myVST Demo: ValhallaFreqEcho MkI from myVST on Vimeo.

Product Description

Bode-style frequency shifter + analog echo emulation = skull melting chaos. Perfect for dub, Dr. Who and all of your psychedelic needs. Sonic results range from subtle chorusing and double tracking to barberpole phasing and flanging to endless glissandos and runaway echos. I get lost in this one.

http://www.valhalladsp.com/freqecho.html

What is The Time Modulator?

CONTROL TIME ITSELF! - with The Marshall Time Modulator (now in a convenient, cross-platform plug-in size!)

Once in a while something is created that is so good, so unbelievably useful, it becomes "timeless"...

The Marshall Time Modulator is one of those creations. Before there was much "digital" anything, and before records were considered something anachronistic and nostalgia evoking, back when "Dark Side of the Moon" was new and Hip-Hop kind of a distant dream, Stephen St. Croix had an idea: What would happen if you took the the longest analog delay line possible, gave it the greatest signal to noise ratio in a piece of outboard gear, and then made the modulation of it possible over such a wide range that it could effect sound in ways sublime AND outrageous. Something so utilitarian and necessary that it could fit in equally well on Stevie Wonder's "Songs in the Key of Life," or as the means of giving extra gravitas to the sound of a bad acid trip. Stephen called it: The Marshall Time Modulator. You'll call it "indispensable".

http://intdevices.com/proaudio/product/show/11/

Bombardier is our most ambitious project to date – a premium quality buss compressor, tailored for smooth and musical processing of complex audio such as drum groups, vocal stems and your full stereo mix, lending a controllable sense of weight, fluidity and cohesion.

Bombardier gives a nod to the non-linear and frequency-variant subtleties of a wide range of Grade-A hardware buss compressors, and should you wish these can be pushed almost into the realms of a character compressor.

Due to its RMS compression engine (and unlike The Rocket, which uses peak compression), Bombardier is ideally suited to final mixdown and mastering usage, as well as for those who like to set up buss dynamics first and then mix ‘into’ the buss compressor.

Bombardier’s party piece is the new and unique ‘bomb’ processing algorithm which, when selected, gives attack and release settings that are effectively instantaneous while yielding exceptionally smooth gain reduction. Bomb mode is sure to become a firm favourite with mastering engineers the world over, but can also give extremely satisfying results in single track and buss applications

Five different and highly effective pre-emphasis filter modes vary Bombardier’s response to the frequency spectrum and are key to preserving transparency during full-mix compression.

Bombardier is very flexible, offering forward/feedback topologies, variable and automatic release behaviours, sidechain operation, parallel processing and variable gain reduction range limiting. Choosing appropriate settings for the task at hand is critical to getting the best out of Bombardier, so a full range of well chosen presets are provided.

http://www.stillwellaudio.com/?page_id=342

Feburary 22, 2010

Last month, my friend Bill and I viewed a commercial space with the possible intent of sharing the lease. It was listed on Craigslist.com in the "office / commercial" section as a professional recording studio ("non-parallel walls", "wired", etc.). It was shown to us by Toby Nady. She revealed to us that her husband, John Nady of Nady Systems, originally built the studio and that he was very proud of its construction and acoustics. We discussed with her at length our intentions for the space: to use as an office space for our audio software development work, as well as recording and mixing projects. After exiting the building, she pointed out the other tenants on the lot and said that we had great neighbors who we'd surely enjoy meeting: a tattoo shop, a small audio installation business, and some sort of theater set design company. (These are all cinder-block buildings joined by a metal canopy.)

After some discussion over logistics, we excitedly took the lease. The recording space wasn't perfect and a little raw, but nicely built out with a drum kit enclosure, large vocal booth, a control room, and some additional storage. It also had a couple skylights for some natural light, as well as a low noise floor (with the fluorescent overheads flipped off.) With some spring cleaning, extra lighting, and a little more acoustic treatment, we could create a neat space -- finally a real-world R&D lab for Massey Plugins! Since I've recently hired a friend (former Digidesign coworker) to join Massey Plugins, we sorely need a shared office space to work out of. I have high hopes of putting out a batch of fresh plugins in 2010!

During the tour, we of course performed some high-end acoustical hand-clap tests Within the vocal booth, I noticed there was echo through a former doorway, now sealed over with sheetrock. From the reverberation, it sounded like an empty chamber on the other side of the door. In our discussion afterwards, Bill and I figured we'd throw up some of his DJ records or a large bookcase to block the sound leakage.

During a subsequent visit to Toby Nady's office -- I believe prior to actually signing the lease -- I asked what the space adjacent to ours was exactly. I was thumbing through the lease agreement and there was a map at the end, which reminded me about the reverberant sound. She told me that she thought it was unused.

On the first day that I had keys to the space, I showed it off to my girlfriend. Upon arrival, the parking lot was totally packed with cars. "This is weird," I wondered out loud. But, we soon discovered why. A very large and loud salsa band was practicing in that "empty" space outside of our recording studio. Sound was blaring through the walls. I was a bit unnerved, but had no reason not to believe it wasn't some odd one-off occurrence. Toby seemed incredibly nice, accommodating, and frank -- and surely would have disclosed such details. The man watching the gate of that space seemed uneasy about our presence and chatted with us nervously. We suspected he was using it unauthorized.

On a later visit to the Nady offices, to amend the start date of the lease because of numerous roof water leaks, Bill asked about the salsa band. Toby seemed ignorant of their presence and was unperturbed by the story. She simply asked, "Well, were they any good?" I was a little put off by the lack of concern, but again, trusted we were being dealt with fairly.

Unfortunately, this wasn't a one-off occurrence. On the first day Bill and I began our cleaning spree, a booming drum kit started up in the "empty" space. Frustrated, we left to get lunch and called Toby to inquire. She returned Bill's call and told him there was in fact a permanent rehearsal space next door. This was an interesting omission of information only now revealed.

We have no idea why this fact was withheld. But, it's pretty critical information that we should have been given prior to signing a lease. As it stands now, we are stuck with an unusable recording studio and a really noisy office.

On subsequent phone calls, Toby was indifferent to our position and only stated that "it wasn't a problem for the former tenant" and that "we had a binding professional agreement in place." I was stunned by even the lack of consideration. I appreciate the former tenant's absent input into the discussion, but I feel that Bill and I were the right people to decide whether a loud rehearsal space next door would impact our operations. Had we walked into the building on the day of the tour with a blaring rock band, our decision about leasing would have been clear and concise: "Thanks, but no thanks." We were never given that opportunity.

Now, we're in a bind. We're being bullied by the Nady general counsel into either taking the lease or be in breach of contract (with damages up to $19,800 to cover full term of the questionable lease, plus other miscellaneous legal fees). If we take the lease, they are graciously allowing us to sublet the unit.

Anyway, I was hoping we could get some suggestions from the pro audio community from folks who've been in sticky studio-leasing situations before. What did you do? I've never leased a commercial space before, but know that the protections usually aren't as strong as they are for residential leases. This is in Oakland, California. Our timeframe to make a decision (according to their lawyer) is short. We have until March 1st, or less.

Perhaps, there's someone in the Oakland or Emeryville area that would be interested in subletting this as a rehearsal space or "studio with free backing tracks!" It's $1800/month. It's a very roomy spot, over 1000 sq. ft. I would guess. It could probably be shared between a couple of bands. I wasn't planning on branching out from the plugin business into rehearsal space management, but Nady Systems has more lawyers than I do. Greg, the handyman around the place, has been super rad -- patching up the leaks, fixing the door lock, and staying in touch on move-in issues. So, I think you'd be well taken care of, unless the space also contains a "portal to hell" they haven't bothered mentioning I can be reached at 415-336-0464, if you think you'd be interested -- I can email pictures.

The strange thing is, we've never actually met or talked to John Nady directly -- the person who owns the building and whom we signed the lease with. According to his lawyer, he refuses to talk with us personally. I guess this is what his wife is calling a professional agreement.

Sometimes, I think "professional" just means putting up a facade, so that no one ever has to take personal responsibility for anything. I've always refused to operate Massey Plugins "professionally." I deal with people -- personally. (And, if you ever feel that I'm not, I encourage you to hold my feet to the fire!)

But, this is why I've loved working in the pro-audio industry: It has its business side, for sure, but it's also a community -- a community of really interesting, smart, and unique people across the board -- from the gear manufacturers to the folks that buy and use the stuff. I've made a ton of friends around the country and the world. Going to AES shows and TapeOp Conferences are often the highlight of my year -- not because of the gear or commercialism, but because of the fun had afterwards at dinner and into the night: meeting people, discussing recording techniques, music, the meaning of life, the history of the recording industry, etc. So, needless to say, this situation is really bumming me out.

Steven Massey
Massey Plugins Inc.

The VIRTUAL CONSOLE COLLECTION consists of two plugins, Virtual Channel and Virtual Mixbuss. Each plugin allows the user to choose from one of six modeled consoles. Virtual Channel is applied on individual mixing channels. Virtual Mixbuss goes on the first insert of the master fader. When using the Virtual Console Collection, your DAW instantly takes on
the personality of a real analog mixing desk. The imaging and depth improves, instruments sit better in the frequency spectrum, and mixing becomes easier and more musical. You can even push the DAW faders up to find each mixer’s ‘sweet spot’. This is due to the algorithms being dynamic, just like a real console.

Read more
From Slate Digital Co-founder Steven Slate:

The Virtual Console Collection has been a dream of mine for years. I've always mixed on analog consoles because I love the color and sound that they provide, and I missed it while trying to mix "in the box".

The Folcrom allowed me to get the best of both worlds, and I've used it on hundreds of mixes and productions with great results. However, after creating Slate Digital with Fabrice Gabriel almost two years ago, one of the first things we looked in to was recreating the sound of analog mixing, but with digital.

This first lead us to the question: What is wrong with digital summing?

To answer this question, we first built our own digital summing buss. In fact we built three of them. Our conclusion?

NOTHING. Nothing at all is "wrong" about digital summing, whether it be fixed integer or floating point, dithered or undithered... None of these things had an audible effect that any human could pick out in a blind A/B test.

No, actually the problem is with analog summing. With an analog console, the audio path contains a lot of circuitry. By the time a mix is summed in an analog console and gets passed to the outputs, it contains varied degrees of harmonic distortion, phase distortion, and noise. However, it is these nonlinearities that sound "musical" to the human ear.

Fabrice Gabriel is not only a genius at audio DSP, but he has a degree in electrical engineering. He was able to carefully analyze the schematics of all the great mixing consoles and produce individual DSP modules that reproduce various parts of the circuit path, from line input amplifiers to fader buffers to summing amps. Over the past year, we then tweaked the modules by EAR in a mastering room to precisely match the hundreds of test files that were processed with each console.

Keep in mind, that an analog console is a dynamic instrument. As you begin to push the faders into the mix buss, the amplifiers start to reach their threshold and various changes occur in the harmonics and overall sound. This is all recreated in this plugin suite.

In conclusion, I'm so proud of this plugin, and I think it will change the way many people think of "mixing in the box". As we've been developing the Virtual Console Collection, we've been pleased to see other digital models of analog mixing pop up (such as the Harrison Mixbuss), showing us that this was an important issue for the audio industry, and we're glad to add to it.

The Virtual Console Collection is RTAS, VST, AU on both Mac and PC, and along with the whole Slate Digital line, will now be available very soon with a 14 day demo. I'm eager for you all to try them.

- Steven Slate

www.slatedigital.com

http://www.solid-state-logic.com/news/article.asp?ID=219&T=M

LOS ANGELES — Solid State Logic, the world’s leading manufacturer of professional digital and analogue consoles, is proud to announce the release of X-Patch at the 2010 Winter NAMM Convention, Booth 6907 at the Anaheim Convention Center from January 14th to 17th.

X-Patch is designed to deliver the flexibility of plug-in style routing to boutique analogue processing. Developed from technology at the heart of SSL’s acclaimed Matrix console, X-Patch provides a 16x16 SuperAnalogue™ routing matrix that can be Ethernet controlled remotely from a standard computer. SSL’s Logictivity™ Remote Studio Browser application provides Set-up, Configuration and Preset Storage and makes the X-Patch the perfect tool to incorporate analogue processing into any production studio environment. X-Patch can function as a simple ‘X-Y Router’ or as a ‘Matrix’ to create complex processing chains. This allows for analogue processing to be built into favourite processing chains and then easily placed into signal paths, for example, favourite Mic Pre, EQ & Dynamics processors recalled as the perfect vocal chain at a single stroke. In a studio environment X-Patch speeds up workflow and aids creativity by reducing the constant physical re-patching required when using only a patch bay for routing. Up to six X-Patch units can be controlled in parallel from a single instance of the X-Patch Logictivity Browser software.

X-Patch is also a powerful stage or studio live performance tool for guitarists. Once configured, X-Patch can operate independently of the Studio Browser application and host computer and has MIDI connections. Connection of a standard MIDI Foot Controller to X-Patch creates a versatile stand alone analogue routing/switching system for on-stage boutique instrument processing, or amplifier selection at a fraction of the cost of comparable professional on stage effects selection systems.

Key Features

* Inserts analogue processors into production workflow like plug-ins
* Suited to studio production and live performance applications
* Insert ‘chains’ can be created, saved and recalled
* Browser software controls routing and set up
* Ethernet connection to Mac or PC host computer
* 16 x 16 pure analogue routing matrix
* Rear panel audio connection via 4 x 25 way D-Sub’s
* Front Panel XLR inputs and outputs for channels 1 & 2
* SSL SuperAnalogue™ transparent audio performance
* MIDI connectivity enables use of Programmable Foot controllers
* +4dB and -10dB operating levels facilitate use of guitar pedals etc

X-Patch will be available Spring 2010 priced $1,199 + Tax.

"I am pleased to say that this is an incredibly accurate software recreation of my original A-Range design."

Professor Malcolm Toft, Original designer of the Trident A-Range console

Linköping, Sweden. February 1st, 2010. Softube is shipping the Trident A-Range for native VST, AU, RTAS and TDM. Trident A-Range is available today at the Softube web shop and at authorized Softube dealers at an introductory price of $229 (Native) or $329 (TDM/Native), excl. VAT. The introductory offer will last through out February, thereafter the price will be $279 and $449, respectively.

The Trident A-Range plug-in is a model of a channel equalizer from the legendary Trident A-Range console, a holy grail for sound engineers and producers since the seventies when hit records by David Bowie, Elton John and others were recorded at Trident Studios in London.

The plug-in is fully endorsed by Trident Audio Developments and the original A-Range designer Malcolm Toft. Toft calls the plug-in an "incredibly accurate software recreation", even down to the overdriven sound of the original.

As only thirteen A-Range consoles were ever built, it's a very exclusive piece of equipment that now is available in a plug-in format. The sound is continuously referred to as "colorful" and "musical" and will provide you with a very unique way of shaping your sound.

A fully functional 20 day demo can be downloaded from http://www.softube.com.

http://www.youtube.com/soundonsoundvideo#p/u/2/vqRwDLq_-P0

Here's how it works:

1. Fill out the Public Beta authorization request form.
2. Download the currently available Public Beta software and install.
3. Download your authorization from your iLok account and away you go.

Make sure to read the info on known issues, and then use the special Public Beta form to report any issues, make suggestions, or slather on about how cool we are. Be aware, if you do not read the known issues and report one, we are likely to mock you secretly behind your back.

Availability: 12/15/2009 - 01/31/2010

http://www.soundtoys.com/beta/

I got the Decapitator locked and loaded on the ilok and I am loving it so far.

Softube and Tonelux are partnering together to make a plugin verision of the TILT EQ.

http://www.softube.com/

http://www.tonelux.com/