Just how rugged is your microphone? Mats St̴lbr̦st, editor of the Stockholm-based Studio, took testing to a new extreme last year. He did violence to the legendary Shure SM58 Рthe sub-$100, vocal dynamic mic. It was used to hammer nails. It was dropped several meters. It was frozen. It was dunked in water. It was driven over by a car. It had beer poured on it. It was placed in a microwave atop a pizza. And the thing kept on working.

We covered the gory abuse back in October 2007. Little did we know then that the test wasn’t over. It seems Mats and company buried the SM58. The SM58 has been there, underground, for a year, even enduring a harsh, Swedish winter. To complete phase II of their test, the folks at Studio unearthed the poor mic, washed it (running it under a tap, of course, not doing it properly), and gave it another test. Surprise: still working.

Incidentally, the SM58 and variants make a fantastic gift for a musician. Even if they’ve already got one, they could probably use another.

Shure SM58 Product Page – and yup, positive they do not endorse this sort of thing, but if it keeps working like this, who needs a warranty?

Here’s the new video. May not be suitable for squeamish audiophiles:

Play this track:

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”.

Did I say ’start to finish’? After reading through the first few chapters of the manual, it was clear that setup for Choirs would not be a simple affair. It was also clear that reading through the entire manual wouldn’t necessarily give me any better grasp on using the app as a whole. So instead, I decided to take a stepped approach: read a few chapters, get the hang of those techniques, then read a few more.

As previously mentioned, the first thing I had to throw out was the concept of plug-and-play. Once the application is installed, the similarity to other sample libraries ends. In order to really take advantage of this app, a second application is used, namely WordBuilder. WordBuilder is the application that allows the user to specify what text is to be sung, as well as the duration and dynamics of the piece. For those who may not grab the concept, it is easiest to think of WordBuilder as an intermediary app – it sits between your input device (usually a MIDI keyboard controller, sequencing or scoring app) and the Choirs Kompakt player. As note information comes in, WordBuilder maps the appropriate sample to each note, taking into account what syllable you wish to play, the duration, the intended sampleset (is it a Bass or a Tenor singing “Aaaaah”), etc. In a way, it is like a MIDI processing unit, adding additional ‘control’ values to incoming notes, and sending out a more complex signal.

Vocoding is capable of a broad range of sounds, from the traditional “robot talking” effects to unique, organic-sounding synth and drum effects. Like many commonly-used techniques for synthesis and processing (and qualifying as both), vocoder effects can be cliched — but they can also be used to great effect.

The only real challenge in using vocoders in software is routing, since you need two signals — a carrier and a modulator. People are regularly asking how to do this on the Ableton Live forums, because there’s not an obvious way in Live to sidechain signal. Here’s one tutorial, and it’s friendly to people who have never used a vocoder before:

How To Use A Vocoder In Ableton Live [SonicTransfer]
More Orange Vocoder Tips [SonicTransfer]

Since some of the links are broken, here are the vocoders mentioned in the article. Both are Mac/Windows compatible, but only mda TalkBox is free:

Orange Vocoder Mac, Windows [Prosoniq]

mda Free Effects (Download the whole archive in VST Windows or VST/AU Mac format; TalkBox is in each version — and yes, the free mda stuff now runs Universal on Intel Macs)

East West Quantum Leap Symphonic Choirs is without question one of the most extensive and sophisticated choir sample libraries on the market. In order to put such a mammoth to the test, I felt that that it was important to be more critical of the software from a professional perspective, and that I must be able to demonstrate how accessible, thorough, and powerful this software could be for the end-user. To meet these goals and truly put EWQL Symphonic Choirs to the test, I intend to see if I can use it to rework an entire choral piece, performed entirely from the sampled voices from this library in place of a real choir. Due to the nature of the review, I intend to provide CDM readers with something different: an episodic review. With that, I give you Episode 1: The Arrival.

9 DVDs – are you serious!?