Acmebargig iFace Arrives

iFace Trial

Support the good people at ABG and purchase iFace here


After quite some time of waiting, the wait is over. Sweet! If you are a Redwirez user, no more fumbling around thousands of files and folders to find the perfect IR (Impulse Response) for your tone. With iFace you can select Cab, mic and go. Actually move the mic on the user interface and the IR changes to that position, off axis, or ambient. It basically makes using IR's much more like a real studio setup and work flow. I know I'm going to put this to use within the next few weeks.

The trial version will work fully for 30 days. But at the low low price of around $20, I'm going to support my friends and buy it if it works as well for me as I think it should. You should consider that too.




***UPDATE***
I took a while last night and reorganized my Redwirez folders to the correct paths and got a few minutes to play with iFace. I'll be purchasing it sometime in the next few weeks. This thing works fantastic. No more clicking through 1000 folders to simply change an IR. Before iFace auditioning different IR's was hard and by the time you clicked through all the folders to a new IR, you forgot what the old one sounded like. Now, just move the mic. Wonderful. As much as I love LeCab, this thing is just too easy to work with to not use it. The only downside is that it takes a little more CPU per instance. Running 8 or 10 amps on one project could be a sizable cpu hit. But as easy as it is to move mics around now, I think I'm going to simply start bouncing tracks down to save the CPU anyway. Thanks Ken and everybody at ABG for this extremely useful plugin.

LeCab2 Is Here!

Lepou has released his updated Impulse Response loader "Lecab 2". I haven't had the chance to play with it yet, but I can't wait. In the past few months I've shifted from using Revalver MKIII as a shell program to simply putting everything single, plug by plug in my effects chain. I've used the first Lecab extensively and it works great. This new version adds 4 more impulse slots for a total of 6, dropdown menu's for easy auditioning, and basically improved control over everything. It's sure to make routing, blending and using your IR library much easier.

LeCab2 is the evolution of LeCab1. It's a cabinet (guitar or bass) impulse loader. LeCab2 offers :
- 6 impulse slots
- Latency control (down to 64 samples)
- Dropdown menu built with the .wav files contained in the directory where the last impulse is loaded
- Next and Prev buttons to navigate through the impulse directory
- Solo button for each slots
- Channel selection for each slots
- Possibility to link the loaded impulse of 2 slots (other controls stay independant)
- High Pass and Low Pass filters for each slots
- Phase, Delay, Pan and Volume controls for each slots


You can see what the man himself has to say about it here:
Lepouplugins.blogspot.com

Look at me Mom, I'm a Ringback Tone!

Ok, a very cool update.

If you are a Cellular South Customer, you can get my songs as ringback tones. There's a $0.99 monthly fee for the service, but the actual ringback is free and not subject to any charges except the monthly fee.

I know most people think Ringback tones are just annoying, which is why I've done it :P But you gotta admit, it's kind of cool too! I mean come on, it's not really that hard to get your stuff up on iTunes and while I do have some industry connections for stuff like this (It's a big part of my job to manage our digital catalog), It's not nearly as easy to become a Ringback tone.

Just search for "A Sonorous Pose" on the Cellular South Ringback web page. I'm under the "Emerge Artist's" category. I guess I should take this time to also mention the Android Emerge App. You can also find some of my music on that. Cellular south created it. It's designed to help promote local unsigned artists. While a good idea in theory, yeah, most of you can probably imagine - and I'll just leave it at that.

So if you're a Cellular South customer, go check it out.

Ignite Amps NRR1 Update

I took a little more time to get this to sound how I want it, and with a little advise from the developer / instructions on how the tone stack works, I've got something I think I really like. Here's the clip:


Original: NNR1 demo

2nd try: Click Here

3rd try: Click Here

On the "2nd try" clip, I have 2 tracks, Reagate ->ts808-> NRR1-> Lecab -> ReaEQ (hi/low pass) -> verb -> Taldub III delay, both panned 86% and then into a bus track with the final Eq for a slight dip in the low mids and a slight (very small) boost in the upper mids and lower highs. This examples Ir's are the same as the first clip. I used Lecab to blend a Marshall impulse (75%, sm57 close to the cap) with an ambient room (actually a Royor 121, 12 inches off the cap) Soldano impulse (25%). Same thing on the other side except replace the Marshall with an Uberkab. The Soldano Redwirez cab is a little funny up close, but I've found a really good distances, it adds a nice little bit of mid creamyness when lightly added to the mix. The only difference between this and the very first clip is the settings on the NRR1.

On "3rd Try", the NRR1 is the same, but instead of blending the IR's, I routed the Soldano's to their own separate tracks and panned them 100%. So now you've got (soldano100%, Marshall 86%, Uberkab86%, Soldano 100%). Then all added back together in the bus track and eqed etc like above. I thought it might add a little more roomyness. I think it did add more, but it didn't quite turn out as good as I would have liked it to.

I like certain things with the "complicated" one. Like that the stereo field is a little wider or more separated when listening at optimal conditions, but it does take away from the punch a little - probably because the mids added by the Soldano cabs are now much wider. If you listen at a very low volume you can hear how it just drops out. Now I have to wonder if it wouldn't sound better with the Soldano's in the middle and the Marshall and Uber at 100%. I doubt it.

I think I'm going to stop messing with it and start tracking something with the "2nd Try" clip settings and see what happens.

Reaper Audio

Click me: Reaper Audio

A good Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) is essential to making a decent recording, along with a computer that is able to handle the load. If your machine is relatively new then you're probably ok for the most part. I use a quad core with 4 gigs of ram and it seems to work pretty well. If your machine starts to slow down you can always "freeze" or "bounce" your tracks (this lets you work with a completed .wav file, effects included, without the effects taxing your cpu). I also use an external hard drive to store my sample libraries, project files and anything else that might be used a lot, or constantly pulled from the HDD. This allows the C: drive to concentrate on running the programs while the external drive takes care of the busywork.

My DAW of choice is Reaper and it works wonderfully. With most of the same options and features as really expensive workstations, Reaper works just as well at a fraction ($60 noncommercial license, with an unlimited trial) of the price. You can easily spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on software that is, and I hate this term, "industry standard". Brandon Drury over at Recordingreview.com wrote a wonderful article on the topic - Digidesign Pro Tools: Rethinking The Industry Standard Mentality


I've never had a problem from Reaper. It performs wonderfully, accepts just about every vst I feed it, is very light on cpu, and a whole list of features that make my life easier like: a virtual midi keyboard, built in high quality vst effects, track templates, and simple to figure out controls.

While there is a learning curve with any new DAW, especially if you don't really know your way around a studio to begin with, Reaper is actually one of the easier DAW's to learn. If you understand the principals behind a simple mixing console, it won't take you long to learn how to use Reaper. What makes this even better is that on the Reaper Audio website, there is a user forum. Can't figure it out? Just ask.

How I use Reaper: I have track templates setup for everything including my guitar amps, drum sets, bass, certain vocal settings, certain tracking settings, master track etc. When I start a new project I can simply load the templates I need, arm the track, and press record. It's so simple.

I like to get some scratch guitars down first tracked with a simple drum pattern just to keep time. I then go back and edit the drum parts (more on this in a later post). I re-track guitars, bass and anything else. At this point the recording is pretty close to finished. All I need to do is add on the master track effects and tweak the mix. Because I started with a template for just about everything, and the templates came from a project I completed, the song pretty much mixes itself - with some exceptions.

My master track template takes care of the "Mastering" phase of recording for the most part. I use Stillwell's 1973 eq for a little bit of a shelving boost hear and there, Stillwell's Event Horizon limiter, Bootsey's FerricTDS for some saturation, Density Mark II for compression and Recording Review/Aradaz's Panipulator.

Stillwell Audio
Density MarkII
FerricTDS
Panipulator