AcmeBarGig Shred 1.5x Public Beta PC VST available here **Updated Oct 2

[Ken McLaren]

Hey Guys, I finally feel confident enough in Shred 1.5x to release a beta to the general public, away from the ABG site. Man this has been an insanely long development, too many tribulations to talk about here...

Anyways, just a few disclaimers in case we missed something and the download link is at the bottom of the the page. No manual yet, we are still writing it, sorry.

Current Version September 28 2010 1.5x97 A
Download Temporarily Suspended

WARNINGS
You must remember this is a Public beta, The key word being BETA So as such use caution with your volume levels.

NEVER
1) Make any changes like selecting different components,
2) Turn effects on or off.
3) Click any switches.
WITHOUT FIRST TURNING YOUR VOLUMES DOWN!!
Just in case you get a volume spike.

About...
These skins were created By Amit Talwar, and Manwelo Sitoy..
Other credits to follow...

Current version download September 28 2010
IMPORTANT:
'Shred 1.5x97 A' Requires a complete uninstall of previous versions...
Including the Read.Dat file that will be left in the Shred Install folder after uninstall has ran. Best thing to do is run the uninstall then delete the installed shred folder.
However, if you have presets COPY THEM TO ANOTHER FOLDER! Then just copy them back after installing the new version.

Shred 1.5x 97 A Information.
It is unknown what presets saved with older versions will do. However, you will HAVE to load previous presets and re-save them with Shred 1.5x 97 A. If you do this, Shred should function without issue. However, its a beta, so you never know...

Here it is...
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/923791/ShredPos ... .5X97A.rar
***UPDATES

Oct 2
-Fixed Redwirez issues
-Updated the tonal correction to version 2 status
-Set speed on knobs as per FutureFields request

[dickiefunk]

I think it is astounding that software like this is free!!

Amazing work and a huge thanks!!!

[Ken McLaren]

Thanks Dickie...
There will be a rapid updates all this week as I get more fix information in..

[nix808]

Thanks a bundle Ken!
I'll give you some feedback after I've taken it for a razz.
Let me know how you go with my 2SYN if you get the time. I think it's working better.
mighty cheers
PS-It works best with the tone all the way off.

[ezelkow1]

Loving the effect, though it does seem to suck up alot of cpu, and this was on a c2d 2.8. I did have one issue that I think Ive only seen with one other plug, i think was also in beta at the time. The first time I tried loading it up it would just immediately crash Ableton 8.2. The same thing happened with the older 1.0 shred. I had to load up the plug in vsthost and bring up the gui, and I set the audio input for good measure.

After that I was able to load them into ableton fine without crashing.

[Ken McLaren]

ezelkow1, Thanks for the Ableton information. I just learned something about that daw from you. So, Exactly the same problem with 1.5x? If so I'm going to release a new version shortly and I'd like to know if you get the same thing.

Nix as always man, thanks for your help and support. I briefly worked with 2syn, and so far seems improved. Have you looked into Phase Lock Loops? I don't think that will be quick enough for tracking purposes though..? I don't know because I have done absolutely zero work with them..

[ezelkow1]

Yes I had the same problem with both 1.5x and 1.06. Initially I had been trying the beta and thought it may have just been a beta issue so I tried 1.06 and it was the same.

[Ken McLaren]

ezelkow1, OK I think I have figured that out. Although I am not sure why it would affect Ableton?

Shred uses a file called Read.Dat, That file is not distributed, but instead created by Shred. We use the fact that the file is missing to determine a first run situation. I am really not sure how that would affect Ableton though, So I'll add an empty Read.Dat file to the install an we'll see if that helps..
This is the only thing that is apparent to me regarding this issue at the moment..

Also you said it was high in CPU? Thats kind of weird as well? I wonder if there is something else going on that is not apparent.

I'm getting usage as low as 12.6% in Reaper on a Single core Pentium 4 3 ghz with 1 gb ram. I don't have Ableton, but one of our testers does and he was able to run 7 instances of Shred on a c2d at 30% cpu? Thats 7 copies of it running at once. So, I am wondering is perhaps there is a setting somewhere that Shred does not like. You should be getting the same if not less CPU usage as other suites..Notable exception being Vandal, which has great CPU usage. Actually our CPU usage when using our modeled cabs instead of the convolution cabs will drop to around Vandal's level, once we have them complete.

[ezelkow1]

Yea I found the cpu usage odd as well since I had seen the previous posts showing how low you got it on the p4. This is a c2d 2.2ghz, sorry got the wrong # last time, with 4gb ram. So it not extremely powerful but its no slouch either. I have tried it turning off and on the multi-core support in live as well and that didnt really seem to make a difference. I also tried running it in vsthost, just to take ableton out of the equation and it reported the same cpu usage. There a stock preset I should try? maybe the one its coming up on uses alot of power?

When I get home Ill also try with my audio4, I had been using my internal sound on MME, when I dropped it to using asio4all the cpu dropped a little bit but not a huge amount. Maybe switching to the audio4 will make a larger difference

[Ken McLaren]

I would like to see what you get running it in Reaper, because we can use that as a baseline. We know for sure what Shred does in that DAW. We can compare what you get with Reaper to what we get and that'll tell us if something else is going on. Perhaps we can then start to look for those causes as well...

[ezelkow1]

Sounds like a plan, grabbed reaper and it looks like it idles between 13-16%, so thats more of what I expected.

So I got to try the audio4, switching to that immediately drops down the usage to 14%, so Im not sure what reaper is doing differently with asio4all, but it seems to be some sort of driver thing going on

[Ken McLaren]

ezelkow1
13-14% is still almost double to what I would expect Shred to run in Reaper with a core 2 Duo. I would expect to see it run at about 8%...So, there is still something going on. Just for the sake of it, as this goes beyond Shred and into all other applications you are running, I'm sure you'd rather see them run as efficiently as possible. Can you try lowering you Hardware accelerations? I am just curious what effect that will have..

[ezelkow1]

Sorry should have also tried reaper with the audio4, using that in reaper it drops it down to 8-10. So I guess with ableton the issue is just in how it reports its cpu usage, or with reaper, either way.

[futurefields]

Question -

I'm confused about Shred 1.5 and Shred 2.0, because the ABG website is advertising presales for 2.0, and here you are beta testing 1.5

So I guess I'm wondering when are you expecting Shred 1.5 to be done, and when are you expecting Shred 2.0 to be done?

[Ken McLaren]

Simply put..They are done when they are done...

Shred 2 will be built from Shred 1.5x, So, we have to get it as right as possible. We had almost released a few times when we found some flaws. This is the first time we had public betas being held at our own website alone. So, I think if had done our normal thing which is public betas all over, then a lot of the flaws that I missed, would have been caught and we would already be released. Case in point, I have had some great responses to this beta already and have had flaws reported that I knew nothing about.

Anyways Guys, speaking of flaws, I fixed an issue with the Cabinet Menu maker. The new one if you want it, is already available for download from the original Link. I just updated the Rar file.

I reverted back to the older version that had the Redwirez Flaw in the interface too. This is of course temporary, but if you like, there is a workaround, courtesy of vicsnest at GAM. Simply create a Speakerbox folder under the red wirez Impulses folder. Those that have the speakerbox library will not have issue unless they don't have big box, in that case create a big box folder. There is a free cabinet available from the big box collection so at the redwirez website, so go get that.

ezelkow1, That still seems like a lot? I'll ask Michael if you like for his system specs? I actually don't know what a single copy runs at on his machine, he only ever reported the 7 copies usage to me..