Bored with regular GUIs? Recording a music video and need a studio shot with a computer in it? If you want something unique check out Kammerl Audio’s new VST plug-ins for Mac or PC. Pitch, Distortion, Scratcher, Slicer and Looper are ready to be installed. These are free from Germany. Go get em: www.kammerl.de/audio/
“I just discovered these frunny and usefull plugins I needed to share… Playing with it for a moment proves me that there’s some really usefull tools here!” – Miro Pajic
via Miro Pajic
This entry was written by , posted on November 1, 2009 at 12:22 pm, filed under plug-ins and tagged Kammerl, plug-ins. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Not so long ago computers for producing music were all seriously underpowered. I remember on my old Mac clone, a Power Computer PowerCenter Pro210 I could only open 2-3 plug-ins before the computer would click and glitch to a halt. However, today we live in an amazing time as far as music technology. I can load up my Macbook Pro all day long with plug-ins and it seems my CPU never jumps past 50%. It actually took me a few months to get used to piling on plug-ins without freezing or bouncing tracks. I realized I was wasting time 
bouncing everything by watching younger kids demo their Ableton and Cubase tracks on YouTube. My keen eye caught mountains of plug-ins placed frivolously over twenty plus channels. I realized I better “un-old fogey” myself and start painting with thick strokes of live effects or be left behind.
So today’s quick tip is to start a song with plenty of effects placed on assorted channels before you ever even place a sound producing synth, sample or voice anywhere. What do I mean? Well how about putting Altiverb with a Neuman Mic IR (Impulse Response) on the Master Channel? Why not also put a nice compressor there too? Now as your build your song and mix as you go building into those plug-ins. In effect it’s almost like you bought a new sounding mixer.
There’s no reason to be subtle either. Try creating a sub-mixer of 6+ channels and on the Group’s master fader and have a flanger set to 100% wet. Next place all your synths in your new flanger group and adjust the oscillators and filters toward the flanger not the other way around. The key is to start off fully loaded with effects on so everything you hear isn’t the same ole, same ole…
Related post: Making Groups in Ableton Live is really easy.
photo credit: Pulpolux !!!
This entry was written by , posted on December 20, 2008 at 11:32 am, filed under Ableton Live, plug-ins, song writing and tagged Ableton Live, Altiverb, effects, flanger, groups, Impulse Response, Neumann, plug-ins, Power Computing, PowerCenter Pro210, song writing. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
If you don’t own any Ohm Force this is a good time to get them all cheap. All thier plug-ins are highly recommended. For more info: click here
Related post: Wire to the Ear Ohm Force OhmBoyz Screencast
This entry was written by , posted on October 14, 2008 at 8:33 am, filed under plug-ins and tagged Group Buy, ohm force, plug-ins, ProToolerBlog. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
With today’s massive computer power you don’t buy a TC Powercore or Universal Audio UAD-1 because you need a boost, you buy them because the plug-ins sound fantastic. One of the early posts on Wire to the Ear was about TC Voice Modeler which is not available in any native format and is a must have in my arsenal.
Universal Audio has posted a video teaser for the upcoming UAD-2 card. Here’s the highlights:
The UAD-1 had a 7 year life.
They will break any limitations enabling any kind of audio processor on UAD-2.
They discuss the SHARC chips.
The card is capable of 2 Gigaflops per second.
Native decoding.
Years of devolopment.
More new partners.
To view the video: click here
This entry was written by , posted on August 28, 2008 at 8:37 am, filed under hardware, plug-ins, video and tagged plug-ins, Powercore, TC Electronic, UAD-1, UAD-2, Universal Audio. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I personally don’t use any cracked software. I like a really stable system and if I buy something I know I will learn all it’s features and get the most out of it. I also like having new updates available to me. There’s no doubt I have been tempted especially when it comes to things like Adobe CS which costs as much as my laptop.
Another good reason not to use warez is if you get caught by the public it’s totally embarrassing! In the February 2006 issue of German Keyboards magazine they printed an article on producing William Orbit style Filter Delays. They used Ohm Force’s amazing OhmBoyZ plug-in and as you can see in the screenshot it clearly shows a hacker groups name “Team ArCTIC” displayed on the interface.
To read Keyboards official response and some comments head over to the Digital Music Mag blog’s post: click here
A more recent case was outed over at the KVR Forums. A jungle/breaks act named Aquasky did a video interview for the DVD that comes with Future Music Magazine (Issue 201). In the video it shows they are also using an Ohm Force’s crack, this time for distortion plug-in Predatohm. Remember I mentioned how you can use Predatohm as a widener in: this post?
For more info on warez and cracks and a list of alternative freeware stuff you can download check out dontcrack.com
photo credit: Kaptain Krispy Kreme
This entry was written by , posted on June 2, 2008 at 1:01 am, filed under plug-ins, political and tagged Aquasky, cracks, Future Music, Keyboards Magazine, ohm force, plug-ins, warez. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Today I would like to talk about the biggest epiphany I had when it comes to recording entirely inside a computer. If you take one thing away with you by reading this blog this should be it. In 1996, Steinberg released Cubase VST which stands for Virtual Studio Technology. For the first time, someone with a limited budget and a PC could record audio to the hard drive and have access to a virtual effects rack and software synthesizers. People today call this mixing “in the box”. This had profound
implications, so much so I would compare it to the release of the Tascam 4-Track Portastudio. Recently, laptops have become so powerful that they themselves can be full virtual studios anywhere you are.
Almost weekly I am asked for mixing advice. Usually after a few probing questions I discover that 90% of the people unhappy with their sound are making the same mistake. They are completely overdriving their internal summing bus! Take all your song’s individual channel faders and bring them at least -12db and keep the Master fader at 0dB at all times.
Look at your DAW’s mixer. Now imagine the volume of your individual channel fader’s adding up from left to right heading to your Master. If you keep your channel faders close to zero surely your Master will go over odB and clip. As we all know any clipping in the digital realm is very bad.
Why not keep your channel faders all hot and turn the master down? Because you will still be overdriving cheap plug-ins. Well written plug-ins can handle a hot signal but some of the coolest freeware and to be honest some big name effects clip internally when even a warm signal is shot at them. The worst part about this happening is there is no visual warning. All you know is your mixes just sound like crap.
If you ran a test overdriving one plug-in and pushing a channel fader too hot you may not notice anything. But keep your levels low in a complicated song with over 10 channels and you will definitely notice a major improvement.
If this is news to you don’t stress about it. It took me a while to wrap my head around it. To give credit where it’s due I first came across this advice when reading an article in EQ magazine by Craig Anderton. After I read it I emailed 
him to clarify some questions I had. He was graceful enough to answer me and I then did some searches online and found this was huge discussion on several high end pro-audio forums. Forum members at Tapeop, Gearslutz and the Digidesign sites were rambling on about audio levels and mixing ITB. Most of the threads were over 50 pages. Everyone was learning the same lesson.
How did I choose -12db as a start point? First, each DAW has a different summing engine so your own number may differ. I use Ableton Live and originally I was starting projects with channel faders at -6db. However, I constantly had to adjust them all down as I built the songs up. I settled at -10db but recently I noticed something very interesting. In Live 7 they introduced Drum Racks and a Slice to Midi feature. A group set of faders becomes automatically available to you for the individual drum sounds of audio slices the new features create. Guess what? The channel faders are automatically set to -12db! It seems Ableton headquarters has also caught on how to make their DAW sound better. Interesting no?
In Ableton Live if you hover over the Track Volume slider you can see the exact dB it’s set at by looking at the Status Bar located bottom left of the screen. If you click on a channel faders small left facing triangle you can then use the up and down arrows to nudge the volume in small increments.
As I mentioned in this post something to keep in mind is when you add EQ to a sound you add dBs. If you add +6db of high end EQ to a vocal you may want to adjust the channel fader. Lastly, I add a limiter to the Master and set it at -0.1 to catch anything that manages to spike a little too loud. Anyone with a Mac has Apple’s free AU limiter built-in.
I think you will really enjoy mixing quiet a lot more once you try this method.
photo credit: oooh.oooh
This entry was written by , posted on January 25, 2008 at 5:42 am, filed under Ableton Live, plug-ins and tagged Ableton Live, Cubase, mixing, plug-ins, volume. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Here’s another reason why there’s no exuse to use cracks. This free multi effect unit is from Korean manufacturer Luxonix. They make the Ravity software rompler. Luxonix is the effect section ripped out of Ravity and given to us for free. I did some research and Luxonix was released in 2004 but I thought it was worth mentioning because up until last night I never heard of it. So maybe you hadn’t either? My friend had it on his laptop and of course it peaked my interest.
Its available for Mac and it’s Universal Binary. It’s available for PC and also runs on Vista. It looks and sounds like commercial software. When it was released in 2004 it won KVR’s “Free Plug-in Effect of the Year”.
I like the interface a lot. It reminds me of some old hardware and it’s a simple layout. Three slots load up three effects. Three parameters for each effect are tweakable. You get 128 presets, 32bit processing and 24 effect algorithms:
- S’Filter 12 / S’Filter 24 / 3-band EQ
- Peak Compressor / RMS Compressor
- Overdrive / Distortion / Amp Distortion
- Crusher / LP Noise / Stereo Image
- Chorus / Flanger / Phaser / Auto Wah / Tremolo / Auto Pan
- Delay / Stereo Delay / Ping-pong Delay
- Gate Reverb / Room Reverb / Hall Reverb / Spring Reverb
Go grab your download now: click here
This entry was written by , posted on January 12, 2008 at 2:47 am, filed under Uncategorized, plug-ins and tagged free, Luxonix, plug-ins. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
The company Way Out Ware created my favorite software synth the TimewARP 2600. It’s a re-creation of an Arp 2600 semi-modular analog synthesizer. They have just released their new toy the KikAXXE and it’s a huge amout of fun!
It’s based around a re-creation the Arp Axxe and therefore it has only a single Oscillator. However like the original Axxe there is a noise generator and sample & hold which increases it’s flexibility. But the fun really starts when your eyes focus on the top part of the plug-in. Here you find a drum machine and an analog sequencer! The final joy can be found on the bottom right: an analog tape delay. Watch this video to see all these sections in action. The video is nicely sized so be sure to click the TV icon under the player to view the show in full screen mode.
As with the TimewARP this plug-in really does “Kik AXXE”! I had a blast using the fully working 30 day demo and I know in a month I will have to whip out the credit card. Luckily this noise machine is only about $70! Have fun watching the video but do yourself a favor and download it and make your bleeps and beats.
photo credit: geirarne
This entry was written by , posted on January 7, 2008 at 1:37 am, filed under plug-ins, synthesizer, video and tagged Arp, drum machine, KikAXXE, plug-ins, sequencer, synthesizer, Way Out Ware. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I like weird effects and instruments and Time Freezer from Mark Lingk fits the bill. Both the insert plug-in and instrument allow you to freeze any audio in real time. Once you have a frozen piece of sound playing you can shape it using a bandpass filter, pitch control 
and de-noiser. There are mono and stereo versions. Intelligently there is a internal clipless maximizer. There is nothing as crappy sounding as plug-ins clipping in the digital realm.
The instrument version lets you morph to the next “hold”. Basically it’s applying crossfades between times you hit the “Freeze” pad. Take a listen to Time Freezer in action:
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For those of you with Ableton Live you can get a similar effect using Live’s built in Reverb. Crank up the decay time, scream something and hit the Freeze button! Reverb’s aren’t the only effects that sometimes have this function. For example, Propellorhead’s Reason BV512 Vocoder has a Hold button which also freezes audio in time. If you own Reason you should really try it out as it sounds uber wicked.
Remember that you can automate the Freeze and Hold buttons!
This entry was written by , posted on January 4, 2008 at 5:41 am, filed under Ableton Live, Propellerhead Reason, plug-ins, sounds and tagged bandpass filter, freeze, pitch, plug-ins, Propellerhead, Reason, sounds, Timefreezer, vocoder. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
A few months ago I performed at a club called Rumours in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands. This required us to get picked up from Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam and be driven about two hours north. In the car I was shocked to see there was no CD player or MP3 jack. Staring me in the face was a cassette deck. Looking around some more I 
noticed about 50 cassettes stuffed in various places. About an hour into the drive I realized how good these cassettes sounded. There was some very nice high end going on that I had not heard in years. The bass sounded warm and sincere.
There is hardware software that will emulate tape saturation. On the hardware side check out Robert Neve’s 5042 True Tape FX unit.. Software wise there are lots of options including Digidesigns Reel Tape Suite and PSP’s Vintage Warmer.
But what if you want to bring back some good old fashion tape noise? Adding a few seconds of noise before your song starts will trigger your listeners mind into believing your song was recorded in the 1980s or earlier. My favorite plug-in for the task is Izotope’s free plug-in called Vinyl. Here’s a list of some of the “sounds” you can add into your song using Vinyl:
You can also adjust “Warp Models”, year and RPM of the Vinyl emulation. Lastly, there is a mono/stereo switch. Using the Dust and Scratch settings you can get a nice Portishead sound. I have to say I really love this plug-in and if it cost money I would buy it. Big thanks to Izotope!
There are many other ways to get some noise into your tracks. Sometimes I turn off a synthesizer’s Oscilators and turn up only the Noise Generator. Adding a filter modulated by the LFO to the Noise makes some nice wave or storm sounds. Sonic Charge has a superb software drum machine called uToniq. I use it as a noise generator by clicking the oh so ever awesome random button. Or why not record some real noise with a microphone? Even aiming a mic at your computer’s fan while it edits a large Photoshop document will do the trick!
photo credits: Lee Jordan and Breakfast for Dinner
This entry was written by , posted on December 21, 2007 at 10:51 am, filed under plug-ins, sounds, synthesizer and tagged cassette, izotope, LFO, Neve, noise, plug-ins, rpm, Vinyl, warp. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
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