grm warp, argotlunar and other obscure plugins

[cron]

For anyone on OS X, the Michael Norris (free!!!) Soundmagic Spectral suite is a true must. Still can't believe these are free and beat most of the commercial plugins, unreal buttery quality to the sound.

Very nice! Thanks for pointing this out - these are nice audio tools!

These plugs are the main reason I envy Mac users. They look fantastic.

[jancivil]

thanks for this

[shonky]

Feeling rather befuddled by an excess of tedious paid employment but is there much I could do with SPEAR that I couldn't do with Harmor, Iris and Spec Ops?

[cron]

Feeling rather befuddled by an excess of tedious paid employment but is there much I could do with SPEAR that I couldn't do with Harmor, Iris and Spec Ops?

SPEAR is more about surgical editing. The partials are 'objects' you can select. You can do some cool things beside surgical editing though. There are functions to select partials below a certain amplitude or length, and stretching or moving them can result in cool results. I have a very audio-heavy workflow so I use a lot of standalone programs like this, but if you prefer to keep things real-time it might not suit your workflow. It's very easy to use as far as experimental standalone programs go, no faffy set-up, so you can get into it and start making sounds quickly.



You could do worse than listen to the first minute and a half of this. It's all made from a short vocal sample singing "No I" and all the background harmonics and 'stretched' sounds come from SPEAR, picking out harmonics from the sample and moving them around and stretching them. All the processing in the track was done with CDP (the 'granulated' and 'bouncy' sounds) and SPEAR (everything else). Some edits and pitchshifts in the DAW around the 1.30 mark, but everything else is raw CDP and SPEAR with no additional processing bar compression and EQ. https://soundcloud.com/charityqueen/no-i

[CrystalWizard]

Wow, that’s cool.

[Neon Breath]

@cron, is SPEAR still processing audio in mono? Last time I tried it years ago it was and it was a big downer for me.

@Anyone took the chance with Spexx yet?

[cron]

Yeah, SPEAR is still mono only. Importing a stereo file willl ask if you want to use left or right, or mix them together into a mono file. There haven't been any updates since 2009, and I doubt there'll be further updates going forward.

As for the rest of my suggestions, most of the CDP processes are mono only too (however there are a few multichannel processes), but the frontends 'bodge' it by invisibly treating stereo as 2 mono files and recombining them at the end. It works very well for the most part, but any process involving randomisation will of course leave you with completely different results on each channel. I've used these decorrelated results in tracks before as they can still be very cool, but 'seed' functionality would really help there.

Hourglass is 'proper' stereo though. A lot of granulators mix to mono and then spatialise the result. True stereo granulators are great as they allow you granulate space as well as sound, if you get what I mean, and Hourglass is perfect for this.

[Neon Breath]

Thanks cron for the precision. yeah I tend to stick nowadays to stereo effects & processors. But SPEAR is free, so who can really complain!

Seems no one took the $49 risk on that spectral Spexx thing... I'll wait until there's a hands-on demo. With Michael Norris' spectral suite, SpextrumWorx and SpecOps, I have my spectral needs very well covered already.

[Neon Breath]

While we're there, regarding OP's 'and other obscure plugins' question, there are Puremagnetik plugins which very rarely get mentioned, especially Cloud Machine (spectral blur efffect), Granule (granulator/grain delay), Re-Function & Mimik (both buffer/glitch audio manglers)

https://puremagnetik.com/collections/spark-packs

[mister-rz]

One I've been surprised about lately is audiothings frostbite, picked it up on sale from plugin boutique, around £7, bought an already nice pad sound that I was working on yesterday to life.

https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/ ... -Frostbite

Reaktor fx has loads of obscure gems, loads for free, some sweet standard stuff too, another one not so obscure but great for mangling is soundtoys effects rack, that comes with the bundle.

[Neon Breath]

One I've been surprised about lately is audiothings frostbite, picked it up on sale from plugin boutique, around £7, bought an already nice pad sound that I was working on yesterday to life.

https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/ ... -Frostbite

Good call on that Frosbite!! A very under estimated effect. Almost a crime to let it go at this price.

[mister-rz]

One I've been surprised about lately is audiothings frostbite, picked it up on sale from plugin boutique, around £7, bought an already nice pad sound that I was working on yesterday to life.

https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/ ... -Frostbite

Good call on that Frosbite!! A very under estimated effect. Almost a crime to let it go at this price.

Made a promise to my other half that I'd be good and not buy anything else for a few months, then things like this happen.

[mister-rz]

A recommendation I got from here a while back is the freeware anarchy plugin bundle, I mainly use anarchy rhythms behind beats, but there be strangeness to be had in them there bundles.

https://www.anarchy-rhythms.com

[cron]

A recommendation I got from here a while back is the freeware anarchy plugin bundle, I mainly use anarchy rhythms behind beats, but there be strangeness to be had in them there bundles.

https://www.anarchy-rhythms.com

Yep, a really solid little set of effects. Length Separator is particularly useful for me. Pan the transient and stable parts hard left and right respectively, route each to separate tracks, and process as desired. Eventide Physion for free, but you can use any effects you own! I tend to use G8 for this now as the tracks are summed losslessly, but the spectral approach offered by Length Separator can beat the time domain approach sometimes.

[mister-rz]

Length separator was one of the ones I haven't used much, but that is an excellent tip, I like physion but find the fx section limited, especially considering eventides back catalogue, thanks