the watmm GAS thread

Yeah, I remember back in the early 2000s trying to find nanoloop and midines was tough, but it was easy to get Atari synthcart and the coleco drums. Then, eventually when new versions came out it seemed easy to find them, but at that point I didn’t really care that much.

As far as other chiptune stuff goes- I only used the “incredible music keyboard” software with the c64 at first, but eventually got mssiah, and it’s probably the best chiptune thing I have..... but I’m not as sentimental about the c64. I always wanted one when I was younger, but didn’t end up having one until I was in my 20s and I found one someone was throwing away with other accessories. Never ended up getting the coleco drums thing, but it syncs with the Atari synthcart, which I love. 
 

I tried to keep up on all the chiptune stuff, but eventually I got bored with it. However- one of my biggest regrets was not getting the synthcart midi adapter. I had never realized that Paul Slocum made one of those until https://atariage.com stopped selling it. If anyone on this forum ever comes across one, let me know!

CXM 1978 (motorized faders )

  On 4/27/2021 at 9:50 PM, Braintree said:

CXM 1978 (motorized faders )

 

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The videos for these are super sexy.  Who doesn't love the preset gliiidddeeee

They know how to charge for them though.

I just had a GAS rage and bought one of these.  Ordered from Norway 2pm yesterday and DHL had it with me in Devon by 2pm today, unbelievable service. 

Its an arrhythmic delay with additional send-receive feedback loop so you can get some really funky ambience and messed up sounds.  Can't wait to dive deep with this one.  

I seriously need to start looking into some reverbs and IR more. Posting it here so that I won't forget to!

  On 4/27/2021 at 10:33 PM, thawkins said:

I seriously need to start looking into some reverbs and IR more. Posting it here so that I won't forget to!

I can’t hype the strymon big sky enough. If you haven’t listened to one in person, do it before you buy another reverb of any sort. I almost bought strymon’s output module (forget what it’s called) just because their stuff sounds so good. It’s the only pedal I don’t want to be true bypass, because the buffered quality is so good. I saw that Steve roach recommended it along with the eventide space factor as the best 2 reverbs, but I have a pitch factor, so I went with a brand I didn’t already have.

  On 4/27/2021 at 4:25 PM, Himelstein said:

Yeah, I remember back in the early 2000s trying to find nanoloop and midines was tough, but it was easy to get Atari synthcart and the coleco drums. Then, eventually when new versions came out it seemed easy to find them, but at that point I didn’t really care that much.

As far as other chiptune stuff goes- I only used the “incredible music keyboard” software with the c64 at first, but eventually got mssiah, and it’s probably the best chiptune thing I have..... but I’m not as sentimental about the c64. I always wanted one when I was younger, but didn’t end up having one until I was in my 20s and I found one someone was throwing away with other accessories. Never ended up getting the coleco drums thing, but it syncs with the Atari synthcart, which I love. 
 

I tried to keep up on all the chiptune stuff, but eventually I got bored with it. However- one of my biggest regrets was not getting the synthcart midi adapter. I had never realized that Paul Slocum made one of those until https://atariage.com stopped selling it. If anyone on this forum ever comes across one, let me know!

 

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Sounds like basically what happened to me, right down to the Synthcart.  I got one of the originals for my birthday from my girlfriend at the time but didn't learn about the Midi one until it was too late. There's actually an Atari 2600 sound chip Midibox variant now but a partal kit is over $100 and I don't really care that much.

https://modularaddict.com/tia-atari-2600-synth-cartridge-partial-kit

  On 4/28/2021 at 2:02 AM, Himelstein said:

I can’t hype the strymon big sky enough. If you haven’t listened to one in person, do it before you buy another reverb of any sort. I almost bought strymon’s output module (forget what it’s called) just because their stuff sounds so good. It’s the only pedal I don’t want to be true bypass, because the buffered quality is so good. I saw that Steve roach recommended it along with the eventide space factor as the best 2 reverbs, but I have a pitch factor, so I went with a brand I didn’t already have.

I have never heard Big Sky in person but an old bandmate of mine had another Strymon reverb and he had insanely good sound altogether. Before I get anything hardware, I want to try out some plug-in alternatives though. I just need to remember to do it sometime.

  On 4/27/2021 at 10:33 PM, thawkins said:

I seriously need to start looking into some reverbs and IR more. Posting it here so that I won't forget to!

In software land, aside from the excellent Valhalla plugins (I especially like Vintage Verb, though Supermassive is a great gateway), I swear by Relab Development Sonsig A, which sounds lush AF and sits in the mix effortlessly. I now use it 99% of times. FWIW they run frequent discounts.

Whenever I need a gritty, grainy, characterful reverb I go for Megaverb though. I love it.

Finally, Live11's native new Hybrid reverb is significantly better than the awful old one.

This is still one of the best sounding free reverbs:

https://www.kvraudio.com/product/orilriver-by-denis-tihanov

Whatever reverb you use, remember that if it includes EQ/tone controls they're usually post reverb, but one of the most important things you can do with reverb is to put an EQ on the dry signal before it hits the reverb. If nothing else, highpassing somewhere around 200-600 Hz and lowpassing in the 10k to 15k range pre-reverb almost always makes it sound much better in the mix. Lows in particular almost never need to be there, unless you have some kind of big, Vengelis-y synth solo going on and even they you probably don't need much below 100Hz.

Fantastic tip, I do it all the time, quite often in M/S.u

ps: if you still want to reverberate some lows / highs, shelves work wonderfully well there.

I usually put Airwindow Capacitor before the reverb on my reverb sends (even hardware sends sometimes), solo the send and then set the HP and LP by ear that way first and fine tune them in context after that.

Speaking of, Chris fixed the compatibility issues with the latest MacOS for all his stuff last week.

  On 4/28/2021 at 1:26 PM, TubularCorporation said:

This is still one of the best sounding free reverbs:

https://www.kvraudio.com/product/orilriver-by-denis-tihanov

 

Whatever reverb you use, remember that if it includes EQ/tone controls they're usually post reverb, but one of the most important things you can do with reverb is to put an EQ on the dry signal before it hits the reverb. If nothing else, highpassing somewhere around 200-600 Hz and lowpassing in the 10k to 15k range pre-reverb almost always makes it sound much better in the mix. Lows in particular almost never need to be there, unless you have some kind of big, Vengelis-y synth solo going on and even they you probably don't need much below 100Hz.

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That plugin is pretty neat. I played around with it today, probably way too much.

The free TAL stuff is good:

https://www.kvraudio.com/product/tal-reverb-iii-by-togu-audio-line

https://www.kvraudio.com/product/tal-reverb-4-by-togu-audio-line

Ambience is good:

https://www.kvraudio.com/product/ambience-by-smart-electronix

Valhalla Supermassive is really good for very, very long reverbs:

https://www.kvraudio.com/product/valhallasupermassive-by-valhalla-dsp

Voxengo's free reverb is old and basic but it has a nice sound for some stuff, too:

https://www.voxengo.com/product/oldskoolverb/

There are a couple Airwindows reverbs that are Airwindows reverbs, they can sound very good but they're also weird.

So this is what came out of OrilRiver this week. There's probably too much reverb but I like how it turned out.

For some reason I thought Valhalla was a non free plugin and hopefully I will have time to try these other things out soon.

Valhalla has a few plugins, most of them are $50 but some are free.  If you ever pay for a reverb plugin they're all near the top of the value-for-money heap, really nice sounding and can cover a LOT of different sounds with a simple interface.  VintageVerb is the most popular.

Anyhow, what you should do now is download something with a very different sound (maybe one of the TAL plugins, or that Lexicon one hat came with the Presonus) and then run stuff through two contrasting reverbs at the same time in parallel (or series, but start with parallel). Also, I don't know how easy it is to do in Live, but something that works really well is using one reverb instance for all of your tracks but putting slightly different predelay on every send that's routed to it, so it's like the reverb plugin is a room and the amount of delay on each send is that sound's position inside the room.  Voxengo Latency Delay is a perfect plugin for that, because it's simple, lets you dial in very short delays very accurately, and it's free.

https://www.voxengo.com/product/latencydelay/

Honestly I don't usually do this because even in Reaper it's a bit of a pain to set up, but it does sound really good. I wish Reaper (and all other DAWs) let you delay any aux send as a built in feature, it would be super useful.

I think in live the same can be achieved using the track delay settings. 
 

great tip, never considered this.

Have been using tdr’s proximity lately for virtual positioning, also putting it on sources and return channels. Mixed bag but for some stuff it works really well. 

  On 5/3/2021 at 3:11 PM, user said:

I think in live the same can be achieved using the track delay settings. 
 

great tip, never considered this.

 

Have been using tdr’s proximity lately for virtual positioning, also putting it on sources and return channels. Mixed bag but for some stuff it works really well. 

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The thing is you don't want to delay the dry signal, only the pre-effect send signal, so I don't think track delay would work?  In Reaper it's just a matter of using extra channels in a track, probably most easy/CPU efficient to do the delay on the sending tracks rather than the receiving one.  For a stereo track, add two more channels, insert your predelay plugin of choice and route the audio to it on channels 3 and 4, add a send that sends only 3+4 to 1+2 on the receiving track, and then if you need to make sure that only the dry signal gets to the output of the sending track you could  turn send-to-parent off and use another send to rout it to the master or a submix, but this only really matters if you're doing surround mixing or using folders instead of busses for submixes.

TDR Proximity is fantastic, I haven't used it before a reverb in a long time but I remember it sounding great, especially if you're automating the send and use Proximity instead of the send level.

Actually, the van driveby sound at the beginning o this track was done mostly with Proximity:

https://elemental95.bandcamp.com/track/westbound-on-the-interstellar-hwy

I recorded a snippet from this record playing through some kind of 80s DIY 2" powered speaker I found on the curb on garbage day that had leaky capacitors inside and went back in the trash right after the recording, layered it with some engine and screeching tire sounds that were synthesized from scratch and recorded live in two passes on the Redsound EleVAta, and then routed a submix of that through Proximity and some kind of simple pitch shifter.  Automated pan, Proximity distance and a tiny bit of pitch shift for a subtle doppler effect. There's probably a reverb send with automation, too, but I might have just used the reverb in Proximity.

I think you can achieve the thing you are describing by creating new tracks that have monitoring on and a delay set, but not outputting to master buss - only to the reverb sends. This sounds like an interesting experiment to try, I hope I get around to doing that.

Yeah that would do it, I didn't know Live had track delay built in (but you could use any number of free plugins in the same routing setup).

I miss Windows 2000, when it showed a running log of everything that was happening during installation or updates so if something went wrong you actually had a decent chance of figuring out what it was.

  On 5/3/2021 at 7:59 PM, TubularCorporation said:

The thing is you don't want to delay the dry signal, only the pre-effect send signal, so I don't think track delay would work?  In Reaper it's just a matter of using extra channels in a track, probably most easy/CPU efficient to do the delay on the sending tracks rather than the receiving one.  For a stereo track, add two more channels, insert your predelay plugin of choice and route the audio to it on channels 3 and 4, add a send that sends only 3+4 to 1+2 on the receiving track, and then if you need to make sure that only the dry signal gets to the output of the sending track you could  turn send-to-parent off and use another send to rout it to the master or a submix, but this only really matters if you're doing surround mixing or using folders instead of busses for submixes.

 

TDR Proximity is fantastic, I haven't used it before a reverb in a long time but I remember it sounding great, especially if you're automating the send and use Proximity instead of the send level.

 

Actually, the van driveby sound at the beginning o this track was done mostly with Proximity:

https://elemental95.bandcamp.com/track/westbound-on-the-interstellar-hwy

 

I recorded a snippet from this record playing through some kind of 80s DIY 2" powered speaker I found on the curb on garbage day that had leaky capacitors inside and went back in the trash right after the recording, layered it with some engine and screeching tire sounds that were synthesized from scratch and recorded live in two passes on the Redsound EleVAta, and then routed a submix of that through Proximity and some kind of simple pitch shifter.  Automated pan, Proximity distance and a tiny bit of pitch shift for a subtle doppler effect. There's probably a reverb send with automation, too, but I might have just used the reverb in Proximity.

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Kinda had the feeling I was missing the point as I hit "submit reply", thanks for the clarification.

Had more or less forgotten about proximity until recently and now wonder how I did without it all this time, it's been great for quickly helping things gel. And it greatly improved the realism of the piano plugin I use for practice. 

Cool track btw, conjures up a nice mix of Kronenberg and kraut vibes in my head.

The basic idea is that if the reverb is percived as the space a sound is in, and the amount of predelay between when you hear the dry signal and when it hits the reverb is percieved as the distance between the sound source and the closest reflective surface, by using slightly different amounts of predelay for every sound source that gets sent to that reverb you can get a more convincing sense of them all happening at different positions in the same space.  It doesn't have to be realistic either, it just makes things sound different/bigger/more vivid/whatever.

Hello friends. 

Was wondering if any of you have recently bought a new laptop/computer for music making and if so what did you get? 

I just need something that is decent for Ableton, running multiple plugins etc etc. 

I'll then keep this computer (Mac 2013, 2 GHz Intel Core i7, 16gb) separate for work so that it doesn't die on me. 

Any help appreciated!

I would wait a couple of months for the next generation Apple M1 Macbook Pro and get one of those. Of course I am already invested in the Apple world so this colors my opinion.

As an alternative I think maybe a business class Lenovo or Dell laptop that has plenty of RAM (32GB) and a decent processor. This should be good for years - I would go business class for laptops just to have the physical shape of the computer hold up over the years. Cheaper laptops feel they are made of flimsy plastic and will break and make you sad.

The thing is, while my main laptop was in repairs this January,  I could run Ableton Live Suite 10 and do a livestream recording 6 stereo tracks using my old Macbook Pro from 2009 (8GB, with SSD), and I only had to bump the buffer size to 128 samples, so it's really not so necessary to get a beast of a computer. 

That said, I don't use a lot of synth VSTs, I mostly use computer processing for things like EQ and cabinet simulators and delays and reverbs.

  On 5/5/2021 at 12:37 PM, thawkins said:

I would wait a couple of months for the next generation Apple M1 Macbook Pro and get one of those. Of course I am already invested in the Apple world so this colors my opinion.

As an alternative I think maybe a business class Lenovo or Dell laptop that has plenty of RAM (32GB) and a decent processor. This should be good for years - I would go business class for laptops just to have the physical shape of the computer hold up over the years. Cheaper laptops feel they are made of flimsy plastic and will break and make you sad.

The thing is, while my main laptop was in repairs this January,  I could run Ableton Live Suite 10 and do a livestream recording 6 stereo tracks using my old Macbook Pro from 2009 (8GB, with SSD), and I only had to bump the buffer size to 128 samples, so it's really not so necessary to get a beast of a computer. 

That said, I don't use a lot of synth VSTs, I mostly use computer processing for things like EQ and cabinet simulators and delays and reverbs.

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Thanks for the advice.

I'm used to Mac's now but will likely look at a normal laptop as think the price point might be cheaper for a less 'cool' product? 

Looking at some of the Dell, 16gm ram. Maybe one like this > https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/laptops/new-inspiron-15/spd/inspiron-15-5515-laptop/cn51206 or https://www.johnlewis.com/dell-inspiron-14-5406-convertible-laptop-intel-core-i7-processor-16gb-ram-512gb-ssd-14-inch-full-hd-titan-grey/p5265848