High quality audio morphing effect plugin, why it doesn't exist yet?

[FabienTDR]

Please define "morph". You can also try to "cryptonize", "nuclearify" or simply "mysterify" sounds.

So far I know, the term "morph" describes a visual process. IMHO, it's not adequate for the world of sounds, where it has no reasonable meaning.

You can change several parameters of an electronic instrument and tell the marketing department to call it "morph". But it still doesn't explain what to expect from such an "effect".

[Timfonie]

I've been waiting for many years to come accross a piece of affordable software to convincingly morph a screaming woman into a roaring lion. Really.
Every year it's still Kyma which is the only solution, but it's hardware based and too expensive for just morphing.

Once there is a well prices software solution, oh boy! it may trigger another Cher-effect like boom in popular music.

[Neon Breath]

Please define "morph". You can also try to "cryptonize", "nuclearify" or simply "mysterify" sounds.

So far I know, the term "morph" describes a visual process. IMHO, it's not adequate for the world of sounds, where it has no reasonable meaning.

You can change several parameters of an electronic instrument and tell the marketing department to call it "morph". But it still doesn't explain what to expect from such an "effect".

A sound is worth a thousand words. Just listen to the audio example posted above and you'll understand what it is discussed here.

[Neon Breath]

Every year it's still Kyma which is the only solution, but it's hardware based and too expensive for just morphing.

Same thing here!

[Timfonie]

@ FabienTDF: there's pure parameter morph between presets, but there's also morphing between two audio files, based on the audio spectra. For a totally fluent morph one needs also to take care of lfo-like phenomena.

[monas]

if you don't mind getting your hands dirty, you could use cabbage to code your own plugins using Csounds pvs opcodes. for now cabbage only exports vst plugins but a new version that supports AU as well should be out very soon.
unfortunately pvs opcodes introduce some latency, but they are among the best sounding spectral tools out there.

[highkoo]

Another interesting example:
youtube.com/watch?v=nt9tXXaXRrM

n/m, Im an idiot.

That is a pretty "clean" morph from the sound of it.
Its maybe the first example Ive heard that made me take notice because of the pleasing in between sections.
I wonder how much custom set up is done on the back end for each sample.

[tweiss2000]

Have you an example for this morph sound?

Harp sound morphed in a dog bark: http://ssc-media.com/Audio/mp3/harpguitdog.mp3

A woman into cat, a baby into dog, a dog into a Harley, a woman into a little boy: http://ssc-media.com/Audio/mp3/morphs.mp3

Thank you, Neon,
Now I understand what you mean and that there is something new to me, that is not going out of my head.
Morphing opens a complete box of sound creativity.

We have so many analog sounding synths, ,different compressors, eq's, but no synth for morphing in the direction you showed.

I see room for a market, so let's call our dev's: why not building tools to close this gap?
Kyma proofs, that it is possible, pc and mac is performant hardware, there is a lot of documentation, how sound morph can be achieved.
What are our dev's waiting for?

[padillac]

alchemy can totally do this. not real-time on arbitrary audio streams, mind you, but it can certainly pull off those examples that were posted.

[Harry_HH]

alchemy can totally do this. not real-time on arbitrary audio streams, mind you, but it can certainly pull off those examples that were posted.

I think the real-time feature including the interface is most essential concerning the tool we are talking here. What comes to the Alchemy, I'd like to hear an example what Alchemy can do when the starting point is two different user's own audio files which he likes to morph. In the similar discussion Andy from the Camel Audio stated that "Alchemy does the job" but unfortunately none bothered really demonstrate it. Poor marketing from the Camel Audio. H.

[Timfonie]

True. Alchemy is a very capable and flexible synth, yet I also haven't heard any audio examples of one audio file smoothly morphing into another over time, like the Kyma audio demos show.

[lfm]

I think the best solution is to use a synthesizer that can morph presets, and then become very good at programming it

Hmmm no I'm afraid a simple preset morph would only volume-cross fade between the two presets, and not truly and harmonically morph by interpolation into each other.

Would a synth/effect with two channels - and two ADSR-controlled filters be what you want.

Same frequency range removed on one channel, and rising on the other. Maybe a shelving HP or LP filter with a moving turnover frequency.

Crossfade with overlap would do all frequencies equally at the same time, but ADSR controlled filter could give you a sweeping effect over time.

And combining with reverse reverb on one channel could give interesting transformation to the other channel.

[VariKusBrainZ]

Acmebargig have a realtime convolution plugin that works on 2 realtime signals.
http://acmebargig.com/product/ir-a-live2/

Also, check out the Jez Wells plugins, one of those can do morphing.
http://jezwells.org/Computer_music_tools.html

I remember there was a standalone morph plugin that came with a n00b music tech book called Composing Music with Computers by Miranda.

Might be useful?

Ive never been overly impressed by those audio file morph sounds, not even the Kyma and I own one
It all epends on the source audio, dont expect miracles.

[VariKusBrainZ]

Hmmm no I'm afraid a simple preset morph would only volume-cross fade between the two presets, and not truly and harmonically morph by interpolation into each other.

On what?
The Nord Lead 3 can morph parameters

[cron]

I think morphing is more a skill than an effect. Obviously the tools play a part, but in the sound examples posted, you can hear that the humans in the recording are somewhat mimicking the sounds to be morphed. For instance, the harpist matches the rhythm of the dog barking. I don't think you could ever make a one-slider process that works in real-time with whatever you throw at it. The system needs some knowledge of what's ahead if it's going to produce a convincing morph trajectory.

The video is quite impressive. Sounds like some kind of pitch-aware granular process from the sounds of it. The morphs often sound like a sliding pitched buzz during the transitions as the granular stream moves from one pitch to the other.

I own CDP and the morph function in that doesn't seem to be pitch aware, so a lot of pre-processing is required to get a convincing result. I listen to Vox 5 by Trevor Wishart which contains some outstanding morphs, all created with an early version of CDP's phase vocoder algorithm in 1986, and it instantly reinforces my view that morphing is a compositional process. The only really great result I've had was morphing the last note of a vocal phrase into a gong in CDP. It wasn't very musically interesting sadly.

All the Kyma buzz I've seen over the last decade seems to be over this morphing effect. It sounds a bit cheesy to me. The clean morph from source to source is a novelty effect you can only really use once or twice before it gets old, and I'm not sure what you'd do with it musically. I'm sure it could be creatively abused, but then I've plenty of methods of spitting broken FFT grids already. Loads of unsubtle, sledgehammer narrative possibilities for people doing sound for film/TV though...