Posts Tagged ‘Quantum-music’

Antress – Modern VR-ME (Review)

Sunday, July 8th, 2012

Recently, I was re-reading an old Sound on Sound magazine, more precisely its SOS mix rescue section, and I saw this plugin on the screen that looks very similar to the manley variable MU Compressor. Let me tell you that it caught my interest very quickly. Even if I’m not an analog fan for practical reasons, I’ve to admit that I would be more than happy to possess a manley compressor. I think it’s the dream of every mastering engineer. The marvelous object is quite pricy though. The idea of a plugin version seemed pretty interesting…

When I saw this, my reaction was “Someone made a plugin emulation of a manley product few years ago and nobody told me about it ?!”. While I was questionning my friendship with other sound engineers, I saw the MODERN prefix name on it which made me realize that it was a “MODERN family” plugin from Antress. The “it’s a freeware” reason always seems to be a good justification.

Unlike most sound engineers, I have absolutely nothing against the fact that a plugin is free or not. Often they use the same well known algorithm and the same precision; it’s then a question of judgement of which method to use. Moreover, the people that are giving it away are people that have done it by passion. This is an interesting factor that money can’t buy. Also, this is ain’t the first free plugin I review and, in general, I’ve said very good things about these plugins.

Few seconds later, I’m excited about the idea of having a “Manley” compressor and the first question that comes to my mind is “Where can I find this plugin ?”. I mean, it’s not part of the modern pack anymore… Which means it’s not even on the constructor website! Well, I managed to find it on another website which was hosting an oldversion of the pack.

So, how does it sound ?

That’s a tricky question. Does it sound good or does it sound like a Manley. Unfortunately, the answer is neither. Wow, that sounded very brutal…  Let me explain my point more clearly:

Compared to a Manley:

The cool thing with a Manley compressor(Slam, vari-MU, etc.) is that you can make things sound crazy loud and it’s just better. More you push it, more you get that wow sound. It is used very often on high end hip hop production to give that impact. Here, it’s completely different. I try to boost the things by every manner possible and every time when I bypass the plugin it sounds louder. However, it is true that the plugin behave in an “analog” way from a certain perspective; the way the compressor behave is far different from usual digital compressors and there is subtle texture. But if it can’t do its job properly, it’s simply degrading for no apparent reason.

By itself:

If I can’t push it without destroying it, why would I insert a compressor on a mastering chain ? (Let’s do not forget the “do no harm” rule of mastering.)

In conclusion:

I will admit that the GUI is beautiful and very inspiring, but unfortunately, it sounds nothing like the real thing. It has been very deceiving and ironic since it is suppose to emulate a high end reknown equipment. Even running at high sampling rates, it’s just not there. I find it quite ironic to “emulate” a gear that is reknown for its wonderful sound by poor sounding algorithms. Sad. (Overall rating (2.8/5)

PLUS:

  • Inspiring GUI, I mean, that looks very good on a screenshot!
  • Very distinctive texture
MINUS:
  • Sounds nothing like the real thing
  • Can’t be used to improve loudness
  • Very degrading compression
  • Not supported by every DAW

What is mastering ?

Friday, July 6th, 2012

« MASTERING IS THE LAST CREATIVE STEP IN THE AUDIO PRODUCTION PROCESS, THE BRIDGE BETWEEN MIXING AND REPLICATION – YOUR LAST CHANCE TO ENHANCE SOUND OR REPAIR PROBLEMS IN AN ACOUSTICALLY-DESIGNED ROOM. »

- BOB KATZ, THE ART OF MASTERING.

The previous definition is coming from the book “The art of mastering” which I consider to be the bible of the mastering engineer. Bob Katz wrote down things in a way that nor I or any other mastering engineer could have. It is right, clear and inspiring. For whom this definition is still not clear enough, mastering can be seen as a multipurpose process… Here are listed the basic reasons to get your mixes mastered by a professional:

Homogeniety:

For whom this definition is still not clear enough, mastering is the step where we try to make fit different mixes in a whole. What I mean by that is fairly simple: Some mixes has been done tired at 2am, others fresh as a flower at 9am; some of them sound crazy loud and others very soft… Now, the question is : How do we put them together on a same record ?

Standardization:

Another good reason to get your mix mastered is to sound good everywhere. The problem with mixes, is usually that they have been mixed in less than perfect acoustical environment, so by definition, they won’t translate well everywhere else. A mastering studio will have a near-perfection acoustically treated room and very flat monitoring setup in order to make a sound-good-everywhere version of this mix.

Loudness:

You want your mix to be competitive in terms of loudness ? Okay, but don’t do it yourself, because it is the best way to ruin in 10 sec an excellent mix. The mastering engineer will use its talent, knowledge and experience to make sure that your songs don’t suffer too much from gain reduction undesirable effects. Moreover, mastering engineers use high end gear that helps to conserve the integrity of the master.

 

Xenium Audio – X-tube (Review)

Wednesday, July 4th, 2012

x-tube

To be honest, I’ve never heard of Xenium audio before. Do that means that I was skeptical about this product ? Yes. Do that means it is a bad product ? Absolutely not ! Fortunately, I gave it a try and nowaday, I’m very happy to have this secret weapon in my vst rack !

Overview

It’s a 12AX7 tube emulation, 64 bit floating point internal processing, with possibility of oversampling up to 16 times at zero latency. It can be used to warm your stuff up a bit. The plugin is available both in 32 and 64 bit versions.

Hands on

I tested it on a master, nothing less ! Since I’m one of those who try to avoid A/D conversion when I can, if I can do everything in the box, I’ll do it. I tried the plugin while I was already running at 96kHz with the oversampling set to 4 times and it sounded really natural. I could have closed my eyes and it would have been difficult to tell if I was processing in the analog domain or not.  At such high sampling rate, the difference between digital and high end analog is difficult to differentiate.

Now, the result depends on the quality of the transfer function that has been used to model the original equipment. Personally, I’ve been using an Altec 436C (What a classic !) for about 10 years and this technology uses 12ax7 tubes. I’ve been able to recognize the similarities in the sound, but at the same time, the plugin seemed to sound clearer to me. I have to admit that my old 436C needs maintenance and is becoming very noisy. However, the fact that I found myself using it on many project is a good sign. That means that my subconscious mind found it efficient enough to use it has a go to “warmer”.

Unfortunately, for the moment, at least, no freeware plugin is perfect. On this one, a major drawback overcomes the advantages of using it. I might like it a lot, but this plugin crashes a lot too. It also make sense since it runs at 16 times oversampled without latency, but still, this is not an excuse. Also, it happened that I could not reload the plugin properly when I was opening a previous file. Other uncertainty, the plugin has sometimes weird effect in the stereo field.

In conclusion, this is a very nice sounding plugin that, unfortunately, still has bugs. However, the fact that you can oversample ridiculously make it sounds very analog and natural, especially when your base sampling rate is 96kHz. (Overall rating: 4.1/5)

PLUS:

  • Crazy oversampling
  • No latency
  • Smooth natural sounding
  • A lot of parameters tunable for a simple plugin
  • Very useful, simply…
MINUS:
  • Crashes sometimes
  • No Mac versions
  • Sometimes, weird effects happen in the stereo field.

 

Resources:

Download link on xenium audio website:

http://www.xeniumaudio.com/downloads.php#XTube

 

Towards a deep understanding of the mastering process (part 1)

Thursday, June 28th, 2012


Introduction:

You’ve probably already heard the famous quote saying that inventors are people that have been forced to change field, because they see the never solved problem with a fresh perspective. I tend to believe it, since problem solving is often a matter of paradigm shift. Even if you know me for mastering music, first you should know that my background is based on chemical process engineering. If there is something that this field taught me, it is how to define a process, understand it in order to improve it. Sometimes this improvement simply consist to simplify its operation, reduce its cost or automate its critical steps. Well, I decided to apply this method to the mastering process…

 

First step: Identify the key parameters (Success criteria)
Whatever problem you’re facing, if you want to solve it, you will have to identify what are the critical aspects. It’s not everything that really matters; there is a notion of priority. For Mastering, I think that Izotope have already done a good deal of the job with its all-included bundle Ozone. Let me enumerate the components they’ve proposed us for mastering:
  • Equalizer
  • Multiband dynamic processing (expander, compressor and limiter)
  • Mulitband Exciter (tape, tube, etc.)
  • Reverb
  • Stereo tool
  • Maximizer
Investigating a little bit about the selection of these tools brings us back to the fundamentals. Are all these tools necessary for every case ? Certainly not. Do I add reverb to every master ? No. Okay, so…What does really matters ? To find out, let’s answer the following question: How should the perfect master sound like ? Let me guess for you:
  • Well balanced
  • Powerful
  • Focused
  • Rich
Oh, we start with 6 circumstantial aspects and came down two 4 fundamental ones. Moreover, if we speak the same english, Well-balanced refers to tonal-balance, Powerful to dynamics, Focus to stereo,  and rich to Harmonic content. Can we go simpler than that ? I don’t think so. Do I play with these 4 dimensions every time I master ? Yes. We just identified the fundamental parameters:
  • Tone
  • Dynamics
  • Stereo
  • Harmonic content
Wow, that simplifies a problem, doesn’t it ?