Devious Machines Duck 2

[Eshalon]

Sweet update to this ducker, side chainer, volume shaper plugin.

https://deviousmachines.com/product/duck2/




multiband modes, groups, offset controls, better envelopes, randomiser, swing options, looping... and a bunch of other stuff.

overview vid from DM -
and another from Venus Theory -

only a fiver upgrade if you have pro effects bundle 1 to 2.

[jcredland]

Thank you Eshalon!

I don't think your first image worked?

Here's our full press release with the rest of the details and pricing:-

Any questions - shoot

cheers - Jim.
______

Devious Machines announce Duck 2 - a comprehensive update to their popular sidechaining and volume-shaping plugin

https://deviousmachines.com/product/duck2

First released in 2019, the original Duck quickly became a trusted tool for tens of thousands of producers worldwide. Duck 2 builds upon this with a much-improved envelope editor, powerful new multiband section, more presets, and many new workflow-enhancing features – all packed into a modernised, resizable UI.

What is Duck?

Duck is a versatile volume-shaping tool. At its heart is a flexible multi-segment envelope, giving precise control over how a sound’s volume changes over time. It can be used like a tempo-locked or free-running LFO; or triggered like an envelope which responds to MIDI notes, or audio from the plugin’s main and sidechain inputs.

Its uses include:
Ducking bass to make way for drum hits
Making sounds “pump” to the beat– a popular effect for EDM music
Rhythmic gating patterns
Envelope shaping (e.g. of drum hits)
Using it like a synth’s ADSR, complete with MIDI triggering and velocity sensitivity.
Tremolo
Wild, volume-modulation effects
Dynamic tone shaping using multiband mode

Multiband

Duck offers independent level control over different parts of the frequency spectrum with its Multiband mode, greatly enhancing the range of shaping possibilities available. Multiband has been significantly enhanced in Duck 2, and now gets its own pop-out panel to accommodate all the extra features.

The number of available bands has been increased from two to three (configurable). Each band can optionally now have its own unique envelope, in which case the envelopes are stacked vertically in the main window, so no switching of views is necessary.

The crossover now features a configurable slope, switchable between 12, 24, and 48dB/oct, and there’s a linear phase mode which cancels out any phase shifts introduced by the crossover filters – useful for avoiding phasing artefacts in parallel signal chains, or when the cleanest-possible sound is required.

Envelope Editor

Duck’s graphical envelope provides a detailed and accurate way to shape the volume of the sound passing through the plugin. This is overlaid onto a wave scope showing the output signal and (if enabled) the sidechain, so the user can see exactly how their edits relate to the processed audio.

The editor has received a major upgrade and modernisation in Duck 2, with a slicker interface and plenty of new workflow-enhancing features. There are new brush tools for stamping shapes like ramps and steps – useful for quickly drawing rhythmic patterns. There’s a randomise envelope function, with several modes to choose from, for quickly generating new rhythmic ideas. A suite of edit functions have been added such as nudge left/right, invert, reverse, repeat envelope etc.

The envelope itself has received two new curve shapes: a “2D bend” shape where the curve handle can be moved in two dimensions, for greater control. And a new “spline” shape which smoothly interpolates between all the points on the graph. The editor supports multi-select of points, as well as copy and paste of envelope shapes, including the ability to copy a shape from Infiltrator. There’s also undo and redo, and an expanded palette of envelope presets.

Flexible Triggering

Duck 2 offers a choice of four trigger modes, which affect how and when the envelope plays. The first of these is Repeat, in which Duck’s envelope cycles continuously like an LFO. By default this is tempo-locked to the song’s timeline, and there are a range of different speeds to choose from, ranging from 1/32nd notes all the way to 8 bars. Engaging the Hz button switches the envelope to behave like a free-running LFO with a continuously variable speed – useful for tremolo-style effects.

The remaining three modes are all triggered modes. MIDI mode will cause the envelope to be restarted when the plugin receives a MIDI note on, whilst Input and Sidechain will trigger it in response to audio received at the plugin’s main input or routed to the sidechain, respectively. Each of these modes has an advanced settings panel, where various options such as a MIDI note filter and audio input filter can be engaged.

Optionally (and new for Duck 2), the triggered modes can be set to Loop, whereupon a pair of cycle markers appear on the envelope display. A further Release option will cause the envelope to stop cycling between the markers once a MIDI note off is received, or in the audio modes, when the signal falls below the trigger threshold. This facilitates ADSR-like behaviour, as well as rhythmic cycling effects. The MIDI-triggered mode also gains velocity sensitivity, whereupon the velocity if MIDI notes can be configured to affect either the amount of ducking, or the output volume.

Presets

Duck 2 ships with over 200 presets covering three broad categories: Ducking and Side-chaining, Envelope Shaping, and Creative. These are sorted into various sub-categories, and presented in a brand new preset browser which displays tags and envelope shapes next to each preset for easier browsing.

Groups

The Groups feature allows different instances of Duck in the same project to share an envelope shape. There are four groups to choose from, and adding an instance of Duck to a group causes its envelope(s) to shape their shape with the other instances in the same group, and editing one causes all to change shape simultaneously. This is useful if you’re using Duck on multiple channels for the same job – for example to cut out the shape of your kick drum from different sounds – and don’t want to edit each one individually when you tweak the shape,

Trace Envelope

A further new addition in Duck 2 is the Trace Envelope feature, which analyses an audio signal (which may be from the sidechain or an imported audio file), and then automatically turns it into a ducking envelope shape. So instead of drawing the inverse shape of your kick drum, you can simply drop the wav sample onto Duck and it’ll do the rest. This also works in multiband mode, splitting the signal before analysis, and drawing an individual shape for each band.

Offset

The new Offset control replaces and merges the old offset and lookahead functions from the original Duck into a new, continuously variable time offset – providing fine adjustment over the timing of the envelope with respect to the audio. This can be calibrated in milliseconds for sample rate independent offsets, or samples for when making latency corrections (essential in Ableton Live where latency isn’t always correctly compensated).

A Seamless Upgrade

Owners of Duck 1 can purchase an upgrade to Duck 2 for a small fee, equal to the difference in price between the two versions.

Once installed, Duck 2 replaces the old plugin, and all DAW sessions and presets created with Duck 1 will work as before, only using the new version of the plugin.


Duck 2 is available from deviousmachines.com.

Pricing: £29.99 / €34.99 / $39.99
Upgrade for Duck 1 users: £9.99 / €9.99 / $15.99
14 day demo available
Duck 2 is also part of the Devious Machines Pro Effects Bundle 2.

[kalqlate]

Very cool product I hadn't considered before. Looking forward to checking it out.

[fisherKing]

it's pretty great, i just added it to my arsenal (am, for no logical reason, bored with shaperbox3)... anyway going in to explore it more soon...

[Funky40]

I like it !
i had the bundle and never used duck bevore. Now i do.
Great little SW

[MattLeschuck]

Great update to an already great plugin. It almost looks like Audiothing or whoever does their UI designs did this one. Very nice!

[Igro]

it's pretty great, i just added it to my arsenal (am, for no logical reason, bored with shaperbox3)... anyway going in to explore it more soon...

CableGuys don't like feature request (they've been asked a few times to add a sample start position selector to the NoiseShaper as well as a non round-robin sample playing). Devious Machines are more open in this department.

[fisherKing]

it's pretty great, i just added it to my arsenal (am, for no logical reason, bored with shaperbox3)... anyway going in to explore it more soon...

CableGuys don't like feature request (they've been asked a few times to add a sample start position selector to the NoiseShaper as well as a non round-robin sample playing). Devious Machines are more open in this department.

i've just been using shaperbox since, i dunno, the 1800s. so it's nice to investigate something new

[c_voltage]

Nice

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[fundlebundle]

Does Duck 2 still have offline activation like Duck 1 does? I will likely upgrade if so!

[c_voltage]

Does Duck 2 still have offline activation like Duck 1 does? I will likely upgrade if so!

I dont remember how it was in v1 though, but yes - in v2 there is two option - via log in thru plug UI (for register overall DM licenses), and via enter v2 code (which you get in your account after purchase at official site, or from PB shop). I used second.

[solvni_music]

Licence from pluginboutique are offline

[jcredland]

Does Duck 2 still have offline activation like Duck 1 does? I will likely upgrade if so!

I dont remember how it was in v1 though, but yes - in v2 there is two option - via log in thru plug UI (for register overall DM licenses), and via enter v2 code (which you get in your account after purchase at official site, or from PB shop). I used second.

We e-mail you a license you can use offline and you can access it at deviousmachines.com/licenses if you buy from us direct.

There's also an online user-name password system too which is optional - but a lot easier if you own lots of our products as you only have to do it once

[jcredland]

Nice


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Dear god Did it work ok

[VikingWarrior]

Nice


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Is this how you duck out one of those small flies in the summer months when recording a vocal ?