Theres a few very good freeware, it's a harder search but some nice ones are out here, it seems you've found quite a few that suit you already wich is good. I'm not too crazy about alot of freeware but i know that the freeware out here is MUCH better then the cheap hardware junk i had. I would'nt go back to the hardware only days if my life depended on it, It scares me just to think about it. That stuff was costly in many ways. I love my digital sound, and realize that the computer music age has brought me nothing but opportunity. It's great we can build a pro home studio off of freeware.
As far as Cakewalk, they have been great to me but i understand your point. I bought several steinberg effects that became discontinued and was'nt able to get updates (Mastering Edition, d-pole, grm tools) so i've experienced this myself.
The Uad and voxengo's are great for commercial compressors and eq's aswell as other effects,
Some more good freeware would be nyquist eq, voxengo span, voxengo overtone geq,vanilla compressor, and colortone by tritonedigital.for freeware synths try swamp-free. Good luck! I'm sure things will work out well for you.
what HARDWARE gear do you use to tame digital sound?
-
- KVRian
- 1359 posts since 5 Mar, 2005
-
- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 148 posts since 11 Sep, 2006 from in my own little orbit
thanks for the recommendations. i'm STILL researching effects, but i already have decent shortlists of the ones that keep popping up here and in other forums.
freeware effects are pretty easy to find as there's so much buzz here and elsewhere about them. i've even done some statistical analysis of the results and have found a few effects that seem universally popular...
reverbs:
SIR
oldschoolverb & pristine space by voxengo (and voxengo in general especially boogex)
ambience
glaceverb
echotank XL
filters:
scuzzphut 6
frohmage (i just heard a demo of quad and loved the wild distortion effects it provided that i never knew a filter could make)
minion
ohmygod!
auto filter by kaerhus (and kaerhus clasics in general)
posihfopit
&
tone 2 bifilter
EQs:
PLP par EQ 3
clas
sonalkis
glis EQ (another voxengo)
classic kaerhus
& nyquist
equim & firium were very popular, but acording to CM they have been taken up by a new company, renamed and now go for $300 a pop... definately not freewar
limiters:
endorphin
blockfish & floorfish
dominion
mda multiband
&
pocket limiter
for amp sims, JCM9000 seems to be the universal favorite
for de-essers, spitfish seems to be tops
and somewhere i have a note for the noise gate everyone seems to think is best.
searching for effects is a bit easier than synths because most effects are supposed to do very specific tasks in a very specific way whereas synths are definately a matter of personal taste. i hate the "industrial sound" whereas a a nine inch nails fan would probably hate the bouncy cheerful tones like steel drum, kalimba & banjo that i like.
i'm still not a total digital convert. i like the sound of my vinyl better than CDs. it's warmer and more relaxed, but i COULD easily get crisper treble out of my previous turtle beach soundcard i bought for $25 on closeout compared to my $700 sony portable cassette deck (which still does sound pretty darn good for cassette, especially considering it can be used for field recordings). oh snap! i just realized, i ALREADY have an analogue limiter in my cassette deck! there's a new piece of hardware i already had, yay!
digital is simply cheaper and more flexible than analogue. i wish i still had my 1/4" X 8 track @ 15 ips fostex, but it could NEVER do the extensive editing possible with a 48 track DAW and each 15 minute recording would cost $8. really it didn't quite suit my needs anyways as i won't be doing live recording.
the sound of digital isn't great, but the possibilities are virtually endless. i'll give up some SQ to get the power of a million dollar (circa 1980) recording studio for merely the price of a $500 PC, $200 soundcard & a $300 midi controller.
my poor busted emax was never connected to a sequencer as i never had a PC until about 2000 and when i did, it was too out of date for the planned obsolescence pushing software developers. now i'm poised to get everything i'll ever need NOW and NEVER buy another PC or OS again until it actually physically breaks.
i'd try to start an anti-obsolescence boycott, but i already know from experience it'll never catch on any more than my plans to bring greedy overpaid high speed internet and cable providers to their knees.
most people seem happy to foolishly whizz away money like good little consumer robots.
yeah... i've got issues. LOL
freeware effects are pretty easy to find as there's so much buzz here and elsewhere about them. i've even done some statistical analysis of the results and have found a few effects that seem universally popular...
reverbs:
SIR
oldschoolverb & pristine space by voxengo (and voxengo in general especially boogex)
ambience
glaceverb
echotank XL
filters:
scuzzphut 6
frohmage (i just heard a demo of quad and loved the wild distortion effects it provided that i never knew a filter could make)
minion
ohmygod!
auto filter by kaerhus (and kaerhus clasics in general)
posihfopit
&
tone 2 bifilter
EQs:
PLP par EQ 3
clas
sonalkis
glis EQ (another voxengo)
classic kaerhus
& nyquist
equim & firium were very popular, but acording to CM they have been taken up by a new company, renamed and now go for $300 a pop... definately not freewar
limiters:
endorphin
blockfish & floorfish
dominion
mda multiband
&
pocket limiter
for amp sims, JCM9000 seems to be the universal favorite
for de-essers, spitfish seems to be tops
and somewhere i have a note for the noise gate everyone seems to think is best.
searching for effects is a bit easier than synths because most effects are supposed to do very specific tasks in a very specific way whereas synths are definately a matter of personal taste. i hate the "industrial sound" whereas a a nine inch nails fan would probably hate the bouncy cheerful tones like steel drum, kalimba & banjo that i like.
i'm still not a total digital convert. i like the sound of my vinyl better than CDs. it's warmer and more relaxed, but i COULD easily get crisper treble out of my previous turtle beach soundcard i bought for $25 on closeout compared to my $700 sony portable cassette deck (which still does sound pretty darn good for cassette, especially considering it can be used for field recordings). oh snap! i just realized, i ALREADY have an analogue limiter in my cassette deck! there's a new piece of hardware i already had, yay!
digital is simply cheaper and more flexible than analogue. i wish i still had my 1/4" X 8 track @ 15 ips fostex, but it could NEVER do the extensive editing possible with a 48 track DAW and each 15 minute recording would cost $8. really it didn't quite suit my needs anyways as i won't be doing live recording.
the sound of digital isn't great, but the possibilities are virtually endless. i'll give up some SQ to get the power of a million dollar (circa 1980) recording studio for merely the price of a $500 PC, $200 soundcard & a $300 midi controller.
my poor busted emax was never connected to a sequencer as i never had a PC until about 2000 and when i did, it was too out of date for the planned obsolescence pushing software developers. now i'm poised to get everything i'll ever need NOW and NEVER buy another PC or OS again until it actually physically breaks.
i'd try to start an anti-obsolescence boycott, but i already know from experience it'll never catch on any more than my plans to bring greedy overpaid high speed internet and cable providers to their knees.
most people seem happy to foolishly whizz away money like good little consumer robots.
yeah... i've got issues. LOL
-
- KVRian
- 1121 posts since 4 Jun, 2003 from Skanky Manc
http://www.rozzer.net/wp/?p=33gambitron wrote:does anyone here use real analogue gear to fatten their digital tracks at all? i'm about to get a dedicated PC for recording and plan on resampling tracks through analogue gear at 24/96 to make it sound more analogue.
-
- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 148 posts since 11 Sep, 2006 from in my own little orbit
it WAS about hardware. someone started taklking about software and i replied. what do you mean "hijacking my own thread"? does this forum have different rules than the IMDB etc.?
for what it's worth, it looks like i'll be getting the elecro harmonix and maybe a fuzz box and/or compressor down the road.
digital is nice, but why not use the real thing whenever you can afford it right?
for what it's worth, it looks like i'll be getting the elecro harmonix and maybe a fuzz box and/or compressor down the road.
digital is nice, but why not use the real thing whenever you can afford it right?
-
- KVRAF
- 8088 posts since 9 Jan, 2003 from Saint Louis MO
Because it's also a matter of taste.digital is nice, but why not use the real thing whenever you can afford it right?
All those words people use to describe why digital is "bad" are subjective: sterile, glassy, cold, and so on. Some of that makes about as much sense to me as a person with kinesthesia insisting they don't like the number 5 because it's yellow.
I like my digital music to be full of grit and noise and stuff. Nothing at all sterile about it. Lots of little digital microorganisms scuttling around. Sand in the gears. That excites me way more than any "fat, smooth, silky" oscillators or filters in the analog realm.
If I had the money to get any musical gear I wanted, I wouldn't go filling a room with analog synths. I'd pick up a couple of toys and effects (seeing as how nobody's done a proper ring modulator in software yet) but I wouldn't expect to primarily use them over plugins. But I'd get the fastest, quietest computer I could find and fill the bastard with DSP cards.
All a matter of taste.
-
- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 148 posts since 11 Sep, 2006 from in my own little orbit
digital DOES have a sound to it and many people do find it objectionable. personally, i think that people with hairs in their ear that vibrate at a precise ratio of digital's standard 44.1 KHz sample rate hear it more than others. it DOES sound cold and sterile, but it has also gotten alot better. around 1988-1990, even "high end" players on $10k B&Ws were screechy and offensive to my ears. my CDs sound totally different than my vinyl. my "cars" LP sounds WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more relaxed than my disc. i find listening to CDs for long periods of time to be fatiguing.
i'd love to hear SACD or DVD-A as i'm sure it's much better than the CD standard. perfect sound forever my hiney.
yes, it does come down to taste, and by claiming you prefer digital, then you are admitting that there IS a difference. by all means, like whatever you want to, but i find the shrill treble of digital (especially bad digital) to be stressful. i'd rather hear ticks and pops.
still, you just can't do as much with analogue as you can with digital and certainly not for free(ware). digital just sounds excessively siblant to my ears. maybe analogue's lower noise floor is a pleasant psychoacoustic byproduct, but i believe that converting "random" peaks and dips into regularly spaced bits (especially at a resolution only 2X the limit of hearing) is the reason why 16/44.1 just sounds wrong.
when digital first came out, alot of people were taping their CDs on cassette to tame the haze. i totally refused to embrace CDs until around 1995 when they started to sound less artificial with better DA converters and bitstreaming, but CDs still sound a little buzzy compared to vinyl to my ears.
i don't have a million dollars to build an all analogue studio, so i'll reluctantly embrace digital, but try to work at 24/96 whenever possible and use any analogue warming tricks i can to tame the spit.
after browsing another forum about filters, i'm starting to lust after the sherman filterbank hardware.
if you thoroughly like the sound of digital, more power to you, but i DO know that the treble on certain CDs i hear at the nightclub sounds like nails on a blackboard. even on my decent home system, my CD single of get busy by sean paul has high treble that's like a dentist's drill to the base of the neck. i love the song, but it's actually painful to listen to except on the radio.
i'd love to hear SACD or DVD-A as i'm sure it's much better than the CD standard. perfect sound forever my hiney.
yes, it does come down to taste, and by claiming you prefer digital, then you are admitting that there IS a difference. by all means, like whatever you want to, but i find the shrill treble of digital (especially bad digital) to be stressful. i'd rather hear ticks and pops.
still, you just can't do as much with analogue as you can with digital and certainly not for free(ware). digital just sounds excessively siblant to my ears. maybe analogue's lower noise floor is a pleasant psychoacoustic byproduct, but i believe that converting "random" peaks and dips into regularly spaced bits (especially at a resolution only 2X the limit of hearing) is the reason why 16/44.1 just sounds wrong.
when digital first came out, alot of people were taping their CDs on cassette to tame the haze. i totally refused to embrace CDs until around 1995 when they started to sound less artificial with better DA converters and bitstreaming, but CDs still sound a little buzzy compared to vinyl to my ears.
i don't have a million dollars to build an all analogue studio, so i'll reluctantly embrace digital, but try to work at 24/96 whenever possible and use any analogue warming tricks i can to tame the spit.
after browsing another forum about filters, i'm starting to lust after the sherman filterbank hardware.
if you thoroughly like the sound of digital, more power to you, but i DO know that the treble on certain CDs i hear at the nightclub sounds like nails on a blackboard. even on my decent home system, my CD single of get busy by sean paul has high treble that's like a dentist's drill to the base of the neck. i love the song, but it's actually painful to listen to except on the radio.
-
- KVRAF
- 8088 posts since 9 Jan, 2003 from Saint Louis MO
-
- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 148 posts since 11 Sep, 2006 from in my own little orbit
uh... putting an EQ on a home system (except maybe a behringer DEQ2496 , ahem digital EQ, to flatten overall in room response to +- 0.5dB) is an abomination in one's home system. less is more. EQs add distortion. now that room tuning has become affordable though, the hi-fi crowd doesn't avoid EQs like the plague anymore.
maybe the engineer who mastered the mix to begin with should have put some lowpass on those high-hats. i've never heard anything else sizzle like that on my system ever. they must have had blown tweeters in the studio or something. it's so loud it competes with the vocals which i thought were at fault until i checked the instrumental out. i'll definately give that track some rolloff when i get my new and imprioved PC.
the nightclub DEFINATELY needs some lowpass. they also should put those cheesy "DJ" speakers in the corners for more bass emphasis and turn them upside down for better time alignment of the horn tweeter. horns... blech! i bet a nickel those are cheap piezo units.
back to hardware,
i was doing a bit of article scanning at electronic musician and found a great little limiter there for just $200. some further research confirmed that the FMR - really nice compressor is a huge value and is more transparent than units several times it's price if anyone is looking to compress in the real world.
maybe the engineer who mastered the mix to begin with should have put some lowpass on those high-hats. i've never heard anything else sizzle like that on my system ever. they must have had blown tweeters in the studio or something. it's so loud it competes with the vocals which i thought were at fault until i checked the instrumental out. i'll definately give that track some rolloff when i get my new and imprioved PC.
the nightclub DEFINATELY needs some lowpass. they also should put those cheesy "DJ" speakers in the corners for more bass emphasis and turn them upside down for better time alignment of the horn tweeter. horns... blech! i bet a nickel those are cheap piezo units.
back to hardware,
i was doing a bit of article scanning at electronic musician and found a great little limiter there for just $200. some further research confirmed that the FMR - really nice compressor is a huge value and is more transparent than units several times it's price if anyone is looking to compress in the real world.
-
- KVRAF
- 10597 posts since 13 Jun, 2004 from Alberto Balsam
I wouldn't agree with that at all. If you run noise under a digital synth it sounds like a digital synth with noise added to it. It's like trying to make a signal sound like it came off of a record by running a recording of record fuzz under it. It just doesnt work.Benedict wrote: Try this and you may be amazed: add a small amount of white noise just under an instrument. Hey presto it sounds warmer and more real already.
I would say that if you're going to run audio through anything hardware/analog and back into your computer to tame harshness, the most important thing is the quality of your convertors. A cheap A-D convertor will make it sound harsher than ever.
But in my honest oppinion, I would say the real key is in the mix-down of your tracks. I bounce shit outside my computer less and less but i think my synth sounds sound better than they did in the past. I think a good sounding EQ can be very important. It's all about how the sounds fit in context with the rest of the track. And use decent synths in the first place.
-
- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 148 posts since 11 Sep, 2006 from in my own little orbit
the white noise trick probably DOES work to a small extent if you keep it just below the threshold of audibility. there was a big to do back in the mid 90s about pioneer CD players that used DITHERING (related to white noise) to make their players sound more analogue. the player was the darling of the audio press for a few years after that.
a cheesy AD/DA converter will definately affect sound i know. that's why i won't settle for anything less than 24/96 and have been trying to follow "best converter" threads wherever i can, but info seems sparse. i had tried to use keywords like "best AD converters" and "audio interface shootout" to no avail. anyone know of a website with reviews for the best entry level converters? i know that i'd really like a benchmark DAC-1 system, but i don't have $2000 to lay out for an AD as well as DA converter.
on the PC i just gave away when i moved, i was actually surprised at how good my $25 closeout 16/44 turtle beach card sounded. it wasn't that bad and did little damage to dubs i made from cassettes.
it's definately true in both analogue and digital that garbage in = garvbage out for sure.
a cheesy AD/DA converter will definately affect sound i know. that's why i won't settle for anything less than 24/96 and have been trying to follow "best converter" threads wherever i can, but info seems sparse. i had tried to use keywords like "best AD converters" and "audio interface shootout" to no avail. anyone know of a website with reviews for the best entry level converters? i know that i'd really like a benchmark DAC-1 system, but i don't have $2000 to lay out for an AD as well as DA converter.
on the PC i just gave away when i moved, i was actually surprised at how good my $25 closeout 16/44 turtle beach card sounded. it wasn't that bad and did little damage to dubs i made from cassettes.
it's definately true in both analogue and digital that garbage in = garvbage out for sure.