Having recently joined Mr. de la Mancha in an evil alliance (mostly, I suspect, because I won't stop making presets for his lovely plug-ins) I've been designing presets for the alpha versions of 2 synths as well as the pitchshifting delay he and Crane Song created:

KVR thread about octav8r

runagate octav8r preset bank 1 (de la Mancha, if you happen upon this it's an updated atchive and has more presets than would actually fit in the bank)

Now, if you own this effect and have read the manual it can be rather daunting, as it has deep posibilities and a lot of controls.

Don't be intimidted. If you own it you may as well get your $15 worth out of it, but this effect varies a great deal depending upon what kind of audio you run through it. My favorite kind of effect, usually, but one that's hard to make presets for and which means you can't usually just call up a preset and get an expected effect.

Here's some sound design tips:

1) Octav8r is really a multifx unit!

A pitch shifter or harmonizer (just turn off the delay...)

A panner (different envelope length assigned to different pan positions)

Resonant filtering

Chorus (6 channels of different levels and pan positions create quite a "choir")

Vibrato (with really interesting waveforms and an up/down/both vibrato direction control)

Reverb

Unison/Choir (small pitch shifts, panning, envelope times - check out the preset called Flash Mob or somethign like that, sounds like a bunch of multitracked version of the same input audio, really the best I've ever heard)

Rhythmic Gate

Audio-triggered fx

Midi controlled gate

and combinations of thereof, which offer a surprising variety of possibilites

The 1 - 6 channels have settings for octave/semitone (+/- 3 ocataves, +/- 12 semitones which means you can if needed shift something up or down 4 octaves altogether), pan, adsr, filter type and resonance, delay, chorus, vibrato, reverb

Buffer length (scrollable number box at the start of each channel" and Method I or II are just there for you to select which pitchshifting algorithm you use, which sound better for small or large shift increments.

2) Whenever you call up a preset, look at how the top-left "env" drop-down list is set

The options are:
off/tempo/audio/midi

What you've got to keep in mind is that obviously the tempo of the project in your DAW is going to effect the gating behavior (dictated by the "pulse" control that appears right next to it, generally only very low values create what you'd think of as "rhythmic gating" which is all well and good to know but upon first peering at the GUI if you don't notice that "tempo" is chosen the preset might not make sense, or sound totally different at a different tempo.

"Audio" is just a gate that only triggers when a certain volume level is exceeded, set by the "threshold" knob. That's straightforward, but this effect actually becomes quite useful when you're playing live and only loud playing kicks off the effect.

But the midi one is the tricky one. In this mode octav8r only triggers the envelopes when it receives midi note-on messages. How this can be accomplished depends on your host. I use Ussine and FLStudio the most. Usine you can send whatever you want to an effect. FL you have to instantiate a Midi Out plug-in, set it's out channel and the octav8r's in channel to be the same. So a preset that has "Midi" selected may not even make a noise unless you do this first.

Of course, then it becomes a "playable" effect, and if you've got a midi instrument you can do really interesting things to a mix channel or even the master bus. When played live I like to assign one knob to the DAW's wet/dry control for octav8r so I can sweep the effect in and play the midi gate. With long echos there's not mostly silence but cool stacatto dry signal and pitch-shifted audio throwing out delays after they've passed. Or just duplicate all the midi from a cymbal track and send that into octav8r. There's a lot of possibilities.

3) solo the channels

When making or altering a preset, solo one channel at a time so you can hear what that particular one is actually doing. Just click all the lit-up on/off buttons next to each track. You'll generally not use all 7 channels anyways. It's generally a good idea to solo/mute the envelopes' ADSR so you can hear what it's actually doing, too.

The "0" = main "dry" signal - with pan, adsr, chorus, delay and reverb and the wet/dry mix control for the other 6 channels. The wet/dry does not control the those settings, only how much of the succeeding 6 channels you hear.

4) Investigate the global on/off toggles and subcontrols

On the upper right of the GUI are the global controls for vibrato, reverb, delay and chorus. Each has it's own options that aren't obvious til you select each effect type. Just these alone and the "0" channel, with all the other delay channels turned off, offers a nice amount of multifx.

Ok, so that's enough typing for tonight. I'll be back with more tips, enjoy my extra presets (which I think will most likely be included in a bigger default bank in an updated download) and that's all I can think to say off the top of my head.

Here's something cool:

I've been working on Mancha's alpha versions of metamorph and jellfish synths, and the effect unstable which is a type of tape wow effect but that has an "extreme" setting, too.

Here's a little demo Jelly Rollin'

jellyfish alpha version
unstable alpha version
broxxen
and some other, freeware VSTs: milli vinyli. rednef twin, dirthead, deavl.triad, & ferox v1.1

I like it enough that I'm going to clean it up and incorporate as part of one of my band's songs.

Thanks for this, runagate! I especially appreciate your explaining some of the practical ways for tweaking Octav8r's controls. I just got it, and it's surprisingly, interestingly complex. Does stuff that no other effect I've encountered does.

I'd definitely like to hear some more tips on using it. So far, I've only used it to thicken my vocals, and to mess up a couple of guitar tracks. When soloed, they sound strange, but in the mix, I really like the effect, especially how the guitar sounds semi-synthy, but still guitar-y.

brilliant! thanks runagate (and thanks GreyLion for the purchase)

I've uploaded runagate's sound design guide and preset bank to the Octav8r webpage too, as a single download

direct link: http://www.delamancha.co.uk/plugins/Octav8r%20runa gate%20guide%20and%20presets.zip

webpage: http://www.delamancha.co.uk/octav8r.htm


I think this guide will really help people evaluate the demo version in depth.

Glad I could help. I'll probably get around to some of that today at home.

hi all!


do you think this plugin usable to beefing up mid-bass rangy sounds without losing definition?

[i will downloadthe deno, but wantopinions from pros ]

I imagine it depends largely on the specific sound.

It does a great job of making things sounds as thickened like they were multitracked.

=)

thanks runagate for the guide, the banks and remembering me to buy octav8r.