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4Pockets Aurora Sound Studio HD

[ 0 ] 2010/07/29

The preview video for Aurora Sound Studio HD had certain team members compulsively checking the App Store for its release, for it promised a full production studio for the iPad. Not a DAW, mind you - no audio recording would be provided, for one thing - but an electronic studio with everything you need to compose and perform electronic music: drums, subtractive and waveshaping synthesisers, a sampler, mixer and effects, all tied to a multitouch grid interface resembling the iconic Yamaha Tenori-On.

Aurora HD delivers on its promise in spades, albeit with a couple of caveats. The interface is divided into tabbed pages, some of which are geared towards arranging your sequences, while others are aimed at live performance with instruments and effects. Sequences are arranged in 14 layers, each with a fully editable instrument assigned.

Each layer has three send knobs, for routing the signal to a trio of aux send channels, with a choice of nine effects for each. Additionally, you can apply the Atomizer and M-Gun functions in real time, the former being a sort of sample-and-hold function (think Ableton Live's Beat Repeat), while the latter is a per-sound 'drum roll' function.

Songs can be exported as WAV and AAC files, or even as MIDI. The latter ensures that compositions sketched out on Aurora can be reworked using your DAW's instruments and effects.

So what are those caveats we mentioned earlier? Well, the big one is that there's no way to write any sort of velocity data to the individual layers. You can, however, fake it using the synthesiser's built-in MSEQ function, but this is only available to the analogue synth.

Also, a mere three effects slots seems miserly, and there's no compressor. In addition, while you can upload and share songs via an online Song Library, this can't be done with songs that include your own samples.

Nevertheless, 4Pockets has brought in a winner, albeit one that carries a price tag considerably higher than those to which App Store customers are currently accustomed. The problems are few and do nothing to get in the way of what is a truly inspiring production environment. If you're an iPad owner in the market for a portable production tool, you definitely won't want to pass this one up.



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Wizdom Music MorphWiz

[ 0 ] 2010/07/29

Kevin Chartier and keyboardist extraordinaire Jordan Rudess have teamed up to bring us what may be the first serious performance instrument designed specifically for the iPad. Inspired by Lippold Haken's Continuum controller, MorphWiz presents a control system wherein notes of a given (and user-definable) scale are laid out across the screen as vertical lines.

As on a traditional keyboard, notes range from low to high as you travel from left to right. However, sounds can morph from one timbre to another as you drag your finger vertically along a given note. You can also play between the notes by placing your finger just between the B and C lines. Additionally, MorphWiz taps the iPad's accelerometer - you can tilt the device to tweak the sound of the built-in synthesiser.

On that synthesiser, it's refreshingly direct, with a smattering of parameters that draw upon basic waveshaping, FM and 'Wavesync' synthesis to shape the sounds, with a few effects to spice things up. While FM synthesis is tricky to master, even the greenest neophyte isn't going to get lost with MorphWiz's simple implementation. There's just enough flexibility to personalise the sound, but not enough to distract you from the performance.

And that's what MorphWiz is all about: performance. Rudess's experience shows in the design of the instrument and the immediately playable factory patches.

MorphWiz provides a built-in recording function with looped overdubbing capabilities. You can adjust the number of beats and measures and there's a metronome to guide you. The results can be exported, emailed or sent to apps that support AudioPaste.

MorphWiz turns the iPad into an expressive performance instrument. Is it perfect? No. There are a lot of pages to work through and there's no MIDI-over-Wi-Fi, unfortunately. Even these drawbacks aren't enough to tear us away from it, however.



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Toontrack Beatstation

[ 0 ] 2010/07/29

When Beatstation was announced, it wasn't clear what it was or who it was designed for. And even after spending some time with it, we're not sure we can answer either of these questions. Stranger still, we're not sure Toontrack could either.

They call it "a tonal and percussive open surface new generation virtual instrument", which is accurate enough, but tellingly, the sell line for Beatstation is vague and non-committal: "It's what you want it to be."

Beatstation has the look of a groovebox, with the main part of the interface taken up by a bank of sample-based pads. You can add and remove pads, drag them around and select from four pad styles: one square and three circular ones of different sizes.

"Ultimately, it's hard to say exactly what you will find it useful for - if anything - until you actually give it a go."

The pads are designed for rhythmic sounds but there are also Bass and Lead 'pads' (actually mini virtual keyboards) for instrument sounds. You can change the look by loading up skins, and you can design your own with the Skin Tool. The pads can be filled up with samples from the browser sitting to the left.

Beatstation ships with content in Lowbit, Organic and Synthetix categories, and in each of these you get drum kits/instruments, MIDI grooves, REX files and individual sounds. You can load up sounds as a whole kit or on a pad-by-pad basis.

Music library

The quality of the library is generally good, with the acoustic drums being particularly impressive. There's plenty for those who aren't so keen on 'real' sounds too, though, with dance music and hip-hop fans well catered for.

Crucially, it's possible to bring your own samples and loops in. MP3 and WAV formats are supported, and MIDI and REX files can be imported.

You can also use expansion packs in Toontrack's EZX and SDX drum kit formats, as well as the new Beatstation-specific BTX format.

Below the browser are REX and MIDI file players, which can run independently or (in sync) together. To hear everything you've got loaded, just hit the play/pause button.

To the right of this are two FX busses, a master effect and a master volume control. The effects come from Overloud, which ensures better than average quality, and the range is extensive, with categories including Bitcrush, Chorus, Compressor, Delay, Distortion, EQ and Reverb, as well as instrument-specific ones for piano, bass, snare, vocals, etc. Each effect has just a single slider to play with, enabling you to dial in 'more' or 'less' of that effect.

And that, on a basic level, is it. If you want to use Beatstation very simply, run it standalone, load some sounds and/or a MIDI/REX file and click the pads or press play.

There's not a lot you can do with your sounds, though, as parts can't be edited and there's no sequencer. Thankfully, Beatstation also works as a plug-in instrument, so you can use it to make songs in conjunction with a compatible sequencer/DAW program.

(2 pages; go to page: 2)

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Steinberg Nuendo 5

[ 0 ] 2010/07/29

Whereas Cubase has long been a staple product for computer musicians, those working in post-production for film, TV and radio are more likely to turn to its sibling, Nuendo. The two apps are superficially similar, but each has its own exclusive features.

Post-production is where music, sound effects, actors' dialogue, etc, are compiled into a finished stream of audio in a specific format - it might be in surround sound, too.

This is where Nuendo steps in, with features such as extensive surround support (up to 12 speakers), pro video and sync functionality, import/export of a wider range of formats, and network collaboration.

"Surround Panner v5 makes the previous effort look chunky."

Traditionally, certain features in Nuendo have filtered through to Cubase (and vice versa), and in fact, there are a few things in Nuendo 5 that are also in the recent free Cubase 5.5 update.

Of course, here we'll focus on the musical side of Nuendo 5.

Dialogue box

The Cubase/Nuendo MediaBay is something that, until now, hasn't really clicked with us. The idea is that you use it to index all the relevant data (audio, MIDI, projects, plug-in presets, etc) on your drives, so that you can browse, filter and preview it all at your leisure.

It's been overhauled for Nuendo 5 (and Cubase 5.5) and we're pleased to say, it's really making more sense now. The layout has been refined and it just seems more logical and friendly, not to mention swifter overall, making it something we actually want to use.

You need to tag all your data for it to be of much use, but that chore could well be worth the effort for post-production houses. Also new are Clip Packages, whereby you select a bunch of related audio clips and export them - you can later pull them from the MediaBay to recreate the original structure of clips.

Many music producers create beats with samples on audio tracks, and we found Clip Packages to be a great way of stashing away such 'composite beats' for later use.

New in the mixer is the Wave Meters view, which shows a visual recreation of the clips on the audio tracks scrolling upwards. It doesn't show the channel's output data, though, and while that does mean you can see what's coming up in advance, it still feels like an underdeveloped idea - you can't adjust the speed or scrub by dragging, for instance.

Next up is Direct Routing, enabling you to designate eight possible output destinations for each channel, and then flick between them with a single click. You can switch multiple channels at once, and even select multiple destinations, and it's all automatable.

It works nicely (aside from a momentary level increase during the change), though you can't set a level offset for each output. Note that you can now arm multiple channels for recording too.

Just drive!

There's a new pitchshifter plug-in, Pitch Driver, with a claimed range of "up to 24 semitones", but while you can go two octaves down, it seems you can only pitch up by one.

(2 pages; go to page: 2)

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VIR2 Electri6ity

[ 0 ] 2010/07/28

Vir2 is developing a reputation for its quality virtual instruments and the latest of these is the ambitious virtual guitar library Electri6ity, which has been three years in development.

Containing over 24,000 24-bit samples taken from eight of the best known electric guitars, this library uses Kontakt 4 as its playback engine and, beyond the raw sample data, it utilises a wealth of scripting information to attempt to provide a complete solution for studio based non-guitarists or indeed for guitarists who don't happen to have several thousand pounds worth of high quality axes lying around.

"Pretty much any parameter you can think of can be manipulated via control changes or key switching"

So far, so good, but does this impressive theory equate to a similar level of playability?

Install and first impressions

Well, before we get to that, let's get the essentials out of the way. Electri6ity ships on four DVDs containing an installer for the library and, if you need it, a separate one containing the latest version of the Kontakt Player.

Note that if you are a Kontakt 4 user who hasn't updated since your first install, you'll need to run NI's Service Centre to update as this is a system requirement for Electri6ity.

The library will munch 27GB of your hard drive space and installing to an internal or external 7200 or 10000rpm FireWire drive is recommended over a USB equivalent.

Thereafter, launch Kontakt and activate the library as usual through the Service Centre and you're away.

The instruments sampled read as a who's who of the world's most celebrated guitars, namely: Stratocaster, Telecaster, Les Paul, P90, Rickenbacker, Danelectro Lipstick, ES335 and L4 and each has been recorded with Front, Rear and Front/Rear blended pickup positions, from which you're free to choose.

Playing modes vary between polyphonic, monophonic and both sustained and muted legato, with slides and other techniques available in all modes for lots of real-time performance enhancement.

The realism goes on, as you can choose the release mode in performance, with finger noise, hand mutes and pick noise just three of 14 separate release 'types'.

By now you might well be wondering how all of this is selected and intuitively 'playable' and that's where the magic of the Kontakt engine takes over. Vir2 have extensively programmed AMT (Articulation Morphing Technology) and VMT (Velocity Morphing Technology) scripts into Electri6ity's GUI so that, as you play, the engine carefully analyses your performance and uses your playing style and velocity response, for example, to instantaneously switch between samples and playback styles.

However, if you want to get involved, rather than let the engine do all of the work for you, pretty much any parameter you can think of can be manipulated via control changes or key switching, so you can hone the guitar of your choice to your own setup and playing style.

(2 pages; go to page: 2)



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Focal Professional CMS 40 Compact Monitors

[ 0 ] 2010/07/28

Focal Professional's CMS line is primarily designed for smaller studio environments for post-production work and (in the case of the CMS 40s) for use as secondary monitors to compliment larger full range systems.

The CMS 40s are Focal's most compact nearfield monitors to date and on unpacking them, it's surprising how small they are, but how solid and well built they feel. They look the business too, with black-powder-coated, die-cast-aluminium cabinets.

The speakers ship with removable protective grills, phase plugs (to insert over the tweeters for as precise a soundstage as possible), rubber feet, adjustable spikes and rubber isolation mats - plus they can be placed vertically or horizontally and wall mounted if required.

Connection-wise, there's a kettle-plug power socket, a balanced XLR input and an unbalanced phono input.

High and low-shelf EQ switches plus an input level switch are provided too for optimising the performance of the CMS 40s in your listening environment. Round the front, there's a power switch, overall volume control and a handy clipping indicator.

Design details

The CMS 40s are a front-ported design (which is great if the speakers need to be placed close to a wall) and utilise a four-inch main woofer with Polyglass cone, coupled with a magnesium/aluminium inverted-dome tweeter connected to two separate 25W RMS, Class AB amplifiers.

From these specs, it's clear to see that these are very much simply smaller versions of the larger CMS speakers and no corners have been cut in terms of materials, electronics or sound production.

As fans of Focal's larger Twin 6 BEs, we were eager to try these monitors out and are happy to inform you that these tiny speakers have the fantastic accurate sound stage and overall character of their much more expensive CMS and S-Series brothers, which is great news, particularly if funds are tight.

This is nothing short of miraculous considering their size but they really have to be heard, as the quality of sound that comes out of them is top notch. They are accurate, have a smooth and clear top end and detailed mids.

Although the lows roll off at 60Hz (which isn't ideal for Dance music where low subs need to be heard), they can be paired with a CMS sub for extended low end response providing you with a very flexible and compact, yet full range monitoring setup.

Mini magic

Bearing in mind their size and the applications they're aimed at, there's really nothing to fault. Once paired with the sub, we would be very happy mixing a whole album on them.

They are surprisingly powerful and punchy and are easy to listen to over extended periods, but the main positive is that translation from studio to other systems is great and the character of the speakers remain consistent throughout the frequency range.

Their response really is truly surprising for their size and you certainly won't be disappointed with their performance. If you need a compact setup and can compromise on the 60Hz roll, they're a great choice and you need to check them out. Focal have done it again.



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Audio Damage Discord 3

[ 0 ] 2010/07/26

Like most plug-ins from the Audio Damage lab, Discord is designed for creative experimentation and is well capable of mangling a sound way beyond recognition.

Version three updates the original concept with new pitch-shifting modes, a variable band-pass filter and a brand new animated GUI. The GUI update is not just a cosmetic improvement, it's made programming easier and more accurate than previous versions by implementing a 'grab the number and scroll' technique.

This is especially helpful for making accurate adjustments to the amount of pitch shift or when setting the delay time in ms.

Shifty geezer

At the heart of the machine is a true stereo pitch-shifter with three distinct algorithms; kind of like the past, present and future of pitch-shifters. The P1 'Vintage' is modelled on the Eventide H910 and H949, while P2 'Clean' represents the modern sound and the third is Granular - which opens the way to another world of textures entirely.

Spiral galaxy

Next in line is a pair of delays, one each for the left and right channels. Each side has its own independent set of controls for delay time, feedback and cross feedback. The delay time ranges from zero to two seconds and can also be programmed in sync mode offering speeds between 1/1 and 1/32 with triplets and dotted notes.

The clever bit happens when the delay line feeds back into the pitch shifter. This makes each repeat shift up or down by the same amount again, sending the pitch spiralling up or down. This can spin right out of control with high shift and feedback settings, and create some awesome splattering and grainy tones.

The third effect block in the chain is a band-pass filter with controls for cutoff and resonance/width. This helps shape the sound to fit in the mix and the cutoff can be modulated via the dedicated LFO.

The sum of the parts

As multi-effect units go, Discord has a unique sound largely owing to its characterful pitch algorithms that alter the basic tone in interesting ways.

The delay and filter sections are really useable and work really well when feeding back into the pitch section. This makes it great for simple things like subtle double tracking for vocals through to wide wobbly chorusing.

With longer delay times it's easy to dial up cool underwater Dub-tek echoes, and weird granular twists that can be animated and take on a life of their own through the LFO.

The pitch shifting is not scale based, chances are after the initial delay repeat harmonic material will start to take on a more discordant nature - think along the lines of cinematic eeriness and Stockhausen clangs and you'll be in the ballpark.

One thing we would like to see is more panning options, besides the straight stereo spread. It would be nice to be able to pan the channels using the LFO, though we're told there will be some improvements to this in the next update.

If you already own Discord 1 or 2, this is a must have update which expands the palate and makes programming slicker and quicker all for $10. At the regular $60 asking price, it's still good value, and is highly recommended for everyone looking for a unique sound mangling tool for their creative arsenal.

Listen to some samples of what the Discord 3 can do with our audio demos:

Bass Doubling

Discord Delays

Dubtek chords

Granular Wobble

Granulated Delays

Jungle Grains

Minimal Beats

Shifty Drums

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Avantone BV-1 Valve Mic

[ 0 ] 2010/07/26

Avantone has carved out a niche for affordable mics ranging from ribbons to large capsule condensers, and with all mics getting the once-over in the US prior to shipping, quality is excellent.

So by their standards, the BV-1 multi-pattern valve condenser marks a bit of departure, not only because it's quite pricey, but also because final assembly is done in the United States.

Given these facts it's perhaps fitting that it arrives in a Fender-esque tweed case. And with the inside sporting a deep red furry guitar case style lining, you've got to hand to them - overall this really looks the business. The mic and power supply are finished in the same gloss buttercream colour and both the mic box and the mic itself are stamped with the serial number.

As you'll have spotted the BV is a lollipop style, and includes an integrated pop shield that screws neatly into the neck section. The capsule itself is a dual diaphragm edge-tapped design mounted on four isolators behind a large twin-layer grill, and a nine-position notched knob on the PSU handles pattern selection.

Further features include body-mounted pad and low-cut filter (10dB and 6dB / octave at 80Hz respectively) and you also get a quality Gotham multi-core cable. Finally, the mic includes a US-made CineMag output transformer and a Russian-made 6072A low-noise valve.

Nice threads

Multi-pattern mics offer plenty of flexibility but also a bit of headache when it comes to spec, so maybe it's no surprise there are no response charts included.

In the central cardioid setting, our first impressions are that the BV-1 isn't excessively bright, and we're really sensing a solid, gutsy low mid-range with plenty of proximity on vocals.

Switch right to omni mode and you get a real sense of the mic's natural tone. But for us the best setting is the slightly wider cardioid settings either one or two notches towards omni, as these reduce the proximity and nasal nature slightly. If your room acoustics and isolation considerations allow it, this has to be the way to go with the BV-1.

In terms of sensitivity, the BV-1 delivers 18mV/Pa, and we certainly noticed the mic gain drifting up for acoustic guitar (which sounded lovely and rounded). Also the 18dB noise figure isn't amazing but not rare for a valve deign.

Caveats

Without a doubt the BV-1 is one on the best-presented mics we have ever tried, and when you consider the price, that's quite a complement.

However, there are a few things that did bug us. Firstly, although it looks cool, the pop shield sits too close to the capsule and you can't adjust it, so for us this would stay in the box.

Secondly, in an ideal world, we'd want a longer multi-core so we could get the PSU out of the way.

Thirdly, this mic is heavy (1.3kg) and needs a strong mic stand, so bear that in mind.

Finally, both the cradle and the pop shield give off resonant rings when you tap them. Not the end of the world, but worth knowing before you ruin a perfect take.

These points aside, the BV-1 is really rather nice and should deliver plenty of trouble free service while making your studio look more stylish.



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