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Archive for April, 2007
Sunday, April 15th, 2007
Who: Verstaerker
What: Recreation EP
Sounds like: Noisy industrial from Berlin
Recreation is a free remix EP from independent industrial artist Verstaerker. It features remixes by Mezire, Psychotronic and Audiohead as well the new track Monotal. It is dark, harsh, distorted, and flows from ambient soundscapes to club beats. To me, this is much more exciting than the new NIN album. Turn it up!
Verstaeker uses FL Studio, Ableton Live, Microtonic software and Korg Monopoly, SCI Pro One, Sherman Filterbank, Electribe MX, Machinedrum for hardware.
Full album “Analogien” is released on April 16 available here.
Website: www.verstaerker-music.net
Posted in Music, Review | No Comments »
Sunday, April 15th, 2007
Every Monday I highlight free plugins new and old that are worth checking out. See all posts in the Free Plugin Of The Week Series.
There aren’t many free RTAS plugins out there so I was pretty excited to find this pack of plugins from Soundhack.com, the Freesound bundle. There are four in the pack and believe it or not, they are good too.
Recently updated to V 6.0.1 the pack includes: a distortion, a compressor, a sample and bit depth reducer, a MS matrixer, and a phase scope. The come in VST/RTAS/AU for OS 10.4 or Windows, and are fully automatable.
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Posted in Free Plugin Of The Week, Software, Virtual Effect | No Comments »
Monday, April 9th, 2007
By now we all know that MP3 is a lossy format, meaning that to get a smaller file size some data must be thrown away. But what exactly is discarded? I’ll show you how you can see and hear what is lost when converting to a 320 kbs MP3 and a 56 kbs MP3. I’ll do it in steps so you can follow along at home.
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Posted in Commentary; Rants and Jokes, Music, Tutorial | 2 Comments »
Monday, April 9th, 2007
The Fender Stratocaster VG
God’s guitar.
I figured I would share this recent piece of gear with the readers here at AudioGeekZine. This is one of the coolest things I have found in a long time. Does anyone remember that guitar from Line 6 that felt like a poorly set up Squire? Variax maybe? No…. I don’t either…. but this captures that technology, originally brought about by the crew over at Line 6, and amalgamates it with one of the greatest pieces of music history, the Fender Stratocaster.
The new VG Stratocaster is a plethora of incredible sounds just waiting to be unleashed. Other than looking cool like Strats always do (In my opinion) it has thirty-seven different pickup sounds to use. They are denominations of the five primary Modes: Normal Stratocaster (Magnetic pickups), virtual Stratocaster, Telecaster, humbucking pickup and acoustic. The guitar can be used like a normal strat by utilizing the stock magnetic pickups on the guitar or switch into one of the virtual modes and use classic strats, teles, and 5 different acoustics (from dreadnoughts to resonators).
Pretty sick eh? Well that’s not all this powerhouse boasts. Along with the virtual setups it has the ability to change between five different tunings….. Without ever touching a machine head…. what? Seriously. This allows alternate tunings without any change at all in string tension, consequently making it so that a person never again has to set up alternate guitars if they have a song that necessitates something other than standard tuning. The 5 tunings include all the most often used tunings, Standard tuning, Drop D, Open G, D modal (DADGAD), Baritone/Low B, and 12 string. Of course, by the sounds of it, this guitar appears better suited to live gigging or light studio work opposed to serious productions, but wow… what a toy.
The only negative aspect of this instrument I have come across in my travels is that it has an insatiable hunger for battery power. I could get over that. The only way they could make this guitar any better in my opinion would be to hijack the electronics from the Line 6 Variax which allows digital linking between it and their flagship amplifier The Vetta…. The Stratocaster VG and The Vetta would be UNSTOPPABLE.
Throw away your Variax… The Strat has evolved… and its hungry and sure to eat the competition.
http://www.fender.com/vgstrat/home.html
Posted in Gear, Gear Lust, Guitar, Review | No Comments »
Monday, April 9th, 2007
This tutorial is for anyone who has Cubase on their computer, but don’t really use it (like me), but are annoyed by its superiority complex that makes it the default folder to install new plugins to. Now what if you don’t want that, what if you want the FL Studio VST folder to be the default (which I do). I like having all my plugins in one place, the ones that come with Cubase can stay there because they are just not good enough to be in the same folder as the other VST. Take that Mr. Steinberg! Moving on…
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Posted in Tutorial | 3 Comments »
Monday, April 9th, 2007
Every Monday I highlight free plugins new and old that are worth checking out. See all posts in the Free Plugin Of The Week Series.
This time it is a new plugin. Bitter Sweet by Flux. This plugin in is new, so new there are still some bugs/issues. Still this is a nice little plugin for sweetening (or bitterering) your mix.
Official description:
“This dynamic processor manages audio transients.
Bitter Sweet is especially active on loud percussive tracks.
Turning the central button on the sweet side, decreases the transients amplitude. On the bitter side, the transients amplitude is magnified. Bitter-Sweet also features a control for the signal to be processed. When the main position is engaged, the process affects the stereo signal. If Center is engaged, only the M signal of the internal MS matrix is processed. If stereo is selected, only the S signal from the MS matrix is processed.”
I was just checking this plugin out in FL Studio and immediately I noticed a problem, a crackling sound. After some messing around with settings I found that enabling ‘Use fixed size buffers’ corrected the problem. There was also a small amount of delay before doing this, and a lot after (which is dependent on the hardware buffer size) which means that unless you are willing to offset every track so that this delay is not heard, you will be limited to only using it on the master. This error is only with FL Studio, and should be fixed in the next update.
Another issue I noticed was that the right click menu does not work in FL Studio 7, but it does in Protools. There are no problems as far as I can tell with this plugin in Protools 7.3, no delay, and no crackling, and presets work.
This plugin in is somewhat subtle, it is most noticeable on loud sounds, such as kick and snare drums. Turning the big knob to Sweet helps fit these loud sounds in with everything else, and Bitter makes these transients even louder. Not quite like a normal compressor or limiter.
It is an interesting plugin, a great free plugin to add that sugar on top.
It is available in VST and RTAS formats
http://www.fluxhome.com/ – Registration is required to download
Posted in Free Plugin Of The Week, Review, Virtual Effect | No Comments »
