Cytomic "The Scream" stomp box distortion plugin

[lunatiKK_synth]

I feel like this is going to be FANTASTIC for old-school punk stuff. Tube screamers are always my go-to for that grittiness and having a plugin like this to just grab right away is stellar. Can't wait.

[andy-cytomic]

Yeah, well, how are we supposed to really know if it's any good w/o me trying it??????

I definitely recommend trying before buying. In the past I've spent a lot of R&D work getting an automated solver working, so this is really the first product I've done with that in place. It's taken just under two months solid work thus far, and I expect it to be released in around 4 weeks, so this will be the quickest product I've ever done. I'm also getting much better at the 3D side of things as well, it's great being able to turn around a product so quickly after having spent years and years on other ones!

[AnX]

Thanks to everyone for all the great feedback!

Here is an updated render of the UI with a more standard Cytomic black horizontal brushed metal type look, and I've also updated the name to use Cytomic's standard product font:

The top section just looks to crammed. I'd rather see your standard clean and clear gui thats easy to read and use than this photo realistic stuff that crams everything in while there is tons of wasted space around it.

...and it should really be the same colour as the original pedal.

[cprompt]

(whoops)

[cprompt]

The top section just looks to crammed. I'd rather see your standard clean and clear gui thats easy to read and use than this photo realistic stuff that crams everything in while there is tons of wasted space around it.

As much as I love a good photorealistic GUI, a certain dev of certain ampsims and now plugins has done very well in the last year using non-photorealistic GUIs. Truth be told, once I close the GUI, it could be a picture of Marilyn Monroe for all I care.

Having said that, this is a beautiful GUI for sure.

[kj.metissage]

Looks great now !

[A3ntar]

Love the first Green GUI (screamer green). The black is not my cup of tea for a screamer emulation.

Why not have the GUI skin (green or black) as an option, or if it is too complicated as your framework does not allow dynamic resources loading/switching, upon initialization load the skin from disk as a separate file and give both bitmaps in the distro, so one could easily switch from one skin to the other by renaming files (or editing config file), or one could even create custom bitmaps for the Screamer's main GUI.

Regardless, can't wait to try your emulation of the TS-808 and the pedals emulations to follow.

[andy-cytomic]

Love the first Green GUI (screamer green). The black is not my cup of tea for a screamer emulation.

Why not have the GUI skin (green or black) as an option, or if it is too complicated as your framework does not allow dynamic resources loading/switching, upon initialization load the skin from disk as a separate file and give both bitmaps in the distro, so one could easily switch from one skin to the other by renaming files (or editing config file), or one could even create custom bitmaps for the Screamer's main GUI.

Regardless, can't wait to try your emulation of the TS-808 and the pedals emulations to follow.

It's easy enough to switch resources, but the problem then is plugin bloat. All resources are baked into the binary, so you can never accidentally delete anything, and it's really easy to then switch which version you're using, and backup and restore the plugins. The problem then is this causes bloat if you have multiple copies of backgrounds as they all have to be in the binary. Things get even worse on Mac since then you have universal binaries so the 32-bit and 64-bit version need to be in there, so this doubles resource use already. Additionally it's not just the background that would have to be switched, every other control would have to be rendered with the different background colour since they all bleed into each other as the light bounces around the scene!

[izonin]

The last GUI preview looks perfect. Top 3D modeling/rendering skills, man.

(Don't be surprised if NI asks you to be their next GUI designer, hehe)

[kmonkey]

The top section just looks to crammed. I'd rather see your standard clean and clear gui thats easy to read and use than this photo realistic stuff that crams everything in while there is tons of wasted space around it.

...and it should really be the same colour as the original pedal.

It does not! Drop it you Tron-iron man!! (this is supposed to be a joke just to be clear)

I certainly like this last darker GUI. I hope Andy will stick to it.

[kmonkey]

Any preliminary sound examples???

[Ivan_C]

Everything looks awesome !

[Ichad.c]

... I'm keen to tackle the RAT, Big Muff PI, and possibly the Fuzz Factory (I need to have a listen to one first!) and even the MXR M-104 is there is demand.

The Fuzz Factory can be insane, even get it in Eurorack, not a very complex circuit but I'll take off my hat to anyone that can nail it in plug-in land:

[incubus]

I only care about ONE THING: How does it sound?*

*Well, and cpu usage of course

Frankly (and I've donated more than once) the TS-999 is very good and very versatile and it's free for cheapskates

I play guitar no less than 2 hours a day, so I'd use it all the time if cool. (particularly in front of s-gear, which with some dandy IR's, sounds as good as anything these days)

[andy-cytomic]

I only care about ONE THING: How does it sound?*

*Well, and cpu usage of course

Frankly (and I've donated more than once) the TS-999 is very good and very versatile and it's free for cheapskates

I play guitar no less than 2 hours a day, so I'd use it all the time if cool. (particularly in front of s-gear, which with some dandy IR's, sounds as good as anything these days)

The Scream sounds gorgeous, and captures a lot more of the dynamic behaviour of the original circuit than any other plugin I've tried - I can switch between the The Scream and the hardware and can't tell them apart unless the input is something basic like a sine wave so I can make out the hiss of the hardware. It takes around 11% cpu of a single core on my 3.1GHz i7 laptop running at x2 oversampling of 44.1 kHz, the TS-999 takes around 6% cpu on x2 44.1kHz. You have to pay for the extra detail, but I think it's still a reasonable tradeoff to get things sounding bang on to the hardware.

If you don't want to fork out USD 29 for the extra tone, detail, and customisation options then please stick with the free TS-999, it still sounds good. Just don't push it too hard with the input levels otherwise it can break their DSP code and sound terrible!