A moment in time: adventures in Poverty

I’m hanging out in a computer resource center… waiting around for a ride home.. so here I am… typing away… looking for something worth talking about.

I suppose it might be worth talking about the plight… the sorta scheme of things.. which is a tale of poverty and mental-ill health.. and what not.

I got my check deposited today… and for God knows what reason they can’t give me money for it.. unless I was putting it into the ATM… but I’ve lost my card… and it’ll be about 2 or 3 days before the thing cashes.. and the reality is that I have maybe enough money to make it to the other appointments I have this week… as long as I get a ride back from here…

A ride on the buss is $1.10… so things are tight. That said I’ve had this check for a little while… so I’m actually doing sorta amazing as far as making the tiny amount of money I’m getting last… which at the moment is $100 per two week period. In a few months the cost of heating the house will drop.. allowing me to have about $200 every 2 weeks.. which will sorta allow me to have a life again…  cause this sucks.

Anyway…

I’m over tired because the buss came to the buss stop before I was able to get myself an energy drink.. and so I’m going on no caffeine… and so am like totally out of it tired…. that and I’m REALLY hungry…  There’s food at home.. so no need to hit the grocery store on the way back.. which I can’t really do with a ride… and I will be going out tomorrow… and can do it then.

On average.. if I can’t get a ride.. .it takes about 5 hours per appointment.. of which I have 3 a week.. .so 15 hours spent in transit.. the time is a result of buss schedules mixed with how much time you gota walk.. and how your schedule interacts with all that…

But when you stop and consider what you could do with an extra 15 hours in a week……  well…  how much would that be worth for you? How much is this getting in the way of me getting to where I need to get?

There’s more to this story.. including the problem of…  well transportation issues being an obstacle to employment which is sorta a major thing right now…

Anyway.. I’m going to read through this and try and make it readable.

Oh the frustrations: adventures in audio degradation, bit crushing, and plugin folders

I woke up today, and before I even made my coffee, I was off to the Audio Ease website in search of a Speakerphone update.

Maybe I should give the back story?

So..  sometime yesterday, during my production, I came to the conclusion that what I really needed, for this particular synth, was a bit crusher. I looked around my plugin folder and found that there wasn’t really much I liked… and so I thought “screw it, lets go to speakerphone” which is like a wonderful toy chest.. filled with fun things to degrade your sound…

Speakerphone almost wants to say “bit crushers are for pussies” for its tag line.

See…  what is bit crushing?

OBVIOUSLY… what we are talking about… is taking an audio file that’s… lets say 16-bit… and lets make it 8-bit or less… and you know.. you might crush the sample rate while you’re at it… and hell.. if you could somehow model really horrid D/A converters.. how nice would that be?

But that’s not really what bit crushing is.. or that’s literally what bit crushing is… but that’s like looking up a word in a dictionary and mistaking the correct spelling for the definition..

1. Bit crushing is a particular type of digital distortion… and when I use the word distortion here… what I’m talking about is something that kinda calls attention to the medium…..
2. So for instance… there’s a way that photographs of a certain age age… that gives them a sepia tone.. and so now we associate various things with the sepia tone look… so to speak.
3. And there are these kinds of distortions to… everything from the walls on the inside of Egyptian pyramids… to how pre HD video behaves… and in the audio world… bit crushing is but one form of digital distortion..
4. And you know.. you could even think of impressionist painters… showing there brush strokes.. as a kind of distortion….. at least in respect to it being about the same sorta aesthetic principle I’m trying to get at..
5. Another kind of digital distortion…. comes from bad converters…. that convert digital audio to analog audio, or analog audio to digital audio… and different converters can have there own kind of sound.
6. Clearly.. what MP3 compression does to a sound… is yet another kind of digital distortion.

Well.. speakerphone is, as I say, a very interesting toy chest for your sound degradation pleasure…

Its sorta main feature is a giant library of speakers…. that it emulations via convolution… which is to say sampling.. so that it can make the sound sound like its coming out whatever sorta speaker you might like…. from this crazy huge collection.. that encompasses everything from a wide range of guitar amps to ancient telephones, answering machines, toys, old record players, radios..etc. It’s kinda like if you have a thought on this subject… there’s probably something in the library that’ll at least approximate what you’re looking for.

Speaker As EQ Rat Hole

One of the things I kinda like about it is… you can kinda use it instead of an EQ… that is an EQ will have a kind of EQ curve… a way that it’ll effect the frequency balance of the audio going through said EQ… and you know.. with an EQ you shape that balance… well different speakers will shape the frequency balance to… so sometimes throwing a speaker on.. can be a kind of interesting thing to do.. instead of EQ.

I’ll often use about 3 EQ on a channel anyway…. One for making musical curves… kinda shaping… of the frequencies… another that’s like a jig saw that I use to make it so the various sounds I’m using in a mix might fit properly together, and then another that’s about controlling your sense of where sound is in space.. so having to do with the depth….

But that’s a conversation for another day….  point is.. if you use 3 EQs in this way… choosing to go with a speaker, instead of an EQ, in one of these slots..  kinda makes sense…

But I digress Back to Speakerphone

So.. first speaker phone has this… library of speakers that you can put a sound through……  but really.. that’s only the start of it.

You can make your sound sound like it’s going through one of a selection of microphones…. the speaker inside of one of a selection of rooms… and you can even pick one of a collection of covers to put over the speaker… should you like.

The wonderful world of distortion

There’s  various types of conventional distortion.. .shall we call it.. that you can put on a sound…. there’s a crusher… theres something that sorta models the sound of record players, there’s another thing that models the sound of different kinds of cell phone networks, and the distortion they create, another for what radio will do to a sound… and there’s a bunch more in there after that.

So… when I say bit crushing is for pussies… what I mean is.. that there’s a broader pallet of degradation out there… and its sorta like.. if you were a poet… having that larger pallet is about having a command of larger vocabulary.. .and that’s really what we are talking about here.

Ok…

Back to the problems of my current project

So In my production I have this sound that I want to come out of incomprehensible distortion… and then starts to make sense: if it were saying something.. you’d eventually be able to make out the words.

SO… to achieve this I had settled on the GSM telecom distortion in Speakerphone… and set about to automate it….

Now… I should add that I have a 32-bit version of Speakerphone running in a 64-bit bridge kinda situation…. but for whatever reason… it was really flack-e about if it would respond to the automation or not… and so it was with this in mind that I ventured forth to the Audio Ease website first thing.. .before even my coffee was started.

What I found was slightly horrifying… it would appear that there is no 64-bit version of Speakerphone. Umm.. this is Speakerphone 2 technically… and it came out… I don’t think 6 years ago? But it’s been out for a long while.. .and I kinda feel that at this point… if you’re a real developer… kinda everything ought to be 64-bit.

There were some updates which I attempted to install and I’m not 100% sure if the install worked.

I then fired up the project I was working.. spent time monkeying around with it.. .and still couldn’t get the automation to reliably work.

This really kinda upset me… in large part cause I had already shaped out the sound and I LOVED what speakerphone was doing…. and now I’d have to throw all that out… and go find some freeware bit crusher or something.

(And shouldn’t my DAW just have one anyway?)

A Tale of Bit Crushers and Plugin Folders

Off in the land of freeware applications I was reminded that a lot of the freeware crap is a pain to install.. cause you gotta manually put the right files in the right directories… deep in the bowls of the operating system… and I’m still not at a place where doing that kinda stuff is obvious to me….  so now its sorta like I don’t have a bit crusher…..

Well… I have some 32 bit options…

Or really this requires a deeper plugin folder search.

The Plugin Folder

So… every music producer, more or less, has there plugin folder.. which is where you put your plugins… or really… its like.. your in your music production program of choice… and you reach into a folder to find what sorta virtual instrument or effects you might want to get your dirty little hands on.

WELL… here’s the deal…

At a certain point.. you find that you have a crap load of stuff in that plugin folder.

See plugins are to producers what candy is to little kids.. and you can never have enough candy, can you?

Plugins… do indeed range in price… from $50 or less.. where.. folks whom aren’t in poverty like me… can come to acquire without thinking about it too much.. to plugins that are around $1000 where you think “yeah, maybe next year”…

And then there’s bundles.. where for however much money you get a crap tun of plugins….

And finally.. there’s freeware… that don’t even cost ya anything….

And when producers hang out and talk? Yeah.. a good amount of that time might be devoted to the conversation of plugins.

So what happens is “over the years” you start to accumulate plugins.” AND… you have this folder that… you don’t even know what’s in there at times!!!

I mean……

So… I’m not sure how long ago it was… more then a year anyway… I upgraded from… some version of Komplete.. .to Komplete Ultimate.. I think it was 8…. and there was soo much crap in that bundle.. that there’s stuff in there I still haven’t even played with… and that was well over year ago… hell it might have been 2 years ago, or creeping up on 3….

With a bundle.. usually there’s a couple items in a bundle that you want.. and you realize.. if you buy the bundle… you’ll get those couple items for less then you would other wise get them.. to such a degree that this is really the thing you must buy next…

And so what happens is… you wanted… lets say these 3 plugins… but.. you got 10… now.. you figure you’ll give the other 7 ago… but… who knows.. right?

The Plugin Auditions

I find that.. in practice… you have your go to plugins… and then you have plugins that have to go through an audition to make the cut. In any given situation.. there might be a plugin that you know to turn to..  a plugin that you really know….

But sometimes… even though you have that plugin to turn to.. that go to plugin… maybe you just want to try something else.. cause you’re just in that kinda a mood… SO…. audition time.

Now let me explain something about “knowing a plugin.”

You could have a plugin that has 2 knobs… lets say it’s a distortion plugin… lets call it a tube-tape distortion… and the two knobs are drive.. which is how crazy you want to get the distortion.. and a wet dry knob.. so how much of the original, un-distored, signal do you want to have mixed with your distorted signal…

You might think “well that’s quite an easy plug in to learn, it only has two knobs… I don’t even have to use it to know it… I just have to look at the UI, and instantly I get it.”

Yeah.. sure.. but that’s not really learning the plugin. Learning it means… learning how it sounds… first of all… and you can only do that by living with it. Another thing is that.. this here distortion unit.. might sound different on different types of sound sources… it might be appropriate for certain things and not appropriate for other things… and maybe you can make it work for something its normally doesn’t work for.. but maybe that the wrong thing for this instance…..

And then… so you have different types of sound sources.. different frequency contents of sound sources…. and.. there’s how loud that sound source is… particularly with distortion where.. the more the souse is pushing into the red.. the more it’s going to distort…

And distortion will compress a sound… so there’s the question of how the distortion will effect the sonic envelope of the sound.. which is like the shape of how loud a sound is over time….

And then.. if however you are effecting the sound… all seems too much.. you can decide to let the original sound through… and how will those two sounds sound together?

So you see there’s a lot of complexity there.. for our simple 2 knob distortion unit… and to REALLY know that distortion unit… can actually take a long time….

Back to the subject of auditions

When something becomes your “go to plugin” that means you use it ALL THE TIME… which means you really know it… the plugins you audition.. you don’t really know.

That’s a funny thing… you go and audition a plugin you don’t know.. and your judgements can be a little superficial… grab that distortion plugin… you turn the drive up… How’s it sound?…  You turn it down…  you adjust the wet dry of it… you spent a little time goofing around.. .and then you’re like “ok, what other tape / tube distortion units might I have?”

The more of a particular plugin type you got, the less likely you are to spend much time or attention on a given plugin

The thing is… in your little test to see if you liked it… you didn’t have a chance to “live with the sound” which is sometimes something you really need to do in order to be a good judge of quality…. but also.. you didn’t bother to screw around with… adjusting how loud the signal was going into the plugin… so you might have been able to exert more control over the sound then you did.

Also… some distortions sound best cranked.. some somewhere in between.. some have “sweet spots” some… maybe they sorta work sorta differently at different levels… and you might not have the slightest idea about that.

Now here’s the deal… how many tape / tube distortion plugins do you have in your plugin folder?

I currently still believe I need more of the tape / tube distortion type of effect…  but basically the answer is that I have… like 4 plugins that fit that bill..

BUT… lets say I’m just looking for “analog warmth” of one flavor or another… now it gets a whole lot more complex.. because yes.. the tape / tube distortion is the first thing you’d look at BUT…

1. You might have delays that emulate tape delay that will give you the sound of tape distortion.
2. You may have various EQs and Compressors that will impart this type of distortion on the sound….
3. I have 4 tape / tube distortions here… but the truth is.. that that number will go up depending on what software I’m producing in.
4. There’s the sorta distortion you might get out of a guitar amp or stomp box… then the number goes up to something I don’t even know off the top of my head.

I mean I literally have over 40 EQs… which.. trust me, are more complex then my made up 2 knob tape/tube distortion unit.

So… depending on how you want to go at a problem… you have a a HUGE number of options….  which means a HUGE number of plugins you could audition.

And.. how much time do you really want to waist auditioning new plugins?

So.. you try that tube tape distortion on something today… and because of the sound source… something about it… who knows what.. you decide “oh, I think it might be a little crappy” you say to your self… so you’ve just decided that you’re not going to pick up that distortion unit the next time there’s a choice of 10 or 20 to pick from.

But the real truth is.. that very often the reason you do or do not pick a given plugin to use.. is not so much because of how good or bad it is.. .but just… out of a kind of prejudice you have about it… maybe you like the color scheme / visual design or something….

I have a tape saturation effect that I more or less decided was crap.. years ago… and yesterday it became a new favorite.

And this brings us to another part of the issue….

I said a while ago that my current feeling is that I need more tape / tube saturation plugins….  and I have about 4. Here’s the deal… tape saturation… tube saturation.. is like a color… that you can impart on your sound… and.. its somewhat complicated… but you could have 2 developers emulating the very same tube, or the very same tape… and they’ll do it in different ways… where… they’ll cut corners in different ways.. .so that in reality… if you want the best sound in a mix.. you use one emulation for some elements.. and another for others.

So.. a part of a reason that that old tape saturation I thought was crap.. is cause it was all I had to work with at the time.. but when I use it in conjunction with other tape saturation plugins… I find that I feel very differently about it.

So…….

Back to this specific project

All of this kinda stuff can contribute to not really knowing all of your plugin folder so well.

The plugin I was going to turn to, after Speakerphone for my bit crushing.. turned out to be a 32 bit plugin and.. I just felt like I didn’t want to deal with a 32 bit plug in at this point…  because of my last experience.

It had bit rate reduction. .and then something else.. which didn’t really feel like sample rate reduction.. which are the two controls I really wanted to have…. so I crossed this one off the list and had to go a scouting through my plugin folder.

Eventually I find a bit reducer from Traktor.. that runs in Guitar Rig… and guitar rig can also give me speaker emulations… all though not of the answering phone variety….

(Guitar Rig exemplifies the problem of not knowing whats in your plugin folder because… God knows how many effects are in Guitar Rig.. And so when you have a few plugins… that them selves host any number of effects.. its like russian dolls… and makes it that much harder just cause you can’t see them from the plugin drop down menu in your DAW)

Actually.. its quite upsetting that I can’t use speakerphone… because there’s very specific things that are extra cool about it… I have half a mind to fire up a 32 bit program… that will host 32 bit programs.. and use that in the 64 bit bridge.. to see if that can control speakerphone in such a way to get around the problem…

But really?

I just don’t care that much.