Thanks guys. I'd love to get some feedback and hear your thoughts on the sound and operation.
So anyone feel free to lemme have it - good or bad.
pklima-
I haven't done any public releases before, but I've made some VSTs and tiny .EXEs for personal use and for particular/requested usage by friends, co-workers, etc.
Some of the things I've worked on:
- A compressor plug-in that allows the user to draw the attack and release curves. (Can make the compressor sound aggressive / smooth / tight / soggy / transparent / punchy.) Also has side-chain input, side-band or wide-band operation, key filtering, an FFT to view the key signal, variable degrees of channel linking on the detection circuit, automatic gain compensation, saturation, an output limiter, and key listen functions. (Has some issues on the release code, which I can’t seem to resolve - may be operational order.)
- Another, simpler, compressor plug-in that has most of the same features, but uses standard attack & release curves (non-shapeable), but also provides parallel processing.
- A plug-in that adjusts the time-alignment of frequency bands. (Bass freq’s take longer to develop, causing them to sound as if they happen later than the high-frequency attack of the sound.) This plug-in shifts the time-alignment so your mix sounds punchier, more defined. (But, the only band splitter option I had to work with (not knowing how to code one myself) was uses an IIR filter – causes some phase issues that currently have to be corrected with a follow-up EQ. I now have a linear-phase option, so I may revisit this one.)
- A new - at the time (I started this one 10 years ago) form of Spectrum Analyzer plug-in that takes stereo feeds and views the spectral FFT against the panned location - a "Spectrum Panalyzer", if you will. X-axis is pan, Y-axis is frequency content, and color opacity denotes volume. You can overlay stems/buses (via multiple stereo inputs) and set each as a different color,so you can see how instruments in your mix overlap each other not only in frequency, but also pan placement, for true visual staging. (See what you hear.) I was thinking of patenting this one, but couldn't get a workable prototype finished in time before Roland came out with their R-Mix plug-in, which has the same exact display form, just not multi-track. Ironically, the first public mention/research I did for this idea was on Cakewalk's user forum - Cakewalk was subsequently purchased by Roland years later, then they released the R-Mix following that.
- A plug-in that emulates David Gibson's The Art of Mixing - a very simplified version of my Spectrum Panalyzer - which uses spheres to represent the elements of a mix. I don't think David Gibson ever successfully implemented his idea (or at least didn't release to the public), though I have seen some video of it being proto-typed. The user can place spheres on a 3-dimensional grid to control highpass/lowpass filtering, volume, and reverb level / predelay. (simplistic staging)
- An Elliptical Equalizer plug-in - combines bass frequencies of a stereo feed to mono (selectable frequency, as well as amount of stereo collapse), while leaving freq's above the setting untouched (full stereo). Typically used in vinyl mastering, this also allows bass frequencies to be more efficiently reproduced by using the power from both channels to achieve the same volume as needed by one alone (can then provide extra headroom), and while frequencies are naturally less directional as the freq decreases, the effect can be relatively imperceptible when set right.
- A MIDI program changer .exe to remotely change presets (and name them for reference) on external hardware.
- A SYSEX-based MIDI Program Table editor .exe (again, for an external piece, this time specifically the ART ProGate) that allows you to edit which preset is called up when any particular MIDI patch # is received. You can also save multiple setups for future use.
- A SYSEX-based Patch Namer for my friend’s floor controller pedal - the Roland FC300. (If the user tries to name patches on the pedal itself, you have to go through lots of menus, then scroll through the whole alphabet for each character you want... it takes a looong time.)
- A program to rewrite the names of regions (markers and time sections) in Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge. (This was to automate a time-consuming process that a fellow recording engineer needed to perform for corporate clients on a routine basis.)
- A super-simple scrolling spaceship game that uses collision-detection to win/lose.
Here's a snapshot of most of 'em:
Okay, that was a bit of a tangent... uhh, how do y'all like/dislike the OC-D2?
