alternatives to iZotope Trash?

[pHz]

i did !!!
slainte rob

Good man! Well done. Btw the way do you have CamelPhat3? if you do could you perhaps provide some clues how to use it. All I get is banging loud distortion about as subtle as a thermonuclear device.

when i wrote 'i did !!!' i should have perhaps added 'ages ago ...'

as for camelphat3 ... yeah ... i have that too *but wouldnt claim to be an expert) ... any specific questions ???

... steve ... nice work on the free alternative set up there ... depending on your host you wouldnt even need to use eXT to chain them (something like T2s rack filters would do the job too) ... i wonder how it compares CPU hunger wise with trash ???

slainte rob

[Beardedone]

any specific questions ???

Yes. How can I apply it where it won't sound like a an anvil fell on it? Seriously.

[pHz]

what are you trying to apply it to ??? drums ??? guitar ???

slainte rob

[Beardedone]

Drums I tried first then synth basses and leads (Cameleon5000, Symptohm Sonic Synth2, WS, Cronox3, Albino 2). Pads and keyboards would seem inapproriate I think. I am trying to understand how to tone down the aggressiveness while at the same time having a good wet/dry balance.

[caustic386]

how exactly does waveshaping work?

It's a per-wavecycle gain response curve, so what goes in is forced to the volume curve of the waveshaper. Pull a point up on the curve, the volume will get pulled up at that point in one wavecycle of the incoming signal, push a point down, you squash the wavecycle.

OK got it - my only question is, how do these programs determine the length of the wavecycle?

[smart]

Just get Trash. It's f**king awesome with tons of possibilites, made by an awesome company with exceptional customer service, and is capable of tons of different stuff. The delay alone is so tasty it's almost a deal sealer on it's own!

[shamann]

OK got it - my only question is, how do these programs determine the length of the wavecycle?

I'm sure there's some code that explains zero-crossing detection methods better out there, but a wavecycle is from zero to zero to zero. Like so:



Most waveshapers are symmetrical, so they only detect half a wavecycle, from zero to zero, and apply the same curve to each half.

[caustic386]

Just get Trash. It's f**king awesome with tons of possibilites, made by an awesome company with exceptional customer service, and is capable of tons of different stuff. The delay alone is so tasty it's almost a deal sealer on it's own!

I actually already have Trash - I practically live by that thing... All the other guitar amp simulators never even get used on guitars, I save them for keyboards (Guitar Rig 2 + Pentagon = friends) - I'm mainly just trying to find something else to point at once in awhile, something that might have a flavor similar to the digital distortions you can make with the TC Fireworx... That unit was grand, I can't believe I sold it...

One of my main influences is NIN, and Reznor's always talking about how great TurboSynth and the Pluggo waveshapers are, so I thought I'd look into the idea... Can't get Pluggo to run under ProTools 7, though...

Thanks to everyone for their input, some of the suggestions I've gotten are astounding (I'm still in disbelief over that darkwave stuff in an earlier post, as well as Lucifer 2)...

[PeterL]

Here, an all-free alternative. Just rack these up in energyXT (free to use, but you can't load saved projects without registering), connect an envelope comp to Bifilter's cutoff parameter to supplement an LFO, and Bob's your uncle.

1 - buzzroom GranComp3 (multiband compressor)
2 - Tone2 Bifilter
3 - Smartelectronix Cyanide2 (waveshaper with pre/post filters)
4 - Noizware Tridirt (tri-band distortion)
5 - pohsifohpit (multiband parametric EQ. Use the Screamer mode for a little extra colour)
6 - Voxengo Boogex
7 - Kjaerhus Classic delay (I've never liked the delay in Trash, but the Kjaerhus delay has a similar tape-like dirty delay, and neither interpolate delay time). Throw in any old bitcrusher (like tBt's SampleReducer, which gives 7 modes for some added character)

No cats are straying around my house anymore

[Alex@ProgressAudio]

On this ShapeShifter URL you gave me, I see the matrix is based on some in/out manipulation that you can draw - how exactly does waveshaping work? It's relatively new to me, and I feel a long way off from understanding how a plugin like that can create a guitar sound like NIN's Broken...

A waveshaper basically works my altering the amplitude of each sound sample in some way. It takes each point on your sound wave, looks at its amplitude, and looks it up on the graph on the IN axis. It then reads the corresponding y value off the graph, and that tells it what it should output. So the shape of your sound wave ends up being transformed.

That's what's going on inside.. however that doesn't necessarily help understand how to design the graph. Well the diagonal line you get as default in ShapeShifter does nothing - what comes out is the same as what goes in. So you need to add some points and move them around to change the sound.

The best way to get a feel for it is to load up some of the different preset waves and hear what they do to the sound. This gives you a good idea what sort of graphs give interesting results. Then you can try creating your own graphs from scratch.

However, Shapeshifter's waveshaper has an advanced feature that I don't think you'll find elsewhere, which is the ability to create a series of graphs and move between them using a step-sequencer. This means that instead of having the usual fixed distortion sound, you can create distortion that changes in tone over time, which can create a very unique effect!