Innehållsförteckning för November 2019 från Computer Music

01 Register your FileSilo account and log in. Even if you have a subscriber ID, you’ll still have to unlock each mag separately or migrate your old Vault account (see step 3) 02 Head back to the Computer Musicpage (filesilo.co.uk/computermusic) and choose an issue to unlock. You’ll need to answer one question to prove you’ve purchased the issue 03 You can migrate your old Vault account over to FileSilo to retain the issues you’ve added – head to filesilo.co.uk/vault and enter your Vault email address. Reset your password via the email you receive, and log in…

APPLE LOGIC PRO X Stephen: “When I was about 15, living in Pennsylvania, I owned a Roland D-5 synth and joined a band that sounded vaguely like New Order. We lost our drummer, so I decided to get a Kawai Q-80 sequencer to program beats via MIDI and the synth. That was the start of writing and making electronic music for me. I learned Master Tracks when I got my first Mac, then Cubase because that’s what all the drum ’n’ bass producers were using. I used Cubase for a long time and I only switched to Logic when Penelope and I moved to the UK. When I produce under another alias for other artists, I need to be more compatible with files. It took a bit of time to…

Distortion could be considered to be anything that changes a waveform’s shape. But audio engineers usually use the term more specifically to mean non-linearities: circuits that behave differently depending on the signal level. All DAWs now use floating-point maths, which gives us more headroom than we’re ever likely to need, and by default they exhibit totally linear behaviour. But analogue circuits don’t behave that way: they’re designed to be as close to linear as possible within their normal operating range, but if you push them too far, they can’t cope, so they start to change the shape of the waveform. The result is harmonic distortion: extra harmonics that are musically related to the original signal. And also intermodulation: the addition of extra partials added due to interaction between different parts…

One of the defining characteristics of many tube circuits is their tendency to subtly compress the signal dynamics, most obviously when used in guitar amps. The way the power stage responds to loud signals can profoundly change the guitar’s feel, from spongy to punchy. This compressing effect is due to a slight ‘memory’: the way a tube circuit reacts depends in part on what came just before, and this can result in a gentle rounding of transients, even in circuits designed to be as clean as possible. But perhaps the most important characteristic of a valve is its asymmetric behaviour when it overloads: the positive waveform half isn’t affected the same as the negative half, with important results for sound. If you’re into synthesis, you’ll know that triangle and square…

Electric guitarists tend to be familiar with intermodulation, though they probably won’t use the word. Nevertheless, it’s a phenomenon that every guitarist runs into shortly after they get home with their first distortion pedal… A single note with distortion sounds good. A perfect fifth sounds awesome! The distortion turns it into something you can convincingly describe as a ‘power chord’. Now add more notes: an extra octave above the root sounds better still. Add a fourth below: intermodulation between this and your root note now adds an extra phantom low root note an octave below the one you’re playing. Depending how much distortion you’ve piled on, you may be able to go further and add more notes of the chord: a major third might sound good; perhaps a minor third…

‘Mu’ is tube speak for ‘gain’, so ‘vari-mu’ means variable gain – like, for example, the gain-riding part of a compressor. A vari-mu compressor, then, is one that uses a tube right at the heart of the compression itself, with that tube impacting on the compression behaviour as well as just adding harmonics. Vari-mu compressors tend to have a very soft and gentle knee, with a gradual onset of compression, and a ‘gluey’ character that can work especially well on complex material like full mixes or subgroups. The grandaddy of vari-mu compressors is the legendary Fairchild. This is a huge 30kg unit with 20 valves and 11 transformers, and original units now sell for silly money. These units were used extensively at Abbey Road Studios, helped to define the sound…

The ‘head bump’ refers to an EQ-style boost in frequency response in the lower frequencies. The precise frequency depends on the tape speed and the physical size of the playback heads, but on pro machines running at 15ips, it’d typically land in the 60-80Hz region – ideal for adding thump to kick drums and depth to bass guitars. Many engineers preferred tracking at 15ips rather than 30ips specifically because of the characteristic head bump at that speed, and a pleasantly fat, warm bottom end is now part of the ‘tape sound’.…

Brighter transients Load Satin over a full mix, then choose A-type (Dolby A) for the encoder, and leave the decoder set to Same as Encoder. Turn the Mix knob up/down, and hear how the companding makes transients seem snappier and brighter. Warmer transients Try switching to A-type Mode for a little bit more transient enhancement. Or switch to the B-type (Dolby B) to make your transients seem a little softer and rounder, and the overall sound a little warmer. Punchy lows Try this on drums: set the Encoder to None and the Decoder to uhx-Type II for massive, punchy expansion of low frequencies. You’ll need to dial back the mix knob quite a bit, otherwise this will be way too extreme! Enhanced highs Now set Encoder to A-Type or A-Type…

The original flanger effect was created by synchronising two tape decks playing the same audio, then manually disrupting the rate of one of those decks by grabbing hold of the tape flange – hence the name. When two copies of the same audio are played against each other with a slight time delay, the result is comb filtering, as some frequencies cancel out while the frequencies between are boosted. If the time delay between those copies varies continuously, the comb filtering will sweep around, creating that characteristic ‘whooshing’ sound. Later versions of the flanging effect used other ways to delay the audio signal, and replaced the manual adjusting of tape speed with an LFO to modulate delay time. This is the type of flanging effect you’ll find in modern guitar…

Slapping a tape sim on your DAW’s master channel isn’t a 100% accurate way to emulate a multitrack tape production. But perhaps that’s not quite true… In effect, what we’ve emulated is a digital multitrack recording mixed down to an analogue master tape, and indeed, this probably happened back in the 80s in high-end studios equipped with DASH (short for Digital Audio Stationary Head) open-reel digital multitrack tape. That’s right: digital multitrack recording was possible in the 80s, and believe it or not, they used to edit the tape with razor blades just like analogue tape! Stereo DASH machines were also available, but the format wasn’t that common, so DASH multitrack productions were often mixed down to analogue master tapes. If you’ve only got enough CPU left for one tape…

Slick EQ M is a superb mastering EQ plugin from Tokyo Dawn Labs, which uses a parallel internal topology. This means that bell boosts are created by blending a band-pass filtered signal with the original, while the low and high shelves use parallel low- or high-pass filters respectively. If it’s enabled, those parallel filters get a touch of gentle, tasteful saturation, too, which adds harmonics to that frequency band. And in a similar manner to multiband distortion, the lower bands will saturate without intermodulation from the higher bands, and vice versa. This helps to keep the saturation delightfully subtle, as you’d expect from a mastering processor, and perhaps helps to explain why colourful, analogue-modelled EQ plugins are popular, even though we now have ‘perfect’ digital EQ available. But this type…

01 Driving delay and reverb If your overly clean reverb or delay signals need a splash of colour, load them on an auxiliary return track containing a saturation or distortion plugin. By placing the distortion effect after the delay or reverb, you can dial in varying shades of colour: gentle saturation will bring up low-level detail and flatten your reverb or delay’s dynamics; while more assertive drive will result in face-melting, over-the-top distorted tails or repeats. Placing the distortion stage before the ’verb or echo will coat the driven dry signal in clean ambience. Use subtle settings to spice up tame vocals and synth stabs, or heavily distort a parallel synth signal into gigantic reverb to design gnarly ‘foghorn’ bass sounds. 02 Make some noise Need a simple, effective way…

The full version of Stark ($79.99) offers 12 amp models, each with clean and overdrive channels, six room types, nine different cabinets and cabinet pass-through option. It also comes with a four-slot FX board that allows you to load up any combination of multiple pedals that can be rearranged via drag and drop. iPad-owning guitarists and music-makers can also grab the identical iOS version for $19.99 (Auv3 only), placing all these lovely features right at your fingertips. Computer Music readers get a whopping 50% off the PC/Mac version of Stark Use the code CM2019 at checkout to get it. Offer ends 1st December 2019…

Sequencing To turn an LFO into a 16-step sequencer, set its X-axis to 16 and its Y-axis to 12 (in unipolar mode), then modulate the pitch of an oscillator by 12 semitones. This will give you an octave of semitones above root pitch. Noise Using the Noise generator to modulate the pitch or cutoff frequency in the audio range is a useful way to add grit and grunge to a sound without resorting to a distortion module. The secret here is to use extremely small modulation depths for each destination. Rhythm and motion You can assign a multitude of parameters to a single macro for wild timbral-morphing effects, then finesse their scaling for useful results at each end of its range. Once in place, apply a synced LFO to modulate…

Last month, I looked at using diminished seventh chords as pivot chords to change or modulate to a different key. To give them their proper title, the chords I was using are also known as fully-diminished sevenths, but if we delve deeper into the seventh chord’s family tree, there’s another, closely-related chord in the diminished family with a whole other range of uses, and that’s the half-diminished seventh. Also commonly b known as the ‘minor seven flat five’ (m7 5) , the half-diminished chord is a type of seventh chord with a particular structure that makes it a pretty useful passing chord. Described as being ‘intensely expressive’ by theorists, it’s found a lot in jazz, but it can also be used to add some emotional colour to most other genres.…

While The Grid obviously takes centre stage in Bitwig Studio’s v3 update, a few other less significant enhancements have been made, too. First up, shuttling audio signals is made that little bit easier by the integration of VU meters into the mixer and track list routing choosers; while the option to add a minutes/seconds/ milliseconds scale to the timeline – called the Realtime Ruler – will be welcomed by media composers. Automatic project backups help to ensure that you don’t fall victim to data corruption by saving a duplicate of your current project file. And users of Ableton Link will be reassured to know that Bitwig are on top of that particular protocol – version 3 is now supported. A few graphical changes have also been worked in. Alongside a…

With versions 1 and 2 scoring 9/10 in 238 and 252 respectively, the pressure is on for the latest iteration of iZotope’s amazing ‘smart’ channel strip plugin to meaningfully improve on its predecessor. We’ll concentrate on the new features of v3 for the purposes of this review, but first, let’s get up to speed with a general summary. Neutron is a semi-modular channel strip boasting seven (previously six) superb processing modules – two multiband Compressors, EQ (with Dynamic mode and the excellent Masking Meter), Gate, Exciter, Transient Shaper and the new Sculptor – invoked in whatever combination and order you like (and also included as individual plugins), plus an output Limiter. What’s always set it apart from other similar offerings, however, is the Track Assistant feature, which ‘intelligently’ analyses the…

Introduced in 2016, Nx is Waves’ immersive audio system that creates 3D audio on any stereo headphones. It’s been incorporated into a number of products including Audeze’s Mobius 3D headphones, the Nx app for both desktop and mobile, and DAW plugins Nx Virtual Mix Room and Abbey Road Studio 3. The plugin versions are simply inserted as the last effect on your master output, and modify what you hear in line with their algorithms and impulse responses. Simply bypass them when you bounce your mix. Both Nx plugins incorporate five key elements that influence what you hear. First, there’s adjustment of the stereo and mono signal components. This gives the impression of a phantom image in front of you, much like loudspeakers, rather than between your ears, as with headphones.…

AudioThing’s latest release, Valves (VST/AU/ AAX), is a multifaceted effects plugin that centres on three main modules: Valve, Filter and Cabinet/EQ. In fact, it replaces two earlier AudioThing plugins – Valve Exciter and Valve Filter – both of which included similar valve drive stages. Each stage has individual bypass, and the Filter can be placed before or after the Valve stage, with the Cabinet/EQ as the final module in the signal flow. Rounding things off is a Master section with Input and Output level, overall Mix blend and a switchable Soft Clip. Valves includes 37 presets, and there’s the handy option to lock parameters when loading them. For instant creativity, there’s a parameter Randomizer (dice icon) on the top bar, and right-clicking on any parameter enables it to be made…

Get out-of-this-world sounds aplenty in this pack of one-shots and loops from trusted samplesmiths Cyclick and Groove Criminals. Within this collection you’ll find hits, loops and even multisampled instruments to take listeners into another galaxy. Our intrepid sonic explorers have created loops over a range of tempos. There’s also some circuit-bent Akai action to really help you blast off. Get these samples on your cover DVD or via our FileSilo download site: filesilo.co.uk/ computermusic. > Step by step Loading up this issue’s Cosmic Glitch sample pack 1 In the Cyclick folder, you’ll find a collection of Bass, Beats, Electric Piano and Synth loops (about 50 in all) at five tempos: 85, 95, 105, 120 and 130bpm. These spaced-out sounds vary from disco gated synths to chilled, atmospheric, burbling lines. 2…

HYBRID SYNTHS Our synths have been created by the best software developers in the world to bring you a suite of sound-making tools for all music production scenarios u-he Zebra CM Blendable oscillator waveforms Super-programmable step LFOs Slick delay, reverb and chorus Original synth designed just for CM AU/VST, 32-/64-bit KV331AudioSynthMasterCM Dual wavescanning oscillators Multimode filter and built-in effects FM/AM synthesis modes Based on SynthMaster 2.5 AU/VST, 32-/64-bit Synapse Audio Dune CM VA and wavetable oscillators Powerful per-voice modulation 12-slot modulation matrix Based on the full version of Dune AU/VST/RTAS, 32-/64-bit u-he Bazille CM Patchable modular synthesiser Sequencer and Mapping Generator Audio-rate modulation, Fractalizer Huge how-to guide in 232 AU/VST 32-/64-bit Dmitry Sches Thorn CM Dual spectral oscillators Analogue and Harmonic Filters Spectral and real-time effects Glitch Sequencer and Arpeggiator…

Though there are a wide variety of DAWs, each with its own unique interface, there are similarities when it comes to loading up and using plugins, and most stick to one of two approaches. The first – as seen in Steinberg’s Cubase, Apple’s Logic, and Cakewalk’s Sonar – involves insert slots on a track or mixer channel. These are used in the same way as an insert effect would be used on a hardware mixer. In other words, the effect is placed ‘in line’ on that mixer or track channel. Plugins might be loaded in by use of a dropdown menu tree or right-clicking in the effects slot. Clicking in the insert or effects slot in some DAWs – Cockos’ Reaper, for instance – will reveal a dedicated browser from…

DESIGNER DISTORTION Our seasoned studio experts bring you a handful of creative and clinical tricks for heating up your mixes Read the full article on p22 1 Distorting delay and reverb with aux setups 3 Beefing up beats with parallel excitement 4 Designing crunchy sounds with digital distortion 6 Sidechained distortion for next-level mixes 7 Cleaning up and enhancing distortion with EQ 9 Customising distortion with effects chains cm Producer Masterclass CLIQ See Robin and Max get a little Wavey in this month’s exclusive in-studio video Note: this video is only available using the link on page 45 Read the full article on p44 STARK CM Get started with Klevgrand’s guitar amp plugin, free this issue Read the full article on p54 cm/experts Our resident music production gurus walk you…

cm How did Loopcloud come to be? MP “It came from a selfish need to find what I wanted more quickly from the huge catalogue of sounds that I [as Loopmasters] have amassed over the years. Searching for sounds can really get in the way when things are firing in the studio. “I asked [Credland Audio’s] Jim Credland if we could work together on a method for tagging samples based on the metadata we already had, so we could ultimately add the Loopmasters catalogue to the cloud and search it by these tags. Then we started having more ideas, and that was when the Loopcloud train left the station. Version 5 has been our biggest upgrade yet, but Loopcloud is at heart still a sample management system with the added…

Wusik SP22 Bag yourself a simple, sample-powerful plaything (that actually samples!) from a seasoned developer Wusik’s William Kalfelz has been at this plugin game for nearly as long as they’ve existed. Starting with complex, commercial clones for users of Native Instruments’ Reaktor, he then turned his talents toward original products, first with Dash Synthesis and later Wusik. The jewel in his crown must be the long-lived Wusik Station, a mighty sample-plus-synthesis workstation that combines powerful features like wavesequencing and user-drawable waveforms. Wusik has ever been willing to toss a fantastic freebie into the wild, but they’re always worth celebrating, so we were pleased to see Wusik SP22 come our way. Once again, Wusik has turned to sampling for inspiration. Wusik SP22 is a cross-platform instrument (and, in a manner of…

IK Multimedia AmpliTube Custom Shop The free version comes with nine stompbox sims, plus four amps and five cabs ikmultimedia.com Klanghelm IVGI Analogue-style mojo from the dons of saturation emulation klevgrand.se Cableguys WaveShaper CM Design your own distortion response by positioning nodes on an X/Y axis cableguys.com Audio Damage FuzzPlus Fuzz distortion with an MS-20-esque filter – what’s not to like? audiodamage.com Creative Intent Temper Flavoursome saturation with an appealing interface creativeintent.co Rob Papen RP-Distort CM Five distortion algorithms plus EQ, dynamics, widening and modulation robpapen.com Tritik Krush Drive, Crush and Downsample algorithms, a filter, plus an LFO to wiggle them all tritik.com…

The term ‘distortion” has historically held mostly negative connotations for audio engineers. For decades, the goal was to minimise it: only with the advent of perfectly linear digital recording has distortion become something we routinely need to add deliberately. So here’s the big secret: very subtle harmonic distortion usually isn’t perceived as distortion. Often it just makes the source seem brighter, or thicker, or richer, or more detailed. Perhaps counterintuitively, adding just the right amount of harmonic distortion will usually make things sound more hi-fi. This kind of distortion is often called saturation, but the difference is really just one of degree: push it too hard, or feed it too complex an input signal, and that gentle saturation will turn into unpleasant distortion. ‘Colour’ can sometimes refer to frequency response:…

Real analogue valves have other characteristics beyond their interestingly non-linear behaviour, which aren’t always so desirable. They’re power-hungry and run hot. They burn out over time and need replacing periodically. They can become microphonic and pick up external noise. And the high voltages used in traditional valve circuits can be very dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing: many guitar players have been electrocuted on stage due to faulty valve amps, sometimes fatally. Of course, plugins tend not to model these undesirable aspects of real tube circuits, which is a big – and sometimes overlooked – advantage of software!…

Bias is an inaudible high frequency tone, somewhere between 40kHz and 150kHz, which was printed to tape along with the wanted signal, and greatly improved its performance by keeping the signal within its linear range. Setting the bias level is a crucial part of maintaining and aligning a machine, but there is no one single correct level for the bias tone. Engineers might go for slightly different levels, depending on whether they prioritise a flatter frequency response, minimum distortion, or a brighter or warmer sound. Some tape plugins model the bias tone, and allow you to tweak the level, which gives you a lot of extra tonal options. Try u-he Satin for example, or the T-RackS Tape Machine Collection from IK Multimedia. But note how high in frequency that bias…

Signals aren’t recorded flat to tape. Instead, EQ is applied to the signal on the way in, and an equal and opposite EQ is applied on playback to restore the original frequency response. The choice of which standard EQ response to use affects which frequencies are most likely to saturate the tape when driven hard, strongly affecting the resulting sound. u-he Satin gives you control over this: choose the IEC 15 ips standard for the Rec EQ for a good all-round setting; or the NAB standard if you like lots of low-frequency saturation; or you could try running it flat if you like super-saturated treble. The Repro EQ should usually be set to ‘same as Rec’ to correctly reverse the effects of the Rec EQ. But Satin gives you the…

Tape was also the origin of that most fundamental effect: the delay. These days, we think nothing of loading up a delay plugin and applying echoes automatically synchronised to the tempo of a song. But the first delay effects were created using two tape decks (one to record, and the other to play back slightly later), and synchronising the delay time to the song would mean adjusting the tape speed, or the physical distance between the two decks. Obviously, engineers wanted an easier way: the first delay units used loops of tape, which could be run at different speeds to change the delay time, like the Roland Space Echo. Needless to say, this isn’t the highest fidelity way to create a delay: all the usual side-effects of tape apply, magnified…

There are many analogue circuits that don’t use valves or magnetic tape, and have their own saturation and distortion character. Components like transformers and inductors exhibit subtle memory effects, like tubes and tape, for complex saturation that, again, can’t be recreated with a simple waveshaper. The classic Neve mic preamp is a case in point: no tubes in sight, but still a sound rich in harmonics and character that’s been modelled by many different plugin developers. Almost as ubiquitous is the API preamp circuit: another fully solid-state design known for its raunchy, rock ’n’ roll midrange drive. Then there’s the Neve EQ, or the API EQ, or the SSL EQ, all of which add their own saturation characteristics on top of the EQ they apply. The T-RackS Neve and API-style…

Bitcrushing works on the other axis of the graph from sample-rate reduction, reducing the resolution with which each sample is stored. As it decreases, you get more quantisation distortion, which is the low-level grunge we lose when we add dither. Bitcrushing depends on signal level, but in the opposite way to analogue distortion: as the signal level drops lower, the quantisation distortion becomes more and more extreme, until eventually the signal drops below the lowest bit and grinds to crunching silence. This gives a natural ‘gating’ effect, which can help tighten up drum tracks while simultaneously giving them extra attitude.…

CM: House music being the multifaceted genre that it is these days, how would you describe your own particular sound? Robin M: “I would say it’s certainly house music, but house music has now broken down into all these weird little genres. Would you put us in the bass house category, or chunky house, or..?” Max Reich: “Back in the day, it would just be house music, but now it’s finding the different types of genres within house. Someone said we did G-house the other day. What is G-house? “For us, good house music just works on the dancefloor. We might cross genres between future house, urban house or classic house, or whatever. I’d say we dip into different genres more though rather than just pigeonholing.” RM: “I think a…

Bitwig Studio is a DAW that’s always been influenced by modular systems. Version 1 brought nested effects and open-ended controller setup; while v2 took things further with its excellent modulation system, whereby any device could be adorned with extra LFOs, envelopes and control routers. Bitwig Studio 3 steps things up a notch with The Grid, a pair of devices – the Poly Grid instrument and FX Grid effect – that present the user with an open-ended modular environment in which to make use of over 150 tools including oscillators, filters, delays, maths/logic operators, sequencers and more. This concept is nothing new, of course – The Grid shares influences with Max/MSP, Reaktor and modular softsynths such as Phase Plant or VCV Rack – but The Grid stands out for its accessibility.…

A development of reggae in the late 70s, but really coming into its own in the 80s with the advent of affordable electronic instrumentation, dancehall music is a milestone genre on the roadmap of bass music – that would eventually feed directly into jungle – as well as an enduringly popular form in its own right. The tract that’s most widely considered to be the dancehall prototype would be Wayne Smith’s (Under Mi) Sleng Teng (1984). Although the seminal drum machine part in the track could be said to be relatively non-descript, the style would go on to quickly develop its own particular percussive template. This is based on a dotted-note shape that sounds and feels very different to the 2-and-4 backbeat of most other dance music flavours, and makes…

“In actuality, Chipsynth MD comprises six independent Mega Drive emulations” The eagerly awaited follow-up to 2018’s Chipsynth PortaFM (8/10, 259) sees much-loved Canadian developers Plogue recreating the soundchip from the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis 16-bit games console of the 90s, and deploying it as the foundation for a plugin synth (VST/AU/AAX/standalone) geared up for both vintage chiptune-style noises and complex contemporary sounds. Chipsynth PortaFM modelled the OPLL (YM2413) chip found in Yamaha’s PSS line of FM instruments, and Chipsynth MD stays with the same manufacturer and synthesis style, “bit-accurately” emulating the Mega Drive’s OPN2 (YM2612) processor. No samples are involved – this is pure coded emulation, taking in the full architecture, right down to the OPN2’s peculiar 9-bit DAC, which used time-division multiplexing to manage playback of one sample at a…

Neutron 3 introduces a new module to its virtual rack in the form of Sculptor, which applies up to 32 automatically adjusted bands of compression in order to push the input signal towards a target curve. Said curve is selected from the same menu of 25 instrumental options presented by Track Assistant, including four All-Purpose settings for source-agnostic usage; and Sculptor is also given pride of place by the Track Assistant engine, which places it first in every chain it generates. Having selected your target curve manually or analysed your real-time input, the amount of spectral processing applied – ie, how hard the frequency is pushed towards the target curve – is determined by the left-most control, while the Tone knob tilts the spectral shaping towards a darker or brighter…

Universal Audio’s latest UAD update (v9.10.1) includes a new compressor collection featuring the UA 175-B and UA 176 models. Originally released in 1960, they were designed by Bill Putnam specifically for studio use and are the all-valve forerunners to Putnam’s more famous 1176 design. The valve-based gain reduction and amplifier circuits combine to produce a harmonically rich tube behaviour also reminiscent of Fairchild’s 660/670 classics. The UAD emulations are based on a pair of Universal Audio’s own golden units. The UA 175-B is the simpler of the two designs and has a fixed ratio of 12:1 with limiter-style hard knee compression onset. It also has a low/hi gain control (an internal jumper option on the original hardware) that boosts the input by 10dB. The UA 176 has four ratios (2:1,…

To help you get the most out of our immense plugin collection, we’ve assembled the Plugins Tutorial Bank, containing over 100 guides and tutorials for our cm Plugins, specially selected from past issues. You’ll find Getting Started PDFs and videos for most of the individual plugins, along with tutorial PDFs and videos on using cm Plugins for sound design, mixing, and even creating entire tracks. You’ll find all of this as a handy download from FileSilo – go grab it now and start getting more out of your plugins! filesilo.co.uk/computermusic…

So how does your DAW know where to look for your plugins? Actually, it might not. Mac users have it easy, as there are OS-specified folders into which plugins are installed. These folders can be found by going to your Library folder (if you can’t find it, go to the Finder’s Go menu, hold Alt, and a Library option should appear). Find the Audio directory, and then the Plug-Ins folder within. There you will find more folders still. One will be labelled Components – this is where your AU plugins reside. Other folders will be found alongside it for VST and VST3 plugins. If you’re a Pro Tools user, you’ll find your plugins in an Avid or Digidesign folder. If your installers don’t automatically install the plugins into the proper…

Kawai K1 It’s difficult to dissect the success of Kawai’s K1. On one hand, it offered a decidedly low-budget alternative to Roland’s D-50 – the hottest synth on the market at the time of the K1’s release. On the other, so many corners were cut that an argument could be made that it could barely be considered a synthesiser at all, as the omission of any sort of filters meant that for many owners it served merely as a collection of multi-sampled instruments – what we’d call a ‘ROMpler’ nowadays. Even then, the initial version lacked drum sounds or sequencing of any sort. And effects? Forget it. And yet the darned thing sold. And sold. And sold. Eventually, Kawai would shift 50,000 of the things – and while that was…

OENKENSTEIN AUDIO RUMBLE K1 GRANULAR SYNTHESIZER This massive Rack Extension for Propellerheads’ Reason was inspired by the K1, and that still shows. However, the developer have added quite a lot of functionality, including those lamented filter and effects. There’s also a powerful modulation matrix and granular synthesis functions. propellerheads.com ROLAND D-50 If you’ve been itching to get some 80s-style PCM synthesis, 20 bucks will get you a month’s access to Roland’s Cloud service, where you can avail yourself of the synthesiser that inspired Kawai’s K1. The D-50 has a different set of samples onboard, but it also has filters and effects. It’s a classic, and for good reason at that. rolandcloud.com IK MULTIMEDIA SAMPLETANK FREE We couldn’t exclude the free version of the ROMpler that re-defined the form for the…

Plugins Install and use Stark CM, plus our cm Plugins instruments and effects Samples Download this month’s exclusive packs and power up your tunes Tutorial Videos See and hear exactly how it’s done with our expert video guides Tutorial Files Follow along in your DAW with WAVs, project files, MIDI clips and more Log in at filesilo.co.uk/computermusic Register this issue for instant access to our plugins, samples, videos and files on your desktop computer Free for digital readers too! Read on your tablet, download on your computer FileSilo Secure and safe online access, from anywhere Free access for every reader – print and digital Download only the files you want, when you want All the downloads from all your issues, in one place…

Reason Studios Reason 11 All change in Stockholm: Reason goes plugin and Propellerhead is no more The departure of founder and CEO Ernst Nathorst-Böös earlier this year heralded the start of a new era for Swedish software powerhouse Propellerhead, creators of the hugely popular but decidedly idiosyncratic Reason DAW. Not only have the company changed their name to Reason Studios, making their developmental focus abundantly clear (and losing that jarring ‘propellerheads’ URL), but it looks like Reason itself is also being radically repositioned, as version 11 introduces the ability to load the Reason Rack as a plugin in any DAW. This makes Reason a potentially tempting proposition to those uninterested in its unorthodox sequencing and mixing capabilities, serving simply as a powerful and well-stocked suite of instruments and effects for…

When VST instruments were first made possible, young Angus Hewlett formed a one-man outfit called FXpansion and quickly established himself with a catalogue of superb products like the mighty DR-008 drum synth/sampler. One of the earliest freebies, Mysteron was intended to bring the spooky sound of the Theremin to our desktops, with a spare but intuitive interface and familiar sound. With five knobs surmounted by a blue X/Y pad, all manner of sci-fi soundtrackery could be elicited. It was the perfect tool for explaining to onlookers what a VST plugin actually was. http://bit.ly/cmmyst275…

When it comes to imbuing sterile audio signals with harmonic excitement, aggression, bite and character, there are few better effects than saturation and distortion. With so many flavours on hand, spanning subtle to searing, the ranges of tones on offer are almost infinite. But so much sonic potential comes at a cost. Should you reach for a software emulation of a classic tape machine? Or would a glaze of retro tube distortion do a better job? And what about digital distortion and its associated aliasing artefacts? Unless you’re a bona fide analogue aficionado, the amazing hardware-emulating features packed into today’s plugins can all too easily prove overwhelming. Yes, you can simply load up a plugin at random and overdrive your signals into oblivion – and this can often work –…

The ‘tube sound’ is hard to pin down, meaning different things to different people. In reality, there are many different types of tube, and many different ways to design a circuit around them. Tube microphones are perennially popular, but tubes are used in this context due to their high impedance, which allows for a simpler, ‘purer’ circuit design. The tube will usually operate comfortably within its most linear range, and tube mics tend to sound clean, with glossy high frequencies. By contrast, tube mic preamps are often associated with a warmer, thicker tone than their solid-state counterparts. Driving a valve preamp hard can add rich-sounding harmonics that make the signal warmer without becoming dull. Tube guitar amps vary a lot, from bluesy triode designs to high-gain, hard-rockin’ heavy metal pentode…

Intermodulation is an important aspect of harmonic distortion that’s sometimes overlooked, or mistaken for other artefacts such as aliasing – more on this later. Let’s imagine two sine waves. One of them is big and slow, so has a high amplitude and a low frequency. The other is small and fast, so low amplitude and high frequency. If we distort these separately, each will simply gain a harmonic series above the original frequency. But what if we add the two signals together first, then distort the result? When we sum them, the resulting wave combines long, slow oscillations from the lower wave with faster, shorter oscillations from the higher wave. When we start to distort the lower wave, the amount by which it distorts will be constantly changing as the…

Compression also results in harmonic distortion and intermodulation. This tends to be subtle, until you get into really fast attack and release times, when the boundaries between compression and distortion being to blur. But, of course, many hardware compressors also add their own saturation even when not compressing at all, thanks to transformers on the input and output stages. And the method of gain reduction used will also affect the sound. A VCA (as used in the classic SSL bus compressor) didn’t sound the same as a FET (as in the 1176). T-RackS Black 76 is a good example: the gritty FET saturation is as much a part of its sound as the actual compression. And many hardware compressors also included tubes. However, there are a few ways to use…

Tape enjoyed a long history, and there are many types of tape deck: later models could achieve extremely high-fidelity, while earlier or cheaper models might colour the sound significantly before it even hit the tape at all. Tapes came in many widths, from two inches down to an eighth-of-an-inch for compact cassettes; and tape speed could vary from 30 inches-per-second on a pro machine, down to just 1.875 ips for a compact cassette. Different formulations of tape were available: even the humble compact cassette had three common types (ferric, chrome and metal), each of which sounded very different, and three possible different noise reduction systems (Dolby B, C, or S, although the last one was rare). There are a few general characteristics that we associate with the tape sound, the…

High-fidelity playback from tape requires that the tape speed remains constant: any speedup or slowdown will mean the music getting higher or lower in pitch, as well as faster or slower, and this type of fluctuation is very noticeable. Wow refers to relatively slow fluctuations in tape speed: too much of this will make sustained notes vary in pitch, like a slow vibrato. Conversely, flutter refers to faster fluctuations, when, for whatever reason, the tape isn’t moving smoothly past the head, and this causes more of a ‘warbling’ effect. Opinions differ as to the importance of these artefacts – some tape plugins model them carefully, while others ignore them completely. Even people who consider these effects desirable usually agree that this is only true if they’re applied subtly. If you’re…

Recording to tape is always a balancing act. You need a signal hot enough to be comfortably above the noise floor, but without getting so hot that distortion becomes too obvious. The difference between the max signal level you can record without unacceptable distortion and the noise floor of the medium gives us the dynamic range of the system. Tape doesn’t do so well here – even pro machines can’t approach the full dynamic range of human hearing. This was something that needed improving. Enter the ‘compander’ – a compound word combining ‘compressor’ and ‘expander’. Like the record and repro EQ, these were actually two different devices, the former to process the signal to tape and the latter to process the signal off-tape. They were designed such that the expander…

What happens if you stop the tape with the play head still pressed against it? Playback grinds to a halt, and the pitch divebombs down to DC as the tape comes to a stop. If you start playback again, the pitch swoops back up as the tempo accelerates back to normal, and we’re slingshotted back into the music. It’s a really cool effect! Softube Tape allows you to convincingly recreate this sound via its Run and Stop buttons in the right-hand Advanced panel. There’s no control over start or stop time, but it’s still one of the best implementations of this we’ve heard so far.…

When using tape emulation plugins, the only ‘correct’ approach to is to use whatever sounds good on each part, with no regard for specific technicalities. But sometimes you may want to take a more authentic approach – perhaps to recreate the sound of a certain era, or maybe just for the fun of it. In that case, you should pick a period-accurate emulation, and a suitably vintage or modern tape formulation. But a more important consideration is how you use tape plugins, and where you load them in your processing chain. Simply slapping an instance on the master bus isn’t going to cut it if you want the sound of multitrack tape: you need multiple instances running on every individual channel. If you want authenticity, you’ll need all instances to…

There’s nothing to stop you splitting the signal manually using a crossover plugin, then distorting or saturating each band with whatever works for that frequency band. Here, we’re using DDMF Metaplugin as a modular patching environment within a single DAW plugin slot, and the included crossover plugin as a band splitter. Now we can load saturation plugins that are usually single band, and create unique flavours of distortion that no-one ever tried before. This is without doubt the most flexible way to create multiband distortion effects, and the extra setup time is usually worth the effort.…

Transformers were once a necessary part of circuit design, used for all manner of impedance or level-matching duties, or to provide balanced inputs and outputs. They aren’t entirely transparent: they add their own subtle harmonic distortion, and exhibit complex hysteresis (ak our old friend, the memory effect). They also have limited bandwidth: they act as a high-pass filter at low frequencies, removing DC and subsonic content, and as a low-pass filter at higher frequencies, often starting to roll off gently somewhat below 20kHz. But back in the day, they were nonnegotiable, and your signals would pass through many in the course of a production – from the microphones to the console’s inputs and outputs, the tape deck’s inputs and outputs, and the input and output stages of any outboard gear…

Whenever audio equipment is improved, audio heads claim they liked it better before. So it was with digital audio: as soon as super-clean, linear AD/DA converters became the norm, some people went back to the gritty, grungy sound of vintage samplers, with their limited bit-depths, naive interpolation and primitive AD/DA conversion. And now that we can run pristine digital reverb plugins within our DAW, many producers hanker after the darker, richer sound of vintage hardware reverbs and their lower sample rates. In these cases, we can try and do the opposite of oversampling, and reduce the sample rate inside a plugin instead, deliberately introducing the type of aliasing artefacts that we were trying to reduce with oversampling. These aliasing artefacts may be inharmonic and gnarlysounding, but beauty is in the…

The origin of Wavey 00.10 Like Cliq itself, Wavey came to be through circumstance. Robin tells the tale: “Wavey’s actually the first record that Max and I put together. It started off as a bassline with some drums, and then it sat on our hard drive for a month or two – we didn’t really know what to do with it. We were driving to a friend’s party in Croydon with a couple of other friends, and we played the track in the car, and a friend of mine started humming out a little melody, which ended up becoming the chorus of Wavey – ‘Get lit, get drunk, get high, get wavey’. So props out to Herbie Crichlow on that one! “About a month after that, we went…

Guitar amp simulations can turn your clean, weedy-sounding DI guitar into pretty much any guitar sound you want. They often incorporate multiple amps, miking options and pedalboards and have become a standard toolkit item. Even so, options, sound and of course price vary considerably from one plugin to the next, and if you’re a newbie, you may be cautious about shelling out on features you won’t use. Enter this month’s addition to our ever-growing Plugins suite of free instruments and effects: Stark CM. It’s been built exclusively for Computer Music by Swedish developer Klevgrand, home to class creative processors such as DAW Cassette, Degrader and more. Stark CM (PC/Mac, VST/VST3/AU) is an algorithmic guitar amp simulator with four modules: Amp, Cabinet, Ambience and FX. It includes two amps (Guitar and…

Phase-1 & Swarm The Grid’s VA oscillators aren’t the whole story. Swarm is a module specifically designed to create thick unison sounds, with controls for detuning and spreading the tone. Phase-1, meanwhile, uses the same Phase Distortion technique used by Bitwig’s Phase-4 synth. Results are similar to the audio-rate techniques we explored earlier, but within a handy single module. Capture and release Nestled amongst the Delay tools is a simple Recorder, with trigger inputs to capture and play back short chunks of audio. This is perfect for creating glitchy stutters, especially when combined with some of the gate-manipulating tools found under the Logic selection. Have a go at using several Recorders running in parallel, each using different trigger rhythms. Comb over The Grid’s Comb Filter is a great tool when…

As producers, we always strive for more impact, aggression, width and space in our mixes, and when making electronic music, one of the trickiest factors to get right is the bass. Dance tunes demand power and consistency in the low end, and you need your bass to cut through and underpin the mix at all times, so when stacking signals to create an all-powerful, ‘3D’ bass sound, it’s crucial that you get your layering right. One way to do this is to split your bass into three discrete sections based on low, mid and high frequencies, then treat each layer differently, adding processes that lend themselves to that band. This is a common tactic in a modern producer’s arsenal and can define their workflow and signature sound. Modern DAWs make…

When Sander van Doorn was a small boy – maybe five or six years old – his father used to tell him stories. But there was something different about these stories because they had a soundtrack. “My dad was a big Jean-Michel Jarre fan,” remembers van Doorn. “He used to love the Equinoxe album and, every week, he would put it on the record player and tell me stories that fitted with the music. When the music was high, the story was exciting; when it was low, the story was sad. He would even break the story into two halves so he could turn the record over. “Not only did I enjoy the stories, I was also fascinated by the music. The strange sound of the synthesiser… songs that were…

Six years in, Bitwig Studio finds itself fully bedded in as a prominent fixture on the DAW landscape. Conceived and developed by a team of former Ableton employees, early comparisons of this slick audio/MIDI production system to Live were inevitable and easily made. Nonetheless, the innovations it introduced at launch (9/10, 203), including FX nesting, per-note automation, and the attention-grabbing simultaneous Arrangement and Clip views, were enough to set it on its own path. And the numerous v1.x and 2.x (9/10, 243) updates that followed continued the trend with the addition of an amazing freeform plugin modulation system, voice stacking and more. However, there’s one particular Bitwig feature that’s always been notable by its absence – and it’s a biggie. The company have repeatedly maintained that one of their primary…

Chipsynth MD doesn’t offer any conventional envelopes beyond those built into the operators, or traditional LFOs apart from Vibrato and Tremolo. Instead, modulation is handled by an extensive menu of MIDI streams (all 128 CCs, note pitch, Velocity, Aftertouch, Program Change and more), polyphonic and monophonic Random modules, and 15 step sequencers. The sequencers are the stars of the show, enabling bipolar sequences of up to 64 steps to be drawn in with the mouse and set to one-shot (envelope-style) or marker-defined looping (LFOstyle) playback, albeit with no visualisation of playback position. Triggering can be monophonic or polyphonic; playback sync is governed by the host DAW’s clock, subdivisions of the internal 125bpm clock, or note pitch; and the step length ranges from 1/256 to 32/1, with the Speed knob multiplying…

Over several decades, Studio 3 at Abbey Road Studios has played host to all manner of high profile projects. Waves Abbey Road Studio 3 (VST/AU/AAX) is the latest manifestation of Waves’ Nx system, using its immersive 3D technology to recreate the control room of this famous space in your headphones. If you’re a newcomer to the technology, see Waves Nx – a recap. Getting ahead In terms of functionality, Abbey Road Studio 3 could be perceived as very similar to Waves’ Nx - Virtual Mix Room plugin. You start by inserting either a stereo or surround format plugin, depending on which format you’re working in, upon which Nx will translate the balance onto stereo headphones in such a way that sounds like the phantom image is coming from monitors in…

Hyperspace (VST/AU/AAX) is an algorithmic reverb plugin from independent developer JMG Sound, available exclusively through new software house, United Plugins. It takes a flexible approach to the deployment of its onboard algorithms, enabling extensive modification of them using just a couple of XY pads – Algorithm and Character (see Flexible Friend). The plugin also features six Modes (Vintage, Classic, Retro, Modern, Sci-Fi and Cosmic) that act as recognisable starting points from which to launch your creative adventures. The Algorithm XY pad is the more subtle of the two, with Character adding more obvious influence to the tonal shape. Nevertheless, the main thing to appreciate is that the XY pads set the overall nature of the effect, which you’ll then want to modify in more traditional ways. To that end, there…

Javier Barrios World Guitars Subscription Guitarist Javier Barrios pulls out a variety of instruments for this 670MB collection of beautifully done loops and one-shots: acoustic, nylon and electric guitars, pipa lute, ronroco and ukelele. Most action takes place in the acoustic and nylon area, and the overall vibe is incredibly chilled, from cool bossa nova rhythms and other latin excursions, to delicate arps and atmospherics. Things get spikier in the ukelele department and get darker with the uniquely characterful pipa lute clips, and the only snag is a mercifully small subset of ill-advised guitar-synth crossover loops. noiiz.com 9/100 Loopmasters Vibes 10 – Street Beats £30 Loopmasters’ vintage-themed Vibes series continues with 735MB of very old-skool hip-hop sounds. 19 stemmed drum loops (168 files) immediately tell you what time it…