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Marcus takes a quick look at the Piano’s and Keys Bundle from Waves Audio.
Perhaps it was an inevitable outcome, but a poll of Studio One users asked to name if they used a control surface and if so which one, gave PreSonus control surfaces nearly 60% of the entire vote.
Over 800 responded to the poll on Studio One Expert, with the top three spaces taken by PreSonus Faderport, the free Studio One App for iPad and Faderport 8. Combined with votes for the CS18, this gave PreSonus controllers 58% of the total vote.
Perhaps it’s the tight integration of the controllers with Studio One that makes them a favourite with Studio One users? The Studio One iPad app being second shows that the app is a clear winner for Studio One users, it’s free and feature rich so it’s a no-brainer. It is also nice to see support for Andriod users, not all DAW manufacturers offer this option.
The most used third party controller amongst those who took the poll is the Softube Console 1, getting 7% of the vote with the Mackie Control on 3%, then the Slate Raven MTi2 with 2%.
10% of those polled said they do not use a control surface.
You can see the results below, rounding has been used.
Are you surprised by the results? Did your controller make it into the top ten?
It’s highly likely that if you are going to be using the free version of Studio One, Studio One Prime, that you are going to be wanting to lay down some guitars. The great news is that Studio One Prime comes with some great free plug-ins that can help you get a huge variety of guitar tones.
Studio One Prime includes RedLightDist, a hugely flexible plug-in that features everything from subtle clipping right through to outright destruction and a limited version of Ampire, the guitar amp and cab plug-in.
For the two examples I wanted to show both subtle guitar clipping as if the guitar is going through a combo and then great distortion effects that are possible by combining the plug-ins.
The best news is that I’m not a great guitar player, so just imagine what you can do if you care an axe fiend… over to you!
In the first example I’ve used a Telecaster with Humbucker pickups in the centre position – I’ve simply added some RedLightDist to add character to the sound as it is being connected directly to the audio interface (DI). I’ve included the images to show you the settings in both the first and second example.
In the audio example the guitar starts off just with the DI sound and then the RedLightDist fades and then back out to demonstrate how using the Mix control can blend the sound to taste.
In the second example I’ve use the same Telecaster with Humbuckers but in the rear position. I’ve used the RedLightDist to create the Distortion and then used the Cabinet only on Ampire to create a cab setting and warm the sound up. Without the cabinet it sounds like a distortion pedal but with it you get a nice big round distortion without the fizzy top end.
In the second audio example the guitar starts off just with the DI sound and then the RedLightDist and Ampire cut in we then bypass and then back again. Huge difference!
This week’s free plug-in is SK10 from Wavesfactory.
Wavesfactory, makers of the amazing TrackSpacer plug-in and Kontakt libraries, have a very cool sub-kick plug-in called SK10, better still it is free.
This is what Wavewsfactory say about SK10;
SK-10 is a sub-kick simulator. A sub-kick mic is a particular microphone used primarily for recording kick drums. It’s essentially a speaker converted into a microphone. Thanks to its diameter a sub-kick mic captures a lot of low end and it’s a perfect fit along your regular kick mic for boosting the low frequencies.
SK10 is available for Mac and Windows in VST, Audio Units, and AAX formats. Compatible for Pro Tools, Logic Pro, Studio One, Cubase and any DAW that supports AU, VST or AAX.
Head over to the Wavesfactory website and download SK10 for free.
The Korg PS-3300 was the ultimate synth in Korg’s PS lineup, which began with the PS-3100 in the late 1970s. Even the 3100 was a monster by the standards of the era: It had 12 independent, robust (not paraphonic) voices of polyphony. Its semi-modular design meant that it could be patched, but you didn’t need patch cables to get sound out of it.
The PS-3200 essentially was a 3100 times two, doubling polyphony to 24 voices. Then, the 3300 took it was over the top with 48 independent voices, amounting to three full PS-3100 units in one box with an integrated mixing section. Keep in mind this was before 1980, with the last year of the PS-3300’s production being 1981, so for most musicians getting five notes at a time out of one’s Prophet-5 was a big deal.
Korg PS-3300 image via “Mojosynth” at Wikipedia; Creative Commons license applies.
The PS-3300 came with a five-figure price tag to match its power, and recent auctions have seen perfectly working specimens approach $50,000. Now, however you can have the experience of crafting sounds on one of the most ambitious analog synthesizers ever made for the attractive price of free.
German developer Full Bucket Music has released a Mac AU and Windows VST soft synth emulation of the PS-3300 and it’s yours for the asking. Features include:
Hit the product page for download information, audio examples, and user manuals.
Synderella Stories is our column about underdog synths that were under-appreciated for their time and/or are not now remembered with the fondness they might really deserve. In this installment, that’s the case because the Kurzweil VA-1 virtual analog synth, first demo’ed publicly in 2004, never made it to market. I know because I was writing the instruction manual at the time the project was shelved — in spite of the instrument attracting huge buzz at trade shows such as NAMM and Musikmesse, and generally being one of the most anticipated new synths of the early to mid-2000s.
A search of forum posts and vintage synth sites shows little information but more than a little misinformation. As someone who was there and working closely with Kurzweil’s stateside engineers (and the owner of one of a handful of prototypes left in existence) I’d like to take a little time to talk about the synth itself, its incredible sound and power, and the real story of why it never saw light outside of a convention center floor.
In the late ’90s and early 2000s, knobs were finally making a comeback after the digital user interface desert of the previous decade. The real-analog renaissance — marked by the introduction of Dave Smith’s Evolver and Bob Moog’s Voyager — hadn’t begun in full yet, though. If you didn’t own vintage synths, and wanted polyphony and lots of real-time controls at anything like an affordable price. virtual analog was the name of the game.
The first Nord Lead (1994) is widely recognized as having kicked off this category, and other notable (and still desirable) entrants included the Waldorf Q, Korg Z1 (which also did a fair amount of cool physical modeling stuff), and Yamaha AN-1X. In the early 2000s, Kurzweil — whose K2600 already enjoyed the reputation of Rolls-Royce of keyboard workstations — decided to up the ante and embark on an argument-ending ultimate virtual analog synth based on their then-new proprietary DSP chip, nicknamed CLARA.
I should mention that the VA-1 was entirely the brainchild of Kurzweil’s stateside think tank, the Young Chang Research and Development Institute (YCRDI). Located just outside of Boston in a region often called the Silicon Valley of the East Coast, they continue to work on cool stuff I can’t tell you about yet. But that’s another article.
The VA-1 was to be a 16-voice polyphonic synth with three oscillators per voice and four-part multi-timbral capability. Its oscillators were modeled and in their final form were supposed to be able to morph from one waveform to another. In addition to the oscillators, the mix in a sound program could include two DSP processors (these provided such functions as sample-and-hold and ring modulation), noise, and external audio — for a total of seven sound sources. FM and hard sync were also supported.
Dual filters could be arranged in series or parallel, and covered all the expected types as well as both 12dB and 24dB-per-octave slopes. (Two-pole and four-pole by another name.)
The modulation matrix was really something special, with up to six sources (three of them assignable) per destination. You selected a destination, usually right on the nearly one-knob-per-function panel, then chose the sources you wanted to modulate it. The process was very quick and intuitive. In addition to the wheels and joystick, sources could include the three LFOs, two ADSR envelopes, and two ASR envelopes.
Effects were based on the high-end KSP-8 rack mount unit, which at the time was earning a place next to the likes of Eventide and Lexicon for its sound quality. On top of this, there was a 48-band vocoder, not one but two XLR combo jacks for audio input, 24-bit optical digital out, and “roll bars” on the back to protect plugged-in cables in the event the synth was tilted rearwards. YCRDI was really going for a fully pro, no-holds-barred, synth nerd’s dream at a price point between two and three grand.
You can surf the web and get more specs still, but that doesn’t capture what captivated me and just about anyone who got to hear one in person: The analog authenticity and sound quality were off the charts, and would be so even by today’s higher standards — in my opinion even standing up next to the excellent real analog polysynths available now. The VA-1 was particularly excellent at Oberheim-like sounds, but its palette was very broad. The only thing I recall us not talking about at the time was wavetable synthesis, but the DSP power to do so was there and that could well have been part of a firmware update.
Even with about half the functions working, which was the case with my prototype as the firmware was a work in progress, the thing sounded completely killer and still does.
So what happened? As I was about halfway into writing chapter 4 of the manual and pleased with the positive feedback I was getting from the mothership, I got a panicked call from the head of the engineering team. “Stephen, we love what you’re doing,” he said. “But stop all work on the manual. We’ll make sure you get paid for what you’ve already done.” (Props: They did.)
I’ve read online speculation that perhaps Kurzweil saw the writing on the wall with real analog coming back (given the success of the Evolver and Voyager) and decided not to do a dedicated VA but rather incorporate the technology into their next series of workstations. The latter did eventually happen (keep reading) but not for that reason.
South Korean piano maker Samick, known for inexpensive acoustic and digital pianos, bought Kurzweil’s parent company Young Chang in 2004, or rather they tried to. Samick was interested only in exploiting CLARA and other tech developed at YCRDI for the home digital piano market, and would have killed a lot more than the VA-1 had the buyout proceeded. During the worst of it, engineers came to work to find offices locked, files removed, and computers gutted and thrown on the floor in a pile. Of course there was a “red wedding” of layoffs. Some had the foresight to safeguard their most important work offsite — work that eventually directly figured in to current Kurzweil pro keyboards.
In September 2004, the South Korean government disallowed the buyout, citing anti-monopoly statutes. This left Young Chang with the hope of finding less rapacious overlords, but also bankrupt. Miraculously, YCRDI kept the lights on and a skeleton crew of engineers kept their gigs and forged ahead. But just about every pro keyboardist I knew was freaking out that Kurzweil would soon be no more.
Fortunately, this was not to happen, as in spring 2006 Hyundai Development Company acquired Young Chang. (Not the car company per se; HDC is the ultimate parent of the car company but also of a bunch of other things in heavy industry and shipping.) While their largesse hardly compared to Prince Charming’s, they did prove committed to pro keyboard development, and the brain trust at YCRDI began to rebuild. By 2007, Kurzweil was showing their first new workstation in years: the PC3.
By then, market conditions had shifted and it was indeed too late for the VA-1 as a stand-alone instrument. But its story is truly the Cinderella story of the company, which went from glory to destitution under a “wicked stepmother,” then rose again. The VA-1 lives on as the KVA analog modeling mode in the PC3, PC3K, and Forte instruments.
My VA-1 prototype? I still have it, though it’s currently more pumpkin than coach. This is because of the incomplete firmware, not any defect. MIDI isn’t working, some of the knobs adjust their parameters very slowly, and so forth. But the core sound that turned heads is all there, and I plan to get it running as smoothly as I can for you and post what will surely be the first video demo in over a decade. For now, check out one of the only videos on the searchable web, of sound design wizard Dave Weiser demonstrating one at Musikmesse 2004, courtesy of synth blogger Matrixsynth. Yes, just like its subject, it’s gone sideways.
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With the price of hardware plummeting, many electronic musicians are now rocking dual or even triple-monitor setups on their studio machines. When working on a song, a second display can dramatically increase your productivity – as you can work on two tasks full-screen rather than having to switch between two views all the time, or split one screen in half to multitask. Here are our top 6 tips for making the most from a dual-monitor setup when working with Studio One.
If your monitors both support the same resolution, great! Spend some time adjusting the resolution on each monitor such that you get the max resolution, while minimizing weird scaling differences and impenetrable pixel walls between monitors. Be sure to align them in a way that makes sense for how they are placed in relation to one another. These display options are all available in the OS settings.
Figure 1: Detach
Figure 2: Maximize
Sporting dual monitors means you can view two of Studio Ones three views full screen at any one time. So say if you have the song view open on the main monitor, you can view either the console or the editor full screen on the auxiliary monitor. Viewing these windows full screen makes it so much easier to see what you’re doing while doing intricate editing work.
First, detach the window from the dock and drag it to the second monitor by the title bar. Second, hit the maximize button. Once you’ve done this with both the edit window and the console, you can toggle instantly between the two by using the ‘3’ key.
Now that your mouse has acres of space to get lost in, sometimes it can really pay off to internalize a handful of keyboard shortcuts to help you place each window exactly where you need it.
Win+Left/Right arrows: Dock the window to the side of the current monitor, additional presses will push the application to the next monitor edge, then center, then opposite edge continuing in this pattern across all available monitors.
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Rewire, Baby!
Dual monitors make it easier than ever to take advantage of Rewire- as you can show one DAW on each monitor. Makes it a breeze to get the two playing nicely together, and combining the strengths of each really gives you access to untold power.
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Video Editing
What could be more satisfying than scoring a video with a fullscreen program monitor? Nothing, that’s what. Use your dual monitor setup to sync the sound to every frame of the film.
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How do you make the most out of your dual monitor setup? Let us know in the comments.
AIR Music Technology, the team behind many of the most loved Pro Tools virtual instruments, has announced two more of the instruments previously exclusive to Pro Tools, Boom and Vacuum, will soon be available in AU and VST.
Boom, is created in the tradition of the original step input drum machines and features the sounds of drum machine favourites like the 909 and 808, as well as many more vintage drum machine sounds. Following in the tradition of those early drum machines, Boom offers step input of patterns as well as chaining them to create a song. There’s a lot under the hood that belies Booms tweakable potential.
Second to come to AU and VST is the Vacuum, which is a mono synth and legend has it was modelled on some Russian synth. It has excellent potential for mono leads and deep rich bass. It features 2 oscillators, extensive envelopes and filters and is not a plug-in one should overlook when making synth-based music.
Soon you’ll be able to use them in Studio One and any DAW that supports AU and VST.
Each plug-in will be $49.99 for Pro Tools users or $79.99 for new purchases. Exact release date TBC but we are informed it will be in November
You may not be aware but Native Instruments, makers of cool hardware and software, have a free range of some of their flagship plugins. All these plugins are both PC and Mac VST and AU so will work with Studio One.
Check them out, they are very powerful and should be considered as part of your production arsenal.
REAKTOR 6 PLAYER is the free host for all KOMPLETE Instruments powered by REAKTOR.
Three powerful playback engines, 600 MB sounds for free. Includes KONTAKT 5 PLAYER, REAKTOR 5 PLAYER, and GUITAR RIG 5 PLAYER.
Free sample player with a basic sound library, instantly expandable with the growing range of ‘Powered by KONTAKT’ instruments.
Free, expandable effects engine with one amp, 17 cabinets and 13 effects and modifiers. Super-easy to use, hosts all KOMPLETE Effects.
Free, fully-playable instrument with a stunning range of brilliant sounds, based on the innovative synthesizer REAKTOR PRISM.
Head over to the Native Instruments website to check the out and grab them
Pro Tools Users Blog 