Cytomic "The Scream" stomp box distortion plugin

[andy-cytomic]

Right, I understand the implications of the filters and PDC. I was curious about the implementation in terms of output in a DAW.

Is the 1ms PDC compensated?

Ahh, ok, sorry! Hopefully my previous post will be of use to other people that don't realise these things already.

Of course I report the exact integer latency my oversampling introduces so that the DAW can align everything. I also tune my intermediate and minimum phase oversampling filters to have an exact integer delay from DC right up to around 5 khz, which keeps those in place too. I sort out all these details so you don't have to worry about anything you do with Cytomic plugins and can concentrate on making music.

A lot of plugins use minimum phase oversampling but don't even report to the DAW they are delaying the signal at all, and usually this minimum phase filtering causes non-integer (eg 4.2324 samples delay) that the DAW can't even correct if they did report it! (which they can't since DAWs only accept whole integer values through the API to report the latency).

[Robert Randolph]

Right, I understand the implications of the filters and PDC. I was curious about the implementation in terms of output in a DAW.

Is the 1ms PDC compensated?

Ahh, ok, sorry! Hopefully my previous post will be of use to other people that don't realise these things already.

Of course I report the exact integer latency my oversampling introduces so that the DAW can align everything. I also tune my intermediate and minimum phase oversampling filters to have an exact integer delay from DC right up to around 5 khz, which keeps those in place too. I sort out all these details so you don't have to worry about anything you do with Cytomic plugins and can concentrate on making music.

A lot of plugins use minimum phase oversampling but don't even report to the DAW they are delaying the signal at all, and usually this minimum phase filtering causes non-integer (eg 4.2324 samples delay) that the DAW can't even correct if they did report it! (which they can't since DAWs only accept whole integer values through the API to report the latency).

Excellent, thanks.

I wasn't 100% certain if your filter graphs were pure filter implementations, or 'real life plugin implementations. Hence the shift was curious to me.

[meloco_go]

Right, I understand the implications of the filters and PDC. I was curious about the implementation in terms of output in a DAW.

Is the 1ms PDC compensated?

Ahh, ok, sorry! Hopefully my previous post will be of use to other people that don't realise these things already.

Of course I report the exact integer latency my oversampling introduces so that the DAW can align everything. I also tune my intermediate and minimum phase oversampling filters to have an exact integer delay from DC right up to around 5 khz, which keeps those in place too. I sort out all these details so you don't have to worry about anything you do with Cytomic plugins and can concentrate on making music.

A lot of plugins use minimum phase oversampling but don't even report to the DAW they are delaying the signal at all, and usually this minimum phase filtering causes non-integer (eg 4.2324 samples delay) that the DAW can't even correct if they did report it! (which they can't since DAWs only accept whole integer values through the API to report the latency).

Indeed, many plugins with minimum-phase oversampling don't report latency correctly. For a long time I avoided minimum-phase plugins in parallel processing chains, because of the frequency cancellation. But I found that The Scream can be used in parallel even in minimum-phase mode for many signals as with correct delay compensation the notches only appear in the top-end.
Although the linear phase mode is very efficient in The Scream, so it can be used for parallel processing.

[andy-cytomic]

Indeed, many plugins with minimum-phase oversampling don't report latency correctly. For a long time I avoided minimum-phase plugins in parallel processing chains, because of the frequency cancellation. But I found that The Scream can be used in parallel even in minimum-phase mode for many signals as with correct delay compensation the notches only appear in the top-end.
Although the linear phase mode is very efficient in The Scream, so it can be used for parallel processing.

Most people don't notice such things with plugins, so I'm impressed you know the difference! If you're doing parallel processing then I recommend you use the built in mix control, which will delay both the dry and wet in exactly the same minimum phase way, so the resultant parallel mix will be bang on all the way up.

So if you do need, for some reason, you need to align an external track to one processed with minimum phase oversampling you can do this by placing another instance of the same plugin on the parallel bus, and use the mix control to make it dry. This way the same non-linear latency is added to both the parallel "dry" and the other wet channel, so they will align all the way across the spectrum without cancellation. Obviously you then still need to latency compensate both of these to the other tracks, so you still need integer latency across most of the spectrum.

[flurp]

Hi

I bought The Scream and i love it. I was wondering if there was a "flat" mod available, when you want to use it in parallel processing for mixing purposes, so that it sounds less mid-rangey ?

It's a pretty damn good distortion box, much more musical than the rest. I wish Cytomic made more distortion boxes

Thanks

[andy-cytomic]

Hi

I bought The Scream and i love it. I was wondering if there was a "flat" mod available, when you want to use it in parallel processing for mixing purposes, so that it sounds less mid-rangey ?

It's a pretty damn good distortion box, much more musical than the rest. I wish Cytomic made more distortion boxes

Thanks

Thanks! The final release will have a some production full bandwidth "warming" presets, but till then check the out the ones starting with Mix or Desk in here:

https://cytomic.com/files/scream-beta-presets-2.zip

Also the cpu usage for these sorts of bread and butter presets will be much lower with the MD mode, it's only the more esoteric settings that will require the full HD mode to pull off.

There are loads more stomp box models planned, and then I'll move on to doing full amp sims as well, all with the same level of detail and ability to customise everything like you can with The Scream.

[flurp]

awesome, thanks for the info and the great presets ! i'm already using them.

[jens]

There are loads more stomp box models planned, and then I'll move on to doing full amp sims as well, all with the same level of detail and ability to customise everything like you can with The Scream.

One one hand that sounds really marvelous but on the other hand we all know the pace at which you use to release and wrap-up, so I'm not holding my breath.

[sleepcircle]

everyone can be slow. i mean, i am as slow as DEATH. and as someone with 18000 posts on this forum, you only have 4 songs online, that I could find, from 2008.

[jens]

I have songs online?

Not that this matters, but just for the record I am actually extremely fast as a musician - on a good day I can compose, record, arrange and (preliminarily) mix a song of reasonable quality in about three hours, so I literally have hundreds of more or less finished tracks sitting on my drives.

But either way I didn't mean to say at all that Andy was a slow coder. I think it's rather that he is such a perfectionist - which is certainly applaudable! And as long as he manages to get enough income to be a) personally really satisfied with it and b) actually stay in business full-time, I don't see a problem at all with it (except of course that I'd love to get my hands on more of his stuff). But I'm not holding my breath.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

There are loads more stomp box models planned, and then I'll move on to doing full amp sims as well, all with the same level of detail and ability to customise everything like you can with The Scream.

If I remember correctly, you posted a while back on the current state of cabinet simulation in the amp sim world and not being pleased with static IR's, but also feeling like getting this piece right would be processor intensive. Just curious if your thoughts have changed on that subject, or how you'd want to address that. Then there's still trying to get the sound of the signal chain post-amp (microphone into pre) in order for it to sound like a recorded amp.

For me, I'd love to see some more stomps (fuzz box - preferrably a muff with all the different variations, maybe a Rat) then honestly, some really high quality compression or even EQs, and of course the Cytomic synth. These days, I've acquired a few good amps with a pretty wide palette of tones between them, and just gone back to mic'ing them up when it's critical or declaring amp sims as being "good enough" when I'm feeling lazy.

[sleepcircle]

@jens huh, i guess i was wrong then. that's impressive. got any songs published anywhere?

[jens]

No, perhaps you were not - there still might be some very old stuff around... and I also more recently occasionally showed on or the other piece to demonstrate a plugin... but officially I have nothing online at the moment. It's not that I would mind - it's just that I somehow can't be bothered...

[sleepcircle]

well thank goodness andy can be bothered.

[jens]

Yes, absolutely! I think I can kind of imagine how much work it must be to get it all together...