108 posts. All years
Here's a quick little screencast I did to show how to access the extra outputs in Live, group the tracks together, and apply some individual effects. I figure users of Cubase and Logic, the which are much more…
We've got friends visiting from Phoenix, so I've been out Seeing the Sights around PDX all weekend. Today is the last day of same. Back to our normal schedule on the 'morrow, but for today this is an open thread. The…
The kind and wonderful folks at the Apple App Store Review Dungeon have finally approved the DroneStation 1.1.0 update. UPDATES: 1\. Tilt controls filter cutoff, in user-selectable amount. 2\. New user interface. (Now…
Various things going on here. The AU port of Tattoo is going relatively painlessly. It's only time-consuming because of all the sequencer functions in this plug-in, each one of which has to be written for the AU…
Finish your Tuesday right with a nice chunk of Sonata XIV. I love to read the comments on John Cage videos on YouTube. The dude is still nearly inciting riots and he's been dead for 17 years. We should all be so lucky…
My wife and I were having a discussion last night about the Eno/Branca thing (that we talked about in the comments of this post,) and she brought up an interesting point. She said the way to combat the pervasiveness of…
I've just submitted Dronestation 1.1 to Apple for approval. I don't know how long updates take to be approved, but I imagine they're the same as initial submissions, so figure a couple weeks at worst, and a week at…
Well, that only took me all day which, given the content, turns to be a big fat waste of time on everybody's part. I did learn some things, though, and they are, in no particular order: 1\. Hardly anyone knows what the…
The screengrab above is exactly what you think it is. Tattoo VST for OS X. The port to the OSX side of things has begun, and is (in output, at least) halfway done. We'll start the AU today, and frankly, this is the…
Here is an interesting blog post from Too Much Joy, an "alternative" (read: college rock) band from the late 80s and early 90s that you might or might not be familiar with. They were on Warner Bros. for four of their…
Okay, holidays over and family obligations fulfilled. It's time to get back to work. Glancing back over the last month or two of posts has shown that AI has turned in to the iPhone And Tattoo Show. Sorry 'bout that, but…
Oh, you love it. Admit it. This is, by a country mile, the most complex product we've made, at least internally, and I have to spend a lot of time beating on it, which is how you end up with all these audio examples in…
Doing the final voice work today. Here's a clip with quite a bit going on: \[Embedded media, no longer available.\] The mid tom sound has every parameter randomized (noise level, click level, tone level, pitch EG amt…
Interesting that Charlie Rouse isn't on this one, which is a German TV appearance from '63. Maybe he was in the bathroom or something. Man, I love this track, though. So harmonically interesting, and no matter what…
\[Embedded media, no longer available.\] This is a short example of Tattoo driving my TX802 via MIDI. No sounds are coming from Tattoo; this is entirely TX, with no effects whatsoever other than a touch of compression…
After a weekend of experimentation with the rig I had pretty much decided on by the last post, I'm having serious misgivings. I'm finding that MainStage 2 is a bit of a resource hog; the same exact samples loaded in to…
This is a very heavy week for me. Lots of stuff going on around here, including visits from Midwesterners, the wife going to Vegas with the Girls for her birthday, the monthly hair and yearly dental appointments, and…
This is the first in what will be a lengthy series of process articles about taking the studio material of RT60 on to the stage. My live rig is already mostly assembled by this point (just waiting on the nano Kontrol)…
Some updates... 1\. All the Varese and Schaeffer shirts have shipped, so if you ordered one, it is on the way. PNW should arrive tomorrow, with the rest of the US in the next couple days, and UK orders should start…
I have to say that I'm somewhat bemused by the people that are writing us asking about 64-bit versions of our products. It's like a healthy portion of our customer base suddenly kited work from Hans Zimmer and must…
Well, I went to submit Plankton to the app store today, and after jumping through all the certificate and provisioning hoops, and assembling all my screenshots, icons, and meta-data, and filling out the page-long form…
\[Embedded media, no longer available.\] Tattoo multiple output test... by Chris Randall Here's a quick test I did of the multiple outputs of Tattoo. There are 11 in all; one stereo pair plus 10 mono outs. This test is…
Normally, my eyes glaze over about 10 seconds in to the latest demonstration of some guy's attempt to break down the barriers between something and something else, but this one caught my attention for some reason. This…
Click for full-sized. With the caveat that the UI isn't 100% finalized, here you go. Have a gander at Tattoo, our first instrument. Some salient points: 1\. No samples. This is a drum synthesizer. Each voice is…
A friend of mine took me to a taco joint in Tijuana once, and when I left the place I was a little sad because I knew that I would never again, in my entire existence on this mortal coil, have a taco as good as the ones…
NOTICE: PRE-ORDERS ARE DONE. YOU MISSED OUT. SORRY. If you hit the shop page you can now order the Varèse t-shirt. There are also, as I alluded to in a previous post, a few of the Pierre Schaeffer shirts from the last…
I know we've talked about this before, but it's always fun to harp on a subject near and dear to your heart. I've recently begun working on a new Micronaut EP, and I decided, since I was already set up for it as a…
\[Embedded media, no longer available.\] 009909 And Re-Mixes by Chris Randall When I put up my 009909 track I did last weekend, I also put up enough pieces to recreate the song, and between then and now, nine re-mixes…
Gee, I wonder what this could possibly be.
Big ups to Jeffrey @ Ground Kontrol for the loan of his 808 and 909. Having them both here, "side by each" in the vernacular, is fairly pleasant, and is something I could get used to. Unfortunately, I'm not rich.
All kinds of fun stuff happening in Sample-Land the last couple weeks. Sonic Couture (replete with shiny new web-site) has Skiddaw Stones, which I'm actually moving from my Mac to my music PC right this very minute, and…
Don't forget if you're in PDX the next Ableton Users Group meeting is Tuesday next, 9/8, at Airplay Cafe. 7pm for the kaffeeklatsch, I've been informed, and the actual festivities start at 8pm. I should just mention…
I'm doing a fairly monstrous sample set of this alphaSyntauri, and now that I'm in the thick of things with Kontakt (I'm doing it all in Kontakt 2 for compatibility's sake; it seem that many more people own 2 than 3)…
No earth-shattering reason for posting this image, but I was sampling the alphaSyntauri today, and that thing can spit out some truly odd looking waveforms.
In no particular order... 1\. This weekend was chock full of RT60 fun and games. We're closing in on having the first release, which is an EP, done. Two songs left to record and then I have to mix everything proper, and…
After a morning's worth of testing, I think we can say with certainty that the entire Audio Damage product line works without issue in OS X 10.6.0. There may be minor problems here and there that I can't find, but my…
My epic 2-day office reorganization is coming to a close. All that's left is to clean up the collateral damage. I think I'll be able to cut down on the clutter now, as I won't have to move 8 things every time I want to…
My partner in RT60, Jeremy, would like to sell his OB8, pictured above. What follows is the description he wrote: Oberheim OB8 rev. 5 with factory MIDI. This unit is in fantastic shape, seeing as it spent the last 15…
Longtime readers will know that I occasionally pine about having a complete working alphaSyntauri synthesizer system. I even managed to collect all the parts via about 2 years of eBay searching a half decade ago, but I…
Back at work after our Long March. We had a fantastic time, which is semi-surprising given the proximity to in-laws and such, but there you go. One thing I didn't expect: the hot dryness of Phoenix completely…
Still baking in Phoenix, but we're getting near to done. We'll be leaving tomorrow morning, back to Fort Irwin, then a quick (well, not so quick, but with a quick mindset) trip up I-5 and back in PDX on Sunday. I've…
We're leaving for Phoenix this morning, with stops in San Francisco and the lovely desert oasis of Ft. Irwin. I'll be in intermittently until our arrival, whereupon I will no doubt make some witty and endearing remarks…
Longtime readers will note that I've often said that spring reverbs can't be duplicated in software with existing technology. This subject came up in our most recent "What Should Audio Damage Make" thread. As a result…
Nice RT60 session this morning. We had the (temporary) loan of an Alesis Andromeda, and this is the first time I've ever spent any quality time with one. I'll be honest and say that I kind of looked at it as a…
I was going to put up a post about how utterly annoying I found that whole humanthesizer thing that made the rounds yesterday. I was going to say that the only thing that made that video actually get posted by anyone…
Their Awesome Flagon is full to the brim with Victory. Words cannot express how frakkin' awesome this band is. The real money starts at two minutes. I dare you.
Dear New Blogger Dude: Just because you purchased and summarily read a "How To Get Rich On The Internet Without Getting Your Dorito-Fattened Ass Off The Couch" PDF doesn't necessarily mean you're actually going to do…
While a 50-comment thread on how retarded YACHT is warms the cockles of my heart (and if there's one thing that makes me happy, it's warm cockles) it's time to move on. Stopped by the Koblo site today, as a result of…
In no particular order... 1\. Ableton Live Users Group PDX meeting was fun and informative. If you need proof, I actually had two beers, which is one more than I normally would drink in a public scenario. I was about…
CM gave Eos a glowing review, and the entire text, with some new audio samples on the second page, is on the Music Radar site. Go forth. Interestingly, they prefer the plate to the hall. I'm curious as to how many…
I managed to shoehorn the K250 in my office. I'm sure you're all happy to find that out. I couldn't get far enough away from it to actually take a proper photograph, so your fertile imaginations will have to fill in the…
New Logic Studio out today. I'm embarrassed to admit I knew nothing about it. At all. Of course, I don't make a habit of checking every day to see what new and exciting things are happening with those bong-smoking…
Okay, it's been a long time since I've done this. While we're in our between-product-downtime, I'm going to open the floor to suggestions as to what Audio Damage should make next. Obviously, we already have a fairly…
For some ridiculous reason, I got in my head to buy a Kurzweil K250. Perhaps those dreams I have of replacing Paul Schaeffer on Letterman are finally coming to fruition. Anyhow, I've got one now. Sorry for the shit…
Okay, that was an exciting morning. I thought I found a bug in Ronin, but it turned out to be a bug in the driver for my audio hardware. Yikes. Anyhow, Ronin is now available for purchase. Go forth and git you some. A…
I finally bowed to peer pressure (well, family pressure, more to the point) and opened a Facebook account. My justification for not doing so, which has served me well since the service's inception, was as follows: I…
Seems everything is sorted and done with Ronin, and we're doing something we hardly ever (well, never, so far) do at AD, and that's a wide beta. If you were a previous owner of the original Ronin, the new one is now in…
Oh, god, there's two of 'em. Now, Rick Wakeman is the single most pompous person in the music industry, and pomposity is a trait I can get behind. Also, he can play circles around me and everyone I've ever met, by at…
Just a general update on the State Of Things 'round these parts. In no particular order: 1\. The AU port of Ronin is hideously problematic, as we feared. (This is the main reason we deprecated it in the first place.)…
I have to admit I'm a bit amused by the reaction to Roger Linn's announcement that the LinnDrum II has become more vaporous than it was before (as if that was possible.) One commenter on Create Digital Music said the…
As was guessed by several people when I recently touched upon this topic, we've trekked down in to the cobwebbed cellars of the Audio Damage IP Storage Bunker with the special low-illumination blue-beamed flashlights…
It's time for my yearly pilgrimage to the High Desert of central Oregon, so I'm going to be out of the office from Sunday morning until Tuesday afternoon. In that light, what we have here is an Official Open Thread. The…
My work on the next AD release is pretty much done, and now it's all up to Adam. This one should be fairly quick, though. The Windows side of things just needs a couple little issues ironed out, but it is otherwise…
One of the things that makes Jeremy a fun collaborator is his militant insistence on running virtually every sound through his seemingly bottomless arsenal of analog effects. If it can alter a sound and doesn't have…
Purple Audio hooked a brother up with some custom-machined aluminum knobs for the World's Most Expensive CS5. Much thanks to Andrew + Ed, and now the little feller (the which definitely needs a name by now) has controls…
Back when I was thinking about maybe getting in to maybe possibly playing live one day, I used to fill reams of notebooks with pencil drawings of stage set-ups. I think I visualized how the stage would look long before…
As I spent a lazy afternoon munching on the soft pretzels my wife made today, I let my eyes glaze over as I stared at Twhirl, with its never-ending parade of "I am here, doin this" comments. (Guilty as charged.) Then…
For our foreign readers, today is a holiday in America. It is ostensibly the day when we're supposed to honor all the US soldiers that have died in various wars. Truthfully, though, it is generally understood to be the…
Had a brief RT60 session this morning, but I don't have anything new to show you this time, as we only did some overdubs on an existing song using gear I already took pictures of. We did track some drums for a new song…
Mad props to the Men From UNKL who made the new Audio Damage logo for us. I'll be merrily re-branding everything to match the new jammie while my lovely and talented wife re-builds the AD website to fit. It'll be a…
Ah, yes, the UP K2-X, the masterpiece of British analogue percussion engineering. "Super Analogue," even. Normally I only put photos in the RT60 set on my Flickr page of gear that actually made it on to a track, but in…
Okay, here's the deal. Some of the vocals (well, 100% so far, but a boy can dream) for RT60 have some vocoder action. In a studio scenario, I can bust out the H8000, and I don't think anyone will argue that the vocoder…
Sorry, but it's been a Day so far. Our interwebs were out for a fair chunk of the day, so I took it upon myself to track down the three (!!!) different Torx drivers I needed to open the iMac. Finally got the drive out…
\[Embedded media, no longer available.\] Demonstration of Eos hall reverb algorithm on piano... by Chris Randall Here's a demonstration of the Eos "Superhall" algorithm on piano. The piano samples are from the Kontakt…
Here's a first real look at Eos, the next Audio Damage product. Some highlights: 1\. As you can see, it has three distinct algorithms. Plate One is a summed input plate algo. This means it combines the left and right to…
Nice RT60 session this morning, wherein we took a song I've been working on all weekend and replaced all my soft-synth parts with "real" synths, which is always a pleasant experience. No offense to the softsynth makers…
EDIT: SOLD OUT! You can now pre-order the Pierre Schaeffer t-shirt here. The pricing and shipping is all the same as the Delia shirt. We're going to do it a bit differently this time, though. We're going to allow…
My thinking with the previous round was that (a) the people that don't want an asphalt one far outweigh those that do, and (b) people that already have a Delia tee don't want the asphalt one, by and large. Thus, we'll…
Stefan got the artwork done for the Pierre Schaeffer t-shirt (click the image for a much larger version, and if you need to school on Pierre, here is a good place to start), and now we're trying to decide what color to…
Some kind soul put up the entire factory sample set from the Fairlight IIx here in a VSE forum topic. Naturally, all the whiny little girls were like "wtf with the looping? ZOMG this shit is thin! Where are my…
The subject of endorsements, while providing brief turns of comedy here on AI, is a bit sticky. Obviously, Audio Damage gets many requests for freebies (I'd say we average about 5 a week) and I put the funniest ones up…
Okay, let's talk about ambient music for a bit. I've had several conversations with Adam in this regard (and he would theoretically know, seeing as ambient is what he makes) but he hasn't actually answered my questions…
As I was driving back from Idaho, I was pondering a track I'm working on, and I was thinking "which synth should I use to make that AlphaSyntauri hollow pad sound..." Try as I might, the AlphaSyntauri is probably the…
Because that's how we roll. Step 1: Adam is in Japan for the next two weeks. You can read about his trials and tribulations of the "Stranger In A Strange Land" variety on his blog. While he's in Japan, it's casual…
Want an Audio Damage t-shirt? They're back in the store.
If you want to go hit the freebies page in the AD store, you can grab a copy of PulseModulator, the plug-in we made for Computer Music magazine's cover disk about three years ago. It is a fairly odd plug-in, I'll be…
A notable press release came out a couple days ago from Prosoniq. They say they're discontinuing Windows development because of piracy. Seriously. Bernard essentially says that because of their simple serial copy…
As per a request in the last thread on the subject of BS2, here's a nice video that Stretta made for MOTU to demonstrate their Volta plugin with a Buchla osc. Towards the end, he drops BS2 up in there. I'm not sure if…
You've probably seen this by now, but if you haven't, go here and stand in awe as someone takes the time to turn a whole massive pile of YouTard demo videos in to something that defies description. Seriously. Go watch…
\[Embedded media, no longer available.\] BigSeq2 Self Osc Test by Chris Randall I'm writing the presets for BigSeq2 today while Adam works on the AU, and here's one of them. This is preset 8 - Self Osc Acid. The drums…
I feel a NEED for good musician jokes. Put up your best. I'll start with my two favorites: Q: What do you call a drummer that doesn't know any strippers? A: Homeless. Q: How are Kenny G and a Ginsu knife alike? A…
Since it's becoming semi-traditional to make a Monday morning post wherein I say nothing of import, I'll go ahead and continue the semi-tradition and do so now. 1\. I'm about to make a build of BigSeq2 on Windows that…
The H8000 comes with a little utility to route all the inputs and outputs, and that image above is a screenshot of what I ended up with last night. The rub: I'm able to use the H8000FW as the Hub of my Digital…
It may come as a shock to you completionists out there, but I'm still moving. Hopefully, this nonsense will be over Saturday, and I can return to my previous lifestyle, which generated, like, income and stuff. Until…
If Ozymandias made electronic music instead of, say, sandstone temples and war against the Hitittes and shit, this is what his rack would have looked like, I'd like to think. Except for the one final piece (a PCM91)…
That bitch has five fucking stars. Go figure. It looks like the Perma-Rain has started here in PDX. I fucking DIG this shit. Anyhow, a couple points to make to start the week: 1\. I was, as it turns out, hopelessly…
Picked up my Airline from 12th Fret today. They did a hell of a job getting it up to modern standards, on time and under budget. New tuners, had the pots replaced, the bridge pinned, and various and sundry adjustments…
Still idling in this hotel room in Spokane. I'm going a bit stir crazy, I'll readily admit. For some stupid reason I didn't think to bring my Duet and a pair of decent headphones, so I can't work on music. The vast…
This week has just been awesome. And I don't mean "awesome" in the Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure sense of the word, but rather the dictionary sense. awesome |ˈôsəm| adjective extremely impressive or daunting…
I don't expect the vast majority of my readers (the ones who aren't in American touring industrial bands, which is, let's be honest, most all of you) to know who Gary Czaplewski is, so I'll give a little back-story…
Okay, so let me tell you about this show I went to last night. I won't say where it was or who was performing, as when I do that it tends to come back and bite me in the ass. But suffice to say that it was one of those…
Here's a shot of BigSeq2 with the new UI. This is, I think, much better than the old one. Click for full-sized. There is one major change to the architecture, as well. Previously, we had only one modulation target per…
1 - BigSeq2 is forging ahead. I've completely re-designed the user interface from scratch, due to comments/criticism about the Rough Rider Pro interface, which was essentially the same as the original BS2 one. (Or the…
Well, that was fun, but let's move along. Places to go, things to see, songs to write. One thing I've noticed about myself specifically is that I can demonstrably ("repeatable," as we say when describing errors during…
Dear Jona: While it was kind of you to write me personally expounding on your comments in the previous post, I'm afraid I take issue with some of the points you made. I've chosen to print my thoughts publicly, both for…
My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare I had to cram so many things to store everything in there... \-David Bowie, "Five Years" Last week was Audio Damage's fifth anniversary. In that time we've…
Okay, time for round two. Here's what's on the block: Apogee Rosetta 200 (192): You know it. You love it. You want it. I have the box and all the materials, and never even sent in the registration card. Essentially…
Well, my Rosetta is neither old, nor busted, but in my searching the Interwebs for solutions to various scenarios, I came across a Mytek 8x192 for sale, in PDX, natch. It was at a price too good to pass up, so I popped…