Monday, April 27, 2009

Update - CV Monitor Tool

A quick update to the CV Monitor Tool.

presiato posted an improvement that allows the four Rotary inputs to be used for bipolar CV signals, rather than the unpleasant truncation that occurred in version 0.0.3.

His original post is here (if you have access to the forum). Many thanks for the improvement!

I have posted the improved CV Monitor Combi patch here:

CV Monitor Tool 0.0.4

Note that the display range is set from 1 to 2000 - this is because a direct mapping between a bipolar CV value and the DDL numeric display does not seem possible. You can get pretty close, but it's often out by 1 or 2. To ensure that this inaccuracy does not confuse anyone, I deliberately extended the range to approximately 1000 in either direction. Feel free to consider this +/- 100.0% if you like. Note that the mid-point is now 992 (for a CV value of zero). I realise this isn't ideal, but it's due to inaccuracies generated by rounding within Reason.

If you can improve it, please let me know!

Thursday, April 23, 2009

OffSiteNoise - Peff's Scream4 Waveforms

One of the things I want to do with this blog is direct readers towards interesting articles written by other people. I will call these OffSiteNoise posts. They will probably be Reason-related, although some may cover more general topics like music theory or audio synthesis theory.

So here's the first OffSiteNoise post!

Following my previous post about the Scream4 tape phase inversion, I wish to highlight the observations reported by Peff for the other Scream4 distortion algorithms. You can read all about it with pretty pictures of mangled saw-teeth right here.

Scream4 Tape Algorithm - Phase Inversion

Peff points out here that the Scream4 'tape' algorithm has an effect of inverting the output waveform at lower frequencies. This can have the effect of canceling with the original signal if mixed back (e.g. as a Send Effect). He posts a couple of solutions and a good example that illustrates this "feature".

I have seen many examples where the tape algorithm is used on drums - this is definitely something to keep in mind if you're not using it purely as an insert.

I did my own test with an Oscilloscope application, listening on my sound-card's "stereo mix" or "What U Hear" channel, and as you can see in Figure 1, mixing the 'taped' signal with the original (blue) cancels out a huge part of the original signal (red). Only the higher frequencies remain.


Figure 1

My test RNS file is here.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Blog Review: boddicker.org

Today I came across boddicker.org, via a new Side-Chain Compression tutorial posted on ReasonTutorials.

boddicker.org is dj.boddicker's site. I don't know any more about this person than what is there, but what really struck me is the small but notable collection of Reason-related posts.

These devices are great. There's the side-chain compression tutorial I mentioned earlier as well as:
The RNS files are provided, as well as demo music files, so have a listen!

What impresses me is how simple in concept these devices are, yet so elegantly constructed. Even better, the examples provided are top-notch and illustrate the devices perfectly.

There is also a small collection of high-quality tutorials, not all related to Reason, that are very interesting and well written. In particular, "how to make drums sound bigger" answers many questions that confound the search for good rhythms.

Great site dj.boddicker - looking forward to trying out your future creations!