It doesn’t seem too long ago when one of my previous bands Randall Flagg was banished from Myspace for some time. By doing our part as a band and promoting ourselves, we were “flagged” as SPAMMERS and had our profile deleted for a significant amount of time. This signified that when a band does some actual leg work to enhance their status, they must be admonished. Well, Myspace’s (and Facebook) hyprocrisy has come full circle now. It seems that all along, as I said 2 years ago, that these corporations want one thing. Exorbitant amounts of traffic, oceans of users and self-made emperors stroking and catering to the ego that pilots them and their haughty profiles, and revenue to generate the money. All this at any cost apparently. Now putting these subtler crimes of ”do as we say but don’t do anything that truly individualizes you or you will be marked as SPAM” aside for a moment, let’s focus now on the more apparent atrocious acts on their part. It turns out these social sites such as Myspace have been giving out personal information of their users. See the article here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100521/tc_ynews/ynews_tc2189
For the sake of knowing what happened thereafter, we did fight back! We had a pretty immense petition and fans who backed us up, as well as legal representation. And even though initially Myspace denied that they deleted our profile of 4 years or that they could make any sense of what was going on or that our profile even existed, they were “able” to magically restore our profile after a month and a half down-time. After this personal experience Myspace has always infuriated me. Their ingratiating fork-tongue “smile” along with their greedy paws extended to shake your hand and welcome you into some empty promise of social happiness and achievement by joining their website. All along toting the lies that they are the platform for you dear reader to express yourself as an “individual”. And when you took the initiative to utilize this tool of what you thought was nourishment for thwarting yourself into higher status amongst fans of your art or music, they clamped down on you as a SPAMMER. But who turns out to be the biggest con of all?? Precisely the accusers. I myself even in using Myspace – as the momentum and presence of the majority of the world makes it impossible to not use it lest it’d be a personal harm and stupidity – I’ve always wanted their demise. I can only hope for it.
One last note: I’m not sure how many people know this but Myspace started as a SPAM company. It’s genealogy is that of SPAM!! Read Trent Lapinski’s perspectives on this. Pretty interesting stuff and all the more reason to take Myspace down:
Well, here is some of my original music for you guys to check out. My band/project has completed a few songs and I’m just posting them gradually here and there like myspace and youtube, etc…
So far, I posted 2 songs on our myspace page and 1 on youtube. Now although I can’t say we sound like our “influences”, we’ve definitely drawn inspiration and excitement from certain bands. When we were growing up it was Metallica and further down the road Morbid Angel. In the past 10 years or so The Dillinger Escape Plan and Every Time I Die definitely do it for us. Another band that I’ve discovered I do enjoy listening to and found some likeness in some elusive way would be French metal band Gojira. Just recently somebody made a cool comparison of us with Candiria. Funny thing is I actually have never listened to them before but the insight led me to check them out and I do dig their metal/experiemental jazzy stuff quite a bit. At any rate, I can perhaps elements of these bands coealsce in our collaborative minds and we create our style, rendition or whatever you want to call it of metal.
An interesting thing I noticed is that each character’s name in some way reflects their character. Some examples include:
Daniel Faraday: scientist/physicist – electromagnetic shields these days called “Faraday Cage” are based off of the actual physicist Michael Faraday.
Jack Shepherd: based on the word “shepherd”, as a sort of watchdog; one who watches over others. From the offset, as a doctor and as the show progressed as an implicit leader on the island, this name seems pretty befitting.
Desmond Hume: most likely based on the 18th centrury philosopher David Hume, who incidentally happened to be Scottish (Desmond is also of Scottish decent based on his accent). David Hume was all about explaining man as a naturalist. That man’s feelings fuel his decisions and choices, which is what this show is based on as well as mentioned above.
I could go on with the others… I’ll get to them at some point. Leave some feedback if you really would like to know I can get to it sooner than later. Some are actually sort of obvious when you are aware of it.
You hear people say “it’s not musical, it has no direction”. Actually, there is most definitely direction. If a human being does not explore the outskirts of the “common”; common pulses or common “gravity” of melody, then Dillinger will sound foreign. It will sound as if there is no purpose and only noise. Underneath it all, there is absolute purpose. Using Dillinger Escape Plan’s infamous track ”43% Burnt” as an example, without even being technical or too verbose about this, the dissonance is sculpted from the natural tendencies of half-whole diminshed scales. From the intro, the main dissonant chord, all through out, even at the point of the quick interlude at 0:35, you can consider a modulation occuring but still based on pivot notes of this “darker” mode the song is based around. Subtle rhythmic motifs keep surfacing as the song is unfolding. I don’t know 100% if learning the songs and performing them on a personal level (which I do) helps connect with the music that much more, but even if you don’t play an instrument, having this kind of art-music exposure over and over will perhaps help one understand it better. Notice I didn’t say help one like it. Liking it is always and will be always a subjective projection.
Many are looking for “musical direction” based on a presumption of what the direction should be or what the “color” of the melodic/dissonant (dissonance is still identifiable, hence it’s validity) movement should be. If you have no grasp of this musical pallette that creates this art-music then you will ostensibly feel misdirected listening to it. So listen to it more! Analyze it, not to death, but enough to start seeing the connective tissue of it all. You will eventually start hearing how things are connected throughout the music.
And my 4th Nebula preset to date is “Draw Her”. This is a compressor preset based on a ’68 model hardware compressor. This compressor preset can be subtle as well as heavily character driven. In its more driven and/or extreme settings, it can round out a signal by smoothing high’s but more importantly add weight and warmth to a signal with a sort of dark personality. This is a unique compressor without threshold control and I implemented a ‘Soft’ or ‘Hard’ knee parameter. The Knee parameter controls the character of the compression. For harder, darker, compacting sounds pull the Knee down. The Drive will control harmonic color, dominating in second even order harmonics which will really add to the ‘meatiness’ cranked up. Also listen to make sure you didn’t go too far!
Below is a link to audio examples of 2 instrument tracks I think this compressor is nice on. It tames really low frequencies/subs and ‘beefs’ up low/low-mid frequencies nicely giving a foward sounding, warmer texture. So one can think snares, toms, guitars, vocals. So I used it on a snare in a drum mix and heavy electric guitar.
Although the intent wasn’t for full program material like a stereo mix I’ve received several success stories of users using this preset on a mix bus so again always experiment for yourself of course and listen. The Drive parameter also adds to the ‘meatiness’ of the compression. The compressor can also be driven harder initially by the ‘Gain’ slider in Nebula just like hardware. Experiment for the best sound.
Oh, and sorry guys I couldn’t really think of a way to create a demo preset of this one because removing anything in this case defeated the purpose of using it.
Hello boys and girls, the 3rd preset named “So Transcited” is finally here. This is another unique utility that’s a transient selective harmonic generator. So far, as discussed, EQ’s more or less boost (or cut) what is already there in your signal. “My Son Max”, a corrective tool, clarfies what is already there in your recorded signal.” And now, “So Transcited” adds to what is there in your signal. You will find the signal grows with density and more fullness. It sounds excited without sounding harsh or peircing which is typical with a lot of exciters/harmonic generators in the VST world.
I’ve created a full commercial version and a free version available for Nebula Free and Commercial users to try. This free version is actually full quality with distortion Kernels, however frequency selection is limited from 5 Khz to 6100 Khz rather than the entire 530 Hz to 6100 Khz range.
There is an audio demo of before and after as well. It’s a raw snare drum followed immediately by the same snare processed with ‘So Transcited’ @ 4.5 dB gain, 530 Hz, and about 11 dB of Drive. It happens twice.
I’ve been creating custom Nebula Presets to be used with the amazing Nebula plug-in. I’m fast at work creating more but so far I’ve released 2 and there’s 1 on deck I will be releasing any day now.
My focus in creating these presets is to make creative tools. There are several other fantastic 3rd party developers who create presets based on highly sought after gear and do a fantastic job. So my take on making presets differs. I like to make utility stuff that’s custom and based on maybe combinations of gear and my own analog paths. So it’s different but always quality. Don’t get me wrong I’ll have some impressive names in the mix (pardon the pun) such as a big one I’m working on will involve Neve gear in the path. But, alas, it’s not always about gear, it’s about the results.
My first preset is called “My Son Max” and is based on a sonic maximizer type of processing. But that’s all I’m going to say about that. It’s function however is to tweak phase relationships between major bands of frequencies between low ones and high ones. In essence, if EQ boosts what’s there already, “My Son Max” clarifies what’s there already making your recorded source shine it’s own inherent tone even better. You’ll notice not only better clarity but a little more punch due to corrected phase integrity. No strident high’s or crackles! Did I mention, it’s only $12 …
The other one now available is actually FREE! It’s called “Ms. Smith” This preset sports an analog panner with the option of width based on an M/S matrix.
By the way, on the nebula page on my website, there are also downloads to audio examples of these in action, so check them out as well. Stay tuned for more of these babies!
For me, if we were to go on traditional methods of creating plug-ins such as with algorithms or physical modeling, UAD(which falls under the latter) has always been a clear winner. Just look at the FATSO plug-in they released in ’09 and read my blog about it.
Recently it’s come to the audio community’s attention that Universal Audio would like some one-on-one time with their customers. Not to long before that, UA actually asked customers to take a short survey (with of course a touch of their generousity, as always, in offering a plug-in voucher for completing the survey). On the survey there were several user questions and also opinion oriented questions on what we, as the customer, would like to see UA create in conjunction with their plugin line. I think the two most important questions were “What plugins would we like to see next?” and “Would we like to see updated versions of the originals?”. Here’s what I’d like to see in order of importance:
Tube and/or tape emulations
More utility plugins, such as a very smooth gate or a sonic/soundstage enhancer/manipulator
A few more classic flagships in audio like API, as an example.
To the second question, it’s an resounding YES! I’d love to see updated versions of the originals. Here’s the deal. I think the originals sound awesome. I do think their recent competition like IK or waves are in some ways outpacing UAD plug-ins but not entirely. I think the inclusion of harmonic distortion modeling these competitors have implemented in their versions of the same classics as UAD makes it appear they have pulled ahead of UAD. However, having harmonic distortion present in a signal doesn’t tell the entire story. First, the dynamism of harmonic distortion is important (a plug-in like Nebula are very exciting in this department! but that’s another blog). Second, the way the plug-in’s processing reacts with the signal is very important and so far, UAD stuff still sounds more organic to me. I think the hype of harmonic distortion and the excitement in and of itself in the competitors’ plug-ins put step ahead but in a novel sort of way. So just thinking about the smoothness of UAD coalescing with updated elements such as harmonic distortion is nice. I in fact think UAD would once again take the throne with MKII versions of their classics! Here we’ll have the best of both worlds. Really, I think the FATSO is perhaps the first illustration of that. Just as I mentioned in the previous blog about the FATSO, it’s huge, smooth, full, dynamic, and sports the correlating harmonic distortion for that final juiciness. So, just imagine what MKII versions could be like if they were to be incepted into our audio world.
Over at Gearslutz there is a thread called “Vote on the Solutions for Loudness” and although I applaud the effort, there is no practical means by which one can thwart the loudness war. I’ve said it time and time again but nobody is understanding the nature of why the contention for loudness exists. Such a contention that compromises musical fidelity is by all means rooted in something else other than what it is apparent. It’s not to be taken at face value. Let me put it this way: any convention or behavior found in cultures is based on a deep psychological force. Until that force is addressed itself, the convention will continue to exist so long as it feeds the underlying will to empowerment, no matter the stupidity involved. If doing one thing either empowers through belief of something assumed to be true or directly creates a brute force result that invokes primitive or visceral excitement, no rule or practical solution will stop it. In other words, devise ways to suppress the loudness wars and you are giving the masses more incentive to defy it. The only thing that can even touch the onset of a solution for loudness is like what I mentioned in my “Loudness Pandemic” blog. A profound and psychological persuasion is the sole weapon. The sense of empowerment used in aiding the detriment of implementing unyielding loudness, which in short is a type of influence really, can also be used to mold the logic (or whatever is left of it) into realizing or at least lauding the prospects of perhaps producing not such loud masters but to show more concern for musicality. Then with time people will start to realize “wait, this non-crushed master does sound better and there is less harshness”, etc…
First and foremost to achieve this, the most influential and and prominent individuals in both the creative avenues of our industry and the most technically proficient must set this bar. The individuals that are looked up to in which young minds would follow suite (because following those at the helm is a sense of empowerment) are the individuals that will create the model in how we must approach music production. A sense of “Man, that’s just dumb making it sound that loud and crushed” coming from the creative and technical leaders would create perhaps a scurvy of implicit shame for any person who would dare revert back to creating squashed, lifeless, harsh sounding music. Incidentally, this is the same recursion record labels/A&R/big name producers had created that started toppling a few pebbles turning it into a loudness avalanche. Why? Again, because following those at the helm gives a sense of empowerment. Rules, methods of enforcing loudness control, and the like will only create more defiance. These types of methods are associated with administration and bureaucracy: precisely the antipodal world to creativity and art. Not a good way of getting people on board.
Up until this point we discussed dither as a saving grace to the detriments of truncation and its delegating characteristics to quantization error. We do have another problem though. That is when we are digitally mixing and processing our signal. Anytime we do processing to the signal we increase the chance of quantization error. For any change to the binary code that represented its signal, there must be a reacting counter arrangement of those one’s and zero’s. There is a rearrangement and this gives rise to more chance of quantization error. Obviously the more bits one has to work with the least chance of misrepresentation. So better than 16-bit we got 24 bit. What is better than 24 bit then? We’ve got 32-bit and not only 32-bit fixed like 16 and 24 but floating in this case. Floating as opposed to fixed is another way of representing the data of the signal.
Floating-point numbers differ from Integer numbers in that they can scale themselves internally to be able to represent very big and very small numbers without losing significant detail. The fixed bit depth obviously have a fixed finite range: a 16-bit fixed can represent 65535 different discrete values. A 24-bit number can represent 16777216 different discrete values. And a 32-bit fixed number can represent 4294967296 different discrete values. Sounds great but all these fixed numbers have the same disadvantage. The disadvantage is that just as we said earlier, analog represents infinite amount of points in exemplifying its signal. So no matter how high these bit depths are, they certainly are not as high as infinity! As the number represented by the analog gets smaller and smaller the fixed bit depths try and represent this scaling but nevertheless due to their nature of finite, they fail in doing so accurately. Therefore the error in representing a small analogue sample increases as the number gets smaller as the number can only be a fixed amount represented by binary code rather than a specific “in-between” value.
Floating-point offers us this nuance. It is an envoy with a decimal point where the decimal can move. This then gives us the flexibility of representing these fractional or “in-between” parts. Internally, inside a 32 bit floating point number 24 bits are to represent the number required between 0.0000000 and 0.999999, and the remaining 8 bits are used to scale the number to the right range. So a floating-point number has the capability to represent prodigious numbers and maintain the accuracy with the more specific or exact aspects of the number.
Single and double precision floating point formats get translated to 80 bit extended precision floating point format (64 bit mantissa, 15 bit exponent) for calculations and the result gets rounded to 32 or 64 bit. (They are not always rounded. It depends on compiler flags, code and some other things).What this means in Sonar is that the full signal path is at 64 bit float [1] (53 bit Mantissa, 11 bit exponent) and calculations are done at 80 bit extended precision. Depending on the situation, results may remain at 80 bit between calculations.
32 bit float DAWs also benefit from the 80 bit extended format. (But the results will be rounded to 32 bit float instead of 64 bit float).
It turns out these social sites such as Myspace have been giving out personal information of their users. Even if ad companies never asked for it! In the advent of utter chaos and momentum of online activity I suppose they figured "what the hell, might as well start raking in even more revenue at the users expense, they won't know where the SPAM is […]
When we were growing up it was Metallica and further down the road Morbid Angel. In the past 10 years or so The Dillinger Escape Plan and Every Time I Die definitely do it for us. Another band that I've discovered I do enjoy listening to and found some likeness in some elusive way would be French metal band Gojira. Just recently somebody made a cool com […]
You hear people say "it's not musical, it has no direction". Actually, there is most definitely direction. If a human being does not explore the outskirts of the "common"; common pulses or common "gravity" of melody, then Dillinger will sound foreign. It will sound as if there is no purpose and only noise. Underneath it all […]
And my 4th Nebula preset to date is "Draw Her". This is a compressor preset based on a '68 model hardware compressor. This compressor preset can be subtle as well as heavily character driven. In its more driven and/or extreme settings, it can round out a signal by smoothing high's but more importantly add weight and warmth to a signal wit […]
Hello boys and girls, the 3rd preset named "So Transcited" is finally here. This is another unique utility that's a transient selective harmonic generator […]
I've been creating custom Nebula Presets to be used with the amazing Nebula plug-in. I'm fast at work creating more but so far I've released 2 and there's 1 on deck I will be releasing any day now. […]
Recently it's come to the audio community's attention that Universal Audio would like some one-on-one time with their customers. Not to long before that, UA actually asked customers to take a short survey (with of course a touch of their generousity, as always, in offering a plug-in voucher for completing the survey). On the survey there were sever […]
Over at Gearslutz there is a thread called "Vote on the Solutions for Loudness" and although I applaud the effort, there is no practical means by which one can thwart the loudness war. I've said it time and time again but nobody is understanding the nature of why the contention for loudness exists. Such a contention that compromises musical fi […]
Anytime we do processing to the signal we increase the chance of quantization error. For any change to the binary code that represented its signal, there must be a reacting counter arrangement of those one’s and zero’s. There is a rearrangement and this gives rise to more chance of quantization error. Obviously the more bits one has to work with the least ch […]
