Cytomic "The Scream" stomp box distortion plugin

[Twrogstudio]

Honestly couldn't care less what it looks like, but I am absolutely dying to hear it!!!

[andy-cytomic]

Honestly, I'd prefer to see all the controls at once. And personally, I think you'd be better off forgoing the stompbox/skeuomorphic look entirely and start with a "The Drop" like design. The Drop and The Glue share a look that's missing here. That look is just something I associate with the Cytomic brand, and the faux-stompbox appearance of The Scream breaks that up IMO. There are lots of other VST stompboxes of lower quality that already look somewhat similar, so I'd think a non-stompbox look would further help differentiate The Scream from the rest. Might also help make the case, "not just for guitarists."

I'd ideally like to see three big Drop-style silver knobs (Drive, Tone, Level, maybe even the Mix knob) along the top of the UI. Blue LED-style toggle buttons for Asym, Fat, and Bright, and smaller knobs along the bottom for the Mods. If you're concerned about how to do future stompboxes in the future, I'd even suggest seeing if there's any kind of shared parameter set where you could add different distortion circuits into the design a la the different filter types in The Drop, even if that meant increasing the price with subsequent releases. A Drop for different distortions would be awesome (kind of like a Cytomic version of Fabfilter's Saturn). Heck, if you were to think about doing a multi-distortion type box, then maybe multiple bands and/or a Drop-style mod-matrix would be cool, but now I'm talking about a whole different kind of product (feature creep).

Anyway, just some customer feedback. I'd end up buying it either way, if anything, just to support a developer who I've gotten a lot of value from so far.

Thanks for the feedback! I have done exactly as I've done for The Glue and The Drop, all the controls are visible at once, and they are 3D rendered and made to look physically possible as a piece of hardware. All Cytomic interfaces are "skeuomorphic" in that sense, included The Glue and The Drop! There are three big silver knobs, just like The Drop / The Glue - they are the most important and they take centre stage. Just like the knobs in The Glue and The Drop are different, so are these - they are in a style appropriate for the effect.

The only control which is not visible all the time is the big silver "active" button, but you can click on the yellow LED to get the same thing, so although that control isn't visible it's duplicate is, so you can access all the controls at once. The mods section will not be physically possible, it will be a page of combo boxes and text edit fields, it's picking capacitor values and diode types, so it's not really suitable for knobs / buttons etc. I could do a graphics of some hands and a soldering iron and boxes/bags of components with labels but I think a few text edit / list / text edit boxes will be fine.

Perhaps in a years time I could combine all the different distortion stomp boxes into a single mega product, but the aim of The Scream is to provide the worlds most detailed stomp box model to date, complete the project quickly, and provide it at a low price point. Most stomp boxes have very different controls, and very different ranges on those controls, which is unlike a resonant filter which basically as two controls - resonance and cutoff which are shared. So in this regard any conglomerate plugin featuring different stomp boxes would basically be a bunch of general knobs which would then get mapped to particular stomp box knobs, so you couldn't even switch between stomp boxes and compare the tone since all the knobs don't map to each other and the levels / gain / eq will be all over the place. So it won't offer much functionality over just swapping stomp boxes at the plugin level - the only benefit would be flicking through presets because multiple different models could be auditioned.

Anyway, back to finishing The Scream first!

[andy-cytomic]

I have to agree with Funkybot... I don't care about a "slim UI", I care about the functionality of this tool. And if everything is in one place, even better. Reminds me of other pedal developers that use the main design as UI, and have buttons to the side that offer advanced settings, or flip the tool around to access more in-depth settings.

There really was no need for this extra UI work IMO. Resizing the UI was enough already.



Else... I'm having an eye on this plugin. I like the concept to model my own overdrive/distortion pedal. Maybe somebody does it right this time without bloat or crazy CP shenanigans (to which I have confidence that you, Andy, can pull that off graciously considering how lightweight your other tools are).


The only two Q's I have left are:
1) when is the ETA for the "public beta"?
2) I might have missed this, but what is the planned MSRP?

Everything is in one place, all controls are visible from the contracted version of the gui, just lick on the yellow LED to toggle the active state of the plugin (ie toggle between processing through the input and output buffers, and the entire signal cain - you need to use the top left power button to actually cleanly bypass the effect.) Advanced customisation of choosing capacitor and diode types will be done on the mods panel, which is yet to be designed, and that will fit on the bottom of the expanded plugin so you can still adjust all the main controls.

1) I'm aiming for Friday 31st March, 5pm AWST (+8 GMT)
2) USD 29

Thanks for the feedback!

[andy-cytomic]

great solution Andy. loving the look

Thanks! I'm happier with this design, much cleaner looking but still just as functional.

[andy-cytomic]

This is probably a stupid question, but will there be any mode suitable for subtle character on the master bus?

You'll be better off using The Drop on your master bus to add some subtle drive. Set the HP to 2Hz and the LP to 20 kHz and use the pad control at -12 dB and the Drive controls all at 0 dB. You could even use the Pre at -12 and Post at +12 to make things less distorted. Flick through all the filter types and pick the one you like the best!

[andy-cytomic]

I think you nailed it with this one, Will look quite nice next to the glue. Maybe some tube screamer green for the font...work some green in there somewhere but then it will clash a little with your other plugins.

Thanks I did try and work the green in but standard Cytomic colours are yellow and blue, the green made it look terrible. I think keeping the product line as plain as possible, although boring, is actually good in the long run since people have to look at this stuff a lot and exciting interfaces get old real fast.

[incubus]

[Compyfox]

Everything is in one place, all controls are visible from the contracted version of the gui, just lick on the yellow LED to toggle the active state of the plugin (ie toggle between processing through the input and output buffers, and the entire signal cain - you need to use the top left power button to actually cleanly bypass the effect.) Advanced customisation of choosing capacitor and diode types will be done on the mods panel, which is yet to be designed, and that will fit on the bottom of the expanded plugin so you can still adjust all the main controls.

Honestly, I do need to see screenshots for this in order to fully grasp your concept. But I think they'll roll in the next days. As long as I can go from "subtle boost" to "destructive overdrive", while having a low CPU load and actually working feature recall (on project reload), unlike a certain other company, I'm game.

1) I'm aiming for Friday 31st March, 5pm AWST (+8 GMT)
2) USD 29

I can work with that info... price lies within the eye of the beholder as usual - depends on how many features are there, how easy the plugin is to use, etc. Which is why a demo/public beta is a good move. Will keep an eye on this date.

Thanks for the feedback!

You're welcome.

[incubus]

March 31st eh?

Cool. I'll be looking forward to HOPEFULLY adding to my excellent repertoire of guitar awesomeness.

[VariKusBrainZ]

just lick on the yellow LED to toggle the active state

Just need to change one capitalised letter for this to be so true

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Thanks for the feedback! I have done exactly as I've done for The Glue and The Drop, all the controls are visible at once, and they are 3D rendered and made to look physically possible as a piece of hardware. All Cytomic interfaces are "skeuomorphic" in that sense, included The Glue and The Drop!

Hi Andy, thanks for the thoughtful reply. I guess what I don't like about the GUI is 1) the cables sticking out of the sides, 2) the stompbox UI element when combined with 3) controls outside of the stompbox housing. So as pointed out elsewhere, some elements are skeuomorphic, while others are not at all. This makes it something that looks like it tries to exist in the real world, with elements that couldn't possibly exist in reality.

Another way to put it: imagine if the 3D rendered GUI for The Drop included a visible virtual room around the border of the UI. And in that virtual room, I could see cables going in and out of the back of the virtual Drop unit that don't do anything (sure in the real world those cables would). And superimposed in that non-function room/border were the In/Out/Mix controls, just floating in space. Now, imagine that, and compare that to the current The Drop GUI. Current Drop GUI one wins right? The imagined physical space around the UI elements, the virtual cables, the floating controls in The Scream are unnecessary IMO and distracting.

Hopefully that's a more specific way of elaborating what I was trying to describe. Like I said, it's not a deal breaker, and I'll be supporting this release current UI or not, but I'm not fond of the current state UI.

[izonin]

...As long as I can go from "subtle boost" to "destructive overdrive", while having a low CPU load and actually working feature recall (on project reload), unlike a certain other company, I'm game.

If you're talking about the same product, I believe there has been recent development there.

[HcDoom]

Yes, GUI can be much better...it doesn't necessarily need to be realistic looking. I would go with Glue/Drop style any day!!!

[andy-cytomic]

Honestly couldn't care less what it looks like, but I am absolutely dying to hear it!!!

Here ya go! First up some A/B against the TS808 re-issue I've based the modelling on:
https://cytomic.com/files/scream-vs-ts8 ... ive000.mp3
https://cytomic.com/files/scream-vs-ts8 ... ive100.mp3

An A/B with some guitar loops:
https://cytomic.com/files/scream-vs-ts8 ... ive050.mp3

And, with the permission of the acidvoice guys (http://www.acidvoice.com), a TB-303 saw pattern:
analog ts808 - https://cytomic.com/files/scream-acidvo ... -ts808.mp3
scream - https://cytomic.com/files/scream-acidvo ... scream.mp3
scream with mods - https://cytomic.com/files/scream-acidvo ... am-mod.mp3

The acidvoice guys sent me .wav files to process, but I'm still waiting for the a version of the pattern they use on the distortion page, will post when it arrives.

[izonin]

An A/B with some guitar loops:
https://cytomic.com/files/scream-vs-ts8 ... ive050.mp3

The difference I can hear is in the lower mids. There's more bloom in the A examples, while B produces a more controlled overdrive.

Overall, you've nailed the general overdrive character, but some tuning has to be done to the frequency distribution of that drive.