Twangström Public Beta (Update: rev 8131)

[knowix]

It's arguable that spring reverb IS the sound of early modular synthesis and the actual modularity of that synthesis is a secondary sonic feature.

Just to correct myself, I was playing around some more and found something interesting. Put any basic bleep or blonk sound through this and you're instantly transported to the 60s. But put a wavetable pad, or even just a unison detune lead, through it and there's no such time travel effect. So the type of sounds do matter.

[sascha]

You have a point with 'bleep' and 'blonk' (should I ever write a childrens book, that would be two cool names for aliens...).
Spring reverbs don't do anything to pitch. Put a static sound in and you're left with a stable copy of it. What it indeed does is changing attacks. Highs travel much more slower than lows, so you have that upwards chirp in every attack. (rotational transverse waves)
BTW, a plate does the inverse, its treble contents are always first.
Either way, both do their 'time travel' on percussive material.

[sleepcircle]

it’s important to let people have an opinion without someone jumping to u-he’s defense and twisting their comments and yes... spinning.

I wasn't actually trying to 'jump to their defense'—they seem quite capable of speaking for themselves—but it is obvious my words did not have their intended effect in the first place, so I apologize, and I will let you all get on with it.

[Niowiad]

About the filter:
I would have loved the ability to roll off both top and low end frequencies.

This, this, this...


I'd just be happy with an additional dedicated HPF (and I wouldn't exactly shit on a midband too)
Of course someone could say "just use a separate EQ" and that's fine, but I tend to really appreciate LO-MID-HI controls on reverbs, or at least LO-HI.
I tried to use Twangstrom's filter as an HP and compensate with the Tone knob, but, that sacrifices some top-end. Again someone could say "use an EQ", but that's a matter of personal workflow.
I personally stack reverbs on the usual reverb send tracks at matched levels and "spectrum", then quickly test them one after another to see what fits better in that given context, so the bare minimum eq controls included in the plugin is pretty much a must-have for me. I know people will disagree, but again, it's a matter of preference in workflow. I only eventually get to further external reverb processing after I chose one from the list I had stacked and tested. Sure people will disagree, but hey...



I'm currently demoing both Twangstrom and Nexcellence, quite different products, both soundwise and feature-wise. Just my humble impressions, maybe wrong or obvious crap

Nexcellence seems much easier to use in a "mixing context" as a standard-use reverb aka a "spacial/dimension" effect for mixing purposes.
Setting it 100% wet is feels much more "dry" than Twangstroom, the sound is much easier to control thanks to the minimal but functional eq section. The "twang" is much less pronounced. Sounds great overall.

Twangstrom in comparison seemed more like a sound design tool to me. 100% wet is really wet, almost "watery" (not necessarily as a negative connotation, as I think it also sounds more realistic) and although it has many more creative tools for modulation and fine-tuning sound characteristics, you can't nearly tame the imho "overwhelming" sonic result without external eq controls.
The filter itself could theoretically be used for eq-ing, but besides only dealing with a single band, it has all the characteristics of a creative filter that emphasizes a frequency range (even if it means notching) rather than taming it.
The "twang" is prominent, even tweakable and imho the plugin's strongest point.

I'll test them much more extensively during the next few weeks and I'll likely end up getting both as they both sound neat AF, and likely use them for radically different tasks (unless Twangstrom gets a couple more eq knobs, which I doubt as I'd guess its gui and features "concept" has been decided for good).

Very nice overall, again congrats on the release.

[illwillis]

I like it; don't love it yet tho. I agree with Niowiad about the wet/dry. I'm having a hard time finding a sweet spot, especially on short sounds like a snare. I feel like it's either too wet or too much dry is coming through and the reverb becomes "disconnected" from the source too easily. I'd also like a little more filter control within the plugin. I definitely find myself needing post-EQ to shape the reverb.

That said, I'll probably still buy it lol.

[muki]

yes!

waited for it since superbooth presentation...

as always with u-he fx:
at first it was kind of "muh...to dull...don't know..."

compared it with logic's amp designer (fender tweed spring) and modnetic
both of them imho more or less "accepatble" spring emulations

both of them brighter, more "in the face", splashy, metallic sounding

then i changed the test synth
from podolski (sic!) to Aalto
fired up some generative pleep&plop patches and:

YES!

back to 60s timemachine radioworkshop mojo

enormously tweakable - wonderful big pallette of sounds

modulation is wonderful
wish there were more mod-slots

but:
still, i am missing the (very) bright and splashy metallic sound
and i cannot dial it in from within TwangStrom's filter
so, yes: some pre/post HPF, lo-hi cut kind of eq would be great

putting twangstrom on a seperate aux-channel and EQing this works,
but isn't quite the same imho...

anyway:
super plugin
imho, one of the, if not *the* most convincing

wishlist:
additional EQ

more modulation slots!

and here are some (more experimental) presets i've made:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rc8fy8ourbrk2 ... 1.zip?dl=0

[sascha]

I'll test them much more extensively during the next few weeks and I'll likely end up getting both

I think the two are very different, and it already begins with the springs because they are inspired by completely different devices. AFAIK with Necklace, there is no reference on any of Accutronics/Fender/Marshall kind of tanks. And to be honest, I had contact to plenty of 'tank type' units in the past 3 decades of my life but I've never been in touch with necklace-kind-of. But just by looking at the mechanics, spring length, and the principle of no tension other than through gravity makes me think it must sound way different.

[Niowiad]

This is very true actually.

[elxsound]

I don't understand the grit requests. Are they asking for heavier distortion from the drive knob? Is the soft clip and driving the output up not enough? Can people post audio examples of what this "grit" sounds like?

The drive sounds lovely to me. But you can definitely push it into complete distortion with the soft clip: https://clyp.it/aaq3b1zv

Since we're still working on the manual, let me give some info on this in advance:
The 'drive' control has a toal gain range of 48dB, which is pretty much like in guitar-pedal territory. The 'tone' control (acting as a kind of tilt filter) is in between. Drive is actually two soft-clipping stages around 'tone'. Thus, the two are interactive, which should be considered when trying to of dial in more 'grit'. Plus, and there's post-gain volume compensation going on.
Maybe it's less than some expect, but I can assure I've tried more gain, and it didn't make much sense in the context. The tank then was flooded by a noise-like signal, and the outcome then was also... noise. Developing such a thing is always a balancing act, and one has to see it from many angles.
I personally like Metal and Industrial, but the stuff I develop must also be capable to please somebody doing Jazz or Fusion. Roughly speaking.

Funny thing is, it was just yesterday when William (who created ColourCopy) said 'hm, I find the filter resonance way too mighty, it can easily add 30dB of gain around its center, that's huuuge'. I was like 'That's why there's soft-clip on the output'. We have lots of discussion in the office on how well or not so well a piece of software should behave, unless you're modelling a specific device with given degrees of freedom.
We considered implementing another filter (or another behaviour) first, but then put it aside, maybe for later. Our focus then was to concentrate on tank and modulation, and check how far people can already get with this concept (which we didn't want to water, it's still designed as a reverberating device). As a developer, you're always at risk of overengineering things in the first place, but sometimes it's better to think of software being an evolutionary process, and of knowledge gained on both sides over time.

That being said, we've always added features to every product over time, and we're together in places like this to keep that going. We definitely appreciate discussing products openly (hence public betas!), and it's great to see people being passionate and enthusiastic (it's all about making music!), as long as manners are preserved.

Again, I definitely agree there's enough drive... you can easily create an almost completely overdriven sound pushing this, and hopefully people catch what you added about the tone control.

I wouldn't normally reach for a spring reverb when wanting saturation, but you guys have created a lovely driven sound that makes it hard to not want to push things. Maybe that's where much of the requests are coming from. For a spring reverb plugin, there's not much competition. In addition to other spring reverb plugins, I have my IRs too and I can easily see myself using this first.

Still, my only gripe is the lack of brightness. I hope you guys reconsider here. I can always add tools after Twangstrom (EQ and saturators) but it'd be nice to not need to do that.

[sascha]

We need to check that with the brightness. Thing is, we downsampled the tank section with the chirp part, since there's so much going on. At 44k project rate it's actually 11k. Most real-world tanks have no significant contents above 5k anyway, so its's generally a safe thing. but there can always be some sparkle above that, but at some point we needed to outweigh things. The least we wanted was a plugin that sounded awesome but consumed too much processing power for the majority of users. Most spring-rev plugins I've come across have steep low-pass filetring at 5k, but of course we can consider adding a quality switch, but it's probably not an ad-hoc thing but more for a future update.

[sleepcircle]

i wouldnt mind having a little more of my power consumed

[Gottrahmen]

I honestly think the majority of my wants & needs could be addressed by including a BP filter, and it's really odd to me that currently there isn't one. I'd love to hear the thought process behind making the middle filter a notch rather than BP, because the latter seems like such an obvious choice to me. I'm sure there's a reason for it, and maybe I'll appreciate the notch a bit more.

[sascha]

BP would be easy. We'll add that and put a switch on the UI (Notch|BP). Would probably default to notch, though.

[Gottrahmen]

Well that was easy. I had a more elaborate message with a hello & thanks but the spam filter is so heavy handed it wouldn't let me post it. So, thanks!

[muki]

another wishlist item:

midi note input

what's great about CoCo is the ability to alter the delay length
with midi-note input (think karplu-strong)

would be nice to have something similar with twangstrom
midinote as modulator-source in the mod matrix or hardwired to tension and/or filter-frquency"

and in re EQing:
as with any real springreverb, there can be massive rumble in the lo end

that's nice for modular-bleepy-di-plop-synth and alike
but imho a major pita for mixing