VSTParty

1. More Loot!

Presence XT supports three new sample library formats: EXS, Giga, and, at least theoretically, Kontakt (full disclosure: I haven't been able to load a single Kontakt patch I've found on the internet into Presence, so we'll skip that format here). The support for its original formats SFZ and Soundfonts is still there, but the sonic bounty available to you has more than doubled in size.

One good place to start your quest is gigasamples.com - they've got oodles of free sampled instruments neatly arranged into categories. For the purposes of this post, I will be using the Brass 98 instrument from this site.

2. Stashing the Loot

As before, it's easy to make your outside samples available in all versions of StudioOne. Just make a directory anywhere on your hard drive and extract the files there. For the Brass 98 instrument, you'll want to extract the file Brasss98.gig file into that directory.

Next, in Studio One, open the Files tab in the browser. Navigate to the directory you made for your outside samples. Right-click on that directory and choose "New Tab From Here".

 3. Let's play!

There is now a new browser subtab under files with the name of your directory. In it, you'll have the sampled instrument you just downloaded. Let's drag & drop it into the project and get playing!

Of course, playing (and listening to) flat, static, boring samples gets dull in a heartbeat. So in the sections that follow, we’ll cover how to make these flat sampled instruments sound more lively and real.

4. Glide Me To The Moon

With sample libraries of orchestral instruments, you can toggle various articulations or styles of playing the instrument. To start, we’ll make a poor man’s version of a legato (slurring notes together) articulation by automating the “Glide“ feature to dynamically switch whether the instrument will jump between two adjacently played notes or slide from one note to the other.

To start, toggle the Poly/Mono switch to "Mono". Next, turn on the "Glide" button. Now, play two notes legato (press the second before releasing the first). The sound will gradually transition from one note to the other. Adjust the Glide Time knob to make this transition happen at a speed you like.

Of course this style of playing can become cumbersome and even maddening very quickly. So we can assign a controller to toggle the glide. For most power, instead of toggling the "Glide" switch, you can toggle the Poly/Mono switch, so that when you're not doing glides, you can play chords with your instrument.

So if you have push button on your MIDI controller that you can assign, here's how to do it:

1. Toggle the Poly/Mono switch with the mouse by clicking whichever one of those buttons that isn't lit at the moment.

2. Press the push button that you want to assign on your midi controller

3. In the top-left corner of the StudioOne Window click the little triangle between the name of the plugin parameter you just toggled and the physical controller you just manipulated. Once that triangle becomes yellow, you're done! Now you can dynamically toggle between a legato-esque sound and a sharper marcato-esque attack.

5. Bright and Early

You've probably noticed that real brass instruments tend to sound brighter and harsher the louder they play. To make our fake brass instrument sound more real, we can easily have Presence XT do the same with our sample.

First, set a low-pass filter on the instrument to make it sound warm and mellow, taking out the harshness completely. Next, slightly turn up the "Vel" Knob on the filter, to that the louder notes sound suitably brighter than the softer ones.

  6. Swell!

Of course real brass instruments can become harsher or mellower mid-note. And we can do the same by also using the mod wheel to modulate the filter cutoff. Before we do, if you followed the steps in the previous section, you may want to turn the Vel knob in the filter close to (or precisely to) the center, so we have some room to um... swell.

First, if you don't see a modulation or effects section on the bottom of the plugin window, click the MOD/FX section button to bring it up. On the left side of that section, click the "Mod A" button to bring up the modulation matrix.

Now, let's add a modulation:

Let's try it. Activate the Polyphonic mode, turn the mod wheel all the way down, and hold down a chord. Then, as you hold the chord, slowly turn the mod wheel up, and voila! A brass swell. 

The truth is, Kontakt is now one of those products that grows in a steady, agile way, not unlike that eternal beloved underdog Reaper. In fact, Kontakt 5 has gained enough features since its shipped date to constitute a whole new release.

Don't believe me? Let's review the release history:

New features in the 5.0 Release:

Time Machine Pro algorithm (Zplane)

Built-in versions of Komplete effects (not really new features for Komplete owners)

Solid Bus Comp

Solid EQ

Transient Master

Tape saturator effect

New Filters

Bus routing

MIDI file player

These are significant features, the use of which must have required significant re-architecting. Now, let's look at what Kontakt will have gained since the release as of September 2016:

New features after the 5.0 release (available at no extra cost to 5.0 owners):

AAX Support (Let's remember that some companies, such as IK Multimedia, required their customers to upgrade a full version just to get 64-bit support for old plugin formats, let alone support for a whole new format).

The Jump (A badass amplifier effect)

Feedback Compressor

Snapshots

Simple LP/HP Filters.

Several developer-facing features.

Dynamic changing of FX Slot contents via KSP seems to be a particularly big one, as far as enabling more dynamic possibilities.

KSP Math improvements and library (coming September 2016) should allow developers to easier and more effectively leverage more advanced DSP techniques.

Many more (see release history for details)

5.6 UI Redesign (coming September 2016)

XY Pad available via KSP

KOMPLETE 11 ULTIMATE. * = New to Komplete 11 Ultimate

PLATFORMS:  KONTAKT 5  REAKTOR 6 *

 SYNTHESIZERS:  ABSYNTH 5  FM8  FORM *   KONTOUR  MASSIVE  MONARK  RAZOR  REAKTOR PRISM  REAKTOR SPARK  RETRO MACHINES MK2  ROUNDS  SKANNER XT

 CREATIVE SAMPLERS:  BATTERY 4  FLESH *   POLYPLEX

 DRUMS AND PERCUSSION:  ABBEY ROAD VINTAGE DRUMMER  ABBEY ROAD | 50S DRUMMER  ABBEY ROAD | 60S DRUMMER  ABBEY ROAD | 70S DRUMMER  ABBEY ROAD | 80S DRUMMER  ABBEY ROAD MODERN DRUMMER  DRUMLAB  MASCHINE DRUM SELECTION  STUDIO DRUMMER

 WORLD INSTRUMENTS:  BALINESE GAMELAN  CUBA  INDIA *  WEST AFRICA

 ACOUSTIC PIANOS:  ALICIA'S KEYS  THE GENTLEMAN  THE GIANT  THE GRANDEUR  THE MAVERICK  UNA CORDA *

 ELECTRIC PIANOS AND ORGANS:  GEORGE DUKE SOUL TREASURES  SCARBEE A-200  SCARBEE CLAVINET / PIANET  SCARBEE MARK I  VINTAGE ORGANS

 ACOUSTIC / ELECTRIC GUITARS:  SCARBEE FUNK GUITARIST  STRUMMED ACOUSTIC *

 ELECTRIC BASS:  SCARBEE:  - RICKENBACKER I BASS  - JAY BASS  - MM-BASS, MM-BASS AMPED  - PRE-BASS, PRE-BASS AMPED

 CLASSICAL INSTRUMENTS:  SESSION HORNS PRO  SESSION STRINGS PRO

 SYMPHONY ESSENTIALS:  - STRING ENSEMBLE *   - BRASS SOLO *   - BRASS ENSEMBLE *   - WOODWIND SOLO *   - WOODWIND ENSEMBLE *

 CINEMATIC:  ACTION STRIKES  ACTION STRINGS  DAMAGE  EVOLVE  EVOLVE MUTATIONS  EVOLVE MUTATIONS 2  EMOTIVE STRINGS *   KINETIC METAL  RISE & HIT

 STUDIO EFFECTS:  ENHANCED EQ  PASSIVE EQ  SOLID BUS COMP  SOLID DYNAMICS  SOLID EQ  SUPERCHARGER GT  TRANSIENT MASTER  VARI COMP  VC 160, VC 2A, VC 76

 STUDIO EFFECTS:  DRIVER  GUITAR RIG 5 PRO  MOLEKULAR  RAMMFIRE  RC 24, RC 48  REFLEKTOR  REPLIKA XT *  THE FINGER  THE MOUTH  TRAKTOR'S 12

It has been previously stated that the NI/Soundiron symphony series will not be included in Komplete. The "Symphony Essentials" above, therefore, are likely to be a lite version.

The contents of the Standard edition are already known.

#5: IR-1/IR-L.

Convolution reverb is ancient news by now, and yes, your DAW probably comes with one such plugin. Waves’ incarnation, however, comes with its unique impulse response and preset library which spans several gigabytes and contains the sounds of some of the greatest performance spaces in the world. My perennial favorite is the Birmingham Symphony Hall, which has been home to such classical music luminaries as Simon Rattle and Andris Nelsons.

#4. DBX-160

I shall deftly avoid the trap of comparing a plugin emulation to its original - a useless and ridiculous task, since there are discrepancies even among multiple units of the same device. What counts is that this is a broadly usable, musical, side-chainable compressor that works wonders on bass (as does the original) and in countless other applications. As with all plugins, your mileage may vary, but there is no excuse for not trying this one. 

#3. CLA DRUMS

I am viciously skeptical of anything that claims to bottle the talent of a celebrity. This plugin does something different - it gives you a library of shortcut and one-fader tweaks that I have found applicable to a remarkable number of drum tracks. I have yet to find a multitrack acoustic drum sample library or patch where the default processing in the drum plugin sounds better than what this bad boy does with just a few seconds of tweaking.

OVERVIEW

The standard KOMPLETE music production collection, 45 products and over 155 GB of content.

So, to start, add Amplitube onto a synth track that you find sounds a little too “digital” or “virtual”. For me it was a NI Prism patch, that on its own sounded shallow and tinny:

The first thing to do with the default preset is to turn off the amp via the bypass switch on the left. Unless, of course, you like the amp, because the amps in here are awesome and can do some wicked magic with synths.

Now, onto where the real magic happens - the Cab section:

Here, you can give your virtual synth a real-sounding speaker. That speaker can be mic’ed with your choice up to two of the three mics in the free version. You can move these mics closer to or further from the speaker(s), up, down, left, right (on or off axis). And, there are room mics, that you can bring closer together or further apart with the width knob. Here, your fake virtual instrument becomes real sound coming from a real speaker in a real space... virtually. This module looks even sexier in the full version, where in addition to mic and speaker choices, you can even change out individual speaker heads.

As with all Waves Signature plugins, you first need to get the input at the level where the Input Level light is green. At default settings, you then hear the difference right away. Be warned: this is in part because the output of the plugin is by default louder than its input. So always use the handy output gain control on the right to compensate for the extra volume when A/B-ing the sound.

Beyond that, even without enabling any of the effects, you get a sound that’s clearer, more in-your-face, and somewhat fuller than you would have otherwise. The higher the intensity setting, the more in-your-faceness. The exact processing chain is diagramed in the manual, which I excerpt here:

I suspect much of the clarity comes not from the EQ but from what the manual calls “fast compression”. You can get a very similar effect with Waves’ Vocal Rider or Melda’s MAutoVolume (pictured below) by setting the sensitivity and the adjustment speed to maximum.

The EQ is subtle (as it should be). Its filtering out of the extreme low end seems to be unconditional, which you should be doing anyway, with or without this plugin. Beyond that, don’t expect it to compensate for any significant recording deficiencies, such as proximity effect from dynamic mics, the harshness of cheap condenser mics, etc. The EQ does the requisite work to maintain a pleasing and clear frequency balance, even with the significant dynamic adjustment at high intensity, but not much more.

The de-esser is not in any way represented on the UI. I didn’t realize it was there until I saw the signal flow graph. It does become apparent when you realize that as you turn up the intensity, clarity and brightness rise, but sibilance doesn’t.

Let’s move on to the effects. While not strikingly original, they do offer a radio-ready sound with minimal tweaking. The delay is a ducking 1/8 ping-pong delay with some modulation and frequency roll-off, likely based on Waves’ amazing H-Delay. Heads up: just like Waves’ H-Delay in one of its analog modes, this delay produces noise even when the input is silent. It’s not enough to even register on most DAWs’ peak meters, let alone consume any significant headroom, but it’s good to know it’s there.

Above, the analyzer on the left monitors the input of the plugin (silence). The one on the right - the output with the delay on.

The doubler is quite subtle, producing a natural double-tracking sound even (maybe only) at the highest settings, so don’t skimp. The reverb is of a shorter, darker variety that manages to not muddy up the vocal or the mix, while adding depth and some width.

A few notes/observations about the effects: The manual repeatedly cautions that the effects are meant to work in stereo. The delay is a stereo ping-pong delay and the reverb is a stereo reverb. If you have a mono vocal, just drag it over to a stereo track and use Waves’ dandy Mono/Stereo version of the plugin. And the doubler, in the classic ADT style, provides widening as well.

All the effects work in parallel, which, to a point, keeps them from trampling over each other. In my opinion, though, because all three effects provide some variation of stereo widening, using all three at full blast at the same time, renders the stereo image less compelling. The space created by the reverb sounds, to my ears, much wider without the doubler on, than with it.