How to create manually the glitch effect on guitars, vocals etc...

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to talk about a mixing topic which can be applied to any type of wave source and that, if used with parsimony, can become a powerful arrangement tool to make the track more interesting.
The "glitch" effect simulates a digital artifact of any kind (usualy the fast repetition in loop of a small soundbyte), and it's used widely in rock, pop, metal, hip hop and electronic music (for example it can be heard in the song Sex, Death and Money by Alice Cooper) as icing on the top of a cake which must already be good, to make it even better.

In order to make a glitch effect of repetition, which is the most common, you need to start with quantization, so take a small slice of the guitar track (or both if we're applying it to the rhythm ones), set the quantization to 32nds and just repeat the slice for i.e. a couple of measures (16 times, for example) and push play.

The sound will be the typical one of the reading error of a cd player, and this is just the basic version of this effect.
Now we can get creative: try to quantize slices twice as long to 16th of note (instead of 32nd) to see if they sound better, or create a rhytmical pattern, for example a 3 slice repetitions, 1 empty slice, other 3 repetitions and so on, and in this the limit is really just the imagination.

So far we have mentioned only taking one slice and repeating it, but if we have for example a riff of 4 chords, we can also simply REMOVE one or more slices, rhytmically, from the track, to create a "stutter effect", or use repetitively the same single slice per chord, or we can even change the quantization from one measure to another and move from 16ths of note to 32nds, to add even more movement.

Finally, it's time to talk about automations: with these, you can take your glitched section and automate on it one or more effects in order to give it even more character.
You can apply on it obviously any kind of effect, but our suggestion is to try one of these 2 (or both):

- a pitch shift, or tempo shift effect, that makes the pitch go down fast during for example the final part of the glitch.

- a bit crusher that goes from 0 to 100 during the glitch, to make it sound like it's deteriorating during the repetitions.

Let us know if you use other cool glitch effects!

Become fan of this blog on Facebook! Share it and contact us to collaborate!!

Review: Audio Assault Rvxx v2 (with video sample)

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to review the version 2.0 of an amp sim we have already reviewed (here) but that after the latest update it has been changed quite substantially: the Audio Assault RVXX!

The Rvxx is the Audio Assault take on the Revv G20, the 20w amp by Revv, a small but very angry tube head, and this new version has received the same treatment received by Sigma 2.0: they have added 3 stompboxes, 3 rack effects, a dual cab ir loader with many good impulses by Seacow Cabs and a preset manager with several presets.

On top of that, the interface has been completely redesigned and now it is fully resizable, making it very versatile.

How does it sound? Better than the original, because the stompboxes now are more, so you have more versatility, and the cab section has definitely seen an improvement.
Compared to the Sigma 2.0, you can still tell that this unit has less watt, because it's a bit more upper-mid rangey and with less low end, but with the right impulse to counterbalance it, this characteristics are tamed, and you can enjoy the strong presence and bite without that thin and boxy vibe that sometimes comes with low wattage amps.

All in all this is a very usable amp simulator, oriented for metal, with a very good quality to price ratio, and I really suggest everyone to try it, it could make a good addition to your collection.

Thumbs up!

Specs:

- 2 channels

- 3 stompboxes: Gate, Boost and Drive

- Rack Fx: 9 band equalizer, Delay, Reverb

- Dual cab IR loader with dozens of Seacow Cabs IRs

- Preset manager

Become fan of this blog on Facebook! Share it and contact us to collaborate!!

Avoid snake oil and use only stuff you understand!

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today's article is a bit different from the usual, and it can be considered as a prosecution of our article about mixing only with stock plugins.

Mixing and mastering is a process that can be stressful at times, but it's also a moment of discovery and of creativity, in seeing the artist's vision coming together in the form of music that can be enjoyed by everyone. 
It's a process of discovery when putting together the pieces of the musical puzzle and fitting them until the picture is clear, but there is also discovery in trying every time new ways to improve and obtain better results, and this involves studying, reading, trying all the new plugins or hardware processors that we can, and all the time there is something new and more shiny that comes out.

Trying new stuff is part of the fun, in the end, but if I've learned anything in these years that I've been writing this blog, is that almost nothing is a real game changer, and that around 70% of what is advertised as a better version of what you already have brings an improvement as noticeable as "the emperor's new clothes".

Sure, there are a few game changers, for example the Neural Dsp plugins really brought the amp modeling a step forward, or Oeksound Soothe made eliminating unwanted resonances fast and easy, but besides these rare cases, there are so many good and cheap (or free, or stock) plugins out there that it's really hard to justify the real need of buying a new one, except for really just have a new toy to play with.

What I'm trying to say is that unless you're really looking for something specific that you don't have, buying a new compressor or a new equalizer most likely won't bring a real improvement in what you're currently using, and after trying so many plugins you get to a point in which you have a superficial knowledge of many of them, but you don't really know any of them very well, and this is one of the differences between an amateur and a professionist: a professionist usually has his experience built upon having something that he trusts, and he used it 1000 times, until he got to know all the ins and outs of every unit in the chain and how to obtain the best from each one of them.

The ideal point would be to choose for example a quality compressor, a quality eq, a quality delay and so on and to use them consistently until we get to a point in which we know exactly what settings are the ideal ones for our signal chain/gain staging, so that we can just plug and play, saving time and not having to do hours of trial and error looking for the right setting.

In conclusion I would suggest you, if you are at the peak of your gear acquisition syndrome, to try to stop buying anything for like 3 months and force yourself only to use what you have, I guarantee you that at the end of the third month you will have reach a level of knowledge of your plugins (or hardware processors) that will allow you to obtain results that you wouldn't have thought possible at the beginning of the trimester.
Most importantly, you might come to realize that a lot of the things advertised as "the next plugin you absolutely need" are not real game changers, in facts, most of them are what can be defined as "snake oil". 

Become fan of this blog on Facebook! Share it and contact us to collaborate!!

Audio Assault Sigma v2 review (with video sample)

 

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to review the version 2 of a virtual amp which has already been reviewed on these pages, the Audio Assault Sigma!

Sigma is a plugin which is a bit special in the Audio Assault lineup, I think it started a new course in terms of interface, features and overall sound quality, and this version 2.0 adds a new interface, more channels (now they are 3), 2 more knobs (2 independent gain controls for low and high frequencies), a booster, more impulse responses by Seacow Cabs, a Delay and a Reverb. 

The amp structure is basically the same, but these extra features allows you to fine tune your tone much more, adding a lot of versatility, especially in the low gain territories.

The new impulses are also quite usable, as you can hear from the sample (I have used the Sigma 4x12 one), and all in all I think it's a great upgrade which makes it, in its price range, one of the best virtual amps on the market.

Now Sigma comes also with an array of presets which have the function of showcasing the amp's versatility, although I would have preferred to have them called with a name that describes them, instead of a number.

My only suggestion is to add a tuner and to optimize a bit the stereo version: usually one puts the stereo version of a guitar plugin in the guitars stereo buss to save some cpu, but in the case of this plugin it's less cpu hungry if used in 2 mono instances, in the individual guitar tracks. 

This is a really good plugin, especially for metal tones but also for clean ones, and I suggest everyone to download the demo version and try it out!

Thumbs up!

Specs:

- 3 channels: Clean, Crunch and Lead

- 3 stompboxes: Gate, Boost and Drive

- Rack Fx: 9 band equalizer, Delay, Reverb

- Dual cab IR loader with dozens of Seacow Cabs IRs

- Preset manager

Become fan of this blog on Facebook! Share it and contact us to collaborate!!

How to remove fizziness from distorted guitars using a multiband compressor

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to tackle a problem that is typical of distorted guitars, but that can be applied to anything distorted, from a bass to a synth: the excessive high-end fizz, which often can be very bothering, especially if we're using an amp simulator with a lot of gain.

The problem with fizz, that buzzing, harsh part of the sound that hides between the presence area (2k to 8k) and the high end (10k to 12k) is the fact that it's quite hard to pinpoint exactly by doing frequency hunting, because we can can take down some notch here and there, but the fizz can remain pervasively a bit everywhere, and if we take down the whole area the tone loses presence and bite, disappearing in the mix.

How do we solve? The ideal is to change tone until we find one that gets us 80% there, so that we are happy also without doing acrobacies, but this is a privilege that not all mix engineers can have, and sometimes we're forced to work with guitar tracks which are already processed, and sounds super fizzy.

First the highest part of the fizz we can roll it off with a low pass filter set to 10-12k to taste, until we get rid only of the useless part, but then when we arrive to the part from 2k to 8/10k we need to adopt a different strategy, or we'll murder the good part of our tone trying to clean it.

Then when it's time to find the fizz in the presence area, we need to take a Multiband compressor and create just a band between 2k and 3k, just to start, and in this it would be VERY useful if we had a solo function to hear only the affected part, then we start move this band left and right listening to the band in solo until we find exactly the part in which there is the "bulk" of the harshness.

Once the area is perfectly set, we need to set the comp with a fast attack and fast release, and then just take down the threshold until we hear some gain reduction in that area; now we need to hear it in context, so listen to the tone (not just to the compressed band) and raise or lower the threshold according to how much fizziness you want to remove. 

Finally, if we have a lot of palm mutes we can also create a band between 65hz and 250hz to tame the low end recoil (thus freeing up headroom), so that we'll clean up the guitar even more with just one plugin.

Become fan of this blog on Facebook! Share it and contact us to collaborate!!

Audio Assault AHM 5050 (with video sample)

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to review a new amp simulator which emulates the most famous metal amplifier in the world: the EVH 5150, both in 6L6 and EL34 version: the Audio Assault AHM 5050!

This amp sim enters a very crowded arena, since this is the most used amp for many genres of metal (from thrash to the most extreme ones), and there are already many contenders to the throne of the best 5150 simulator, like the STL Andy James, the Peavey Revalver, the TSE X50 and the Neural DSP Nolly (although I think this one emulates a customized version).

This Audio Assault take on the legendary 5150 has some ace up its sleeve: it lets you blend between the 6L6 and el34 power tubes seamlessly with the turn of a knob, which is a very cool idea and recreates well the character of the two versions (and all the shades in between), it comes loaded with a wealthy amount of presets and impulse responses, which lets you have fun right away, it has several effects, booster, drive, gate, delay, reverb and so on, and basically the only thing missing to make it a real Swiss army knife is a chorus (in the rack section). 

Tone-wise it has its own character (to be noted that you can also switch between the standard version and the "My Amp" one, which alterates some value, because every amp sounds a little different since all electronic components have a certain tolerance), and the "my amp" function slightly alterates randomly some value, different for each version, to make each instance of the plugin unique.

How does it sound? This is one of the best sounding Audio Assault amps, because, besides the fact that the original hardware is one of the most balanced, tight and ductile amps in the world, the plugin manages to recreate that midrange, that can go easily from honky to scooped but never muddy, that tightness in the low end and the clear attack which are the trademarks of the EVH 5150.
The only thing I would still work on are the impulse responses, which sometimes sound a bit boxy and too mid rangey (in this video sample I'm using an external IR).
Impulse responses are today the single most important thing in an virtual amplifier, they can make or break a tone, and in this the competitors (especially STL Tones and Neural Dsp) are a bit forward.
Nevertheless this plugin is one of the best bang for the buck around and will give you a tons of fun, and good tones in the studio!

Thumbs up!

Specs:

- 3 channels: Clean, Crunch and Lead

- Balance Knob: it lets you dial precisely the tone between the 6L6 and the EL34 version

- 3 stompboxes: Gate, Boost and Drive

- Dual Cab Loader with numerous IRs

- FX Rack with Eq, Delay and Reverb

- Standard amp / My amp function

Become fan of this blog on Facebook! Share it and contact us to collaborate!!

What's the difference between a limiter and a clipper?

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!

Today we are going to talk about a topic that has been the center of a lot of discussions in the world of audio engineers online: is it better to use a Clipper or a Limiter?

The limiter as we know works as a Compressor, only with extreme settings (a fast attack and a ratio of 20:1 up to infinity): the part of the wave that surpasses the threshold is dragged down, producing the classic "squashed" tone.

The Clipper instead doesn't drag the sound down, it choppes it off like it used to do (unwanted) when back in the hardware era a signal was hitting an analog-to-digital converter too hard.
This as we have seen in our article about clippers creates a double edge sword: it doesn't sound as squashed and it allows us usually to raise the volume more than with a limiter, but one single 0.1% too much and it will create aliasing and distortion so bad that we will be sorely missing the limiter.

Using a clipper on a master allows us to raise the volume more than with a limiter, because this "shaving off" part of the tone forces the converter to overshoot and try to recreate the missing part of the sound, and if it's reasonably small, it manages.

My opinion is that if we have our dynamic range under control (meaning that there are no instruments that randomly peak like 6db above the rest here and there through the track), for example we have been good with clip gain, buss compression etc, it's better to use a clipper, it will allow us to reach the same levels of volume of a limiter if not more, avoiding the usual squashed effect.
If instead we have a quite dynamic mix and we want to preserve the dynamic excursion maybe it's better to go for a limiter, because the eventual peaks will be brought down without introducing heavy crackling.

Become fan of this blog on Facebook! Share it and contact us to collaborate!!