the story:
This is my first attempt to program sfz file, so it's possible I did something in a strange way. Consider this.readme.txt wrote:Technics M33G feedback loop tone generator.
version 0.2
This is the effect of a silly experiment and an exercise to learn a bit about sfz format. I took an old cassette deck, Technics M33G and I created a feedback loop by connecting signal output with input. The tone could be controlled with volume deck's volume knob, for some reason I don't really understand. Then I connected deck's phone output to Audiofire sound card and captured the whole scale available from manipulating the magical volume knob, to create this little sample set. I used G-Tune VST to monitor sound frequency, trying to catch exact frequency for each note. The knob didn't work linear and was rather sensitive, so some notes were a little off, which I think adds some character to this set.
The files are 96kHz/24 bit, range it E4-B0, plus the lowest sound I could get. There are sampler mappings in sfz format to use with sfz or Alchemy or another sampler, and nki mappings for kontakt 2.2.4 or newer. Above E4 the deck would go rocket high frequency, so it was rather impossible to get acquire higher notes. Lowest tones are hardly tonal, but I recorded them anyway.
I created several versions of sfz mapping, below I explain their attributes:
(raw) - this is first stage output, the recording was somewhat trimmed, I created loop points and this is it, the feedback loop tone in all of it's dirtiness, some notes are little off and lower notes have big DC offset.
(filtered) - these are raw files, trimmed to three cycles of waveform (middle one being looped), hi-pass filter applied and normalized. These samples are much smaller and don't drift or pulse as much. They might be more practical for some uses.
(tuned) - in such version I'm trying to tune those more detuned samples using sampler settings.
(transposed) - this is mapping only difference. Since E4 is the highest note, all above notes are being derived from the same sample. To introduce some more variety in higher octave, this mapping has everything shifted one octave up by sampler. It results in quite different sound.
And that's all folks.
Oh, there's a bonus... A rec level test tone captured from another vintage Technics, ST-8080 AM/FM receiver. It feels like these should go together.
Final note: These are royalty free samples. Feel free to use them in your music, free or commercial, as you please - no need to contact or credit me. If you'd like to use them for sound design or sample library, I don't mind, but please contact me first, I'd like to know, if it has found some use and what is the outcome. Finally, please don't re-distribute the archive. I would like to be able to pull it off, if I feel like it.
Also: USE AT YOUR OWN RISK! These tones come from old dirty electronics and can be dangerous to mental health and your audio equipment. In other words, if you go nuts or blow your monitors, it's your own fault, not mine.
I played around with it on sfz and Alchemy, without processing it sound very much like an old videogame console.
However I failed importing those sfz-s to Kontakt. That is Kontakt imported them, but it took ages to finish and it didn't import loop point from files, which is strange as it reads them properly, if I open a wav. Is there a way to make sfz Kontakt friendly, or it's just this way?
Some pictures:
the setup:
some waveform shots:
sound examples:
http://soundcloud.com/fairlyconfused/m33g
download link
10MB (rather big for simple waveforms, but I wanted to capture some dirt and irregularities, trimmed version is 512k and is included).
edit: I added mappings for Kontakt, thanks to DavyAch for converting the files.
The results are interesting, but on my girlfriend cpu's headphones they sound like any other oscillators. Is there suppose to be a difference?
Oh, definitely, it's even next level of analogue - vintage analogue...
