Back in the mists of time (9/04), one of the first posts on Music Thing concerned some company called Audio Damage, creating a wacky-looking plugin based on one of those old Realistic reverb boxes. 18 months later, Audio Damage are famous for making cool plugins and being bloggers themselves. They've just released Ratshack Reverb v.2, which is - of course - wonderful for making skinny loops sound fat and adding weird resonant feedback to anything. At $34.99, it's a bargain, but also unusual because it's probably the only plugin which costs more than the vintage kit it models - you can usually pick up an 'Electronic Reverb' for $20-$30 on the 'bay, although I'm gutted I missed item #7402891870 - a treasure trove of black, fader covered, Realistic badness (including the Concertmate 500, which is a Casio SK-1 in disguise), which just went for $52...
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Audio Damage's long-awaited Phase Two plugin is out. $49 gets you a Mutron Biphase wrapped up in the best looking VST/AU interface I've ever seen. It's nice to watch the process on the Analog Industries blog (Chris from AI is half of Audio Damage), from this post plaintively asking if anyone has a cheap Mutron Biphase for sale to this post announcing thier Mutron Biphase clone is available to buy.
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Audio Damage's second cel-shaded (i.e. cartoon-style) plugin is out, and it's free. If you lusted after Dubstation but were to cheap to pay $39, you can get FuzzPlus 2 for free. It's a nice-sounding fuzzbox, which I found works particularly well on drum loops.
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I just got back from travelling and got to play with Audio Damage's new Dubstation plugin. So far, it's great. The 3D comic book GUI is very nice, and the sound is really solid and smooth-but-gritty. If you've ever liked a dub record (and you've got $39), then this is the delay you've been looking for.
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So, many of you are probably in NYC, hanging with the geeks, while I'm in London looking at the clouds. Here's what I'm missing at the AES conference:
See also: 11 crazy expensive Christmas gifts for musicians, and my 2005 Gift Guide, which still stands up OK.Dear reader, what do you want for Christmas. Leave an anonymous note in the comments, and maybe a loved one will be inspired...
Labels: xmas2007
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At the moment, I seem to be spending pretty much all of my time staring at eBay trying to find the ultimate knob-covered vintage delay to buy (I narrowly missed out on this one, this one and most sadly of all this one.) Obviously I'm wasting my time with gear-lust, because Audio Damage (who did the Discord harmonizer, and the Ratshack reverb) have just released Ronin, an analog-sounding delay plugin which sounds great (on first listen), is very twiddle-friendly and has about a million more patching & modulating possibilities that even this comically expensive beauty. Turn the knobs and you get old-school gut-wrenching pitch bending, not digital clicking. Available now, $69.
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Thanks to Chris from Audio Damage for pointing me back to the Boombox Museum. I linked there a while back but totally missed the best bit - these amazing 80s boomboxes with built in keyboards. They're incredibly rare, but get these model numbers locked into your eBay favourites: Casio KX-101 from 1984, Casio CK-200 from 1985 and Fisher SC-300 Stereo Composer. A couple of weeks back, someone tried to sell a SC-300 on eBay (here) with a 'Buy it now' of $499...
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Create Digital Music link to the Roil Noise Centre for the Disturbing Arts and their virtual circuit-bent Speak & Spell, which is good for at least three minutes of fun. Turns out that Chris from Audio Damage (who made the Dischord plugin), has his own Analog Industries blog. He also spotted the thing, but as a programmer, he's a bit sniffy. It uses samples of real circuit-bent machines, so "it's not actually doing any math, nor bending any real speech synthesis in real time." Which is what he wants to do when he finally gets round to building a fully tweakable VST Speak & Spell.
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It is: A VST plugin which sounds like the legendary Eventide Harmonizer H910, which 'fucks with the fabric of time'. It's a pitch-shifter and delay, which does subtle double-tracking or massive stereo warping bwoyoyoing effects