What good is a sound app on a phone or iPod, really? Just ask a Filtatron user.

As with plug-ins and desktop software doodads, I find out of the sea of apps on iOS, a tiny handful are genuinely useful. But those select few can prove indispensable. I would count the Moog Filtatron in that category. Sure, in case there was any doubt, the app contains a subtle link to the Moog hardware catalog, an effort to upsell you to the company’s sound gear. And sure, owners of said gear might turn up their nose at the idea of something with the Moog logo on an iPhone.

But make no mistake: this is a darned useful tool, and a must-download if you have an iPod touch or iPhone. The surprise is, it may appeal most to lovers of other gear. Connect a mobile synth or noisemaker to your handheld, and you have a pocket-ready effects and recording unit. You can add simulated amp overdrive warmth, pop a handy delay on any audio out, and make quick samples on the go. You can plug into a mixer and have sound in a live performance set ready to go should other gear fail or crash. Any notion that mobile software will replace hardware dissolves in an instant. With the Filtatron app in your pocket, every audio jack and strange noise source begins to look like a chance for creative music making. It makes you seek out more gear, not less.

I can say this with more confidence now, as well, having been using the Filtatron for the past weeks. Something about its simplicity, its warm sound, the attention to finger-sized design, and its combination of features makes it ideal. I’ve used it to sample and transform various gear around the house and on the road, and played once with it live as external effect.

Version 1.1 is here, the first update for the Filtatron, and it adds useful improvements:

• You can import sounds to the Sampler, and record and play back samples of any length.
• The VCO pad now allows chromatic scales.
• You can choose to route audio to a speaker, earpiece, or even wireless audio via Bluetooth.
• A settings panel lets you tweak sample rate, audio latency, and control response.

I had no problem making the Filtatron work on my second-generation iPod touch – no minor feat, as that generation of device has a slower processor and often performs poorly with this sort of app. One thing I haven’t been able to test in 1.1 yet (aside from the Bluetooth stuff): I did have issues with the previous version making FTP sync work with longer recordings. I’ll let you know if that appears to be fixed. I was unable to entirely verify the issue even in the previous version.

But I think the Filtatron really is an ideal example of what a mobile music app can be. I’d love it even if it said Brogue on it.

moogmusic.com

See our original (and exclusive) first look from when this came out in October

Software: it looks bland. It often sounds the same. Then there are the gems, like Ohm Force’s incredibly tasty line of plug-ins. Their delay plug-in Ohmboyz really isn’t over-hyped when they call it “the best delay money can afford,” as it’s almost frighteningly deep, with wild special effects and dirty-sounding vintage-style possibilities.

And those wacky interfaces aren’t incidental, either. Dave Cronin of San Francisco design firm/consultants Cooper just posted a great blog entry on “whimsical interaction design.” He says he’s been pondering whimsy in design, pointing to the playful music app Bloom, but also humor by industrial designers Droog, wacky Google cartoons, and, yes, Ohm:

In many cases, it seems that playfulness in interface design is not just for laughs but also help users tap into a different part of themselves than the strictly rational mind. OhmForce, a bunch of slightly crazed French audio software whizzes provide “funky” skins for their products that feel designed to help users think a bit more like Lee Scratch Perry, and little less like Bill Gates.

OhmBoyz does so much, indeed, that you might need to tap a bit of that irrational part of your mind just to use it successfully. Oliver has a great screencast for wire to the ear.

Ohm Force OhmBoyz from wiretotheear on Vimeo.

And that’s just one of many wonderful Ohm creations. If you want to invest in some new Ohm goodness, ProToolerBlog is doing a group buy. The idea is, the more customers commit to buying, the more the price goes down. The discount is up to 35% off already and should hit as much as 50%. (In fact, sign up now and you automatically get that 50%; see comments.) Details and specifics here. Let us know if you’re feeling the Ohm love, and if there are any others you’d want to see in a screencast. (how about “synth grain” plug Symptohm?)

Strange Ohm group buy interactive widget thing, showing discount

What it is, how it works, which plug-ins you can choose and other details

Ohm Force Site (get ready for lots of wacky Flash; sorry)

Daz Diamond is back with another wacky, experimental effect. When we last joined Daz, he was sharing strange and wonderful granular, delay, and sidechain effects. Now, he’s been thinking about buckets (as in brigades, as in sets of delay lines combined to form a reverb). He writes:

Hi Peter, I’m at it again, and have just put out bucketEER MK I – a stereo reverb/delay fx inspired by bucket-brigade style machinery – simple, quite primitive, and surpirisingly good sounding – also interesting for unusual delays with lots of taps …

Full specs on his site, but here’s what I like about the fact that it’s very much in “beta”:

At the moment, when changing from one preset to another, the buffers may get stuck for a few seconds resulting in a glitchy effect. this may or may not be a bad thing, and may or may not happen depending on your host.

So, quick, go grab that before he fixes the problem, and add some organic glitches to your reverb!

Some powerful features:

• Pre and Post effect shelving filters


• Predelay with control over level and time


• Size and Time controls


• Width and Mix controls


• Central readout of knob values


• 17 Randomize buttons – ‘global’ and ‘local’


• Freeze Function


• Bypass switch for each bucket and slot


• Output level meter


• 8 presets

Daz welcomes donations. I may also give this a go on Linux — enjoying Windows VST compatibility on one machine.

Updated – somehow left out these links. Been a bit out of it this week; sorry!

whiteLABEL bucetEER Product Page and Download
Daz Diamond / whiteLABEL Google Discussion Group

Let’s cut straight to the reason we use this stuff: we want crazy-sounding delays we can play with. Reaktor guru Peter Dines shows just how you’d build such a thing in Reaktor from the ground up for CDM’s Kore site. He also takes it one step further by creating not only the Reaktor ensemble, but also a Kore performance preset to match. The advantage of going this route: Kore provides a way of organizing parameters for control, performance, and automation.

This is another all-free download, so have at it. Now I feel like I’m in a patching race with Peter, because I’ve got some ideas of my own for how you might modify this basic idea; let’s see if I can actually make that happen.

Making sense of Kore

The other side of the minisite is we’re further exploring what Kore is for and how to make it work. We asked readers of the minisite to tell us their thoughts on how Kore is going and how they use it, which has yielded an interesting comment thread:

How Do You Kore?

Our main focus, of course, is simply teaching people how to use the tool effectively – from there, you can decide whether it’s for you and how you want to use it. To that end, I’ve got the first half of a tutorial up that explains what for me was the biggest draw and the most initially confusing, which is the control pages Kore uses to assign automation and physical control. I walk through why you’d want this, how it works, and how you manage different levels of the control pages:

Demystifying Kore Control Pages for Automation and Performance, Pt. I: Different Page Types

We also have some important basics, like Kontakt automation, how to get a normal mixer view, and external MIDI control.

Coming soon: I’m planning some short features on each of NI’s instruments. We’ll have to call it the “get it out of the shrinkwrap” series, especially for people who got the overwhelming set of instruments that comes with Komplete.

Overkill? You bet. Ain’t it beautiful?

The prolific PSP developers will be at AES next month, so expect more from here in NYC.

PSP 608 Multi-Delay [PSP]
Compatibility: Mac, Windows, VST, AU, DirectX, RTAS, HTDM
Pricing: US$149; discounts and bundles available
Demo? Yes

In follow-up to my story Tuesday about the new Dubstation from Audio Damage (and other assorted Dub links), ever-vigilant reader Adrian Anders is here with a couple of free VST alternatives. I still think the Dubstation may be worth US$40, but there’s no reason not to check these out, too, if you’ve got a PC. I’ve used the Retro Delay on my PC laptop; it’s fantastic. Take it away, Adrian:

ConcreteFX’s Tape Delay
[Download ZIP]
This SOB packs some major punch and has such original features as bit-crushing, distortion, 2 flutter LFOs, 2 multi-mode filters, and ducking, all inside the delay loop itself. Has to be heard to be believed how devastating the feedback on this delay can get. Not for the faint of heart (or ears).
Peep the other CoFX freebees [at a KVR audio post]. Ed: HUGE list there; check it out!

E-Phonic’s Retro Delay
What’s great about this delay is that the delay can be modulated (by the pitchbend no less!) in real time without the glitches in the audio normally associated with digital delay time-modulation. Furthermore, the delay also features the oh so neat reverb module that can create dub-style reverb->delay effects that I have yet to make with any other plug-in.

PC (Win) only (time to whip out that P4 you have hidden in your closet!) Ed: So THAT’S where my tricked-out P4 tower went! -PK

Thanks, Adrian. Got a favorite effect? Let me know. By the way, after my abysmally-incomplete Dub music roundup Tuesday (so I was in a hurry, okay?), you can expect a fuller story soon. Send your nominations for favorite artists + links if you haven’t already. Cheers! eers! ers! rs! s!

[Updated] Mac Plugin: Never fear, penniless Mac users. King Dubby for AU gives you a free Mac-compatible dub plugin; apparently some compatibility issues for some users so let us know how it goes. Thanks, Symbiotic!

King Dubby

For fans of dub, there’s just nothing like a delay loop, with feedback cranked up and echoes going going going going going going going . . . okay, you get the idea. Our friends at Audio Damage have just created a US$39.95 plugin that gives you all you need for trippy dub effects:

Audio Damage Dubstation Plugin (Windows VST; Mac AU/VST)

The best part is the cell-shaded interface; it looks fantastic. And Dubstation covers all the basics: syncable dub echoes (on/off switch), reverse, low-cut filter, and analog-style repitching of echoes. I’ve really enjoyed Audio Damage’s work in the past: clean interfaces, some character to the sound (I’m still a fan of their “dark” reverb), and MIDI learn in the VST plugs.

Does this replace Logic Pro’s fantastic tape delay? No way. But, it’s also $960 cheaper and can run in Ableton Live, so sign me up!

More on dub:

Wikipedia on Dub

History of the guys who didn’t use VST: Check out BBC’s excellent history of Dub, including its rightful ruler King Tubby. (See also BBC’s King Tubby tribute.) Audio samples included. You’ll also find a zillion links at Dub.com, and, yes, there is a Dub blog.

Thievery Corporation are among my favorite electronic artists right now; they’re a superb example of how you can take the influence of genres like Dub and make it your own. Their weapon of choice, not incidentally, for its deep library of sound design effects: Apple’s Logic Pro.

Of course, you’d better throw some extra tricks in there, because the best dub effects come straight from a tape recorder: the effect was acheived by taking advantage of the gap between the play head and the record head on a tape deck; the dubber literally fed the output signal back into the input of the tape to create endless loops. The only way to manipulate the length of that delay was to change the speed of the recorder, thus repitching the sound. With digital tools at our disposal, it seems only right to think up new twists with the technology we’ve got now.

Updated: As readers have pointed out, I flubbed this post as far as pointing to more music. Sorry, gang — the Thievery Corporation reference is just an example of someone taking the techniques of dub and applying it to genre-mixed sounds. Oh, and you can easily tell that they’re using Logic Pro.

I should have added links to Basic Channel, and the rich selection at Hard Wax of Berlin. Just make sure you have a turntable; those records do get mighty scratched up when you try to cram them into a CD player, let me tell you.

Moog Music has officially announced the return of their beloved analog delay, in the form of the new MF-104Z delay unit. This is definitely a “luxury” model, though: US$729 buys you one second of delay. It’s a classic, but it comes at a price.

Nothing on the Moog site yet, but if you’re at NAMM you can check it out in person; see the press release at Harmony Central.