Looking for sound design tools (not sound effects)

[Lawnmower Of The Damned]

There's always Audiomulch. Between the granular effect and the metasurface there are some serious real-time granular resysthesis possibilities.

I'm having a blast running wavetable sequences from my Evolver through it and morphing between perameters on the metasurface. Afterwords I might run it out to my guitar amp and some effects boxes. I could even mic the guitar cab for a really interesting effect.

[Scot Solida]

btw, What kind stuff you upto with Metasynth these days Scot? Iv heard some stunning treatments done with this software, kinda like liquid formants that ripple through an audiofiles spectrum! Iv only used it briefly since my mac emulation software is a bit buggy at present. But I plan to explore this program extensively asap.

MetaSynth is one of those tools that does things in such a fun and intuitive way that it inspires rather than hinders creativity. Most of what I make in it could be made in, say, Kyma, but MetaSynth has such a cool approach that it suggests things I might not otherwise have thought of. I tend to used it for making loops and effects...for loops, it excels in unusual, timbral-shifting rhythmic sequences. It's easy to turn any sort of sound into a rhtyhmic effect in MetaSynth. For effects, well...it's hard to beat. Atmospheres and ambiences are its primary allure for me. Now you have reminded me to mess with it some today...

[Roland Babbage]

Has anyone mentioned SuperCollider? That's pretty limitless and it sounds spectacular. You'll have to learn the language first though...

Edit: Oops, just realised this thread is old

[tee boy]

Hey, no problem fella. Its a good thread, many appz mentioned here that dont get the time of day usually. Stuff like 'SMS Tools' - no one has heard of this, yets its one of the coolest resynthesis tool out(and free!).

Yes, Supercollider has been mentioned. And yes, it is a great tool. Some great features too - I particularly like the ease with which effective gui's can be built, very handy.

Tell you one of my favorite tools at the moment - Soundhacks Spectral Shapers. This is a really amazing plugin bundle, great for ambient sounds. There is a plug called 'Spectral Compander', which is like a spectral compressor. You can use draw in graphs for the frequencies you want to treat, then set the threshold for some quality ambient filtering effects. I highly recommend this one.

Another bundle that I love (not very new) is the Damage Bundle by Audio Mayhem. This would be amazing for industrial or techno music. There is a compressor so super nasty squish sounds, and a harsh as fook distortion / lofi effect (plus others). I like putting it before a wet reverb and sending drones and textures to it. By automating the send level you can mix in wide shready ambience in the back ground.

Hey, and while Im on the subject... SFX Machine is still a must have. Some of the effects in this fella are really cool, especially if you chain up a few in series.

[Alex@ProgressAudio]

If you're looking for design sounds from scratch, I think you should demo Soup additive synth.

You can create sounds using resynthesis, but also design sounds from scratch. For each harmonic you've got envelopes for amplitude, tuning and pan, and the envelopes can have infinite number of breakpoints and duration, so there's tons of flexibility.

Also there's something called the Elements Editor which is a unique way of designing sounds from scratch, its hard to explain how it works, much easier to just try it. Its great for experimenting and you can make a new sound really quickly with it.

Add to that the powerful morphing abilities which let you morph between as many sounds as you like, so you can create some really unique effects with that.

And of course there's on-board effects, filter, modulation etc. all the stuff to complete the tools you need.

I think you will find it easy to create unique sounds with this synth, so try it out and do some experimenting.

There's a free demo on the website..

Regards,
Alex

[Roland Babbage]

Teeboy, do you have a link for SMS Tools? I downloaded something from a site going on about something called Clam but I'm not sure it's the right thing and I am not at my music computer. This is the link:

http://www.iua.upf.es/mtg/clam/download ... indows.zip

While we're sharing tricks, one I used to like to do was use Yamaha's Tiny Wave Editor to create a sound file from whatever old 'deleted' portion of non-sound file was occupying the next available space on the HD, and then put it into the DS404 sampler and change start and end loop points looking for strange otherworldly synth-y sounds.

[tee boy]

I think thats the same place I got it from. Its a program based on the CLAM C++ library I believe. To use SMSTools you need some knowledge of the code, and Im yet to find any toots.

But I think this app has some real potential. I'll have to get down and dirty with this one before I can give you any kind of details.

[Roland Babbage]

Still trying to get SMSTools to work (missing a dll) but in case you haven't seen it there's a walkthrough here:

http://www.iua.upf.es/mtg/clam/ReleaseD ... ml#h000274