a NEW - OLD way to get that sound
composed in notepad, so i dont know how it looks till its posted, then its to late -
Some years ago Roland had a quandry, how to improve both the quality and quantity of instruments they could fit into a ROM.
If a ROM holds 100 instruments sampled at 8 bits then due to the larger size of the recording the ROM would only hold 50 instruments sampled at 16 bits - OK so why not use a larger ROM ? - well if they did that they would lose backward compatability with older (and other types) of their products -
Needless to say they succeeded both in greater quality and the amount of instruments they could cram into the ROM -
The principal used is easy to describe but harder to understand - the principal they used was based on how the humen brain recognises sounds - you can call this the FAMILUARITY EFFECT -
If you have an amplifier and you press the LOUDNESS BUTTON it
sounds great - but you only recognise the difference in the sound for a very short period of time, after a few minutes if you could not see the state of the loudness button you would not be able to tell if the loudness button was in or out - Your brain has recognised the change in sound and thats it -
it will take another change in sound till the brain responds again -
working on that principal the Roland engineers started to see
how much of a 16 bit sample was required for the brain to be fooled into thinking that the whole sample was recorded at 16
bits - they found that if say we replaced the sample with the
word PING then only the P had to be at 16 bits the ING could remain at 8 bits - the brain recognised the quality sample and presumed the rest was sampled the same rate - so you heard a great improvement over the standard 8 bit ROM -
there is another way that they may have used it is to first play the P as a 16 bit sample and then the ING as a MIDI note - this would make the standard MIDI set sound like it was recorded using proper instruments -
the MIDI note would take up very little space in the ROM so
they could give better quality and add more instruments in the same space -
so wouldnt it be great if we could take a DRUM beat where we could improve the sound of the ‘D’ and the brain improves the ‘RUM’ automatically - and also to be able to dynamicly alter the sound of the ‘D’ without altering the sound of the whole mix -
well we can, but OHHHHHHHHH what does it cost - well we can and its free -
firstyou have to download a set of VSTs known as FISH FILLETS (link below)- fISH FILLETS contains 3 VSTs -
BLOCKFISH (a superb compressor with an OPTO button that replicates an optical compressor)-
SPITFISH which is a DE-ESSER, this is fantastic for tameing errent cymbals -
FLOORFISH which is an upward expander FLOORFISH is the one to use -
With this VST you can set the frequency control so that it responds to the drum (or instrument) you want to improve - then you set the EXPANDER so that it boosts the front end (the D in DRUM) then dies away immediately leaving the rest of the beat (RUM) unaltered - increase the output on the FLORFISH so the first part of the drum beat is slightly louder than the normal beat on the original track, this will make the drum stand out from the background audio -
you can also add EQ to the expanded section which will only be
active while the expander operates - when you alter the EQ on
a track to bring out a drum you alter everything else in the
mix at the same time, this way you only alter the sound for a
fraction of a second when the Expander is active -
One way to use this VST is to import a completed track (with
drums on it) into N - clone the track and put the FLOORFISH on
that track - you will soon have the drums sounding great -
M.R.
GET YOUR FISH FILLETS HERE
The Fish Fillets
I’ve used that set of plugs for a while now - very good ones.
me too.
Me too, great post Mr. Rabbit, very interesting read,
Here’s some that I’ve used with no problem that arent on the list of compatible vsts here on this site:
Elogoxa – Baxxpander and Excita
http://www.uv.es/~ruizcan/p_vst.htm
Signal analyzer – oscilloscope etc,
http://www.rs-met.com/
KarmaFX plugin pack
http://karmafx.net/
TalTube – tube amp driver
http://kunz.corrupt.ch/?Products:VST_TAL-Tube
There's more, I got Stardust to work, although I wish I could shut off the compressor, Room Machine, Stereo Enhancer, theres more,
Maybe someone could go in and update that list.