Cytomic "The Scream" stomp box distortion plugin

[Eleventh]

It worked, no crashes

Thanks for including that option!

[andy-cytomic]

It worked, no crashes

Thanks for including that option!

You're welcome! I wish all DAWs supported it without crashing and still actually doing the correct compensation since this is the most useful behaviour.

[crystalmsc]

As much as I enjoy The Drop to dirty things up, this is really a nice compliment. Together they're becoming the most powerful and detailed filter/destruction processor. Also a great addition to the Ableton Pedal. Can't wait for the full release.

[VariKusBrainZ]

I notice Live has a new distortion plugin, wonder if Andy was involved ?

[andy-cytomic]

I notice Live has a new distortion plugin, wonder if Andy was involved ?

Cytomic did not work on Pedal, it was done in house by Michael Massberg, who used to do all the plugins for Brainworx, and is a great coder. Ableton want to keep the CPU down to a minimum for their devices, so Pedal has much less detail than The Scream, but is also much lighter on CPU, but that being said it is a big step up in terms of tone compared to any existing Live distortion. For Cytomic it didn't make sense doing basic stomp box models because there are already free plugins that do that, but this is great for Live because now preset designers can add some solid sounding drive to presets that ship with Live.

I will am working on the low CPU mode to The Scream right now, which will still contain around twice the detail of Pedal's OD mode, and I hope only take a fraction more CPU. The Scream currently is the most detailed stomp box emulation on the planet, and offers the ultimate tone, the ultimate customisation, and has the most advanced oversampling options of any plugin I know of.

So the two devices compliment each other pretty well, if you want to general distortion flavour and don't want to use much CPU then Pedal is great, but if you want the ultimate tone possible ITB for a track use The Scream.

[jbraner]

To enable ForceDynamicLatency open The Scream, the click on the Preset name and selection "Show Presets Folder" from the menu. Then open the file "settings.xml" in a text editor and alter the line:
<Tuple Key="ForceDynamicLatency" Value="false"/>
to:
<Tuple Key="ForceDynamicLatency" Value="true"/>

If Sonar crashes on render then you will have to change this back, and email the guys at Sonar to fix their DAW so it can handle dynamically switching latency on render!

FYI - this works fine in SONAR Platinum. No crashes here

[andy-cytomic]

FYI - this works fine in SONAR Platinum. No crashes here

Thanks for reporting in on this! Although Sonar doesn't crash it still may not actually work properly.

To confirm the latency compensation is working you need to do the following. Grab a loop and add it to two tracks, then add The Scream to one track, turn the mix to 0%, and set the oversampling to x1 (off) for realtime, and x2 for render, linear phase for up and down, and then add a phase invert plugin after The Scream. Play both tracks together and you should hear nothing, then try exporting the sum of both tracks and confirm it still cancels apart from a tiny bit of high frequency content due to the oversampling filters.

[jbraner]

FYI - this works fine in SONAR Platinum. No crashes here

Thanks for reporting in on this! Although Sonar doesn't crash it still may not actually work properly.

To confirm the latency compensation is working you need to do the following. Grab a loop and add it to two tracks, then add The Scream to one track, turn the mix to 0%, and set the oversampling to x1 (off) for realtime, and x2 for render, linear phase for up and down, and then add a phase invert plugin after The Scream. Play both tracks together and you should hear nothing, then try exporting the sum of both tracks and confirm it still cancels apart from a tiny bit of high frequency content due to the oversampling filters.

Hi Andy - it does exactly this
For the phase invert, I just used the channel invert in SONAR (as opposed to a plugin)
1. complete silence in SONAR
2. a little high frequency noise is all that got rendered.

SONAR is a good DAW


EDIT - I forgot to make it linear phase for the OS settings. (it was intermediate phase)
This time I got:
1. complete silence in SONAR
2. absolute silence in the rendered file too.

[andy-cytomic]

Hi Andy - it does exactly this
For the phase invert, I just used the channel invert in SONAR (as opposed to a plugin)
1. complete silence in SONAR
2. a little high frequency noise is all that got rendered.

SONAR is a good DAW


EDIT - I forgot to make it linear phase for the OS settings. (it was intermediate phase)
This time I got:
1. complete silence in SONAR
2. absolute silence in the rendered file too.

Great, thanks for reporting this! Which version are you using of Sonar?

I'll have a think about how to handle this a bit better, perhaps with a config file that contains a list of host names and versions that, from that version onwards, support correct dynamic PDC on render. Well at least there are three hosts I know work now, Sonar, Live, and Reaper, but it would be nice to get a complete list and then users of DAWs that don't properly work can suggest to the developers of those DAWs to up there game

[jbraner]

Hi Andy - I'm using SONAR Platinum.

[andy-cytomic]

Hi Andy - I'm using SONAR Platinum.

Thanks! Does it have a numeric value associated with it in the about box?

[jbraner]

No - they do monthly updates now, and I'm on the latest one (2017.10)
It's been called "SONAR Platinum" for a couple of years now.

It's like the Windows 10 naming convention - it's just called "Platinum" and they do (more or less) monthly updates.

I dare say that any version of Platinum is going to work - this is a basic function of the audio engine. The other SONAR versions (Artist and Professional) probably work too. The only differences are some "features" and add ons - not the basic audio engine.

[andy-cytomic]

No - they do monthly updates now, and I'm on the latest one (2017.10)
It's been called "SONAR Platinum" for a couple of years now.

It's like the Windows 10 naming convention - it's just called "Platinum" and they do (more or less) monthly updates.

I dare say that any version of Platinum is going to work - this is a basic function of the audio engine. The other SONAR versions (Artist and Professional) probably work too. The only differences are some "features" and add ons - not the basic audio engine.

Ok, thanks for claryfying that! I looked on their web page and couldn’t see any mention of version numbers. I’ll send the guys at Cakewalk an email and find out exactly which version it’s been supported since. Under the hood there will still be a version number being reported to plugins, even though they have changed their public naming scheme

[jbraner]

Oh - good point.
So, you want to set things up according to the host - rather than have the user edit a file?

I suppose you could also make a "setting" somewhere, on a "config" screen, and leave the settings to the users.
That would be a lot easier than checking all the (ever changing) DAWs

[andy-cytomic]

Oh - good point.
So, you want to set things up according to the host - rather than have the user edit a file?

I suppose you could also make a "setting" somewhere, on a "config" screen, and leave the settings to the users.
That would be a lot easier than checking all the (ever changing) DAWs

Most customers won't be competent to conduct the sort of test you just did, just having a use adjustable setting is a good idea. I could grab the currently reported DAW name and version number and allow you to just enable it for that DAW, that way if you switch DAW (which people do) then you don't have to remember to switch settings, for example if you switch between Cubase and Sonar.

Unfortunately as a developer of audio software it's my job to test with lots of DAWs, but I do use the Juce framework to help out with a lot of this stuff. I tend to be one of the developers pushing the boundaries of what is possible so but I like to contribute towards the Juce open source code base to make this sort of thing better for everyone. One of the areas I hope to contribute is the entire oversampling engine, so this dynamic latency compensation is an important thing to get right.