Ujam Virtual Guitarist Carbon

[nix808]

hey Bones-
of course u can clip in digital,
at any point in production, clipping is a no-no

maybe u mean like before the master bus in DAW?
- I think that one is DAW specific,
and yeah- u can't clip Orion before the master out

Carbon is the dug's baws

UJam-- could you do something similar, maybe with less sounds so u can cover the full range of electric guitar? I have a special request for 4 semitones lower than standard, and my axe is 22 frets

[Ou_Tis]

Tried Gullfoss on it---over-emphasizes noise in the highs if I process them (though EQ also mitigates that). Helps bring out other frequencies. Not great though.

Tried Ozone multiband limiter (maximizer mode IV)---seems to help a bit.

I think I made some progress reamping Insane. But when you listen to the same thing over and over again it can start to sound "good"....

[Ou_Tis]

I'm finding Neutron 3's Sculptor (Electric Guitar) surprisingly useful. Too bad it's a cpu hog. Neutron's Distorted Guitar preset seems to be a good starting point for adding a bit of extra distortion, boosting transients, EQ and compression. OTOH maybe I shouldn't be wasting time and cpu trying to get more "realistic" (or is that really just "conventional"?) distorted guitar out of Carbon....

It's annoying that Carbon limits us to one effect. (Is Ujam hoping we'll want to buy Voodoo to string them together?...) Finding it surprisingly hard to get Echoboy's guitar presets sounding good with it (after about an hour of tweaking)... close but off.

[nix808]

I see what you're saying,
I'm playing it now too

it doesn't have body resonance and warmth,
being quite a driven/crushed affair

somewhat interestingly Orion8 and FL20 are putting out different sounds because of their MIDI implementations.
FL is the fail, my events are in order and not duplicit

[BONES]

That's the way Carbon is meant to sound. If you want more of that warm, fuzzy stuff, try Iron. I keep waiting for them to update Iron so it's got more of Carbon's features. In it's current guise it sounds better but is less useful to me.

of course u can clip in digital

Not really. They all process in float space (32 bit) which gives you, for all intents and purposes, infinite headroom. I can pump channels in Cubase, Orion or Studio One as hard as I like and as long as I've got a brickwall limiter on my master, there will be no clipping.

It's annoying that Carbon limits us to one effect. (Is Ujam hoping we'll want to buy Voodoo to string them together?...)

Carbon has Voodoo's FX engine built in. It's not a single effect but a multi-effect chain. There is also the spatial effect. I think it's amazing value for the price. If you want more, spend more on a good Kontakt library. I've got several but I still use Carbon and Iron way, way more.

[nix808]

I can clip,
I don't run a limiter on my master

to get a more guitar-like sound turn severity to 0, condition to paranoid, dull focus, filter null and finisher 'off', I only just did that -was preset surfing

nJoy the wicked tek fellas

[revvy]

If you don't put a limiter on the master does it clip in digital?

[nix808]

yes, very much so

it doesn't drive like analog either and causes the DAC to pop/click/explode nastily

it's not hard to just watch the DAW meters though, they usually have a VU warning when the mix clips, but in my experience u can tell something's wrong

[BONES]

No, without the master limiter, it is overdriving your hardware I/O device, that's what causes the clipping.

[nix808]

yeah mate-
the DAC in ur soundcard

[revvy]

Thanks nix, thought the assertion that you can't clip in the digital realm was bollox. My own experience of having done so was also a red flag.

[BONES]

Of course digital clipping is a real thing, it sounds horrible, but it comes from outside, not from within your host application. If something seems to be clipping inside your host, then it is probably designed intentionally to do that because there is no reason it should. Internally your host is calculating at 64 bit, which is 18,445,744,073,709,551,616 discrete values but it outputs audio at whatever bit rate you've set your driver for. Even if you've selected 32 bit, that's only 4.2 billion values and that's where problems arise and you can get digital clipping. But inside your host you have so much headroom it's never going to be a problem.

[nix808]

np 8D

of course a DAW talks directly to a soundcard's DAC typically,
if u peak the DAW, u peak the DAC

I think mastering engineers call it 0,
but u can think of it as moving between -1 and 1,
if u hit either of these thresholds, it's the dreaded clip

Bones has not to worry, because a limiter has a non-linearity that means that when it approaches closer to the threshold, it is infinitely attenuated, and becomes 'soft-clipped', which curves in amplitude terms and cannot clip- just falling short of the threshold when pushed

[Ou_Tis]

That's the way Carbon is meant to sound. If you want more of that warm, fuzzy stuff, try Iron. I keep waiting for them to update Iron so it's got more of Carbon's features. In it's current guise it sounds better but is less useful to me.

Ujam support said they're working on that. I'm definitely interested in it.

Perhaps part of my issue with Carbon is wanting to make it sound more like Iron. But the developers wanted it to sound different from their other instruments....

It seems there aren't (m?)any riffs shared between Carbon and Iron, which is too bad because I wanted to use them together (Carbon for the higher frequencies).

Wonder what Hans Zimmer actually used it in. Film scores? "CARBON is completely inspirational and all over our tracks! The devil’s candy." – Hans Zimmer (Assuming he wouldn't lie---or wildly exaggerate---for money....) He has all the libraries or (just about) instrumentalists he could want at his disposal, but he uses Carbon in the final product?... OTOH he also has all the cpu/hardware and processors he wants at his disposal to focus on the parts he likes....

Interesting that the positive quotes (on Ujam's site) all seem to be from film/video game composers (so: no metal musicians/producers?). Though they say one of them is also a bassist.

"To create a distortion that is hard like a razor blade and still has integrity –
particularly in the high end – is a craft of its own and took a good chunk of the
work we put into CARBON."

Hmm, I've been focusing around A3. It does sound very different in higher octaves. Maybe it's better for that....

Carbon has Voodoo's FX engine built in. It's not a single effect but a multi-effect chain. There is also the spatial effect. I think it's amazing value for the price. If you want more, spend more on a good Kontakt library. I've got several but I still use Carbon and Iron way, way more.

I'll grant that Carbon is more than worth the $5 I paid to get it for "free". But I also don't regret deciding not to buy it when it was more expensive.

Thought I didn't have any good Kontakt electric guitar libraries (just factory and UVI) but there is the free version of Shreddage Stratus 3. No patterns though I see the full version comes with "multiple demo MIDIS".... Forgot I got 8dio's Epic Guitars last BF, a tempo-synced Kontakt loop library which sounds a bit like Iron but has very few options (and can't adjust amp). Roli Studio's "Stadium Rock" guitar with the delay on sounds surprisingly good through my amp sims despite only using two samples. And Strum GS-2---despite being fully synthesized---after I put it through some distortion pedals and a good amp sim sounds less like a synth than Carbon (with any substantial "Severity") does... partly because, being physically modelled, it does have that body resonance and warmth....

I find myself reaching for Carbon's "Warm Bath" a lot.

If Ujam comes out with better version 2's for Iron and Carbon I'll probably buy them (on sale, at least... after demoing).

[BONES]

Carbon is already in Version 2 status, in that it has all the features you get with v2 upgrades of other products. The good thing about the v2 features is that you can Drag'n'Drop riffs into your sequencer, which would make cross-pollinating between Carbon and Iron much better. Right now you can D'n'D from Carbon but Iron doesn't have an instrument mode, so it's limited in how it can respond to the MIDI.

I paid $69 for Carbon and don't regret it one bit. It gets more use than a lot of instruments I paid more than that for and on the two songs that feature it on our new album, it is absolutely perfect. I doubt I could have got a session guitarist to do it any better. I think my Ujam tally is now 8 or 9 products. I love what they do, it's a great blend of ease-of-use and sound quality.

Hans Zimmer is one of the founders of the company, so he'll lie through his teeth for free. It was the Stephen Lipson endorsement that made e take them a bit seriously.