Heya. Just letting you know that the PerforModule Dephaultz pack for Ableton Live has been updated to incorporate Live 10.1’s new features.
If you have previously bought the pack at Isotonik Studios, you will have already received an email about the update. If you haven’t purchased the pack yet, you can grab it secure in the knowledge that you’ll retain access to all future updates. Live 9 user? No problem. If you plan to upgrade to Live 10 later on, you can at any point download and upgrade your pack to the Live 10 version. Sweet, huh?
“Perfect” Tuning—Is There Actually Such a Thing?
“Perfect” Tuning
With the modern era of digital capabilities to re-tune recorded material, almost all music you hear nowadays has “perfect” tuning on all of the instruments and vocals. But what does this mean, exactly?
Generally, this tuning is based on equal temperament. But is equal temperament the most “perfect” tuning for absolutely all musical situations? I say… nope.
IR Maker Template Set for Ableton Live
This week we’ll be sharing with you an Ableton Live set used for impulse response creation.
Requires: Ableton Live 9 or 10, MaxForLive, MaxForLiveEssentials pack.
It allows you to quickly capture IRs from effects (software or hardware) by dropping them onto a track and pressing a couple of keyboard shortcuts. Using the template skips the setup time, avoids having to fiddle around with routing, and prevents accidentally sending bursts of audio through your system, with the option to listen to the process if curious. Continue reading
A Simple Rule for When to Use a Dynamic vs a Static EQ.
So you’re working on a song and you’ve found a frequency which you want to adjust. Let’s say you want to nudge down 4.4k a little bit to reduce a bit of harshness. Now you ask yourself: what type of EQ should be used?
As time passes by, there becomes more and more dynamic EQ plugins available. Besides, in Ableton, Bitwig, and other DAWs, it’s easy to make any automatable EQ plugin act as dynamic by the use of envelope followers. On the other hand, when using a dynamic EQ plugin, there may be times when you want to use the bands as typical, with no reactivity.
So, we have a pretty much open choice of whether to use a static or dynamic EQ on a track we’re working on. So what to do?
Narrow Down Your Plugin Needs
So Many Plugins
Brand new plugins… promotional sales on plugins… they are SO tempting. But do you really need that new compressor plugin that just dropped?
In order to assess which plugin types are lacking in your toolbox, i recommend making a spreadsheet of all the plugins you own by category. You might discover, as i did, that you have such a vast variety of compressor options to choose from, it’s likely that you won’t benefit a whole lot from purchasing any more of them. You also might discover, like me, that you’re somewhat lacking in gate plugins, and could indeed benefit from picking up a few new models. Etc… Continue reading
Pingdemonium
So i found myself slightly annoyed that Ableton Live’s Ping Pong Delay effect always starts the first echo repeat on the left side. Sure, you could flip the stereo field after applying it to reverse the direction—but that also reverses the stereo field of the source audio. What if i want the source audio to stay the same, but have the echo repeats reverse direction?
Well now, it’s easy..
Using LR Effects as MS (+ free Encoding/Decoding racks)
For this tutorial we’re going to posit an example scenario: a way to achieve the common practice of narrowing the bass content of a stereo track by scooping out the S channel’s low end—but this time, using analog gear instead of plugins. But what if we don’t have any M/S gear? Not to worry.
Continue readingBefore & After Analysis = Awesome
We could all use less “hmm, i wonder what this is doing exactly?” and more “aha, i understand exactly what that is doing!” moments in our lives, am i right?
Well, perhaps you have everything sorted out with absolutely perfect mental clarity at all times… but nobody that i know of does. The built-in perceptual capabilities of human bodies have limitations. Consequently, methods we can use to uncover and keep track of finer layers of detail to our perceptual input than normally possible can be quite useful for stepping outside our our usual—highly subjective and somewhat amorphous—human frame of reference.
An Alternative to True Peak Limiting: Not
True Peak Limiting is a method by which a limiter adjusts for how the digital waveform will be reconstructed by playback systems which can result in actual peak levels above 0dB even when the digital peak level is technically shown at below 0dB.
Implied Curvature
Basically the way intersample peaks occur is that the quantization points of a digital waveform can at times imply a curve between them which goes up a little bit higher than those actual sample points, resulting in a louder-than-expected actual peak level coming though.
To imagine it, just draw two dots in your mind, and then instead of drawing a straight line between them, draw a slightly curved line. The two dots are at a height of zero, and the curved line connecting them is bumping a little bit above zero. See?
Ableton’s Auto Filter— Comparing Circuit Models
Filter Circuits – Drive
We know that the new(ish) circuit models for Ableton Live’s Auto Filter effect add some tasty analog-modeled distortion, but what about their characters? Which of the circuit models adds the most aggressive distortion?
Continue reading
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