Prosoniq: Morph (and related stories)

Plug-in nostalgia? There can be such a thing? Well, yes, after all...
Some time has passed since we've started experimenting with software fx and instruments. And probably, if we think back to the early days of plug-ins, the name Prosoniq comes to our mind bringing back some nice memories. SonicWORX (which was the first Mac software with a plug in architecture in the 1990s), PiWarp, Orange Vocoder, Morph, but also the TimeFactory standalone app (I remember the first time I tried it at a friend's studio, it was one of those "wow" moments!)...
Well, to make a long story short, we were glad to read some months ago that the german software house was going to update its product line making it (at last) compatible with the newer OS X operating systems and plug-in format.
Morph has been the first of the series (now they're going to release the Orange Vocoder in the next days) to receive the "AU make-up".
For those who do not know it yet, the plug-in offers a unique way of morphing two audio signals in real time. How does it work? Well, this is how Morph's creator, Stephan Bernsee, explained the concept behind the plug-in in an old interview: "My definition of morphing comes from the video world, where morphing was first invented and employed by ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) in 'Terminator', if I’m not mistaken. Morphing, in that context means that an object in a scene slowly changes its shape to become another object. The analogous process in the audio world would therefore be an instrument that slowly changes its shape to become another instrument. All morphing processes I’ve seen - except ours - do some kind of spectral manipulation that has nothing to do with the shape of the original instrument. The concept of 'shape' requires understanding the nature of the sound that is being processed - I therefore tend to think of them as some elaborate mathematical tools with musical effects, but not really 'musical' tools. The problem with these tools is that they inevitably require the whole sound to be analyzed prior to manipulation, and that they tend to produce non-musical results in the intermediate stages of the morphing. Our morphing process is based on an inherently 'musical' approach and does therefore not have these restrictions."
It's interesting that Stephan began developing Morph on his Atari ST in the late eighties (of course it was not a real time software at the time). Well, you know, when ideas are good, they're able to stand the test of time!
So you may ask, it can really be useful for today's productions? We think Morph is still the lovely and inspirational piece of software that it was years ago (and that made it a favourite of artists like the ubiquitous BT and of big studios like the BBC ones). At AudioNewsRoom we really like software like this, that try to spice up the creative process without being too complicated or overloaded with options most users will never use. If you are a "vintage" plug-in aficionado or at your first experience with a DAW, our advice is: download Morph's demo and have fun!

Talking with Stephan, we also tried to understand which were the reasons for Prosoniq's 'standby period' and which are his plans for 2008: "I really don't want to go into too much detail but I can tell you that Prosoniq has lost a lot of money when Hartmann Music (the makers of the Neuron synthesizer) filed for insolvency over a quarrel with their former distributor. This has been a major setback which came as a real shock to Prosoniq and has subsequently caused a lot of products to remain stuck in the release pipeline for quite a while. In particular, Prosoniq has been unable to respond to the requests of the AudioUnit community even though the AudioUnit version of their products was well underway at that time. We sincerely hope to make it up to them by now releasing our AudioUnit products first. We really have great customers, they are just amazing and so unbelievably creative and we truly love them and we really care for their requests and listen to what they have to say. We're sorry it took us so long to get there, but all that is now going to change in 2008. As a side effect of all this there had been some dramatic changes in the Prosoniq management, organization and cost structure, and looking at the rapidly increasing Prosoniq sales I'd like to think that they were justified, necessary and beneficial for the company and enabled us to live through this difficult era and come out almost unscathed. In particular, the way things are organized now Prosoniq is able to come out with more and better products faster than ever before, keep track of bugs and other issues in a very transparent way and provide excellent tech support even on the weekend (which is when most people are making music).
In addition, some exclusive licensing contracts as well as some requests by the music industry that we have been honouring in the past are no longer in effect in 2008, which enables us to come out with some pretty amazing products later this year. I can't talk about them before they are officially announced but if you visit the Prosoniq web site every now and then you will notice that the Prosoniq product portfolio will change quite a bit in 2008."

Thanks Stephan! Well, good news then...
We'll keep an eye on Prosoniq, let's hope to see some new creative products soon!

Glitch Gumbo vol.1

Tip of the day: if you have 10.99$ (or 7 €) waiting to be spent, before doing anything else have a look at Atypical Audio's website. You'll find Glitch Gumbo vol.1, an interesting collection of 66 electronic percussion loops (Apple Loops/Acid ).
It's top quality stuff, made using Elektron Machinedrum and Monomachine, Max/Msp, Reaktor, etc.
Especially Logic and Garageband users could find Glitch Gumbo very useful, since there's not so much interesting stuff on the market for this kind of sounds, and even if you're good at programming beats, it's always useful to have some more hi-quality and ready-to-use solutions to add to your tracks, isn't it?
We asked Atypical Audio's Peter Van Hoesen (electronic musician/dj) to tell us something more about his first software release: "of course, as 'glitch' is a main feature of this library you will find this characteristic in most of the loops. The emphasis is on experimental percussion loops - sometimes radically chopped up and dsp-mangled, sometimes on the more funky side. It's a constant battle between the experimental geek and the funky dj in me, eh eh... The main reason for making this library is that I really enjoy combining sound design with rhythmic production. I'm a very rhythm-oriented producer, always have been. Combining these two aspects and making a fresh-sounding library was my main goal."
Peter is generous enough to give away 20 free loops (not included in the Glitch Gumbo vol.1) and a couple of Battery3 kits from his free sounds page, so show him some paypal love!
By the way he also told us he's working on a few new things: "The next download packs will continue along the same lines. There is Glitch Gumbo Vol 2, which will not only include percussion loops but also bass loops and 'abstract-melodic' content, so as to offer the user more options to combine sounds into something unique. I'm also working on a library exclusvely produced with sounds from the Elektron Monomachine, Elektron Machinedrum and Korg ER-1. These are my favourite three beat box synths. All patterns are programmed on the machines, then imported into the software domain for further processing. I don't want to just sample the machines, because that's not so interesting. The aim is to use these machines and their specific sound as a starting point for further sound design. Both libraries should be finished at the end of April."

Off-the-record: ProAudioVault

ProAudioVault is Ernest Cholakis and Dan Dean. We loved their first release, a grand piano virtual instrument called Bluthner Digital Model One (or BDMO, for friends), and since they're also among the most respected people in the software industry we wanted to ask them some questions about BDMO, sampling and related topics.
Well, it took months for Ernest Cholakis to get its homework done, but you know, developers are always super-busy trying to do the right thing for us, isn't it? ;-)

I know you and Dan come from different backgrounds, how did the idea of a collaboration come out?

Over the years Dan and I developed a friendship. Obviously sampling and recording technology is something that we both have in common. We produce different content - Dan has released mostly orchestral and bass samples libraries where I have released drones, drum loops, DNA groove templates and reverberation impulse products.
We often discussed various sampling issues, both technical and marketing as well as the growing problem of piracy. When we started to consider the Blüthner Piano sampling project we decided to pool our combined knowledge base because of the considerable technical challenges involved such as the signal processing required for noise reduction, recording procedures like how to record without any ambience etc. Because the piano is one of the most difficult instrument to record effectively, we decided our combined expertise could develop a better overall product than if either one of us took on the project alone.

Before starting working on BDMO which were your feelings about the available software pianos on the market?

We obviously thought that there was still room for improvement as most libraries had too much ambience in the piano samples and true piano dynamics were not accurately captured. In 2005 I wrote an article in Sound On Sound on this subject - (issue Nov DVD 2). THe article points out that all the major samplers could not accurately reproduce the piano's dynamic range - even when the right tone was put into any given sampler, the dynamic range was inaccurate due to the sampler engine limitations. Most samples (even new releases) still cannot accurately reproduce the dynamic range of each individual note of a real world piano.

BDMO really sounds like a labour of love (just have a look at the manual and you'll agree with me). How much time did it take?

Planning started months prior to the recording sessions which took place the end of October 2004. We released it April 2007 so about 2 1/2 years.

Why did you choose a Bluthner? And, how did people at Bluthner collaborate with you during the making of BDMO?

After playing the Bluthner for 5 minutes at Annehein NAMM in Jan. 2004 we knew that the Bluthner Model One was the piano to sample - it has a warm and distinctive tone that was never harsh - even if you play fff. The other element that appealed to both of us was the evenness of the tone. This is clearly apparent as one plays up and down the keyboard. An another reason for choosing this piano is that is has a distinctive sound that is different from the Steinway and Borsendorfer which already have been sampled. We met Dr. Christian Blüthner formally at Musik Messe Frankfurt the following April.
Ours was the first sampled piano library to be officially endorsed by the piano manufacturer. For both Dr. Christian Blüthner as well as us, the most important criteria was quality. As well we all agreed that recording at Skywalker was our first choose as it has one of the quietest soundstages in the world and for a piano this is an essential consideration.

This product, besides being an excellent sampled library, has many interesting additional features: the most important is the IR one, which really makes the BDMO unique. My only critic is: don't you think this important feature could be better implemented in the GUI, to be more explicit and user-friendly? Users could easily get confused with those cryptic preset names, and for some things they need to keep the manual always handy...

Yes it is a point well taken. There are two reasons.
In the end one should listen to each timbral impulse get to know them individually then decide which one(s) work well in a composition. In a DAW a user can change the timbre without having to re-record.
Clearly RI users find it very appealing of obtain the impulse of a famous acoustic environment as well as a visual of the space. But in a musical sense why does this matter? I dealt with this same issue when I released both Pure Space Reverberation Impulse CD's - I refused to mention and include pictures of the spaces because too many people out there are listening with their eyes more that their ears. The purpose in audio production is to find the right type of ambience and adjust it if need be to compliment or enhance the music. Whether the space is well known, one's bathroom or a garage should be immaterial to the decision of selection. That is why I developed the bass, midrange,and treble numbers to describe the "character" of a space - because they actually make more sense in terms of describing a sound than a picture can ever do. In the end does anyone really think that if they have the Concertegedouw or Abbey Road RI's that is is going to sell more records ?
Another reason I decided to withhold detailed information on the sources was for legal reasons.

BDMO recently got an important update/bugfix. Would you like to say something more about it?

Yes it was released in January 2008. We changed about 800 notes in subtle ways but with a distinctly noticeable improvement in the overall sound of the piano. We also added a script so that a user can adjust the keyboard sensitivity. This feature enables one to customize the response for any controller.

Ernest, judging from your background and the BDMO's Timbral IR list, you have a library full of incredible recordings, probably made in every corner of the planet. I'm sure you have some interesting and funny anedocte about this, to share with our readers...

No funny situations I can think of but definitely a few surprises.
I find it especially interesting when one is in a space that has a historical significance. Over the years I have recorded in many temples, tombs, churches, grottos and early Christian churches. I remember when seeing the film of Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii the juxtaposition of this classical ambient band in a historical setting (Roman amphitheater) with no audience was poetic. So when traveling to Italy my partner and I when to Pompeii and recorded the RI of the amphitheater and man of the other buildings.
I find it fascinating that the sound of a particular space is not what one would expect. For example in the Pantheon one would think that the reverb time would be long and thick sounding given the incredible size of this temple however is is surprisingly short and depending where you stand has only a few discrete echos in the "ambience" of this space. Another space that I find interesting is Brunelleschi's Pazzi Chapel in Florence. It is not a big space but the reverb time is longer than one would expect (maybe due to the architecture's symmetry) and on top of that - it is one of my favorite places in Florence to visit!

Probably the biggest change we've seen in the 'sampling world' in these latest years has been the exponential growth of the libraries (thanks to larger and cheaper hds), which have become bigger and bigger. And sometimes this does not automatically means having a better and more playable product.
Now, in 2008, which is your vision on the state of art of sampling, and which are the next steps this technology is going to take?

Yes I agree bigger is not necessarily better. I think the large library trend has evolved for a number of reasons. Marketing, piracy issues and quality issues. All soundware developers are forced to deal with piracy and as internet and hard drives get larger so it seems the level of piracy also goes up. One very basic form of copy protection is large sound libraries. The problem with this approach is that given the level of polyphony required for a large ensemble such as a sampled orchestra a lot of pressure is put on the streaming engine of an sampler.
Earlier this year I took make a violin resonance impulse of an Andrea Amati and used it to convolve with a regular sawtooth wave patch. The realistic vibrato and character of the resulting tone was very dramatic to my ears. I can't help but think synthesis will go down this path and that convolution will likely be integrated into more sound-ware libraries and software synthesizes.

I know it's not your cup of tea, but still I'd be interested in your opinion...
Since some years we've seen a growth of audio modeling based products. Do you think there's a future for this kind of technology, especially regarding the emulation of a complex instruments like a piano?

Obviously modeling will continue to handle ever more of the piano tone nuances as the processors get faster. A piano sound can be modeled but modeling different instruments (i.e. Blüthner versus Steinway versus Borsendorfer) is a challenge because each piano manufacture and even piano's of the same model all have different partials (tuning and amplitude) and they all change differently as the sound evolves from ppp to fff. The amount of data required for a realistic sound is staggering especially if the user want much more than a "generic" grand piano sound.
That may take a while and will see if the marketplace even cares enough about this to support this kind of development.

is ProAudioVault just a 'one product brand', or are we going to see more products under the PAV name in the future? I swear I won't tell anybody...

Who knows, maybe... (smiles)

Thanks Ernest and Dan!

By the way Ernest added some interesting news. He released a new interesting reverberation impulse CD called "Hollywood Impulse Responses" under his own brand, Numerical Sound. This what he told us about this CD: "These RI's are unique and have something that no currently available software/hardware reverberation unit can do - add reverb that also changes the timbre of the source material as well as being designed for specific instruments (can't be done with any EQ)." You can check some audio demos which illustrate how HIR dramatically changes the timbre of an audio track at Numerical Sound's website.

Need an EQ? Pay what you want!

The much discussed pay-what-you-want model (Jane Siberry, Radiohead, etc.) is not just a music industry topic anymore. 5 months ago, a "young" software house, DDMF, has started adopting this model for its two products, the LP10 and the IIEQ PRO (respectively, a mastering equalizer and a parametric tracking equalizer).
We asked DDMF's developer, Christian, to tell us something more about his products and his pricing model.

Hi Christian, how did the DDMF story start? Did you model your EQs after specific hardware models?

Well, let's see: it began in 2006 when I was between two jobs and had some time to kill. As a scientist I had acquired quite a bit of numerical programming experience, and as a hobby musician I had a good overview over what went on in the plugin world. In my research projects I had used Fourier analysis of all sorts of signals for some time, and I wanted to see whether I could come up with a good-sounding FFT-based equalizer. That's basically how the LP10 was born. It wasn't specifically built after legendary hardware products, but its frequency response (which can be shaped very precise with an FFT-based EQ) follows exactly the ones of RLC modules which, after all, are the essential building blocks of hardware EQs.
Having the basic setup already available, I was then able to develop the IIEQ, a more "go-to" style EQ, in relatively short time. At that time I thought that the LP10 was really something special and the IIEQ more standard (although it offered 10 fully parametric bands),

I know your products had a "traditional" pricing scheme back then. Why did you adopt the pay-what-you-want scheme?

Yes, I offered the LP10 for 40 Euros and the IIEQ as freeware. Ironically the IIEQ received much more attention (well, it was freeware after all) so after some months I decided to publish an extended version of the IIEQ, the IIEQPro, as payware. And indeed, it sold better than the LP10!
But during all these months I never was really sure about the "right" price for the EQs. On the one hand side, there are competitors who charge more than 200 Dollars (and whose products can usually be reproduced by either the IIEQPro or the LP10 to an accuracy of -70 dB or better, by the way).
On the other hand, from my observation 90 percent of the market are young hobby musicians who, in all likelyhood, will not spend that much money on an EQ, but rather get it from emule or some russian torrent site (where my products had also appeared from day one). So when Radiohead published their new album based on the "pay-what-you-want" method, I immediately thought that this was a very interesting approach that would fit very well for DDMF. It would solve the piracy problem, it would allow everybody to buy an EQ from me (and if it is only for a dollar, it's still better than nothing) and, as I only realized later, it's also quite a good marketing tool. In fact, while before this price model DDMF was just another developer, it is now recommended in discussion forums much more often simply because it's an interesting thing...

Let's talk about the results. How do people behave with this scheme?

After 5 months the average price is still around 10 Dollars, and that's really nice! I mean, the users can get away with 50 cents, but they deliberately pay more, sometimes even 50 Dollars, simply because they really like the product. So apart from the model being financially more successful than the old pricing scheme (it's not making me a rich man, but I'm quite sure I'm above the average VST developer) it's also much more rewarding since I have the feeling that people really appreciate what I'm doing.

What we should expect from DDMF in the next months?

In the near future I finally will release new versions of the EQs with full mouse handle control, as this is clearly number one on the request list. I'll probably redesign the whole GUI and add a few other features while doing this, so it's gonna be a major update. It's also tempting to pursue other types of effects like compressors, but at the moment there are no immediate plans.

TENORI-ON: worldwide launch events

On April 25th, The TENORI-ON will be officially launched in Japan with an event in Tokyo, at Spiral Hall (a multi-purpose cultural center). Among the confirmed guests/performers: Atom Heart.
No further news about the launch in other countries yet. We'll keep you posted.

Update: worldwide launch events schedule is as follows...

12th March Frankfurt

8th April Berlin

9th April Paris

11th April Montreal

16th April New York

18th April San Francisco

25th April Tokyo

A new site has just been launched, the name says it all: www.tenori-on-tour.com.
If you're asking about prices, this is what our sources told us some days ago: "the official European announcements will happen from Messe".