Analog Industries

Wicked Cool...

Sun, 05 May 2013 16:41:53 CST

We had a fun week at both Audio Damage facilities. (For some reason that word gives me the gigglesnorts. I can't explain it.) While Adam largely spent the week swearing at our next product, I worked on an Audio Damage tech demo for [REDACTED], which was interesting, in a sort of academic fashion. The last few days I've been doing some OpenGL experiments with plug-in UIs that will hopefully bear some fruit down the road. As to whether you can expect a plug-in called Lazer Disco Cat, well, that is open to discussion.

Anyhow, the reason for this post: I'll be in Boston most of the week "consulting," and I was wondering if there were enough Boston-based folks on this list to warrant some sort of Analog Industries get-together for tropical cocktails and nerd-talk, on Friday (5/10) preferably.

The Room In The Elephant...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:30:21 CST

Audio Damage is a month in to its 9th year of operation, and throughout the history of the company, there are some constants. I regularly receive letters that essentially say "your products look great, but no demo = no purchase. Sorry." These have come about once a week, pretty regularly, since the company's inception. There is no question in my mind that we lose sales because of our No Demo policy. However, mathematically speaking, we'd also lose sales by having demos. (The entire point of a demo to see if you like it; having a demo doesn't automatically mean having a purchase from the person that downloaded the demo.)

There are a lot of forum posts from various points of view about our policy, mostly on KvR but elsewhere as well. I look back with amusement at posts on OSX Audio and KvR from c. 2003 or so where people often would say "there's no way this company will stay in business without demos." Those don't occur any more, of course. There were many discussions about why we do this, with most people deciding it was an anti-piracy tactic, which it is not. Whether or not we have demos has had zero effect on piracy, and we never thought it would.

Which brings me to the real point of this post. The following letter, which I quote verbatim, leaving out only the author's name, has become increasingly common in the last couple years; just this weekend I received three letters that were variations on this theme. This one came this morning:

Hey guys,

I'm a huge fan of your plugins and actually got to check em out a pirated version of your software (I am a student so please excuse the lengths I go to to try out what's good before buying). Anyways, I really love your stuff and was wondering if I could maybe make my own bundle with you guys? I know it's sort of a long shot but I'm on a student budget and I'm trying to go by any means to get legitimate software, so I figure it wouldn't hurt to ask. I was wondering if I could get Kombinat Dva, Discord 3, Eos, and Dubstation. I've only tried Dubstation and Kombinat but the others seem amazing as well. Please let me know if there is any way something can be arranged. If not, I very well understand. Thank you so much for your time. Take care.

Now, using cracked software is like masturbation. 90% of the people do it, and the other 10% lie about it. I'm fully aware of this. We've always just accepted it as a fact of nature. I frequently have to do support with people that have been using a cracked older version of a plug (e.g. BigSeq 1, Discord 1.5, the original Kombinat) and then they actually buy a current version and discover their presets don't work, or they're Logic users and the AU cache chokes on the new version. But this sort of letter is a New Thing, and I'm never sure how to respond.

On the one hand, I'll usually give people deals if they're reasonable. And I always want to turn pirate customers in to paying customers. On the other, well, you know. It's a hard pill to swallow.

Thoughts?

Fresh Coat Of Paint...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 18:38:05 CST

As you can plainly see, Analog Industries got a site-wide redesign courtesy of my lovely and talented wife. We also moved the site from the Audio Damage box to a grid server (i.e. The Cloud) because that's what all the cool kids are doing. If you have any questions or comments, or run in to anything odd, feel free to post in the comments.

If, on the other hand, you plan on posting "well, the orange isn't my favorite orange," or some other peanut gallery design commentary bullshit, nobody cares, least of all me. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

There Might Be Something There...

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 13:50:27 CST

My job, such as it is, is about 50% mining pixels, and 50% researching new ideas (or, as my wife puts it, "watching YouTube videos.") I spend a lot of time hunting down interesting new methods for controlling or creating sound, and pondering how they'll work in Real Life. In the vast majority of what I find or think up, there is very little application to a normal studio workflow, but sometimes that's fine, too. There's a lot to be said for something that just looks cool and gets you away from the piano roll / analog mixer clone paradigm for a bit. In that light, here's a few things I've come across recently that might be interesting.

(Sorry about all the Vimeo embeds; hope they work. That's where people put this kind of stuff.)

Cycles 720 - This was built by Craig Allan (Numbercult) in VVVV to control an M4L patch. The Vimeo description says "rhythm and swing are dictated by the size, number of circles, their degree of separation, orientation and elasticity of each collision." Yeah, sure. I don't know about all that, but it does look pretty. Mr. Allan does a lot of cool things that align with my interests, and his site is worth a perusal.

Cube with Magic Ribbons - This one, created by Simon Katan, has less of a disconnect between what you're seeing on the screen and the result. It is an openFrameworks app controlling a SuperCollider patch, and strongly reminds me of an interactive score for a mid-50s avant garde piece. Check the Projects tab on his site for some other interesting works. Of particular note is the "What Is Life" demonstration.

Hexagrama from lasal on Vimeo.

Hexagrama - This is an interesting take on the tried-and-true Euclidian sequencer, made by Aristedes Garcia. No notes on how it is made, but I assume the usual suspects (VVVV, Cinder, openFrameworks, or Processing, with OSC to whatever.) I think this particular idea merits some more exploration.

There are a metric shit-ton of these sorts of experiments out there. These are just three that I thought were interesting. What's your favorite weird-ass sequencing or synthesizing experiment?

At Long Last...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 21:46:37 CST

Only four short years in the making, the debut RT60 album is now available at Bandcamp, for pay-what-you-want, minimum $5.

I'm not going to go at length in to the process of this album, because there are already about half a dozen posts here on that very subject. Suffice it to say that if you like analog synths, this is none more analog. The equipment list is somewhat staggering, so it's easiest to say "all of it." It was recorded to analog tape, just for the icing on the anachronism cake.

This is also the first release that I'm involved with that has vocals in quite some time. (I believe "The Devil His Due" is the last one, when I was in my "Jesus, I'm getting old. I better get on with ripping off Tom Waits" phase, c. 2007.) Granted, 100% of the vocals are through a vocoder, but still...

Anyhow, hope you like it. We're recording the follow-up in June.

D2...

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 01:08:56 CST

Forgot to post this here. I put this up last Sunday, a bit of afternoon jamming. No DAW, no plug-ins. Just Analog Four and modular. I was trying to get a handle on the A4's CV outputs, and it turned in to a reasonable track kind of on its own. Like they do.

Drive By Snark, Round 2...

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 11:33:10 CST

So the big news of this morning is the trio of Korg Volca "analog loop synths" (their words, not mine) that further extrapolate the idea of the original Monotron in to its obvious conclusion. I'll be honest and say that, like the MS-20 Mini, these do absolutely nothing for me. Korg will, of course, sell a shit-ton, and lots of people will have lots of fun with them, and some good music will be made. Hell, I'll probably buy them all myself, of course, as my moods are changeable, but for right now, my verdict is "toys." Fun for a minute, but ultimately useless.

Yesterday, Nord announced the Nord Drum 2, which gives everyone the stuff they left out of the original one. (Stereo outs, and 6 voices.) I can only assume the Nord Drum 3 will have individual outs. But that said, this will make the first version one of the best buys out there when the big retailers dump their stock; of that I have no doubt. In a studio context, the mono output is fine, and honestly, stereo kick drums for dance music = ur doin it rong, anyhow. I'll keep my eyes peeled for a deal on the first version.

This caught my eye this morning. Softube has taken time out of their busy day making studio plugs for NI to create a channel strip plug-in that is ostensibly an SSL 4000G clone (albeit unlicensed, so they say "famous British console" a lot) with a dedicated hardware controller. This kind of goes at the desktop console problem from the other direction, letting the DAW do what the DAW does, and having an ecumenical channel plug with its own controller. The controller doesn't have any transport, nor channel arming controls of any sort, so for the Full Analog Console Experience, you'd still need a little DAW controller of some sort. Don't think this will do well, as it assumes you're only going to use one EQ or comp ever. Might be handy in certain scenarios, but it sort of defeats the purpose of having a DAW in the first place, which is the lack of limitations on EQ and comp choice. Interesting idea, though.

And that brings us to the Bass Station II. I may have my timeline mixed up, as I used to do a lot of drugs, but I'm pretty sure the original Bass Station was the signal that the Long, Dark Nightmare of the late 80s and early 90s was over, and we could once again have knobs and analog stuff. In short, it was the first synth of the Analog Revival, best I can recollect. So the Bass Station II, aside from its appearance 20-odd years late, is a logical release.

Of course, the ~$500 price point for two-osc analogs with tiny keyboards is pretty full. I was joking with someone the other day that I wanted to have a huge synth rig just made up of tiny analogs. That dream is now within reach.

Drive By Snark...

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 09:26:31 CST

Musikmesse starts on Wednesday, so naturally all the pre-announcements are rolling out, like they do. I was strongly considering going to Messe this year, but then we decided to go to Hawaii instead, for reasons that should be patently obvious. So like most of you, I admire from a distance. Here's what we know so far:

1. ProTools 11: The shit I don't give is apparently only equalled by the shit that Avid doesn't give. I have to say, though, this is the first time I've seen "multiple meter modes" as a leading bullet point. So they're groundbreaking in that, at least.

2. Nord Lead 4: This synth never did anything for me, and it continues to not do so. If I was in a Cars cover band, I might think differently. But I'm not.

3. MFB Dominion 1: MFB, laughing in the face of the 2-osc onslaught from Korg, Moog, and Arturia, explores the mythical land of the THIRD OSCILLATOR! Behold! All kidding aside, they shoehorned every feature ever in to this little analog. 3 oscs, 3 envs, 3 LFOs, sequencer, two ribbon controllers, aftertouch, full CV I/O. I suppose it could sound shitty, but on specs alone, if you like that sort of thing it is the sort of thing you'll like.

4. GRP A4: And very similar in specs to the MFB box is the GRP Synthesizer A4. I absolutely love this bit of copy: The Loop EG function enables the conditioned and unconditioned repetition of the envelope, in order to reach particular and temporal articulated sonorities. All my articulated sonorities have been atemporal to this point, so this is a nice development.

5. New Roland Stuff: I was really hoping for a V-Hurdy Gurdy. No such luck. The RC-505 is kind of nifty, I guess. It is the first time someone has made one of these loopers specifically for Reggie Watts. But Mr. Watts seems to be a dyed-in-the-wool EH 2880 user, so good luck getting him to switch, Roland! I guess we'll just end up with a lot more shaved-head white guys that beatbox, then sing like White Bob Marley over the top. Always a growth market, that.

That's it for now. Stay tuned all week for more Drive By Snark from your hard-working music tech reporting team at Analog Industries!

Say April Fools Again, Motherfucker...

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 11:01:29 CST

Just breath through it. It'll be over soon.

In other news, here's the deal: I generally work on about three or four things at once. Usually one Audio Damage thing, one thing for myself, and one contract job. The reason I haven't been verbose about what I'm up to lately is several-fold. There are currently five (!!!) Audio Damage projects going on; one of them is for another company and we're under NDA, two of them I promised Adam I wouldn't talk about (which is kind of the same as an NDA without paperwork,) and one of them is so close to being done that there's no point in talking about it.

(Yes, that was only four, if you're counting. I'll get to the fifth here in a minute.) On top of that, I have my usual UI contract work I do for others going on; currently, a very large project that, once again, I'm under NDA for and can't talk about, except to say that I'm in the process of making it pop more.

So, I find myself in the unenviable position of being a relatively open person without anything to say. But if you follow me on Twitter, you'll note that last week I spent some time porting Filterstation to iOS. Here's a screenshot. When Audiobus for iOS was updated while I was in Hawaii, they added a feature called "Audiobus Filters." While the name of this function maybe isn't the best, it is an interesting idea. You can designate Audiobus-aware apps (or the system I/O) as both sources and destinations, and the Filters go in between.

So I recreated Filterstation in iOS as an Audiobus filter. It doesn't do anything without Audiobus installed, and after looking at JACK and its supported apps, and the possibly hare-brained rig I'd have to build to support that method, I decided that it should be just an Audiobus filter. It will not work stand-alone. Functionally, it is identical to Filterstation except it doesn't have MIDI or sidechain inputs. The UI is even more-or-less the same, taking in to account the foibles of Cocoa Touch. (For instance, our scrolling digits don't work in that context, so I came up with a nifty pop-up slider device that works in their stead.)

This is pretty much done, and works fine. However, I have to wait until Adam returns before finishing it off and submitting it, because my ADC account is in my name, and there are business considerations to take in to account that require some discussion.

TL;DR: Busy, busy, busy. Cool shit coming. Yay!

Home Again...

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 15:45:21 CST

Back at the Kompound again, after a fantastic week in Kauai. The only bad thing about the trip was the crying babies on the plane (both ways, natch) and that wasn't even that bad, honestly.

Since I didn't take a laptop, and we didn't actually do very much besides lay on the beach and stuff food in our face-holes, I had a lot of time to just soak up ambience. This turned out to be remarkably refreshing, creatively-speaking. I haven't taken a vacation like this before, the sole purpose of which was to relax, so I didn't really have a good idea of how it would affect my general workaday experience. I think the fact that I spent most of the plane ride home thinking about user interfaces and music and the interaction thereof, via some new ideas I had while laying in the sun speaks to the generally effective nature of vacationing.

I've developed--or more to the point Elle has developed--methods for managing my creativity over the years. She knows far better than I when I'm in a slump, and she knows what to get me to do to un-slump things. But I have to admit that I've never really done a cold reboot like this before, and I'm somewhat amazed at the floodgates opening like this. Do you find that taking some serious Time Away (no work, no creative endeavors, actual vacation time) does this for you as well? I'd like to think this is a tool I can use to stoke the engines repeatedly in the future.