Ring-mod what’s it good for?

[Shabdahbriah]

Great thread. +1 for the ring-mod in Bazille! Alternately, there's a pretty decent Ring-Mod in this plug-in 'collection' by Cherry Audio. It's currently on sale for $39 (down from $99)

rackMode_ringMod.png

When two audio sources are inputted, the output contains only the sum and difference frequencies of the two signals, while removing common frequencies. The audio result is useful for creating sounds with inharmonic frequency content, which is useful for synthesizing bell and metallic sounds. Cherry Audio's Rackmode Ring Modulator super accurately reproduces the rare Bode Frequency Shifter and includes a mod oscillator, featuring range controls, and multiple waveforms. Its pitch can also be "played" with a standard MIDI/USB keyboard.

https://store.cherryaudio.com/bundles/r ... processors

Personally... these are two of my favorite (hardware) things:

Pittsburge Modular Dual Ring.png

E560.png

https://youtu.be/mbCQ3T6UlSE?list=PL0y5 ... gJpdQxJTAO

[majoranman]

I like to use Ring mod for making drum sounds, it's the easiest way for me to get some convincing hihats and cymbals! Iirc it was also used in the Hihat sektion of the TR808 (on a set of detuned square waves). That gives a good base to try for your own drum synth experiments using Ring mod.

[YnJ]

Nice and educational thread. I accidentally noticed it on the front page last night after trying out a guitar multi effect hardware unit. It has ring modulation amongst it's effects, and after reading this thread I managed to get some useful sounds out of it. Especially with distortion, some subtle use added some nice grit to it. I have this little unit I can use to insert plugins in front of, into the effect loop, or after hardware guitar amps. Can you use other more synth related modulation effects, like frequency modulation, on guitars, and how would you use it?

[ugo]

Nice and educational thread. I accidentally noticed it on the front page last night after trying out a guitar multi effect hardware unit. It has ring modulation amongst it's effects, and after reading this thread I managed to get some useful sounds out of it. Especially with distortion, some subtle use added some nice grit to it. I have this little unit I can use to insert plugins in front of, into the effect loop, or after hardware guitar amps. Can you use other more synth related modulation effects, like frequency modulation, on guitars, and how would you use it?

Sure, you can use any kind of processing on guitar. There are no rules and experimentation is always the way to go. That said, to get an idea of how an effect may perform with guitar, it helps to consider how the effect works vs what the guitar will be feeding them. For example…

Effects that add harmonics or need pitch tracking to do their thing are often designed for a single notes, so they could get glitchy and chaotic with chords.

FM and wavefolders also make the sound more harmonically complex and tend to work best with sines and triangles, so you would probably have more interesting results if you turn the tone down or otherwise greatly simplify the guitar output. They are also both heavily influenced by input volume. Since guitar is a very dynamic instrument by nature, you’d get a variable effect rather than a steady waveform transformation. Depending on your needs, that may be a very good thing.

Effects that remove harmonics function best when they have a lot of harmonics to work with. On a clean guitar signal, you’ll likely get a more powerful effect on lower notes. Higher pitched notes have fewer extra harmonics to work with because the fundamental is closer to the 20khz hearing limit. So if the effect seems underwhelming up high, try adding some distortion first. Also, since notes tend to decay faster on upper frets, adding something to boost sustain may be helpful too.

[cron]

Kilohearts Compactor is a free plugin that came out recently implementing the 'ring mod sidechain' trick mentioned earlier in the thread. It's amazing to me that people are still finding new uses for these elementary effects that have been around as long as electronic music itself.

[Ah_Dziz]

I don't know what all was covered here already but RM is only different from standard volume modulation because it is bipolar. Man amplifiers in synths that would be modulated by an adsr or whatever have an absolute floor at silence. So if you were to use an lfo to modulated it, once the output hits zero it stays there until the control signal, (LFO, envelope, oscillator, etc) rises to a high enough level to bring the amplitude above silent again. In ring modulation, once your control signal hits "zero" and continues to negative values, you get negative signal with negative polarity. So when using ring modulation as volume modulation you only have silence at one value of your modulation. This has interesting side effects especially when using modulations in the audible frequency range, but also when using very low frequencies as you can then introduce reverse phase audio (as demonstrated in the "reverb" video) . I find that you can get very interesting bits by using RM with modulation that's not very deep (low in amplitude) compared to the amplitude of the carrier. You can correct the loss in level manually after the fact or mathematically if you're using some like Max or Reaktor.

The "clangy" and "inharmonic" and "poorly tuned radio" sounds that people associate with ring mod are to a large extent related to having a carrier and modulator that are both close to taking up the full headroom of the signal path (the way they would be of you were running 2 analog oscillators into a ring modulator directly). Mixing some DC and some complex but well attenuated tones that are related to your input and doing this per voice, gives the best results in my experience.

I've found RM to be very useful making all kinds of keys, EPs, basses, and leads. It can fill out the mids/ low mids in a pleasing way.

[ghettosynth]

^^^exactly. This is why in radio we call them balanced modulators. Related is frequency shifting, Bode style, where you are using quadrature signals driving a pair of balance modulators to generate the sidebands (sum and difference) and then adding or subtracting to emphasize one sideband and null, or suppress the other.

[BlackOctopusSteve]

It's really popular in dubstep/riddim production

[swilow11]

It's really popular in dubstep/riddim production

As side chain or as an actual sound design technique?

It's one of the oscillators mods in my Argon 8 but is sort of gentle and just adds a bit of high end. Similar to how it's implemented in the Virus.

[morphex]

It's really popular in dubstep/riddim production

As side chain or as an actual sound design technique?

It's one of the oscillators mods in my Argon 8 but is sort of gentle and just adds a bit of high end. Similar to how it's implemented in the Virus.

My nephew really likes dubstep, and bass music in general. I hear ring modulation as a staple effect in that genre, because I can hear it in nearly every track. Whether it’s used on bass lines, automated on a pluck, or used to digitize some vocals, RM is in every single song!!

Ring mod in dubstep is just as prolific as stutter edits and rhythmic-gating is in trance music. I love the way that all of them sound. But with such widespread use, their novelty has worn off a bit. That’s why I’m always keeping an eye on niche plug-ins, and effects that come out of leftfield. I like blazing new trails!

[electro]

what are the great ring mod VST plugin emulations?

[ghettosynth]

what are the great ring mod VST plugin emulations?

Don't know.

In hardware, Eliana Radigue's style was really built from ring mod in the Arp 2500. According to her, the Arp 2500 ring mod is the greatest ring mod of all time. She is confident, I'll give her that. Also, I love her work, I could be called a fanboi, I've heard Jetsun Mila this year more times than all Beatles and Led Zeppelin songs combined. Ok, whatever, for the Arp 2500, and 2600, but not the Odyssey, ring mod is a discrete Gilbert cell built from bipolar transistors. Most hardware ring mods today depend on analog multiplier chips like the AD633, e.g., the Befaco A*B+C, or older chips such as the LM1496, e.g., as in the Roland System 100m. Now, one very common ring mod choice in hardware is the diode ring mod, from which the device gets its name, it's powered by transformers and a diode ring, typically germanium, but they can be replaced with Schottky diodes. The transformers add to the color. The ARP Odyssey deserves a bit of a special mention because it's ring mod is an xor of the square waves from the two oscillators, FYI.

It has been said that ring mod circuits all color the sound, differently, depending on their transfer curve and how well they reject the carrier, so, owing many can be useful, e.g., in a modular, for a variety of sound choices, not unlike filters. I have too many ring mods. Not really.

So, any plugins that emulate this will want to consider those factors. Also, many ring mod effects, e.g., those designed for guitar, assume the input is the modulator and the carrier is a fixed oscillator. So, those kinds of effects will depend on the built in carrier as well as what is emulated.

I'll let someone else discuss the software, but, I'll leave you with Jetsun Mila, and a note. Much of Elianna Radigue's work can now be found on her Bandcamp page, https://elianeradigue.bandcamp.com/, in case anyone cares.

[BlackOctopusSteve]

As a sound design technique. Ring Mod basses sound metallic and thrashy.

It's really popular in dubstep/riddim production

As side chain or as an actual sound design technique?

It's one of the oscillators mods in my Argon 8 but is sort of gentle and just adds a bit of high end. Similar to how it's implemented in the Virus.

[zerocrossing]

Adrian Belew's guitar solo in The Becoming: @3:25

[sunthief01]

Ring mod is really useful when working with feedback - both in sound design and in musical applications of feedback.



My favorite synth for this (other than Reaktor and Falcon) has got to be Massive X - with the flexible feedback routing and ability to ringmod the feedback path.

Icarus also has nice AM between wavetable oscillators.