Off-the-record: Soundtoys

At Soundtoys they do work hard, no doubts. Their (may I add "awesome sounding"?) plug-ins, originally available for PT users only, were released in 2007 in the AU format, becoming an instant classic for native users. In the next weeks they're going to release the much-awaited VST version.
So, we've been patiently waiting for Ken Bodganowicz, Soundtoys' founder and CEO, to reply to our questions, but... hey, would you ever dare to put the Eventide H3000's DSP guru under pressure?

Ken, what you were doing before working at Eventide?

I was at Rensselaer Polytechnic institute, studying electrical engineering and also booking concerts for our school. Our biggest show was the Clash, one of my all time favorite bands. It was really cool to meet Joe Strummer and Mick Jones.

When did you start working at Eventide and which was your task?

I was hired at Eventide right after I graduated university, in 1984. My dream job was to design guitar stompboxes, so when I found out an effects company was close to my home in New Jersey, I was thrilled.
My first couple of projects never made it out the door. One was a digital delay, another was a computer graphics tablet. I did some work on Eventide's SP2016 reverb. I redesigned the A/D converters for that. I also did probably the first ever emulation plug-in, an AMS RMX-16 nonlin reverb simulation for the SP2016. It came on an EPROM chip. It was the '80s and gated reverb effects were in high demand!

Which was the main concept behind the H3000 and how much it owes to other previous products?

The original design concept for the H3000 was simply a stereo pitch changer. At the time, Eventide was making most of it's money by selling expensive memory expansion cards for computers, and the audio division wasn't doing so well.
Eventide had just hired myself, Bob Belcher (who works at SoundToys now), and Dave Derr (founder of Empirical Labs and Distressor Designer). The three of us fought pretty hard to get a chance to design the H3000, because we all came there to design audio products and not memory cards!
We were pretty nervous and started looking at the products that were coming out at the time, like Lexicon's PCM-70 and Yamaha's SPX-90. We knew that multi-effects were the way to go, so from the start we wanted out box to be versatile.
Bob worked nearly round the clock designing the hardware and circuit boards at night and the control software during the day. I'd usually come in the morning to find Bob just waking up in the easy chair in his office. Dave Derr designed the analog circuitry and I designed the DSP algorithms.


One of the things that I think helped was that we were all musicians and engineers, so we tried to make the box more 'musical'. That was what drove me to develop 'diatonic' pitch shifting, because I felt that it was just an obvious musical need.
Pretty much everything in the H3000 was done from scratch, including all the signal processing algorithms. This was our first major audio product, and most of the engineers who had designed Eventide's older products were no longer their. However, we did continue the philosophy of Eventide's SP2016 reverb processor. That box was designed to run multiple different effects (which was new for the time) and even had a panel to plug-in new ROM chips to add effects "plug-ins".

During the H3000's development, which was (if there was any) the relationship with artists? Was Brian Eno involved somehow, or he was just an early adopter?

Well, for the most part we kept things pretty quiet - we didn't even let our management know exactly what we were doing! Brian Eno was an early adopter, and wrote us a nice letter about how much he liked the H3000. That really meant a lot to us, and Bob and I taped up that letter in our offices.

Why did you choose to leave Eventide and start a software company?

After developing the H3000 and DSP4000 I was just ready for something new. I've always just wanted to do my own thing, and it seemed like having my own company was the best way to do that.

After having worked on such classic products like the ones we mentioned, how difficult it is to come out with new and better ideas/products?

Coming up with new ideas isn't hard - it's getting from there to the finished product that's difficult.
For me, developing new products is always somewhat painful. I'm a real perfectionist, and tend to get obsessed with sometimes the smallest details.

One of the first things that I've noticed using the Soundtoys' plugs, is the (high) quality of the factory presets. It's not a common thing, and I'm sure there's a lot of work behind them. Could you tell us something more about that?

Thanks - we work really hard on those! The preset thing really goes back to H3000 days. For the H3000, we were all involved in making presets, but I was the 'editor', doing the final tweaks and choosing the best from all the contributions. I've been lucky enough also to work with some talented sound designers. Andrew Schlesinger, for example, created the infamous Crystal Echoes preset for the H3000 still designs presets for us. Mitch Thomas who's our sales and marketing manager is also a really talented sound designer, and designs our preset expansion packs.


Recently your ported (almost all) your suite of effects to the native platforms, and it seems the reaction has been great. But, what about the "missing" plugs like Soundblender? It's just they're more complicated and longer to port or what? Sometime ago you said something like: "we're still not sure what to do with it, maybe release some of its features under a new form..."

We've been working on porting the pitch processing code from DSP assembly language, which is extremely complicated. In the process we are planning on making some 'improvements' to the plug-ins so that they are easier to use and sound better.

You worked in hardware company, and in your "info" page I've read you at SoundToys are collectors of fine hardware pieces. Don't you miss a real, tactile interface for your own products?

Yes, I'd love to see some of our effect in a piece of hardware. Yes, turning real knobs is always more gratifying than using a mouse and screen. But it's hard to deny the other benefits of software - almost unlimited instances for the same price and total recall and automation.

You say Soundtoys is based in a small place in Vermont, "where rush hour traffic is half a dozen cars at a stop light...".
So that's the secret of making better and "warmer" (whatever it means) plug-ins?

It gets REALLY cold here in the winter - we need something to warm us up!

Maybe this can be helpful to some of our readers: I see you're looking for a plug-in developer. Does he/she need to transfer to Burlington?

We already work with some designers remotely, so that's a possibility. However, we prefer to have someone at our lab. You miss a lot when you don't see someone every day.

I see you often join conferences and meetings related to digital signal processing. Probably granular synthesis has been the most important finding in the last 3 decades, but which are the most interesting methods/techniques do you think we'll see applied in audio hardware/software in the next years?

I'd say that the continuing improvement of "Frequency Domain" techniques that have made possible advanced time-stretching and pitch shifting combined with artificial intelligence techniques will make for some very interesting effects in the future.

The last, classic, ,question:  I swear I won't tell anybody... What's going on in your secret labs (and I mean besides the upcoming VST version)?

We've got a few new plug-ins that we are developing that I think you will like very very much! I can't say much more than that.
Will you be coming out to AES or NAMM in the States? We'll be at both shows, and hopefully at Messe this year as well. ...

Off-the-record: Urs Heckmann (u-he)

Since a long time we wanted to ask some questions to Urs Heckmann, the man behind Zebra, Filterscape, MFM.
If you're into software instruments, you probably already have some of his products in your plug-in arsenal. And, well, even if you're a hardware purist, you should have a look at u-he website...
P.s: Urs is known to love smileys, so we've kept them :-)

Your father is a sculptor, you have an industrial design background. How would you put these two disciplines in relationship with your job as music software developer, and how did these things help you in doing what you're doing?

Well, my father is a perfectionist and that's something I've certainly got from him. Describing the relationship between audio software development and industrial design would by far exceed the frame of this interview. I think though that they are very similar things. An industrial designer anticipates and outlines a product up to the point where others can fully imagine its existance, looks and functionality. An audio software developer does the same thing. The major difference is, the result of audio software design is a finished product while the sketches of an industrial designer have to be engineered and manufactured afterwards. I just upload the software on my server and there it is. However, coming from that angle I guess I'm a quite exotic figure within the audio software business. A major scope of my work is making complex beasts very easy to use. Working out all aspects of the user interface purely an industrial design issue.

You've refused offers from big companies (Apple, NI?), how much time (read beers) it took you to decide?

Hahaha, well the companies you mentioned have only asked me to send a resume. The direct offers came from other (albeit not necessarily smaller) companies. It never took a beer. Refusal was always the immediate answer to that question. I live in the comfortable situation of earning money from my own ideas, without any pressure from marketing departments. Working in a company would be a step backwards.

About Zebra, in the past I remember you told me there was a remote chance to see an hardware product out of it. Did the idea evolve somehow and are you still interested in it?

I'm all for it but I can't do it alone. I've spoken to some people but I found nothing yet appealing enough to take a risk. I'd love to provide the industrial design for a zebraesque controller keyboard with 4 joysticks though.

Which today's musical hardware devices (both mass produced or not, controller and/or instrument) "excite" you most and why?

To be honest, I'm not a good keyboard player and thus I'm a bit dyslexic on performance qualities. The only hardware I currently find appealing are analogue modular synthesizers. I'm toying around with a little system based around several modules stuffed in a Doepfer Rack, mostly Cwejman stuff. It's fun to wire this up with dozens of patch cords. Of course you can't save patches nor play chords or anything. Thus for actual music I find software much more suitable.

U-he and Hollywood: Zebra and MFM are an important part of upcoming big movies/soundtracks (we've talked about this with u-he's sound scientist, Howard Scarr). Which are the features' request you get more often from this kind of professional audience?

Funnily there's a really big blob of Zebra users in and around Hollywood, it's almost disturbing (I'm afraid I'm not gonna enjoy movies anymore trying to spot Zebras in the soundtrack...). The requests from there are surprisingly not so much about sonical features, they are mostly about technical details, for instance about integration of the software in huge projects or certain environments. It's about resizable user interfaces, MIDI Program Changes, support for Pro Tools etc. every now and then I get a request for surround capabilities.

Let's face it: with so many mags' awards, praises on the forums, etc, Urs Heckmann has gained a sort of superstar status. Are you still able to maintain a healthy self-critical attitude?

Hahaha, that's a good one ;-) I wouldn't perceive myself as a superstar. I think that my stuff is still pretty "underground" and "niche" despite the recognition it gets in magazines and such. This is certainly due to my lack of marketing ambitions. Selling over the internet is fine with me even though I could move a magnitude of boxes if I went with a retail distribution strategy. In fact I assume that moving only a couple of hundreds of licenses a year is very healthy for a one man business. In comparison a large company needs dramatic marketing to feed the overhead. About being self-critical, winning awards is flattering, but in the internet age there's always someone who puts you back on the ground. My wife is good at that too ;-)

About piracy and melting screens: for the russian hackers "mafia" you're probably marked as "Wanted". I bet you double check before drinking or eating something in a restaurant or in a bar, isn't it?

Nah, I don't think so. I'm having some Russian forums translated and they don't make the impression to be particularly angry with me (even though some have been stupid enough to assume that I wouldn't read their stuff, same goes for a couple of Western crackers)

More seriously but still about piracy, what do you think of the BanPiracy's approach?

I don't like it. It causes too much lateral damage. Here's a hypothetical scenario: a studio has a machine with demos from a software company installed by some engineer. An intelligencer of that company asks some other engineer in the studio if their stuff is installed. This one can't even see if it's a demo or not. He opens the demo and says "Oh, it's only a demo, sorry we don't have it". The company can still press charges for license violation against them. There is a major flaw in this system. I think that any license which disallows "accidental demonstration of a demo version for a pending business decision" should be ruled nonsense. These tactics seem desperate to me. Any company that does this could as well just advertise with a webbanner "Give us more money or we're going out of business". Postponed is not abandoned, it just leaves a bitter taste. (I have no clue as to what state said company is in. I just say how their business tactics come across to me.)

Why do we always get so many interesting and innovative hw and sw musical products coming from Germany? Is it because german moms make you eat something special when you're kids? Or it's just you have good schools?

Ha ha ha, maybe it is because we don't have any particular schools here. I wouldn't know what to study here if i wanted to create musical stuff. Hence I guess there are lots of people with a non-specific background, and maybe that's why the products are interesting? Also I think that in our culture (and probably same in Sweden, France and other countries) creating music hard/software "is good enough" whereas in cultures where business success ranks higher the same creative minds would go for other areas that have a brighter outlook.

In Berlin, where you live, several (big and small) hw and sw companies have their headquarters. Is there a sense of network, a "connection" among Berlin's masterminds?

Well, some of my best friends work in those other companies. I would be all for a bit more talk, but it's somehow too hard to organize. Hence we usually meet during tradeshows.

Since the beginning, you made an advanced use of the Apples AU format's features. This format and this Apple's choice has been often and heavily criticized by other devs. Why do you think there's not much love around for this format?

The major problem of AU is that the SDK (Software Development Kit) is overly ambitious. It's hard to find the things that one really needs. It also has a property that makes the transition from VST 2.x to AU very hard for many developers the separation of process and user interface. Now we have VST3 coming up and it seems to embrace all the same things that make AU hard to devlop for. Hmmm.

The u-he tech net part of your site is a cool thing, especially for the geekest among us; since it seems a bit inspired by the open source approach, I'd like to ask you what you think about music related open source projects, like those born for example in the monome community?

I don't mind open source software. I once have open sourced my gui framework for AU (which now is hopelessly outdated though). However, I'm so deeply buried in my own stuff, I have no idea what's going on in the realm of os audio software... The tech-net is for those who develop third party applications and resources for my stuff. Many people have done some things such as gui skins and sample converters. I want to encourage them to continue and enable them to do so on a high level.

I like the way your products have entered their "adult" age (and the tech net we've seen above is an important part of this growth): you've built for them a sort of modular underlying structure, that lets you add new features (resizing, skins, midi control, new filters, etc.). I know it may sound a bit abstract and it could be a broad (off) topic, but to me your approach is all about the value and the ecology of things, in a couple of words I'd say: "project culture"...

Yes. After the early years (More Feedback Machine, Zoyd, Zebra 1) I realized that products must be able to evolve over time. Hence the modularity that not only spans the musical modules such as filters and oscillators but also a general feature set such as the user interface. This meant that I had to write it all from scratch because I didn't want to depend on others, so I basically have a pretty close relation to all parts of the code. I used to be afraid of feature requests, because adding a single parameter with a new knob is a major problem in common plugin structures. It means a whole lot of work and may in some cases make a plugin incompatible to its prior version. Hence I saw the need to come up with a structure that would be prepared for future changes and even invite to add things. I've abandoned the idea that a product is ever "finished". My plugins demand constant attention and care. The future never stops 8-)

U-he products like Zebra, Filterscape, MFM are quite powerful but complex at the same time. Like you wrote for one of them, the philosophy is "If you can make a knob for it, do it!". Yes, I know you did also some "light" versions, but do you think you could ever release something with a completely different philosophy, let's say a minimalist, one-trick pony, plug-in?

Yes, I think I could do that. Maybe not. Dunno. 8-)

Do you think you'll still be able to personally keep all email contacts with customers in the future, or sooner or later we'll have a fake Urs replying from the good old India?

Well, for now I try my best, but I happen to reply late or forget to reply every now and then. Hence I try to direct correspondence into my forums, so that questions can be answered not only by me. By the way, my official sales address ("anybody at u-he dot com") is already being answered by my mate Hans and me, so there you have it ;-)

Lately you gave several hints about possible future products, talking also of a drum-machine. What do you feel it's missing from the existing software drum-machines?

Here speaks the industrial designer: Usability! Current drum machines are good at mangling loops, sounding like real drums and what not. But I think they lack in a really usable interface to actually create rhythms and grooves from scratch.
I'm working on a concept that enables people to use a pattern-based software drum machine in a live situation. Not like actually playing drums but by evolving patterns with various controls. Can't say when this will ever hit the public though.

Last question: what's on your iTunes playlists at the moment?

I'm currently rotating 4 albums and an EP:

Trentemøller - The Last Resort + The Digital Chronicles
You Pretty Thing - Tune In
Einstürzende Neubauten - Alles Wieder Offen
Storlon - Drill Of Silver Fir

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.

Off-the-record: Antares [ENG]

As promised in the Harmony Engine mini-review, this is the interview with Marco Alpert from Antares.

What's your role in Antares?

I'm VP of Marketing. I have responsibility for all marketing and brand management activities as well as participating in product specification and GUI design. I've also been known to write owners manuals.

How many people work at Antares now, and how many at the beginning?

When I joined Antares in 1998, I was one of three full-time employees (including Dr. Andy). However, all of our sales and distribution was handled by an independent company that we eventually acquired.
Today, Antares consists of a core group of nine employees and an additional network of very talented people to work with us on a contract basis.

Antares' latest effort is Harmony Engine, released some months ago. At a first look it seems it shares a lot of things with Autotune and the Avox suite of plugs. Is it correct to define it as a sort of "modular advanced mixture" of your previous discoveries in vocal technology or does it add something new?

Well it's true that a great deal of the processing technology shares some (but far from all) elements with Auto-Tune and AVOX. What we really believe is new is the way that a musician can interact with and specify the harmony generation. It was our goal to offer all of the traditional ways of harmony programming, but also add methods that let people without formal training in vocal harmony arrangement approach the harmony generation process from a purely musical point of view.

Harmonizers are a very special beast, that's probably why we don't see many of them on the market. Why it's such an "holy grail" for a developer?

I'm not sure I'd characterize it as a "holy grail" in the way that Auto-Tune is considered a holy grail. However, it is a tool that is applicable to a lot of different types of musical endeavor. I think the reason you don't see many on the market is simply that they're hard to do (well).

I found Harmony Engine to be a powerful creative tool. I prefer to define it as creative tool, (in the vein of previous hardware products like the Digitech Vocalist Studio, one of Eno's classics, by the way) more than a truly "realistic" one.
What do you think about that?

What I think about that is that I'm happy to hear anyone say that they find something we make to be a powerful creative tool. If it helps you make the music you want to make, it's serving its purpose.
As to Harmony Engine's "realism," certainly, if you shift pitch a ways and solo individual harmony voices, it will be obvious that you are not listening to an individual singer singing that part. And, of course, for many of those "creative" uses, it isn't about realism to begin with. However, it's been our experience that used skillfully in the context of an entire mix, Harmony Engine can provide backup vocals that are quite convincing.

While testing Harmony Engine, I guess you tried it also on several instruments. Did you get any interesting or surprising result that you would like to share with our readers?

Well, quite honestly, virtually all of our testing was done with human voice. However, during beta testing, one of our testers sent us a track he did using it with a tin whistle, of all things, and it was quite wonderful.

I know you're also the author of Harmony Engine's user manual, and I think you did a great job with that. Writing a good manual unfortunately is often not a top priority for developers (both software and hardware). Is it because they estimate that just a very few users will actually read it?

I can't really speak for the motivations of other developers, but I wonder if there isn't a chicken-and-egg situation with people reading (or not reading) manuals. Maybe if the typical manual were less intimidating or, dare I say, less boring, more people would read them. If you have a tool with a lot of capabilities, you obviously do your best in the GUI design to help people understand how things work. But there're always going to be subtleties that you will only discover from reading the manual. My goal is to write a manual that is both clearly informative and enjoyable enough to read that someone might actually read it. In the end, it helps the user to get the most out of our product and, incidentally, tends to reduce the number of frustrated customers calling our support people.

Auto-Tune is ten years old. Did you expect it to be the best selling plug-in of the decade?

Well, let's say that we were cautiously optimistic that it would be a success.

Did you have a special celebration for its 10th birthday?

Yes, we took it to the zoo and bought it all the ice cream and candy it wanted. It had a great time.

I've read that the algorithm used in Auto-Tune was first developed by Dr. Andy Hildebrand, while working as a geophysicist, to analyze seismic data for locating oil under the earth's surface (?!?). How the thing evolved into the product that we all know?

Quite simply, geophysical exploration is heavily dependent on the analysis and processing of sound waves. The main difference between geophysics and music is that the waves tend to be of radically different frequencies. Consequently, a great deal of the DSP technology Dr. Andy developed for geophysical analysis is equally applicable to music.

Antares is basically a software company. Your latest hardware product, the AVP, was released in 2002 (by the way, it's still on sale). Will we see more hardware Antares products?

Probably not as Antares branded products. However, over the years we have participated is a number of partnerships with other companies, and we are always open to technology licensing opportunities with other hardware manufacturers, so it isn't out of the question that some of our technology might show up in other hardware products.

How do you see Antares in 10 years from now? Will you be busy at making androids singing in harmony or what?

Ten years? Yikes! I'm not even sure what I'm going to be doing tomorrow. But hopefully, whatever it is we're doing 10 years from now, it will still include making cool, powerful, and fun-to-use tools for creating music.

About piracy: how does it affect your relationship with customers and, assuming you know about BanPiracy, what do you think of their approach? Will Antares join them?

That's really a topic for an entirely separate discussion. But obviously, our ability to continue making tools like Auto-Tune and Harmony Engine depend on people being willing to pay for them, just like they'd (hopefully) pay for any creative tool they used. This is our livelihood. It's how we all earn the money to pay our rent, buy food, whatever. I can assure you that if we were into becoming wealthy entrepreneurs, we'd certainly not be in the music software business. We do this because we love music and are happy to be able to make a living producing tools that help people make music. It's unfortunate that there are enough people who believe, for whatever reason, that they should be able to essentially steal what we produce, that we are forced to take measures to try to protect ourselves from that theft. Our goal is to do our best to ensure that those measures have as little as possible effect on our loyal customers.

Oh, how could I forget this? After so many years and all the doubts about JFK, Marylin, Lennon, etc., could we, once and for all, at least know if the (in)famous Cher's fx was AutoTune or something else?

It was Auto-Tune. Used by a second engineer on a grassy knoll just outside the studio.

Off-the-record: GForce [ENG]

As anticipated in the Virtual String Machine review, we asked GForce's Dave Spiers some questions about, well, VSM, his past, piracy, and... his Citroen DS Pallas (?!?).

First of all, I am talking with Dave from GForce Software, GMedia, or what else? I admit I'm a bit confused with these brand names after all these years...

Hey, it confuses me at times too, eh eh!
Gmediamusic was a company started by my partner Chris and myself way back.
We initially released the M-Tron as well as some sample CDs which were
branded as GForce.
Discussions with other developers lead to GForce being used as an umbrella brand under which we started collaborating with other independent developers such as Ohm Force. The Minimonsta is a prime example of this - a joint project under a single brand.
Eventually Chris and I found that GForce was taking up the majority of our time so this year we decided to stop duplicating things like websites and organize ourselves a little better. Hopefully this'll give us a bit more time to devote to things like development and keeping the new GForce website fresh.

Let's talk about VSM: I've seen your picture with all those fantastic machines you sampled and, let me say: wow! Are they part of your personal collection or you borrowed them here and there?

Some of the instruments belong to us but we were lucky enough to talk to Gordon Reid (Sound On Sound Journalist) very early in the VSM development.
Gordon was investigating the entire genre for a series of articles and had bought some wonderful examples during the course of his research.
We recorded many of these and learned a huge amount about the String Ensemble
history in the process.
Chris and I would take it in turns to do the recording while the other picked Gordon's brains about the actual instrument.

While making VSM, did you thought that you were going to become the most hated person for all those people selling their old string machines at ridiculously high prices?

Actually, it might have the opposite effect. We're half-anticipating that, in much the same way as with the M-Tron, VSM will simply introduce these sounds to a new generation and as it starts being used more and more, some of the wealthier musicians will think "I really want an original Freeman String Symphonizer/Solina/Elka Rhapsody etc".
If that happens, it's possible prices will rise.
Years ago you couldn't give Melly's away, that's definitely not the case now.

I know it's not a rock'n'roll question, but... could you give us some details about the recording chain used during the sampling sessions?

All the instruments were recorded via either an RME Fireface 800 or a Metric Halo
2882. They key was getting hold of the best instrument examples as possible and if I remember correctly we recorded three ARP Omnis until we found the best one.

Some of the instruments you sampled had also extra-string presets (like horns/brass), which in some cases could create an interesting blend with the string's sound. Since I don't see them in VSM I guess you just wanted to stay true to the "string-only" approach, isn't it?

Yes. The whole idea came about when we were asked to find a Solina for a UK band, Kasabian. It took a while but and when we found one and started playing it, we just fell in love with that sound. I was a huge fan of 70s funk (Roy Ayers, Herbie Hancock, Lonnie Liston Smith etc) and playing it brought a ray of sunshine to an otherwise damp and miserable English day.
It also coincided with a friend of ours working on the last Goldfrapp album and after we heard the track Number One, where the main riff is a Roland RS505, we thought "We have to build a retro string ensemble instrument".
Of course, we could have gone off at all sorts of tangents but we had to keep focus as much as possible - hence no brass or organs.

The additional synthesis module (filter, adsr) is a nice bonus: is it something completely new or did you re-adapt some of your previous
creations?

It's all completely new. We much prefer creating an instrument from a clean canvas instead of taking old code and tweaking it. Maybe that's why we take so long, he he!

How many people worked on VSM? I've read that Art (ex Bitshift, and author of Phatmatik Pro) was involved in the team too.

We're probably talking a hardcore team of three or four, but I have to say that it's always hard to give a definitive amount of people who work on a specific instrument because people dip in and out of the project as it progresses. By the time you count beta-testers and various musicians, this figure would be much, much higher.
We're lucky to work with some very smart people and all their individual expertise is welcome and sometimes vital. However Art was the main engineer and he was the one who probably suffered the most amount of sleepless nights.

About the fx section: I suppose it's thought for the machines who were originally missing a modulation section. After what the phaser and ensemble have been modeled?

We started by looking at a Solina-based ensemble but often when we added this to, say an Elka Rhapsody, it would make it sound too much like a Solina. The same would happen with a Roland type ensemble - it would just make everything sound very 'Roland' which defeated the idea of having this collection of diverse instruments, each with their own character.
In the end we took an average and opted to give the unit a high degree of flexibility where people could add some colour without it becoming too overbearing.

Still about the fx section: why no delay? I suppose the answer will be: "anybody has at least one", but I'll try to ask anyway...

We did discuss this at length but when we heard the phaser in 12 stage mode, the phaser won the fight.

I've read that we're gonna see some expansion packs for VSM in the future (like you did with the M-Tron). Could you tell us something more about them?

I'm working on these now and at the moment there's a few things that have definitely been short-listed such as the Hohner K4, Yamaha CE25, Korg Lambda, Elektronika EM25 as well as something else which will be the jewel in the crown. Sorry, I can't say what that is just yet though.

As expected, the VSM is also a "virtual award" to the italian manufacturers of the times (Elka, Siel which was the real responsible for
the Arp Quartet, Crumar). But is it true that you thought the word "violoncello" on the Elka Rhapsody preset was a mistake? I had so much fun reading that!

Yep. I freely admit that I was confused by it which is embarrassing considering the time I've spent in Italy. I know my old friends at Generalmusic are going to tease me mercilessly at NAMM over this.


GForce describes itself as a company with "an emphasis on vintage synthesizer modeling". Since "vintage" is not a static concept, do you think we will see you modeling 80's and then 90's synths in the next years?

It's possible. We just love stuff that's slightly 'out-there' and in the early days there was a lot more of that than in the 80s and 90s. I love it when an industry is trying to find its feet because people come up with totally oblique ideas within which there's a certain magic.

I've read you worked with many, many artists, as programmer and engineer. Which has been the most difficult or the weirdest request you had during those years?

In the old days people used to say things like "Create me a sound that goes Zzzzzmmmmmoooooyyyoowww" and think that I could read their minds.
That used to be difficult because studio time was amazingly expensive and they'd sit
their tapping their fingers while I'd plug modules into modules and try to find what was in their heads while they commented "Make it more orange sounding"
The thing is I love those situations because that's where you learn your craft. It's the same with being on the road - you have to have your shit together because the show MUST go on.
I could talk about this kind of stuff all day but there's one example I can remember where I was up a mountain in Switzerland reprogramming loads of borrowed keyboards for a Debbie Harry gig because none of ours had arrived for a huge festival gig. I borrowed various instruments from people like Dave Stewart & Billy Idol and set to work with about an hour to go before Debbie took to the stage. We pulled it off but the pressure was pretty intense.
Chris, who worked with Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson, has some brilliant stories on that front too.

What's your take on the (hotter than ever, lately) piracy's affair? How does it affect your relationship with customers, and what do you think of BanPiracy's actions?

Piracy is a major problem for all developers, especially small niche ones like ourselves and I don't think there's much of an excuse for it nowadays with all the good freeware available. I have more respect for someone who can take a few bits of freeware and create a great track than I do for a warez addict who just goes through the motions.
The sad thing for me is that this industry is losing programmers to big business because we can't compete in terms of salary and because they become demoralised by seeing their work passed around as worthless. It's hard to see people who love what they do and are very good at it walk away to something far less creative.
The BanPiracy thing is alarming on many levels - if their numbers are correct and studio piracy is as endemic as they say then maybe their existence is part of a 'cause and effect' situation. I like to stay positive so we hope the pendulum will settle more in the centre-ground at some point.

You were a sort of pioneer in hardware midi controllers with the Phat Boy. Do you see GForce involved in something hardware related in the future?

It's possible and there's no denying that hardware can't be pirated, which is what I think makes it attractive to software developers.
What I love about software though is that these are still early days and there's a spirit of adventure that's exciting. I spoke to the boss of a hardware synth company who said "If you're not able to manufacture in China, you won't even get on the playing field" which to me implied that everyone is chasing lowest cost manufacturing over creativity - software isn't like that.....yet!

Gforce is not known for being a super-productive company. Is that because in these years you spent too much time in trying to bring back to life your "vintage" Citroen Pallas ? (sorry, I found your personal page about that and I had to ask!)

Hehe - the truth is that my DS has been garaged for about 5 years and I still haven't found the time to devote to it.....yet. Every year I say "This year I'll get it back to tip-top condition" but something always conspires against me.
Everyone here has outside interests and it's these things that inspire and excite us within GForce. For example, during this last year I've contributed to two films, a couple of albums and helped out in a techie capacity on a couple of tours. It's inevitable that you draw from this stimuli and ideas are formed. Some of mine and Chris' best ideas have come from just talking about solutions to problems we've faced that day on the way to and from gigs or studios.

I swear I won't tell anybody... What's going on in your secret labs?

Hehe - I wish it was as simple as that but in truth we have lots of projects running concurrently and focus may change depending on what's inspiring at a particular moment in time. For example, we may hit a difficult point with one product so we'll put it on the back burner for a while and bring something else to the fore. I think of it like doing a mix - sometimes you have to give yourselves space so that you come back with fresh ears.
VSM only came about because of having to find that Solina and if you would have asked me a month previously what we were working on, I'd have said something totally different.

Ok, we've finished, you can have a beer now!

Cheers - Your health and our warmest regards to Italy!

Off-the-record: Sonic Charge [ENG]

This time our special guest is Magnus Lidström, the mind behind Propellerhead Reason 2's Malström synth and our beloved µTonic (or MicroTonic), released under its own Sonic Charge brand. Magnus is taking a little vacation in the deep forests of Småland (Sweden, of course!), where he's meditating on his next software...


Do you feel more proud or more annoyed when the first thing that keeps being said about you is something like: "...oh, yes, he's the guy who worked on that Reason 2's synth..." ?

If there are things being kept said about me at all I am naturally proud. (At least if the things being said are positive.) Naturally you always want to top your previous achievements, so in honesty, I am always nervous about my new releases. I rather butcher products that I do not feel 100% confident about as opposed to releasing them just to cash in on my reputation. So the answer is a bit of both. I would perhaps be annoyed if Malström turned out the only thing that people would remember me by, but at the same time being remembered at all is really sufficient.

Why did you decide to create your own brand, SonicCharge, to release Microtonic? No one else was interested in releasing it at the time?

No, that was not it. The whole point of creating Sonic Charge was to see if it was possible to create and sell software entirely on my own, using only internet distribution. My original intention was to release a lot of very small plug-ins only and decided that a synthetic drum-machine would be an excellent free teaser to bring attention to my site. Several months into the development on MicroTonic, I did a 360 and decided to focus on making a single very strong product instead.

We've reviewed Microtonic here, and as many we think it's a little jewel. What's your opinion on it, after some years, and what about its future?

I am honestly surprised how well it has stood the test of time. When I released it back in 2003 I thought that the life-time of a plug-in couldn't be much more than two years perhaps. MicroTonic is on its fourth year now and it is selling better than ever. (But of course, I have also released a few updates.) I still use MicroTonic a lot personally and for some reason I haven't grown tired of it yet, so I expect to continue working on it for long.

How did the TinTonic idea come out? It'so brilliantly, well... "nordic design"! ... Maybe you could also try to sell it worldwide through Ikea, eh eh!

Hehe. I give the entire credit of the idea to Wolfgang Merkle of Bitplant. I guess it takes a German to design something so characteristically Swedish, eh eh! In particular, I would never have thought of the idea of delivering the USB-memory inside a metal can. That's a stroke of genius.

Talking pattern based drum-machines in general, I'm quite surprised that the basic concepts behind them have not changed much through the years; for example I'd like them to be more "flexible" and suitable to less rigid, linear kinds of music (also dealing easily with non 4/4 time signatures, etc.). Am I asking too much?

Not too much no, but perhaps more than people would expect. When I designed MicroTonic in particular I wanted to stay true to the original concepts of pattern based drum-machines of the late 70's and early 80's. The lack of flexibility and the stiffness of these old machines were due to technical limitations, but turned out to change the way that music sounds (especially if you look at European dance music). The only innovation I allowed myself to add to the pattern programming was the fill buttons.

Which is the most difficult challenge in your job? Coming out with new ideas, hackers, bugs, or what?

Ideas grow on trees; it is the visions and the craftsmanship that matters. There is the phrase "it is not what you do, it is the way you do it", and I couldn't agree more. Sometimes though, my own perfectionism becomes my greatest enemy. Knowing when to give up and saying "it will pass" is especially difficult when you work alone. One of the major headaches is maintaining 100% compatibility with all the various operating system versions and host applications. I spend at least half the development time just testing what I code. The upside to this frantic testing is that I get rid of most bugs early in the development process, leaving very few for the beta stages, and (so far) virtually none in the released software.

When you make music, which are the instruments and fx (hardware or software) you really can't live without, besides your own?

I've always been a minimalist when it comes to the amount of artillery I utilize for my own musical mayhem. I enjoy deeply exploring the possibilities of a limited set of tools, rather than just scratching the surface of everything out there. When it comes to synthesizers I've enjoyed using z3ta from rgc:audio, AudioRealism's ABL and the Korg Legacy synths. Favorite effects include the CamelAudio effects and dblue Glitch.

Which are the artists (just a few names) and musical genres you're into?

I am afraid I am pretty predictable when it comes to music. I like music that pushes genre boundaries a bit, without stretching it unnecessarily far. Good music is a bit like good software, there have to be recognizable parts, like for example scrollbars and menus, and in music you have your familiar 4/4 rhythms and chord progressions etc. But there must also be a bit of innovation, otherwise it isn't unique. If it isn’t unique, it isn’t art, and when it is not art, it is mainstream, and I don't like mainstream. But I haven't answered your question. It is tough to select just a few artists, so I am going to simply put iTunes to shuffle and write down the next ten random artists. Here goes: Legendary Pink Dots, Chicks On Speed, Aphex Twin, Morcheeba, Vangelis, Front 242, Sophie Rimheden, Boards of Canada, Peter Gabriel, Groove Armada. Pretty predictable right? :-)

Your most recent work I'm aware of, is the collaboration on Addictive Drums, by XLN Audio. Which is AD's strongest point, in your opinion, compared to its more famous competitors?

Addictive Drums manages to pack a lot of muscle into a pretty slim outfit. With the built-in mixing environment and quick loading times you can easily check out 20 different drum production styles in just as many seconds. Lars and Niklas (who came up with the product idea four or five years ago) are professional musicians and sound engineers, and I think that shows in the end product. It sounds good, responds fast and looks pretty too.

Have you ever thought to implement your software products into an hardware device? And what do you think of new interfaces/technologies like multi-touch screen, etc.?

I'd love to go hardware some day. There is just something magic about turning a real knob as opposed to using a mouse. One thing that bothers me about software is the way it quickly decomposes if it isn’t kept up-to-date by the manufacturer. Give it a few years without updates and you risk not being able to load it up anymore on your latest computer with the latest OS. Software loses value quickly this way, as opposed to hardware, which if kept in good condition can hold for decades, and actually increase in value. About future interface technologies I am really intrigued by the multi-touch interfaces you mention. The physical qwerty keyboard is for keeps (and physical MIDI-keys and knobs for that matter), but I’ll happily throw out the mouse any day.

Going back to Microtonic, and in particular to your website's f.a.q. section (which is a "must" for those who haven't seen it yet, btw), have you been able to make that "comprehensible interface" for your robotic voice compression alghorithm?

Nope. I still recompile the source-code whenever I change parameters for the synthesis. People really love that robot voice. I put it into MicroTonic to nag people into buying it, but some people have actually written to me expressing their disappointment over that the little guy went away after they purchased and registered. I have already heard three different songs that feature samples of the voice, so I guess it is well about time to make a little product out of it. :-)

Which is the relation between the environment and the development of new software? I know you're now spending some time in some deep (and I guess not that crowded!) forests, up there in your Sweden, and I'm very curious about your next things...

Funny you ask, because my very next Sonic Charge release will be something with more than one link to environment. I know you are very curious, and I would love to spill some details about it, but I know from experience that revealing secrets about unreleased products only risks putting me in a corner and limit my freedom. I can tell you this much that you haven't seen a user-interface quite like it before, and the way that you will create and explore sounds will be something rather new... something organic.

Off-the-record: Sonalksis [ENG]

Kieran Tyrrell and Dave Gamble, Managing Director e Chief Omnipotent Code Guru (?!?) at Sonalksis, talk to AudioNewsRoom about their "babies", ethos, iTunes playlists, Wii Tennis, touch, and much more...
Oh, and we also have the exclusive scoop about their next products!


AudioNewsRoom:
Boring questions have to come first... How did Sonalksis' story start?

Kieran:
It started when myself and Gus Miller met at AMS Neve. We were working on large mixing consoles and hardware dependant dsp systems, but we realised that the direction of the pro audio industry was moving towards computer based systems, and in particular host based processing systems. So we started to produce the first plugin (the SV517 Equaliser), and after about 6 months launched the company.
Being a software only company allowed us to start up with very little (financial) outlay, and we both liked the idea of working for ourselves!

AudioNewsRoom:
How many persons were at Sonalksis at the beginning, and how many now?

Kieran:
At the very start we were a core team of just 2, although we've always had other people working as contractors, so at any one time the 'team' can be as much as 6 or 8 working on any one project.
Now we are a 'core' team of just 4, but again, there are usually about 6 or 8 people working on each project.
[Below, the Sonalksis crew: were you brainstorming, right?]


AudioNewsRoom:
Which is the product or the idea you've developed you're more proud of, and why? And which are the competitors' products that you would have liked to design?

Kieran:
He he, good question! For me personally, I love all the products.
It's probably the combination of the products, combined with the values of the company, the people we work with (internally and as customers) and the development of the brand that I find most exciting.
As to competitors, whilst there are lots of people out there doing interesting things at the moment, we have a lot of very interesting things in development, so we expect that in the near future it'll be our competitors wishing that our products had been made under their brand.

Dave:
Well, we get a lot of feedback from customers, and generally the more excited the customers get, the more proud we feel - the products that the customers ask us for - like FreeG and TBK3 - have had amazing response from people, so I guess those are the most exciting.
As for competitors products... well - I think a big part of our ethos is making plugins "More Right" than anyone else does them.
I certainly notice that we spend a lot of time making sure that every little detail is correct.
Altho, it would have been great to be behind the MiniMoog!...

Kieran:
And Dave is responsible for all the TBKs, so I know he loves those babies, even if he's too modest to say so!

AudioNewsRoom:
Regarding your latest product, TBK3, I found it interesting also because it shows a different approach, beyond the typical "let's try to emulate this particular outboard", so common with software devs in these years.
How do you deal with the "simulation vs creation" dilemma?

Dave:
He he... how much time have you got?...
A lot if it is watching what people expect and how they react when they get certain things. For example I give you a Neve EQ plugin, and it sounds identical (90dB phase cancellation) to your old Neve strip that you love.
It can be exactly the same thing. But it won't be as good because:

1) you don't have the tactile interface and the physical/emotional attachment that that provides

2) in your mind, you exaggerate the potency of the original, because of (1) and because "It's a Neve"...

So we can do clones... that technology exists, there's a lot of it about - the URS stuff is a particularly good example - but why isn't it as exciting as the real gear? See above, 1+2.

So in TBK3, we started with the mechanisms for clones of a few key compressors, merged them together to make one "supercompressor" and then figured out how to do that "sound more"...
You can never give a plugin the tactile interface unless you build it a control surface so we compensate for (2), but making the plugin do way more than the hardware did and that way we're as good or better than the hardware, he he...
We exceed the users expectations of what it can do!
Does that make any sense?

AudioNewsRoom:
Yeah, absolutely....
Which are the artists/musical genres you're into? And how, if it happens, your musical tastes influence your products?

Kieran:
I like any music that creates an emotional response in me!
I listen to a lot of hiphop, but also like rocky stuff too. Top of my iTunes playlist at the moment is Lily Allen and The Go! Team

Dave:
I'm on a strict diet of James Last and Phillip Glass!

AudioNewsRoom:
Dave, I've read you're also a heavy d'n'b consumer, is it right?

Dave:
Maybe...James Last is much cooler tho.. he he!
To be diplomatic I ought to say dnb + breaks, and i'm supposed to shamelessly plug Funkatech records and Viral recordings at any given opportunity.... but we wont go there!...

Kieran:
As to our own tastes effecting the development progress, we always ensure our products can appeal to the widest possible audience. And in the team we have people who use the plugs for so many varied styles of music that we can be sure the products work well in all intended areas, from eurotrash, to heavy rock, to dnb, to classical and soundtrack...

AudioNewsRoom:
Does it happen to you to recognize one of your products, while listening to a song? And which has been the most surprising and gratifying "credit" you had from a record/artist?

Dave:
People generally don't tell me about it. I wish people would more. I know about all the goings on with our own beta group (who include some high profile producers)...
... occasionally I'll hear a TBK1 sweep on something and know what it is... I'm hoping to spot TBK3 crunch on every new record made for the next six years.... here's hoping!

AudioNewsRoom:
I'm sure it wil be recognizable!

Kieran:
It's always hard to pinpoint exactly when our plugs have been used in a mix (more so the EQs and compressors), but we have our suspicions...
We have good relations with some of our users and endorsers, so we get to hear a lot of stuff that they have used our plugins on.
Unfortunately we can't really name names, 'cos of our customer confidentiality rules...
But we will have an endorsements section on our website soon!

AudioNewsRoom:
Which is the funniest request you had from a customer?

Kieran:
He he, occasionally we get support requests that just blow my mind... I remember one request we had where the guy seemed to be enquiring as to where he should insert the CD... yes it sounds like a joke, but I think he was serious!
Or... 'Where's the stereo link button on the mono version?'
As to 'feature' requests, most of our users know what they're talking about so their requests are usually valid...

Dave:
All the support questions I see are basically sane. We have lovely customers, it makes me sleep well!

AudioNewsRoom:
I think one of the key issues in the audio software business is the "update factor".
Every few months there's new hardware available, OS updates, hosts updates, and plugs' developers are forced to follow these trends (and users too).
And this sometimes brings also to complicated relationships with customers (see Waves' often hated WUP).
In my view, new business models are needed. So, which is your approach? Which will be, in your opinion, the "winning business model"?

Dave:
I think it's become progressively more clear that the only real recipe for success is to obey a customer-centric business model.
Whatever serves the customer best will be the company that prevails. And the company who serves the customer best and provides the most innovative products is the one that stands to become dominant.
So I'm quite pleased that the Sonalksis ethos is predominantly focussed on serving the customer, and making them happy - with providing the most innovative products as a strong second!
We've never charged for updates. Ever.
As we observed, if you started off on an OS9 mac, with PPC, moved to PC and DX, then switched to RTAS on XP, then ended up using AUs on an intel mac on OSX, you won't have paid us an extra penny, and we'll keep it that way.

Kieran:
It's a tricky situation. In the past we've always provided unlimited support and updates for all our products, but with OSs being updated almost yearly, and hardware and standards (ie new AU versions, VST3, migrations to intel macs etc) it can become a task in itself to maintain all this.
But as Dave said we still stand by this ethos. We don't charge for updates. If we release new features (ie as with the Mk2 Essentials) then we have to charge a little to cover the cost of the development of the new features, but we still continue to support the Mk1 plugins, so people only have to upgrade if they want the new features.

AudioNewsRoom:
Virtual instruments and fx's quality and quantity growth and diffusion in these years is amazing, but we know that mice, touchpads, generic hardware controllers are far from being exciting "musical instruments".
Brian Eno once said, about the importance of a physical approach when making music, something like: "...it's important to add a touch of Africa..".
Have you ever thought to implement your software products into an hardware device? And what do you think about new technologies like multi-touch screen, etc.?

Dave:
Multi-touch screens are surely the next generation of generic hardware controllers...
But really, there can be no confusion over the fact that expensive exciting kit is made of metal or wood, and have expensive weighty heavy knobs and switches.
An actual military grade weighted potentiometer, like they used to use in the good old vintage gear feels different, and you can feel it. That's when you know you've bought quality.
Positive actions on things (switches, center detents, endstops) feel good and are exciting.
Even a little friction on the travel of a knob makes it easier to use.
So, while I completely feel that hardware controllers provide tremendously useful functionality (I have a few and couldn't live without them), the actual tactile element gets designed out of those things to pursue lower cost. I was around for the design/dev of a famous controller, and kept hassling them to use more expensive plastics and construction!

Kieran:
We've looked into quite a few options for producing hardware solutions, and it's something we'd like to do in the future for sure. I think for us it's a matter of finding the right partners, so we can be sure we'll be offering a really great product, at a sensible price.

Dave:
If someone would sell me a control surface with big, expensive, heavy knobs, that would be great! I want physical "analogue emulation" for the interface, he he!
We're not (currently) a hardware manufacture company, but I'd love to do it, or see it done.

Dave:
Touch is an incredibly powerful and incredibly underrated sense... after all, we get married for touch!...
Anyways, control surfaces aren't that much of an impediment to making great music...
It just means we need to compensate when we make plugs!

AudioNewsRoom:
is there any sort of "ritual" at Sonalksis just after the release of a new product?
Do you get drunk, do you go to a-la Eyes Wide Shut parties, do you shut down everything and go to sleep for a couple of days, or what?

Dave:
Eyes Wide Shut parties: WOAAAAAHHH!! WTF?!?!?!?!

Kieran:
He he, yeah we love those Scientology parties, he he!

Dave:
I smoked a cigar after the TBK3 launch!
We've all gotten into Nintendo Wii recently. I got one, so whenever we all get together, it's Wii tennis!
No eyes-wide-shut parties... that I know of...
I'm not sure my girlfriend would like that! And I'm not sure I'd like that!
Generally, just after the launch, we spend a few days "on edge", making sure that no mistakes have slipped through the net.
I think I disappoint the guys by staying a little too sober...
It means more time for writing plugins and making music tho, and at the end of the day, that's what it's all about, no?

AudioNewsRoom:
Last question, I swear I won't tell anybody: what's going on in your "secret labs"?

Kieran:
We have two research areas that we can't say much about and two new plugs in dev which we probably can...

Dave:
Two (three) plugins under the knife at the moment, aside from the usual things like bugfixes and updates (there'll be a 2.04 of EssentialsMk2 at some point with some very minor fixes).
We're starting on a range of mastering plugs.
The first up is a stereo swiss-army-knife, provisionally titled StereoTools. It does all the stereo things you need, balance and pan, stereo width adjustment and expansion, mono-everything-below xHz, stereo coherence display, that sort of thing. It's very pretty and very useful!
Plugins two and three are the Mastering Limiters [they hope they'll be released "well before the end of 2007" - editor's note].
One is a smaller version of the other, featuring the most useful controls for when you want to do a quick limiting process for a rough master.
The full version is a multiband monster!
The design spec was roughly: "L3 is cool, but how the hell do I use it? I want multiband limiting that makes sense"...
So we've redesigned the process, and in doing so found that we can add in things like a linear-phase mastering EQ, multiband compression, spectrum analyser without complicating the process.
It's a very complete mastering tool, and i'm pleased with how it's looking so far. [see a detail of the GUI here]


Another crucial feature is this:
A lot of people don't necessarily want a limiter for their mix - they want to multiband compress, and polish the eq, sure, but they want to get an analogue clip - just to get rid of the transients and come up raw and ready.
Now, people have to use a desk to do this, because a clip plugin aliases and sounds bad so we modelled an analogue desk clipping!
Just because it's useful and people wanted it ... in fact, that was one of the first things people asked for.
The smaller version hides away all the multiband stuff, it gives you a "bass" control... we found that's the control that people use most on multiband limiters, just adjusting the bass contribution to the limiting, so we've just put it on a knob so you can just ease off the bass if you need to.
Other than that, it's straightforward - drive knob, dither, track is limited and ready for master...

AudioNewsRoom:
Do you think it will be a bedroom's mastering tool or do you expect it to find a place in big mastering studios too?

Dave:
The intention is to provide something that's easily competent for big mastering houses
we're already considering things like K-metering.
But, as always the strategy is to make something that's efficient and intuitive enough that you won't need to be a mastering engineer to use it and still get good results.