Audiosyn BBD Echo-80 - anyone using it?

[bduffy]

Recently, a new developer, Audiosyn, released the BBD Echo-80 as a faithful emulation of Bucket Brigade-style FX. I've been somewhat surprised by how little chatter this plug-in has recieved here, as it seems to offer comprehensive control over analog-style delay FX; a highly popular demand here, I'm sure many have noticed.

So how did we miss it? Is the market saturated? Is it no good? Because it's made with SE modules? I personally found the controls a little confusing, but I don't demand this much from a delay; but then again, many switches are unlabelled. But the complex modulation/options would, I think, appeal to many KVR experimentalists.

My demo timed out, so I lost my chance. He just lowered the price to $39, though. Much more competitive. What do you all think? Just curious.

[bduffy]

bump

[shamann]

It has some cool stuff going on, but I think the silence is mostly:

- It's a commercial SE-made effect. No matter what, whether rational or not, SE'll scare a lot of folk off at that price. If I can remember right, it was originally released without a demo. Perhaps there was a delay with the installer or something.

- For the same price, you can get Audio Damage's Dubstation. I just did an A/B. The BBD Echo-80 has some character of its own and can make for a cool effect, but as a BBD clone, it simply doesn't compare to Dubstation.

- ArcDev are giving a SE-made BBD clone away for free already (see first point on "despite rationality")

- When playing with the delay time, it starts to sound like a bitcrusher. Which is kind of cool on its own, but it shouldn't sound that way for what it is trying to be. The signal also degrades in a somewhat harsh bitcrusher-like way, too.

- The GUI is massive. I mean massive. Admittedly it has cool stuff like the mouse-over help and a lot of controls for modulation, but still, massive.

[bduffy]

It has some cool stuff going on, but I think the silence is mostly:

- It's a commercial SE-made effect. No matter what, whether rational or not, SE'll scare a lot of folk off at that price. If I can remember right, it was originally released without a demo. Perhaps there was a delay with the installer or something.

- For the same price, you can get Audio Damage's Dubstation. I just did an A/B. The BBD Echo-80 has some character of its own and can make for a cool effect, but as a BBD clone, it simply doesn't compare to Dubstation.

- ArcDev are giving a SE-made BBD clone away for free already (see first point on "despite rationality")

- When playing with the delay time, it starts to sound like a bitcrusher. Which is kind of cool on its own, but it shouldn't sound that way for what it is trying to be. The signal also degrades in a somewhat harsh bitcrusher-like way, too.

- The GUI is massive. I mean massive. Admittedly it has cool stuff like the mouse-over help and a lot of controls for modulation, but still, massive.

Yeah, those are pretty much the reasons why I suspected a lack of interest. I'm so curious because even new SE plugins generate interest here, but I think the no-demo thing kind of hurt it at the start.

Speaking of no demo, too bad there isn't one for Dubstation; I would like to try it, it gets rave reviews all around.

You said the interface is massive: it appears there are two versions, on for hi-def screens and one for normal resolutions. You may have used the BBD (Hi) as I did when I first opened it. I thought he was insane at first, then I realized what he was up to and used the (Lo) version. I assume the Hi version is intended for a laptop for easy live performance tweaks.

Happy New Year!

[Plutoniq9]

I guess i can jump in hear;

First off, the reason it has a bit crushing effect is because that is exactly how analog delay's (BBD based) worked. The reason most people were unaware of it and think of them being so "warm" sounding is that they have massive Low-pass filtering before and after the BBD IC to remove the aliasing. But the principal is exactly the same, and on my VST, you can raise the cutoff of the low-pass filter so that you can hear all that wonderful aliasing if you chose to do so, or switch on an 8-pole LPF and drop the cutoff to remove it...options options.

Actually, if you removed the antil-aliasing filters from an REAL analog delay, you would find it aliases a lot more extreme than my VST. Because BBD chips maxed out at 4096-stage, they needed to use a clock of roughly 10khz to achieve 300ms of delay time.

The reason Dubstation doesn't alias is that it doesn't change sample clock to change delay time, which is not how genuine analog delays worked. Actually, with v1.1.3 release, I enabled tap-point modulation on/off switch, which allows you to modulate the delay-time without changing the sample clock.....that means no aliasing. But I actually implemented that for modulation FX (chrous, flanger, etc.)....

Seems more people are more interested in using a pirated version of my software though, unfortunatley, a crack has already been released by TALIO. I urge people to use their judgement when considering the damage piracy does to an upstart business.

Cheers

Ryan

[shamann]

You said the interface is massive: it appears there are two versions, on for hi-def screens and one for normal resolutions

So much clearer. That'll teach me to load without checking what's there.

Seems more people are more interested in using a pirated version of my software though, unfortunatley, a crack has already been released by TALIO. I urge people to use their judgement when considering the damage piracy does to an upstart business.

Sorry to hear that.

[Plutoniq9]

Yeah, both hi and low resolutions. Low resolution version intended for people using smaller screen resolutions (i.e. 1024 X 768). Come on, aren't we in the era of hi-def?

Ryan

[shamann]

I'm using 1280x1024. The high-def one was pretty much the whole width of the screen. I only have a 17" LCD, and any higher def starts to hurt my eyes.

[Plutoniq9]

Oh, I should say that the delay clock goes from 1000hz up to audio host rate (i.e. 48khz) So you should change the sample rate of your host to as high as possible. If you switch that little switch up near the LED display, it will toggle display between delay time (in milliseconds) and sample clock (in Hz).

If you really want no aliasing at all, crank the delay clock up to host rate (i.e 44khz).....and instead change the Stage knob and stage offset knob as those will change the delay time as well. But most off the time, the low-pass filter should cut out most of the aliasing and give the delay the warm analogue delay sound.

You should really give the manual a read though, it's quite a flexible unit way beyond dubstation or bomb factories moogerfooger, but with that comes complexity.

Seeya

Ryan

[Plutoniq9]

Well, I always had in the back of my mind that it was a possibility (Key Generator's), I guess I didn't expect it so soon after a release though, you know.

Of course, the solution to this, in my mind, is to not release un-restricted demo's to the public but instead crippled versions (i.e beeps every 30 seconds). I wanted to try and avoid that with an un-restricted demo....so people could have a more enjoyable demo period....

I guess the positive side is that I'll remove the time limit imposed on using the demonstration, that is, the demo will work forver....it's just gonna have an annoying beep every 30 seconds.....

So, that'll start with v1.1.5. That release is gonna have harmonic distortion generator onboard (for analogue warmth) and a stereo version of the plug will be released with it.

Seeya

Ryan

Seems more people are more interested in using a pirated version of my software though, unfortunatley, a crack has already been released by TALIO. I urge people to use their judgement when considering the damage piracy does to an upstart business.

Sorry to hear that.[/quote]

[CapnLockheed]

Seems more people are more interested in using a pirated version of my software though, unfortunatley, a crack has already been released by TALIO. I urge people to use their judgement when considering the damage piracy does to an upstart business.

Piracy is wrong....that being said, there are
many "upstart" developers that don't charge
so much for SE creations and provide working
demos that are not targeted by the cracking
groups. Something to think about.

Cheers....CL

[Plutoniq9]

So what, I'm a target because I charge $40 for a VST that has been in development for 9 months. So what if it's done Synthedit....it still took a shit load of time to create. The BBD IC emulation was built nearly from the ground up by another hard working developer in the Synthedt community called Dave Haupt. Name another TRUE BBD based analogue delay VST that offers 25% of what has been put into the BBD Echo-80 VST & then offer suggestions about my pricing.
A few things i can say sets my VST apart from the crowd is that

A)That the BBD itself was modelled to work 100% how it does in real life.......

B)Secondly, no true VST analogue delay I've heard of offers delay time modulation......

C)None of them allow you to also create modulation FX (Chorus, Flanger etc.)

D)None of them offer up to 14 seconds of delay time.

I'm really surprised at the perception of worth of synthedit VST's by the KVR crowd.......why should anything that took you 9 months in Synthedit be worth less than something that took 9 months to code. Considering Bombfactories moogerfooger is $200, why shouldn't I expect 20% of that price for something that offers 10 times more features?

Ryan

[Plutoniq9]

So why do you consider a 7-day 100% unrestricted demo not being a working demo? You don't think that's fair....i didn't even put any nags in. It was protected only by a serial number sytem.

That's why i was a target.

Ryan

Piracy is wrong....that being said, there are
many "upstart" developers that don't charge
so much for SE creations and provide working
demos that are not targeted by the cracking
groups. Something to think about.

Cheers....CL