TL;DW: Retro ‘groove crackle’ dither with fuller sound.

VinylDither

Today we have VinylDither, now with 24/16 bit switch and DeRez! And also a variety of previews to other new things, in the video, including an explanation of Golem for those who missed it the first time (if you did miss it, it’s like getting two plugins today).

VinylDither used to be known as Ten Nines: it’s a weird dither using techniques kind of like DSD (direct stream digital, or one-bit digital). I tuned it to spit out noise floor that resembles vinyl surface noise. It’s a little cooler-sounding than regular TPDF, and works like a normal dither (doesn’t gate, or do anything too insane). It’s so good tonally that you won’t get a very good ‘bit-crush’ effect out of it: I demonstrate it compared to regular bit crushing from DeRez itself, and also with a DC offset applied to get DeRez to gate. VinylDither doesn’t do any of that, it sounds just like the high-res only with a vinyl-style surface noise.

I’m demonstrating on the raw audio files for an upcoming sample set: I was changing bass strings on my Rick, which meant removing perfectly good Rotosounds to try out some tapewounds (which I ended up loving, by the way). So it seemed like I had better do a serious sampling session, in order for people to be able to use prog rock Rick bass sounds in their purest form. This is with a SansAmp VT Bass on the neck pickup, and a guitar amp on the bridge pickup (a Chris Squire Rick-O-Sound trick, if I’m not mistaken). When I’ve made my sample set I’ll put the raw files up on SoundCloud for if anyone wants to do their own 24/96 sample making. The demonstrations of Golem are because it’s my tool for taking a stereo track of two mics, or a mic and a DI, and summing them to mono with whatever balance or micro-delay you like: Golem is a known secret weapon tool that hit VST in 2018 and it’s good to mention again. It can be downloaded here: Golem.

I’ve also showed some of my work on the hardware club: spent some time figuring out how I can get CMOS chips and useful parts into the hands of people, so that’s moving along and I’ll probably be good and ready when I reach that Patreon goal.

If you drop by the Q&A on Monday at 11 AM EST, I can tell you about what I’ve learned lately regarding the additional secret weapon of John Bonham’s putting aluminum foil in his bass drums to ‘make them go off like cannons’. It is a real thing, but it doesn’t do that. It does something else, very well, and I’ll be using it going forward, both in my kick drum and my floor tom… so next time I find time to record rock music it’ll be sounding a hell of a lot more powerful than before. And that should be fun :)

This work is supported by Patreon. If I hit $2000 a month I start reselling CMOS chips and experimenter parts at cost to my patrons. Otherwise, I’ll just keep on keepin’ on :)

TL;DW: I’ve revisited Not Just Another Dither, to add a 16/24 bit switch and DeRez.

NotJustAnotherDither

It’s late and I’ve been cranking away on a whole pile of plugins here, because it turned out I had to revise Beam and Dark too. (re-download them from where you got ’em if you’d like the updates)

This is because I started doing the more ‘normal’ dither plugins, and found that my DeRez code was making them go insanely loud at far reaches of the DeRez control: I put in a clamp so the maximum roar of bitcrush is 12 db down, even when it’s one bit or less. This might adjust the loudness of extreme bitcrush in your projects: any normal use, or use as a ‘simulated old school sampler’, will be unaffected. I’ll be having other dithers come out that need this volume clamp more: so far, Beam and Dark and NJAD gate off to silence so there’s a limit to how loud they can go.

I’d like people’s opinions on whether Dark is a suitable replacement for NJAD, in Monitoring. Though they don’t work exactly the same, and though there are things about NJAD that are pleasing, I still feel that especially at 24 bit but even at 16 bit, Dark is simply better. You can also compare Beam (I’ve updated that with a volume clamp too, re-download it) but I doubt that is quite as good. Each plugin has identical DeRez code, so you can set them identically to compare.

This work is supported by Patreon, and thanks to that I’m able to do many things. Like blow a month’s income on a microphone. Do you like the mic audio this week? If you do, I have some ideas on how I can make a simultaneous recording of that and my lavalier mic (very clean, though more noisy) and then do a plugin to apply the kinds of second harmonic distortion and transformer goodness my fancy pants mic boasts of. I’ll still prefer the real mic… buuuut would you like me to take a whack at the ol’ faux Elam plugin? Apologies for not trying out a real Elam: that would be several years of income, ain’t happening :D also, I keep learning more about what you’d need if you can make a break for the big time, and you know I share all my information. See ya Monday, those who like to compare notes.