Cytomic "The Scream" stomp box distortion plugin

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The Scream

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resynthesis wrote:Ah, 0 -> open circuit rather than short circuit then. I will have to get a bit of time to demo this properly
It's well worth it, you can dial in many variations, for instance a more "transparent" style overdrive without the built in TS mid thing.
With the Red led diodes you can go into Turbo Rat / Marshall Guv'Nor territory.
With a pre and post EQ, i suspect you can cover many things.
In fact, i'd rather have this single VST than the whole mono Amplitube4.

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farfadetfarfelu wrote:Okay thanks i understand, that's why the feedback stuff i've tried in modular software often sounds strange like it has phase issues.
Feedback/circuit bending style sounds is one thing i've been missing in software.
The "bias" pot is a nice addition in this regard.

Another small thing with the scream : i've tried to set R107 value to zero (to remove it from the circuit - like a solid connection) but when set to zero the sound stops entirely.

Fuzz is a world in itself, you've got people talking about types of NOS germanium transistors like they would about vintage wine...
There are no zero ohm connections in the real world. I have been pretty lax with my bounds checking at the input stage, I think even negative ohms works, so just set it to to 1 ohm or 0.1 ohm and see how you go. I'll got through and add this to the conversion stage to clamp settings to something reasonable so you don't get silence (hopefully!). If you get silence then click the undo button, the click on the CPU meter to reset the audio engine.

I can model arbitrary circuits with arbitrary connections, but in most "modular software" there are no such things, the circuit will not be solved properly, there will be artificial single sample or entire buffer delays all over the place and will usually sound terrible even with the most basic of settings.

The trouble with "circuit bending" is that you really are solving a completely different circuit as soon as you connect it in a different way. In this sense there is no circuit bending in software, you have to solve exactly the circuit you have connected, and no other. So to support real circuit bending you end up with something like SPICE which doesn't run very fast.
The Glue, The Drop - www.cytomic.com

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Ok it would be interesting to be able to do open circuit or closed circuit connections by changing the component values but maybe that falls into the "circuit bending" scenario you described.

Also something that is strange to me, the fact that the pre and post gain controls are still active when the effect is switched off.

Three presets in a zip file :

HERE

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farfadetfarfelu wrote:Ok it would be interesting to be able to do open circuit or closed circuit connections by changing the component values but maybe that falls into the "circuit bending" scenario you described.

Also something that is strange to me, the fact that the pre and post gain controls are still active when the effect is switched off.

Three presets in a zip file :

HERE
A resistance of zero is circuit bending since the circuit structure has changed and the matrix solver is now invalid. A resistance of 0.01 is ok since that is not circuit bending, it's just a small resistor (or bit of wire with resistance), and may make the system a little ill-conditioned depending on where it is placed, but it still should work fine. There won't be any audible difference between a resistance of 0.01 and 0 in most cases, I just need to add some more bounds checking on the textual input of values as being able to type in 0 is useful to "bypass" a resistor.

I think you may be confusing the silver square button with the power button on the top left, they do totally different things. I have deliberately left the pre and post working when the silver square "active" button on the stomp box is off because the circuit is still fully in operation and a different audio path is chosen around the main drive section but still including the input and output buffers. In fact the main drive section is still slightly audible since the design is not a true bypass - there is a jfet (modelled by a resistance value) that blocks most of the signal. With the pedal not active you can still drive into the input and output buffers and get clipping. You also get a smooth transition between the effect being active and not since the entire effect is still processing all the time on the input signal. You will also notice a small "chirp" sometimes when switching between the effect being active and not, which is exactly what you get with the real pedal. Try that out with any other emulation and see how you go! If you want more bleed you can manually adjust the equivalent jfet resistances (there is one for on and one for off) and get all kinds of cool self oscillating feedback sounds.

If you want a total clean bypass the click on, or automate, the button in the top left of the interface.
The Glue, The Drop - www.cytomic.com

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farfadetfarfelu wrote:It works fine and probably sounds similar to the circuit with the resistor removed.
The point was more about the slightly counter-intuitive no sound result when entering zero values. :)
This is just a bounds checking issue at my end, entering 0 is a reasonable way to bypass a resistor, but internally I need to actually set the resistance to something like 0.01 ohm so that things still work. I just haven't spent the time going through and checking what a reasonably small value is for each resistor to bypass in a transparent way while still being numerically stable.
The Glue, The Drop - www.cytomic.com

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farfadetfarfelu wrote:
resynthesis wrote:Ah, 0 -> open circuit rather than short circuit then. I will have to get a bit of time to demo this properly
It's well worth it, you can dial in many variations, for instance a more "transparent" style overdrive without the built in TS mid thing.
With the Red led diodes you can go into Turbo Rat / Marshall Guv'Nor territory.
With a pre and post EQ, i suspect you can cover many things.
If you want to get rid of the "mid hump" I have already added functions on the "easy" mod page for this.

The signal chain is roughly (dryish + distorted) -> low pass -> shelf, so you have the buffered dc blocked input which gets added to a processed and distorted version of itself. The processed version is high pass filtered by C103, low pass filtered by C104 (in combination with the drive knob to set the cutoff) and distorted by D101 and D102. This sum of dry and distorted is then low pass filtered by C105, then put through a one pole shelving filter C106.

If you want to remove the "mid hump" then head to the easy page and set HP_C103 to 4.7u (7.2hz) and LP_C105 to 4.7n (34 khz), so these are now both bypassed. You get a full range distortion added to the dry signal with no low pass filtering. The tone control now gives you a one pole high frequency boost or cut to further shape the signal, but at 50% it is also bypassed.
farfadetfarfelu wrote:In fact, i'd rather have this single VST than the whole mono Amplitube4.
Awesome, thanks! I couldn't agree more :)
The Glue, The Drop - www.cytomic.com

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So this is great. I had some system downtime and forgot this was in the works. I picked it up yesterday when I remembered it existed and I love the mod stuff. I've just started out doing circuit designs and it's fun playing with the values when I have an inkling of what they will do. Great job as always Andy.
Don't F**K with Mr. Zero.

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farfadetfarfelu wrote: Another small thing with the scream : i've tried to set R107 value to zero (to remove it from the circuit - like a solid connection) but when set to zero the sound stops entirely.
I found the bug. I do make sure each resistor value is slightly above zero, but R107 is also used to calculate the cutoff frequency of C105, and I used the raw value of R107 (zero) here so this calculation didn't work (divide by zero). I've fixed it and will release it later on today.

(edit: I also just fixed setting capacitors to 0 as well)
The Glue, The Drop - www.cytomic.com

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andy-cytomic wrote:A resistance of zero is circuit bending since the circuit structure has changed and the matrix solver is now invalid. A resistance of 0.01 is ok since that is not circuit bending, it's just a small resistor (or bit of wire with resistance), and may make the system a little ill-conditioned depending on where it is placed, but it still should work fine. There won't be any audible difference between a resistance of 0.01 and 0 in most cases, I just need to add some more bounds checking on the textual input of values as being able to type in 0 is useful to "bypass" a resistor.
Ok i understand better the boundaries of what you can/cannot do within the modeling concept.
andy-cytomic wrote:I think you may be confusing the silver square button with the power button on the top left, they do totally different things. I have deliberately left the pre and post working when the silver square "active" button on the stomp box is off because the circuit is still fully in operation and a different audio path is chosen around the main drive section but still including the input and output buffers. In fact the main drive section is still slightly audible since the design is not a true bypass - there is a jfet (modelled by a resistance value) that blocks most of the signal. With the pedal not active you can still drive into the input and output buffers and get clipping. You also get a smooth transition between the effect being active and not since the entire effect is still processing all the time on the input signal. You will also notice a small "chirp" sometimes when switching between the effect being active and not, which is exactly what you get with the real pedal. Try that out with any other emulation and see how you go!
Ok I never realised there was a top left power button.
So there are three effect states :
Effect Bypass
Effect on in buffer mode
Effect on in buffer + clipping mode

Maybe this could be made a little more obvious.
It makes it a pain to program presets because you have to check your overall levels between the three modes. The buffer mode and clipping mode share the same "pre" and "post" gain so it limits the purpose of having the three separate modes readily accessible imo. But i understand the compromise and it's always nice to have the option.
andy-cytomic wrote:If you want more bleed you can manually adjust the equivalent jfet resistances (there is one for on and one for off) and get all kinds of cool self oscillating feedback sounds.
Oh that makes it even better ! Will experiment asap.

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News update: The Scream v1.0.7 is up. This version fixes a problem with bug with the new oversampling system, and also adds better handling of zero values for capacitors and resistors when using the FULL edit mode:

https://cytomic.com/scream
The Glue, The Drop - www.cytomic.com

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Would it be possible to make a Mesa Grid Slammer preset.

http://tagboardeffects.blogspot.jp/2014 ... r.html?m=1

It is supposed to be a TS with less compression, less mid hump and more volume.

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Chandlerhimself wrote:Would it be possible to make a Mesa Grid Slammer preset.

http://tagboardeffects.blogspot.jp/2014 ... r.html?m=1

It is supposed to be a TS with less compression, less mid hump and more volume.
Yes, the Mesa Grid Slammer is a straight up TS9 but with two diodes in each direction in the feedback of the drive op-amp. Just head to the easy page and set both diode counts to 2 and you're pretty much there - it you want to get the last little bit then head to the full page and change R114 to 470 and R115 to 100k (the output buffer resistors of a TS9 vs a TS808). I'll do a preset as well for you :)
The Glue, The Drop - www.cytomic.com

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https://cytomic.com/files/scream-beta-patches-1.zip
--
Stock - Grid Slammer.tsp
Stock - SD-1.tsp
Stock - TS808.tsp
Stock - TS9 Hot.tsp
Stock - TS9 Plus.tsp
Stock - TS9 Turbo.tsp
Stock - TS9.tsp
Bent - Resonizer.tsp
The Glue, The Drop - www.cytomic.com

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THANK YOU!!!

And the SD-1 preset sounds exactly as expected - a little bit tighter and brighter than the default preset.

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GrabtharsHammer wrote:THANK YOU!!!

And the SD-1 preset sounds exactly as expected - a little bit tighter and brighter than the default preset.
You're welcome! Plenty more where those came from, but I need to implement a lock for the main knob positions and only load the component parameters because otherwise it's a bit of a pain switching presets.
The Glue, The Drop - www.cytomic.com

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