February 2012

Paris au Printemps

It’s a lovely Spring morning in Paris, but I’m not seeing much of it because I’m currently in the rather fabulous SAE Paris building setting up for an afternoon introducing the students to the wonderful world of PreSonus. That’s one of the great contradictions of my job – I get to travel all over the world, but I rarely get the chance to see much of it   On the upside, I love teaching, and I really love teaching about this great technology we make, so I’m not too unhappy.

Ooops, students are turning up at the door, time to go talk to them…

Freebie Friday – Alchemy Player

OK, let me get this straight: a 64-bit plugin that comes with a great playback engine, 1 GB of top-quality sounds, has a killer editing interface, and it’s free as well? Yes, it’s Alchemy Player, the free version of the excellent Alchemy virtual instrument. I seriously couldn’t believe this plugin when I tried it. But since I’ve gotten it I’ve been using it all the damn time, it’s that good. The only catch is that you have to register with Camel Audio in order to get it, but seriously, for this kind of quality that’s not much of an inconvenience… Just don’t even think about it – get this killer plugin now.

Oh, and while you are at it, pick up the free CamelCrusher plugin as well. It’s a combo Distortion/Filter/Compressor that can add some serious nastiness to your mixes. And that’s always good by me.

Freebie Friday – Togu Audio Line

This week’s Freebie Friday features the amazing Togu Audio Line. I’ve been using these plugs for forever and a day, and they really are blisteringly good. TAL have been making FX and virtual synths for quite some time, with great solid basic sounds, and remarkable stability and features for free plugins – they were even fully 64-bit far in advance of most of their commercial competitors, so if you are running the 64-bit version of Studio One these will all still work flawlessly without requiring a bit-bridge.

The first TAL plugin that attracted my attention was the TAL Bassline – a fairly perfect emulation of the classic Roland SH-101 analog monosynth. I used to have one of these back in the day, and it was damn fine bass synth; I wasn’t disappointed when I downloaded the TAL version, it pretty much nailed it right there.

Also really noteworthy in the analog emulation stakes is the TAL-U-No-62. This is another great analog emulation, this time of the Roland Juno 60 – including the original’s famous Chorus section. It’s a great little synth, and there are tons of cool presets to download. Highly recommended.

But the big daddy TAL has to be the TAL Noisemaker. Unlike the other synths, this isn’t an emulation of older hardware, it’s a completely new synth, and it’s the bomb. It follows the classic analog subtractive synthesis route, no flashy modern stuff, so it’s really easy to understand and program; and it sounds really good. It’s become one of my first go-to synths when I just want a good solid sound quick & easy.

There are a ton more great plugins on the TAL site, including Vocoder, Reverb etc. so check them out. They are all free, but the author is asking for donations via PayPal – so if you like them, do show your appreciation, even if it’s only a couple of bucks!

Freebie Friday – Plugin Alliance

Yes, I know it’s been a long time since my last update, but in my defence we were broadcasting live from NAMM in California so you got to see lots of me instead of just reading my thoughts during that. And since then I’ve been sort of busy moving to Ireland to help found the new PreSonus Europe Limited, so I didn’t even have Internet for a while there

But now I’m back online, in a new office, and life is grand, as they say here in Ireland. So on to this week’s Freebie Friday!

I know I mentioned Plugin Alliance before, but I am going to mention them again, because they have some great free plugins: Elysia Filter, SPL Free Ranger, Bx Cleansweep and Bx Solo. These are highly simplified versions of some of the most outstanding plugins available at any price, but even though they are simple, they sound great. so everyone should have them. And they have 64-bit versions now too, which as far as I concerned is a 100% necessity these days. I strongly recommend that you grab them from the PA website now. Would love to hear what other people think about them…

Studio One and StudioLive Put to Great Use

Check out this killer song and music video done by Hitherside. Studio One and the StudioLive mixer are featured, almost like bandmates.