Someone should make this plugin. Cymbal synthesis.

[jupiter8]

I just stumbled on this video. He makes the most realistic cymbals i've ever heard. He does it with free plugins in his DAW using feedback and the method is quite laborious. But it's not really anything that complicated, feedback delays, allpass filters and distortion IIRC.

Someone should make this into a plugin. If i could i would but because reasons i can't be arsed to do anything these days.

[VariKusBrainZ]

https://www.chair.audio/shop/

[quikquak]

@jupiter8 Nice find. Just some lazy thoughts on it:
He says you’ll need a lot of EQ work in the end.
It is a great use of phase shifting, delay lines, and frequency shifting, which all remove the ‘twang’ from the feedback loops.
He claims to have spent months working on it.
As it’s just synthesis, you could over-sample it to really sweeten the sound.
It looks like a fun synth to make, and you could create a LOT of expression with it.
But, it could become quite frustrating to develop as lot changes depending on the initial impulse sound, and each step from there, of course.
You would probably need to do the whole drum kit though, but I see he nearly had a snare at one point.

[jupiter8]

I'm actually not that interested in this plugin for myself. I just thought it might be a good project for someone starting out. Not as myFirstPlugin.clap but if you have few under the belt and looking for something a bit more interesting. All the research is done and he shows the settings and that's the hard part. Now it's just a matter of putting it together. SMOP. And it just hurt me seeing him doing it in the DAW.

To me it sound incredible and i'm not really aware of anything close to it though there probably is.
I just figured it'd be an interesting and useful project for someone. Free and open source of course.

[quikquak]

Free and open source of course.

Of course.

[Music Engineer]

I was also very impressed by this video when it came out and even considered to start a thread about it here myself - but then didn't. Its predecessor video about snare drums was also already very good. Is the creator's description of the operation of the Kilohearts Phase Distortion plugin correct (at least in principle)? Do I get it right that this is just a delayline with its delaytime modulated by the input signal in a feedforward manner? This is the question I would have asked, if I had started this thread myself because that seems to be an important ingredient of the whole process - the secret sauce, so to speak. Edit: Ah! I just noticed that it's a Desmos plot that is available here (it's actually pretty amazing what Desmos can do - I only use it for simple quick and dirty plots so far):

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/vmeqdw1blt

From the signals depicted in the video (at around 26:00), it looks quite similar to sinusoidal waveshaping (i.e. smooth wavefolding), so maybe it could be replaced by that? ...because that would be simpler - although, a feedforward input modulated delayline isn't really a big deal to implement either. Ah - maybe it cannot be replaced because "it doesn't make quieter sounds louder but it just makes louder sounds brighter". The whole process looks also like something that could nicely be built in a modular synthesizer like Reaktor or maybe in Pure Data (preferably - because of its FOSSness). ...and yes - it really hurts to see this being done in the DAW. DAWs are made for music production, not for sound design or even instrument design. For doing that kind of complex signal routing, I would really want to use some sort of modular environment, if i wouldn't be outright coding it.

[9b0]

The KHs phase distorter uses the hilbert transform. bias is just a phase offset, tone is a lowpass filter on the modulator.

[Music Engineer]

The KHs phase distorter uses the hilbert transform. bias is just a phase offset, tone is a lowpass filter on the modulator.

That's a very important insight. Thank you. I actually implemented a Hilbert transform filter not so long ago, see:

viewtopic.php?t=608320

...so maybe I could give it a try. But when I have the Hilbert transform, then what? Convert input x(t) and its Hilbert transform y(t) to instantaneous envelope (aka magnitude or amplitude) a(t) = sqrt(x^2 + y^2) and instantaneous phase p(t) = atan2(y,x), modulate the instantaneous phase by the input signal q(t) = p(t) + amount * x(t) and then convert back to output = a(t) * sin(q(t))?

[9b0]

But when I have the Hilbert transform, then what?

The best i can do is to link you to the script that i wrote. This runs inside Alpha Forever Modulars LuaJIT node, but should be straightforward to translate anywhere else. I've done this for testing only.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/mc4k8cff ... jx3yn&dl=0

Probably this is the most important part for you:

Code: Select all

    local yR = x;
    local yI = x;
    for i = 1, N do
        yR = flt_ap(fltReal[idx], i, yR, wR[i], coeffReal[i]);
        yI = flt_ap(fltImg[idx], i, yI, wI[i], coeffImg[i]);
    end


    local phase = math.atan2(yR, yI);
    local magnitude = math.sqrt(yR*yR + yI*yI);
    local flt = flt_lp(lpf[idx], x, w);
    local phase_modulated = flt * drive + phase + offset;


    outs[1] = math.cos(phase_modulated) * magnitude;

[Music Engineer]

The best i can do is to link you to the script that i wrote.

Ah! Very nice! Thanks a lot!

[odibo]

More from the "makes louder sounds brighter" department:

Coefficient-modulated first-order allpass filter as distortion effect, DAFx-08
Feedback Amplitude Modulation Synthesis

I was also very impressed by this video

Same here!

[Aydenelite]

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I ended up upgrading my setup after trying some of the MK Artisan cymbals from https://arboreacymbal.com/ (https://arboreacymbal.com/) , and the feel and tone were way smoother than what I was using before. Their Earth tone gongs are also great if you want something more atmospheric, and it’s nice seeing real player videos so you can hear how they actually perform.

[umd]

Very interesting!

[oneguitarband]

Amazing...