got one you love? Always feel free to send it.

CDM’s resident game composer W. Brent Latta continues pouring over the epic choral sampling library that is EWQL’s Symphonic Libraries. In case you weren’t already impressed with its 9 DVDs of sounds, in this episode, Brent constructs actual words out of samples — the holy grail of synthetic vocals. -Ed.

WordBuilder is arguably the most significant piece of technology in the Choirs package. Sure – in terms of raw samples, there has never been a choir library this substantial. But more important is the ability to actually get the choir to say exactly what you want them to, without resulting to bland “Oooohs” and “Aaaaahs” or resulting to bland, pre-recorded phrases such as “Hallelujah”.

That said, our look at WordBuilder will be brief, only because the application is so deep that to fully explain its use and application would exceed the scope of a review and lead into something more of a tutorial.

As we discussed in the earlier episodes, we’re using Choirs along with Logic Pro 7 – thus we use WordBuilder in standalone mode. We fire up Logic, WordBuilder, and 4 instances of our Choirs Kompakt plugin (SATB), and begin our foray into building words. The first thing to understand about WordBuilder is that while a monophonic note-line will be routed in (from your controller or sequencer), WordBuilder will transmit much more MIDI data at output. Consider the word “sly”. The composer things of this as a single word or syllable, however WordBuilder must break this individual word into multiple segments, “s”, “l”, and “y” – each to be routed (with the same note value) to a different sample. Thus we can see that WordBuilder is a sophisticated MIDI processor, and harnessing its power is no small undertaking.

The incoming note from your controller or sequencer will have a velocity value that will be passed into each segment in WordBuilder. However, we can change the velocity of each segment on the fly in WordBuilder, if we so desire. Even more useful is the ability to set transitions between segments and phrases. As noted in the documentation, “singing the word ‘alone’ might need to be noticeably different than singing the phrase ‘a loan’, even though the sounds of the letters are the same and the notes on the staff identical.” WordBuilder allows the user several ways to specify transitions between phrases, the most flexible being “Text Entry” mode, where entering symbols into the text field will specify the type of transition between segments. “had a lit-tle =lamb” would yield slurring on the first word, staccato on the next 3 words, and a normal transition on the final word.

As a side-note, it should be mentioned that we can solo specific words or phrases to further hone and refine our performance. As we select a given syllable in the text field and click ‘Solo’ in WordBuilder, we then loop the particular notes in our sequencer, or simply play them in repeatedly from our controller.

Perhaps the most important functionality of WordBuilder – aside from assigning the actual text to be sung – lies in its ability to ‘learn’ the timing of the lyrics to be sung. There are two basic approaches: Change Speed, which actually adjusts the duration of each phonetic segment, and Draw Only, which merely indicates the length of each syllable in the timeline. Each one is useful in its own right. Change Speed is the most efficient way to get the choir to sing the lyrics with the melody you’ve written, though it is not necessarily precise enough to simply ’set-it-and-forget-it’. Draw Only doesn’t change the actual duration of the segments – that type of adjustment is up to the composer. What it does is give you a guideline, a foundation from which you can adjust and tweak the syllables to your hearts content. Personally, I’m the impatient type, so I’m going to be working with the Change Speed mode, with manual tweaking after the fact.

One nitpick I have with the documentation for WordBuilder – it constantly references the different colors of segments and notes, but the manual itself is in black and white. I realize that they assume the user will have the application open while they’re reading the manual, but that is a faulty assumption for some of us, who use our commute time (on the bus, mind you) to read through the documentation and our studio time to put it into practice.

It should also be noted that there is one cumbersome quandary in the WordBuilder system that makes it somewhat difficult to get the lyrics to come out the way you want. When a single word or syllable requires multiple notes, the composer must toggle a MIDI CC event – one for “Hold On” and one for “Hold Off”. These toggles are set in the options menu – completely separate from the learned timing system used elsewhere. This dislocation of the hold system from the rest of the timing system is frustrating. Surely there must be a better way to incorporate held syllables over multiple notes within the primary “learning” system. I certainly hope East West refines this feature in the future.

Here is a quick MP3 sample of the Lacrimosa phrase from Mozart’s requiem. As shown in the graphic, one must insert a separate syllable for the note to be held (the ‘a’).

lacrimosa.mp3

WordBuilder is a complex application, requiring proprietary syntax and a great deal of patience. However, it pays off in the end, and your results will be directly proportional to the amount of time you’re willing to spend refining your song. While I wish that it were easier for a composer to get a virtual choir to sing, I honestly can’t think of a more efficient or flexible way of doing it. East West has done an amazing job with this application, and I’m excited to share my results with you in our next, and FINAL installment.

Previously:
EWQL Symphonic Choirs Episode 2: Digging In
Review: EWQL Symphonic Choirs Sample Library, Episode 1 – The Arrival
[Ed.: We're currently correcting an error in the database that caused some mis-encoded characters in episode 1. Thanks for your patience. -PK]

For many of us, our studio and our home are one and the same. The speakers we use to monitor mixes are the ones we use for rehearsals, improvisations, and casual listening. I first got interested in the Anthony Gallo A’Diva series speakers partly because I’ve long admired Gallo’s home speaker products, but also because the Gallos seemed to be comfortable walking this home/studio line.

Normally, engineers steer far clear of home audio equipment when it comes to monitoring. But producer Neal Pogue has been using the A’Diva speakers for just that, including five songs on the new Stevie Wonder album, and projects for Nelly Furtado, Indie Ari, Earth Wind and Fire, and Outkast. (See studioexpresso profile, or a 2004 interview in Electronic Musician for more about Pogue’s production background.) That’s pretty unusual for speakers aimed at the home market.

Having lived with a 2.1 set of the A’Diva Ti satellites for a while, I’m impressed, as well. The sound is uncolored and clear, with really gorgeous high-frequency definition. It makes these speakers sound both much larger than they are (you can fit them in your hand), and much more expensive. (They run just over US$200 a speaker, but you could easily fool someone into thinking they went for more.) That could make these ideal for complementing your existing set of monitors. I got to talk to Anthony Gallo, the speaker’s creator, about his background and, most importantly, why the speakers are spherical in the first place.

A’Divas on Test

First, if you’re like me, you’ve probably had some less-than-amazing experience with small speakers. There are plenty of small speakers that sound great at lower levels, but become harsh as you drive them. I was able to crank my A’Diva Ti setup to nearly painfully-loud levels without losing any clarity. It’s actually a little spooky: normally, “transparent” sound refers to the acoustic properties of speakers, but in the case of these two little spheres sitting on a shelf, there’s something unnerving about little tiny speakers making so much sound.

The drivers on the speakers are a combination of titanium and paper, hence the name and greater treble extension performance. There’s a 1″ voice coil for greater dynamic range, and to me, part of the reason these sound so good has to do with dynamic range and not just frequency range. I moved them around my living room studio and tried them both as traditional monitors and in a home stereo setup, and was pleased with the results for both. They’re small enough, as well, that you could easily mount them even in close quarters. Normally, that would allow you to set up a home theater, but it also happens to make them ideal as a secondary set of monitors for a studio.

The A’Diva Ti 2.1 setup I received for testing was mated with a 250-watt TR-2 subwoofer. Subwoofers are where home equipment tends to really reveal itself as a home product, but the TR-2 sounds terrific: rather than sounding boomy, it retains dynamic clarity right through the low end. (It’s good enough, in fact, that it revealed all kinds of nasty low-end mastering errors in my DVD collection, particularly with TV shows. Some disturbing up-mixing and down-mixing tends to happen when shows get tossed on DVD.) And, of course, those 250 watts are powerful in a way that’s incompatible with Manhattan living; after some brief fun in the middle of the afternoon, I decided I had to turn the level down as much as I could just to avoid getting evicted. (+6 dB boost? Uh, no, thanks, say the people on the fourth floor.) I think the 100-watt TR-1 would probably be fine if you’re in an 850 square-foot apartment. But if you want theater-sized bass and happen to live in the suburbs, you might look at the TR-2.

Just as with the satellites, the subwoofer eschews a rectangular design for a cylindrical enclosure. Unlike most subwoofers, the result feels well-crafted and looks quite lovely on its own. I was also pleased to find some decent options on the TR-2: low- and high-level I/O, plus EQ and a continuously-variable knob for phase.

Back to the original question, though: why am I bothering talking about “home theater” speakers on CDM in the first place? I can see a number of reasons why these would make sense. First, while I wouldn’t rely on them as my only studio monitors, they make a perfect second set, particularly when you want to experience what a 2.1 setup will do to your mix — but without the added coloration and, frankly, poor performance of a lot of inexpensive home speakers. Second, their size and shielding are perfect any time you need flexible placement. I’ve been looking for good speakers to use for installations, so I’m interested in them even for that. But when you’re in cramped quarters, even studio placement becomes an issue. Lastly, a lot of us have limited budgets and need speakers for our home setups. You want those to sound as good as your studio monitors, and you want them to be able to occasionally do double-duty. For me, at least, the A’Diva Ti’s fit the bill.

Now, I’m a fan of a very simple monitoring philosophy: listen in as many different ways as possible. I wish I still had my old Volvo 240 so I could try out mixes on its blown-out cassette and stereo system; if a mix worked there, it worked anywhere. “Mastering” is a pretty misleading concept because it suggests you know what people will listen on, when you don’t. So, I’m still going to hook up mixes — especially anything I’m considering for surround delivery — to some low-end setups, as well. But having the A’Diva setup to hear what’s going on across the frequency and dynamic range in more detail, and hear it the way it will sound in a 2.1 or 5.1 configuration, and have the setup for listening for enjoyment — that, to me, is the ideal.

I would never make a speaker recommendation blind (or is that deaf?); Gallo gets wide distribution so odds are you may have a set nearby you can go hear for yourself, and compare to some of the other available offerings. I will, however, stand by my feeling that you need more than one set of speakers to give your mix a good listening. And I’ll say, as well, more affordable surround setups like the Gallo could be just what we need to dip into surround, which has largely remained elusive to the home musician.

Of course, the one major downside of the A’Diva line is that they are configured as 2.1, which may rule them out as your primary monitors. Gallo is aware of this feedback, though, so perhaps we’ll see speakers geared for the studio in the future.

A’Diva Speaker Series Product Page (I evaluated the slightly higher-end Ti series with titanium drivers)

TR-2 subwoofers; Full surround line

Conversation with Anthony Gallo

Anthony Gallo Acoustics really is the result of the designs of an engineer named Anthony Gallo. I always enjoy talking to the people who actually design the stuff, so I was pleased to get to talk to Anthony a bit about his background and the thinking behind his designs.

Anthony began building sound equipment early in his teenage years, designing speakers as young as 13. He told me that his early work with electrostatics had a big influence on his current designs. (He notes in the company history that he got a “shocked a zillion times.” Well, they are electrostatics, after all.) I’ve found most designers I’ve talked to got started with childhood tinkering, all the more reason to encourage Make Magazine-style experimentation in the next generation of young men and women.

A brief excerpt from our conversations:

Peter: It seems like there’s a resurgence of DIY electronics, after a long lull. Do you see more people becoming interested in DIY electronics?

Anthony: It’s harder to know if there are more DIY’ers out there today. It seems like there are because of the internet. You notice a lot more of them, but to say it’s a trend I’m really not sure. I’m glad to see there are a lot of people out there that have the same passion as I do.

Peter: Did those early experiments impact your work today?

Yes it does. However, when I was experimenting on my own over 20 years ago I didn’t have the resources to develop drivers or even enclosures that I knew in my heart would sound much better than wood. Such as utlra-rigid spherical structures and enclosures with curves. They are inherently much more rigid.

Peter: There’s a lot of confusion, it seems, about speaker wire. I know you sell your own wire for your speakers. What kinds of differences do you hear between different speaker wire; what differentiates yours?

Anthony: For every person you ask, everyone will have a different opinion on the sound of wire. I have selected a wire that is cost-effective and sounds excellent with our products. And in general, I tend to like solid core wire, rather than a lot of the stranded alternatives.

Depending on the type of wire, it could range from a grungy, bloated sound quality, to a crisp, clear transparent on the other extreme. And then there is every variation in between.

Peter: For the layperson, why spheres? And can you talk about how you personally came across spherical cabinets?

Anthony: Firstly, it is the lowest coincidence of external diffraction. External diffraction is what occurs when sound leaves the driver and wraps itself around the enclosure. If there are sharp projections, such as edges on a box speaker, it will interfere with the propagation of the driver and projects different frequencies. Also, the sphere is the most rigid enclosure and since it’s so rigid, the wall can be made very thin, which saves internal air volume and allows the speaker to be smaller than wooden/plastic boxes.

I read about it back in the 70’s, however it’s been well documented as early as the 30’s, that the sphere is the optimal shape for sound. (See attached the graph with frequency response for various enclosure shapes). Since I discovered this, I started seeking out hollow round structures that could be used.

Finding this graph in a textbook was an “ah-hah” moment in his own designs, Anthony says.

I know some readers here build their own loudspeakers, so I’ll be curious to see your own non-commercial designs, as well — and if we now have Anthony as a CDM reader, you can share them with someone who’s well-known in the business!

We’ll keep an eye on the new designs coming from Gallo in the future, as it sounds as though they’ve become more interested in the audio/music production market as well as home theaters. In the meantime, as usual, I expect there are many of you who know more about this than I do, so we welcome comments as always.

]]> http://createdigitalmusic.com/2007/01/29/gallos-right-round-adiva-ti-speakers-and-a-chat-with-the-designer/feed/ 6 http://createdigitalmusic.com/2006/11/25/highlife-the-free-must-have-do-everything-sampler-host-tool-vst-for-windows/ http://createdigitalmusic.com/2006/11/25/highlife-the-free-must-have-do-everything-sampler-host-tool-vst-for-windows/#comments Sat, 25 Nov 2006 16:59:09 +0000 Peter Kirn http://createdigitalmusic.com/2006/11/25/highlife-the-free-must-have-do-everything-sampler-host-tool-vst-for-windows/ ]]> CDM’s Adrian “Atomic Afro” Anders is the master of all music software free and cheap on the Windows platform. He’s found a free tool that could make you drop everything you’re doing, hit the download links, and starting installing regardless of your software setup. But I’ll let him do the convincing … -PK

Yes, folks, that’s an audio editor inside a VST plug-in — and that’s just the beginning of what this free tool does.

Hello CDMers, I’m stopping by this Thanksgiving to highlight a freebie which is making Windows VST users very thankful. Hell, I’m betting it will make a few drop to their knees all teary-eyed in praise (not really).

I’m talking, of course, about Highlife. The VSTi Pro-grade Sampler/Freezer/Host/Audio Editor/Multi-Sampling Tool/A Whole Lot of Other Cool Stuff, which thanks to the generosity of George @ DiscoDSP (and much to the chagrin of Arguru) is now freeware.

At the core of Highlife is a high quality/super-low aliasing sample engine designed by Arguru (original coder of all things DiscoDSP, and the creator of IL’s crazy low-priced multi-sampler Directwave) — an engine that according to an aliasing test puts your $500 mega-sampler’s to shame.

Supported import formats include wav, aiff, raw, sfz, and akai (S5000/S6000) — a first for freeware VSTi samplers. Highlife can also export to wav, proprietary fxp/fxb, and sfz. That’s right, Cakewalk Dimension fans, if you’ve been in search of that perfect sampling tool for your workstation of choice, Highlife might just be what you’ve been looking for. Also, since the latest version of Kontakt now reads sfz files, you NI fans can also take advantage of Highlife’s most special feature.

That special feature is Highlife’s freeze/VSTi multi-sampling, which for users of hosts that do not support native freeze is a (now free)
godsend. Basically, beyond Highlife’s killer multi-sample playback instrument, the program can also “freeze” a VSTi loaded into it by multi-sampling it and creating a lightweight patch as a result. It’s a totally unique way of freezing not to be found in your typical host sequencer. Since it freezes at the patch level and not as a static audio stream, users can tweak a MIDI performance while keeping the original VSTi turned off. Thus even if your host already supports instrument freeze, Highlife may still be a useful freeze tool. [Ed.: It took me a second to follow this, but now that I get it I wonder why it hasn't been done before: Highlife basically samples the sound of your instruments, allowing you to freeze CPU-intensive patches and play them back like sampled patches. Brilliant! -PK]

Now here’s the kicker for everyone who is already married to their existing VSTi sampler: these “frozen” patches made with Highlife can be exported to sfz/wav files, which can then be reloaded by your sampler of choice. Want to layer a z3ta+ pad with an Absynth 4 atmospheric patch? Multi-sample both with Highlife, throw them into Kontakt, Dimension, or Rapture, and layer away with all of the advanced crossfading, effects, and envelopes that your sampler of choice offers. Love the sound of that ROMpler, but freaking hate the VSTi “engine” that it’s wrapped in? Throw it into Highlife, and get the raw samples to import into your sampler of choice.

But it doesn’t stop there. Highlife also has an integrated audio editor. Now, this isn’t some Wavelab or Sound Forge killer, but for quick edits and
minor processing of audio while inside a DAW sequencer environment, it’s hard to beat. In fact, I would say that ImageLine’s Edison is the only VST-based audio editor that can even beat Highlife’s integrated one.

At $99 Highlife was a bargain; now that it’s free, it’s essential.

Highlife @ DiscoDSP

Some will use Highlife as a great-sounding free multi-sampler, others will use it as a handy integrated audio editor. Some will use it to get around the technical limitations of their existing hardware, while others will use it to design their own custom sample patches, banks, and libraries. There are as many possibilities as there are users.

If you’ve got ANY Windows PC in your house, even a Mac Intel running Bootcamp, you have to download Highlife. Trust me, it may just change the way you make music.

Oh, and while you’re there check out the rest of the DiscoDSP line. They have some great sounding synths at reasonable prices.

Stay tuned … next week is Straight Out of No Cash 3: Complete Freeware Virtual Studio, Just Add Host.

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