Cytomic "The Scream" stomp box distortion plugin

[Joe Leidigkeit]

Ah. I did not recognize the yellow highlight bars. Very helpful tip!

Btw. I like how you integrated the pre, post and mix buttons in the ui.

So, take your time for the final touches and thanx for your quick reply.

[t3toooo]

Bought it today,yep i like it!

https://soundcloud.com/t3toooo/cytomic-the-scream-dudle

First part disabled,second part with "The Scream" enabled.

[andy-cytomic]

News: The Scream v1.0.8 is ready for download. This build fixes a minor issue with the new oversampler in linear phase mode, and also improves the nulling ability of the ovrsampler in all modes. I've also added a feature to dynamically switch latency between realtime and render, so if you have no latency in realtime you will get no latency, but can still render with latency compensation. The trouble is very few hosts can actual handle this dynamic switching while still having the correct latency compensation, and lots of hosts crash outright, so I'll leave it up to anyone who is keen to investigate further themselves. To enable the feature you will need to edit the "settings.xml" text file located next to the preset folder. You can navigate to the folder easily by clicking on the preset name in the top bar and selecting "Show Preset Folder", and edit the line, changing "false" to "true":
<Tuple Key="ForceDynamicLatency" Value="false"/>

The Scream v1.0.8 (7 July 2017)
https://cytomic.com/scream

• New: reduced oversampler latency to use the lowest possible to support current realtime and render oversampling amounts
• New: added advanced setting to allow dynamic updating of latency when switching between realtime and render – note: very few hosts support this, so this setting has to be manually changed in the settings.xml config file
• Fixed: accessing possibly uninitialised variable in linear phase oversampler

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I've also added a feature to dynamically switch latency between realtime and render, so if you have no latency in realtime you will get no latency, but can still render with latency compensation. The trouble is very few hosts can actual handle this dynamic switching while still having the correct latency compensation, and lots of hosts crash outright, so I'll leave it up to anyone who is keen to investigate further themselves.

Do you have an idea as to which hosts do and don't support it? I've seen Studio One dynamically update latency reporting on the fly (specifically, turning oversampling on and off on some plugins will have an immediate effect on the latency reporting). Is that basically what this feature is doing and would that be the test?

[zvenx]

Error...
rsp

[andy-cytomic]

I've also added a feature to dynamically switch latency between realtime and render, so if you have no latency in realtime you will get no latency, but can still render with latency compensation. The trouble is very few hosts can actual handle this dynamic switching while still having the correct latency compensation, and lots of hosts crash outright, so I'll leave it up to anyone who is keen to investigate further themselves.

Do you have an idea as to which hosts do and don't support it? I've seen Studio One dynamically update latency reporting on the fly (specifically, turning oversampling on and off on some plugins will have an immediate effect on the latency reporting). Is that basically what this feature is doing and would that be the test?

Ahh, switching latency while running is one thing, but dynamically switching the latency when the host does an offline render is a whole different matter. Reaper supported it when I was trying to originally implement this idea several years ago before dropping it. Also Ableton Live does for VST plugins on Mac, but not for AU (at least it doesn't crash!), don't know about the Windows version.

Best way to test is to have a single sample of noise added at the same start point on two tracks. Add the plugin on the first track and set the mix to 0%, adjust the oversampling to x1 for realtime and x2 or more for render. Flip the phase on the second track and make sure it nulls. Save the song (this is important as then next bit may crash the host!). Then try freezing the first track, and if it doesn't crash see if the host properly handles the change in latency for the rendered audio, because if they switch the plugin back to realtime mode I will report the correct zero latency, but the host has to ignore this because the plugin will by bypassed by being frozen. Fun huh?

The situation is slightly easier if a render is done to a file, but you still have to watch out for the rendered audio being properly latency compensated, either the front gets chopped off, or there is some pre-roll and you'll need to know how many bars the pre-roll is so when you add that audio it lines up properly.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Thanks for the info Andy. I'll try it out when I get a chance.

[Robert Randolph]

It's a 41 page thread and I wasn't able to find it via search:

Is the price possibly going up after release, or is it already set in stone?

[andy-cytomic]

It's a 41 page thread and I wasn't able to find it via search:

Is the price possibly going up after release, or is it already set in stone?

The price will remain at USD 29 after release

[Chandlerhimself]

I did a video going through some of the features. I really like what it does. The variety is really amazing and the sounds are great.




One thing I noticed is that in Sonar even the offline render causes increases in CPU. I haven't checked in any other hosts, but it seems like its working in real time. You might want to check before final release because the CPU usage is really high. Of course turning it down manually solves things, but that kind of defeats the purpose of the feature.

[MogwaiBoy]

It's a 41 page thread and I wasn't able to find it via search:

Is the price possibly going up after release, or is it already set in stone?

The price will remain at USD 29 after release

Good question - GREAT answer!

I was wondering the same thing (is this an intro price?).

That is great to know and definitely on the to-buy list.

[andy-cytomic]

I did a video going through some of the features. I really like what it does. The variety is really amazing and the sounds are great.

Thanks heaps for taking the time to demo the plugin and run through some of the features!

One thing I noticed is that in Sonar even the offline render causes increases in CPU. I haven't checked in any other hosts, but it seems like its working in real time. You might want to check before final release because the CPU usage is really high. Of course turning it down manually solves things, but that kind of defeats the purpose of the feature.

The only additional processing I do is adding a short delay to the input, which takes minimal extra cpu. This is needed to keep the latency during realtime and offline processing the same. It sounds like Sonar adds a chunk of cpu to your session when using latency compensation, so this is what you will be seeing, as each and every track in your whole session will now need to be delayed to bring it back in time with the latency The Scream is introducing.

In a perfect world I could report a dynamic latency to the DAW and it would handle this. The reality is most DAWs crash. So you have three options: 1) disable extra oversampling on render in The Scream, 2) disable latency compensation in your DAW (or ask the guys at Sonar to optimise their latency compensation algorithm to lower the cpu hit), or 3) enable ForceDynamicLatency in the options of The Scream, and hope Sonar doesn't crash!

To enable ForceDynamicLatency open The Scream, the click on the Preset name and selection "Show Presets Folder" from the menu. Then open the file "settings.xml" in a text editor and alter the line:
<Tuple Key="ForceDynamicLatency" Value="false"/>
to:
<Tuple Key="ForceDynamicLatency" Value="true"/>

If Sonar crashes on render then you will have to change this back, and email the guys at Sonar to fix their DAW so it can handle dynamically switching latency on render!

Sorry I can't be of more help, but there isn't anything more I can do without the help of customers of all DAWs insisting on adding support for latency changing dynamically on render.

[Eleventh]

Hey. Noticed in the review video above that the stock presets were already there. Are these available somewhere for download, as I seem to be missing them for some reason.

PS. a little feature request if I may: could right-drag on the PRE or POST sliders inversely adjust the parameters, so that I could increase input while bringing down the output at the same time?

Cheers

[jbraner]

PS. a little feature request if I may: could right-drag on the PRE or POST sliders inversely adjust the parameters, so that I could increase input while bringing down the output at the same time?

Cheers

That's a really good idea!

[Chandlerhimself]

https://cytomic.com/files/scream-beta-patches-1.zip
--
Stock - Grid Slammer.tsp
Stock - SD-1.tsp
Stock - TS808.tsp
Stock - TS9 Hot.tsp
Stock - TS9 Plus.tsp
Stock - TS9 Turbo.tsp
Stock - TS9.tsp
Bent - Resonizer.tsp

The presets from the video can be found here. They aren't included with the plugin yet, but you can add them yourself. They sound great too.