Here I will make
comments on, and provide links for, the software and hardware that I use for
sound design.
Although I have invested a fair amount in commercial
software, I want to first bring your attention to some wonderful Freeware,
and in
the process hopefully acknowledge the hard work of these developers.
This is one of several wonderful Sound Design/
Mangling apps that the developer,
Victor Khashchanskiy, has made available to us. Load in a .wav or
image file, redraw
the graphs, and hear results! Other apps at this site
include Sound
Morpher,
Draw the Sound, and EnRhythmizer.
Nicolas Fournel is another (of many actually) developer that offers a
host of
Freeware. Among other apps available from his site are GLoops, and Audio Paint.
For
those who have worked with Virtual Waves (Synoptic), he does mention on
his website that he has been working on Virtual Waves 3
(which will also be
available as Freeware when it is ready).
Shapee, Wavethresh,
and Ether Don’t let their simple GUI’s deceive you,
these wonderful VST plug-ins will give you
some great sounds! And again, they are Free!
Shapee is a Frequency Shaper, WaveThresh
uses Spectral Thresholding/Gating, and Ether
is a Spectral Compositing plug-in.
ChaosSynth is a unique Granular Synthesizer that
utilizes Cellular Automata.
It is not a
Granular Re-Synthesizer. It does NOT process WAV files, etc. but is an
actual synth with Sine, Triangle, Square, and Noise
waveforms. Although it was
originally a commercial softsynth, version 1 is now
freeware.
If you are unfamiliar with Granular Synthesis, read
this: Granular
Synthesis
Important info for users of
ECHO Audio interfaces!!!
I have been using Echo
Layla24 and Mona24 (Laptop) as well as the Indigo I/O. I have been experiencing
a lot of problems, most notably with
Reaktor,
using the Echo driver. (Note that
the most recent driver for the Layla & Mona24 is still listed as Beta over
a year after its release.)
That is until I recently
downloaded and installed ASIO4all.
All my audio glitches and CPU overload problems disappeared after switching to
ASIO4all. If you are using an Echo interface, I highly
recommend it!!!
******* Please note that
there is a
and
compositions. I will list some links here for other sites where you can find great
Freeware!!! But again, understand that this nowhere near a
complete list. Investigate Freeware online yourself. You
will be happy that you did.
SmartElectronix SourceForge
Tobybear Tweakbench
KVR VSTcentral
Now the commercial software:
AudioMulch is a truly wonderful Sound Design tool and
VST Host. Ross Bencina worked long and hard on
this program. You will be delighted with the results. I
certainly am. It has tons of great features including the
MetaSurface controller (pictured to left). I am listing it first in the
commercial software category not only
because I use it frequently for Sound Design,
but also because for many years Ross offered AudioMulch as a
free
public Beta. ***Also note that a
similar program named Bidule, can be found here: www.plogue.com
Reaktor 5.1 Okay,
so you’ve just purchased Reaktor…
First, take a deep breath. Be patient. This is a very deep program, but
your
investment of time with Reaktor will be well
worth it. I have created many
priceless sounds with ensembles I have built in
Reaktor, and I highly
recommend it as a Sound Design tool. Definitely
visit the Reaktor forum on
NI’s Website. There are many helpful people
in the Reaktor community.
Here are some helpful Reaktor links: Wikipedia - Reaktor, NI Zone,
www.mortmain.com,
Reaktor-Phile :: The Un-official
Reaktor FAQ,
emytextbooks – Reaktor, Martin
Brinkman's Ensembles
A very unique Granular Synthesizer
and Re-Synthesizer. It has many
great features including:
preset
morphing, loadlists, user drawable Splines (mod and windowing),
mono WAV files can be used for the window type
(Grain Amp Env),
4 DCO’s, 4 WAV files can be loaded, and tons
of modulation routings,
etc.,
etc., etc…
If you are unfamiliar with
Granular Synthesis, read this: Granular
Synthesis
To do Sound Design, you really
need a good editor. SoundForge does the job quite nicely for me.
As of now I am still using version7 (version8 was released at least 6
months ago), so I am limited
to DX
plug-ins. However I do have AudioMulch for doing Sound Design with VST plugs!
Sound Forge is a very solid editor, and is very stable for doing stereo
location recordings and then
editing them. To get the most out of Sound
Forge, you will definitely want to purchase plug-ins
like Izotope’s Ozone,
and Spin Audio’s RoomVerb
M2. In many cases though, you will find
Forge bundled with both Sonic Foundry’s (now Sony) Noise Reduction 2.0 plug-in and
CD Architect. Both are powerful
additions!
For now, I have a lot of other projects/commission’s
and music to focus on.
So I will stop here. The next chance I get, I will add
info to this site on the Korg WavestationEX,
Akai EWI1000/EWV2000, Eventide
H3500DFX, KYMA X and CapybaraLS,
as well
as:
ABSynth 3 Spektral Delay Ozone RoomVerb
M2
Please visit my Ensembles,
Compositions,
Instruments,
and Home
pages too!