Aural Relics of Operating Systems past

So i started a rotation on the Gravity Halo blog to talk about music production and i decided to make the focus out of print/discontinued but highly useful and irreplaceable audio software for Mac or PC.

You can check out the first installment on Vaz modular here - http://gravityhalo-rotations.blogspot.com/2011/04/aural-relics-of-operating-systems-past.html

these are some of my favorites that i feel functionally and in many ways have not been replaced by anything existing today

Vaz Modular

Cool Edit

Acoustic Mirror

Anarchy FX

Hyperprism

I know people are here from different generations so i'm curious was there any time where an old piece of sound software that was a standby for you became obsolete, unusable (because of an OS upgrade) or for whatever reason it was no longer supported by your current setup? list those pieces of software here

recently xtranormal changed their text-to-speech system. the voices suck now; i'm gutted. i emailed them and they were like, nope, we're not licensing that engine any more. it's useless now :(

Cooledit 2.0 pro theme hip hop dub

01 Cool Edit Pro (Two Point Ohhhhh) 2.mp3Fetching info...

this is one i failed to mention in my original post

when i worked for Antares there were several producers who told me that this program was their 'secret weapon' and they were surprised no one else is using it.

it basically does what 'The Mouth' does but it came out 10 years before and is a lot more versatile and in my opinion more powerful overall.

i have that plugin, pirated it many years ago, but never really dug into it.... i pirated hundreds in those days, and i don't recall kantos as being immediately obvious like many others were. i will give it another shot !

edit: on the main thread point: while there are some bits i am nostalgic for (ad-lib soundcard came with some midi software i messed with when i was 5 or such), i have been blessed to not have many problems retaining software. i started on music using windows 95 or 98, and most of that shit will still run today. furthermore, as a lifelong computer nerd that always custom builds, i have lots of old PCs and PC parts i should have thrown out like any other sane person. if it ever boiled down to NEEDING something only an older system would run, well, i got a soundblaster 16 wasting away inside a linux box that just runs twitter bots

edit II: i have some anarchy VSTs. they're great, but often intolerably cpu-hungry !

edit III: i've avoided upgrading cubase so i don't lose my directx plugins, but i give increasingly less of a flying shit about that these days; probably won't last much longer

yeah there are only a handful of Direct X plugins i absolutely can't live without. If hyperprism 2.5 Dxi worked for me under Cubase 3 or even 4 i'd probbaly hold out but it doesnt

so after a little investigative reporting i have some very exciting news

Leighton Hargreaves, the creator of Anarchy FX has agreed to after his webpage being down for a while put up all of his old plugins 100% free of charge, non trial/demo versions. the full things!

here is what he had to say..

  Quote

Anyway, a few months ago my AnarchySoundSoftware web server crashed, I lost my online shop setup, and all my old plugins disappeared off the web. Until yesterday that is. Inspired by your email, and a few other recent emails from AnarchySoundSoftware users, I've quickly thrown up a new site, over which I'm publishing everything. Now it's all out there as freeware: the old effects, and the new more basic but previously unreleased ones. It's no longer really worth my while to administer a shop for the number of sales I get, and I'd rather that they were out there being used!

That's awesome news, I remember having a dodgy version of Corkscrew on my old lappy and remember it having such a distinct sound. Definitely going to have to pick these up

Oh great, I used Anarchy Rhythms a lot a few years back. Those spectral plugs are all pretty cool too.. Definetly dated yes.

GeoSynth is crazy, it's a 320mb download, most of what I presume is a lot of map elevation data!!

great.... get me downloading plugins again why don't you, watmm.... shit, there goes any other plans i had for today

boo! i was all stoked to try this geosynth navigator thing, but it's all MEMORY OUT OF -- REDUCING RASTER SIZE and there are no maps. and worse, no sound but the BONK windows makes when there are PROBLEMS

clearly in the spirit of the thread !

haha ill have to ask him about that, i wasn't even aware he put that on there till you guys mentioned it. Swarm synth is also one i haven't had the chance to try.

anybody ever use Anarchy Rythms? it wasn't included in the proper 'anarchy fx' pack but it was probably the most practical usable tool of the bunch.

it was basically a fancy midi gater except you divide your sounds into 4 frequency bands, so you could almost make drum beats out of pad sounds or singing.

it even had a neat trick where you could reinforce the impact of each band by adding drum synthesis to it

if you're reading this Leighton, thanks much! i will be getting back in touch with you soon to followup on my Anarchy FX article for Gravity Halo

  On 4/14/2011 at 1:17 AM, Jonas said:

 

 

 

fasttracker use on the pc died when a new version of windows came out around 2000 if I remember correctly. Switched over to Cubase 5.1 with vst's , semi returned to tracking using madtracker for a few years before finding Renoise. Probably many more programs I tried out in between briefly like hammerhead, tuareq, rebirth et cetera.

good stuff, never heard of Tuareq before, is this it?

http://www.brothersoft.com/the-tuareg-71638.html

seems pretty interesting from the description

  Quote

EditByBSEditor: Tu2 is a (standalone) phrase sampler which means it will make music and sound out of samples you feed it. Tu2 will stack samples, loops and SoundBites for you. You can Slice 'n dice them, mutilate them, filter them, remix them, put effects over them and while you're at it you have the Freedom to put your own personal sonic sauce over the outcome.

 

Tu2 is the Perfect Companion for Tunafish if you like to Create your own loops, samples and phrazes. It has numerous built-in effects and tools which will help you mangle your samples any way you like. you can free download The Tuareg 2.5 now.

  On 4/14/2011 at 8:31 AM, Awepittance said:

haha ill have to ask him about that, i wasn't even aware he put that on there till you guys mentioned it. Swarm synth is also one i haven't had the chance to try.

i did, back in 2003 or so. it's FULL OF BEES (in a good way)

I used to spend far too many hours using Scream Tracker and Impulse Tracker, which almost work properly in DOSBox on my iMac now. Though to be honest, I've kind of moved on.

I still prefer the FM7's retro UI than the FM8 and its one of those synths that works better as software.

So I've heard about it a lot and my roommate still uses it exclusively.

What is it about Cool Edit that everyone loves?

I'm not bashing, I'm just curious. I haven't done much with it myself. I'm sure you'll discuss it in the next article, but just a few highlights would be nice.

Also, you've convinced me to play with Vaz. :)

  On 4/14/2011 at 10:51 PM, wahrk said:

So I've heard about it a lot and my roommate still uses it exclusively.

 

What is it about Cool Edit that everyone loves?

For me, I use it because it does everything I need a sample editor to do and does it well. And because it's over a decade old the system requirements are so low that it all runs oh-so-fast and has no bloat.

It's been a long time since I last used it, but I vaguely remember Cool Edit being easier to use than Audacity and more featureful / less dumbed down than Fission. It also had (has?) a shareware version that let you do any two things of your choosing, if memory serves, so when some of us were too young to own credit or debit cards, it was something we could at least try out.

I still frequently use Sound Forge 6, and Reason 2.5 from time to time.

http://gravityhalo-rotations.blogspot.com/2011/04/aural-relics-of-operating-systems-past_15.html

cooledit 2.0 installment up

http://www.composersdesktop.com/index.html

I've always been intrigued by this software, although apparently they are still developing it but it has a long history and unique in that it is non plugin based. aphex was rumored to have used it, and i think richard devine as well?

Windows sound recorder before they castrated it. I remember creating grotesque radio plays with school friends - Multiple recorders open, cutting and pasting, reversing and stretching our pubescent gags and game sound fx. Later we discovered Cool Edit.

  On 4/15/2011 at 9:15 PM, Bubba69 said:

http://www.composersdesktop.com/index.html

 

I've always been intrigued by this software, although apparently they are still developing it but it has a long history and unique in that it is non plugin based. aphex was rumored to have used it, and i think richard devine as well?

richard devine used to speak quite highly about it. I had a friend who bought it and promised to tell me all about it and how good it was, unfortunately he wasn't able to tell me much because he found it quite unusable.

id love to be able to try a trial version of it or to test it out but there is no demo

i still keep my old os9-booting powerbook around to run all my old stuff, tho i don't use it that often. more for nostailgia reasons, really.

never been a pc guy, but here are some mac apps i loved to use:

b1257+12 - chaotic old max/msp-constructed standalone app by the old integer/antiorp/netochka nezvanova entity. the interface is half the fun.

cellsynth - like a little baby modular sound app. easy to set up all sorts of interesting internal feedback and just let it run.

eco 1000 - weird little synth noisemaker thing by the maker of the soundhack plugins.

marcohack - similar to soundhack but more focused on timestretching & spectral processing.

retro cd - cool little japanese shareware app that was nothing but a variable speed player for your cd drive. pop in a cd & play it at any speed you wanted (0-200%). fun!

thonk_0+2 - pick a soundfile, pick one of the 12 available presets, and sit back as it chews thru the file and turns it into a long chaotic noisy drony unpredictable piece of sound art. great way to get 5 minutes of music out of a 3 second sample.

it would be amazing if there was a website somewhere dedicated to old 'obsolete' music-making software. not just descriptions & screenshots, but also direct links to download the files, documentation, etc. everything stored on their own server in case the original company/host/programmer is no longer online. a musical app museum with downloads.