The Sound Board

Lawrence wrote: ↑Nov 28, 2025 11:36 pm I forgot-those 10 UAD plugs for $100 deal is also calling out to me. Hmm.

Thanks for the pep talk, Laura. Btw, I might have gone for Cartoon Maestro as well, but I own one Project Sam library which happens to be Animator. I love it and it seems to cover much of the same ground.

We do seem to think alike sometimes - I like Animator a lot, I do think Fluffy Cartoon Maestro would be a great addition, if I had a project that called for it. So back to only buying things that have at least a chance or earning their keep. Secretly I do hope I come across a project that needs Cartoon Maestro.

Oh well

Ach.

I have Glow by Waves Alchemy and it does everything I want from an RMX16 clone. Well now there's a bundle of this plus three more for £19 at Plugin Boutique til Dec 7:

Glow - RMX16
Radiance - EMT-140
Dawn - EMT-250
Pulse - PCM-60

https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/ ... erb-Bundle

This thread will ruin me. At least let's not post about reverbs anymore? (says the guy who bought 3 reverbs in the last 2 weeks)

Guy Rowland wrote: ↑Dec 02, 2025 3:58 am Gotta feel for those who paid 300 bucks back in the day.

Yep, although I paid $300 back in the day and I felt bad for me even then! I wrote a "review" of it at the time on either NS or VI-C, pointing out its many problems. What a waste of money ... and hard drive space.

It's because of that review that Nick Phoenix holds a grudge against me. He thinks I slammed VOP as a way of planting the seeds to get people to buy Realivox (which wasn't released until years later.) The truth is the opposite, though. A large part of why I started the Realivox project was because Voices of Passion was so bad that I thought I could do better.

Mike Greene wrote: ↑Dec 02, 2025 3:06 pmA large part of why I started the Realivox project was because Voices of Passion was so bad that I thought I could do better.

You were right, you could!

Hell THEY could.

Speaking of reverbs... (sorry, not sorry )

LiquidSonics, up to 70% off on stuff until the 7th of December: https://www.liquidsonics.com/

Pretty good deals on bundles in particular. Plus, if you already own something, you get loyalty discount codes that should stack with other discounts.

Maybe this will be the year that I finally get around to upgrading my non-pro versions...

I'm having a weak-willed year. A Roland Juno 106 for £44 from Plugin Boutique - with £8 loyalty things off - called to me.

A friend of mine had one back in the day and it was great. Always wanted my own - so simple and fabulous.

Guy Rowland wrote: ↑Dec 02, 2025 3:41 pm Hell THEY could.

Ha! You're right, they definitely could. Given that this was Nick Phoenix, it's amazing what a misfire VOP was.

That stereo issue you mentioned with the legato, by the way, is because the samples aren't actually "stereo." They recorded each singer with two different microphones (each being mono) so you could choose which mic you prefer. But for whatever reason, they decided to put them both into a single stereo sample: Telefunken 251 on the left, and an RCA 44 ribbon mic on the right. So you're supposed to pan left if you want the 251, or right if you want the RCA. (I might have that backwards.) Then collapse the stereo spread, of course, to center it.

Naturally, no one (certainly not me) knew this, so we all thought they were actual stereo recordings. The problem, though, is that the two mics weren't always in sync, so the stereo image was bouncing around like crazy.

Mike Greene wrote: ↑Dec 02, 2025 5:55 pm

Guy Rowland wrote: ↑Dec 02, 2025 3:41 pm Hell THEY could.

Ha! You're right, they definitely could. Given that this was Nick Phoenix, it's amazing what a misfire VOP was.

That stereo issue you mentioned with the legato, by the way, is because the samples aren't actually "stereo." They recorded each singer with two different microphones (each being mono) so you could choose which mic you prefer. But for whatever reason, they decided to put them both into a single stereo sample: Telefunken 251 on the left, and an RCA 44 ribbon mic on the right. So you're supposed to pan left if you want the 251, or right if you want the RCA. (I might have that backwards.) Then collapse the stereo spread, of course, to center it.

Naturally, no one (certainly not me) knew this, so we all thought they were actual stereo recordings. The problem, though, is that the two mics weren't always in sync, so the stereo image was bouncing around like crazy.

Oh good lord.

And can you recall about the legato patches that are polyphonic and don't seem to have any true legato intervals?

Guy Rowland wrote: ↑Dec 02, 2025 6:08 pm And can you recall about the legato patches that are polyphonic and don't seem to have any true legato intervals?

I can't remember the legato, although I don't recall not thinking it wasn't real. Mind you, I wasn't all that sophisticated back then, so I would probably have been pretty easily fooled.

A few years, I came across the mp3 snippets that I made for the review, but I don't know where they are now. I'd be interested to hear them now. Surely I did some legato tests.

Now that I think about it, there was an amusing story where somebody was asking on one of the forums (soundsonline, I think) what the various phrases meant, so that they could be sure they weren't submitting anything inappropriate to a client. Nick couldn't offer translations, but assured everybody that these were all safe phrases, like "life is wonderful" and stuff like that.

Not satisfied he could be sure the phrases were safe, the customer asked if anyone spoke Bulgarian and could give translations for each of the phrases. So someone who spoke the language answered that ... it isn't Bulgarian! I can't remember what language he said it actually was. It was pretty funny. (It's possible it was originally listed as some other language, and they later changed the titling to Bulgarian. But whatever it was, the language on the tin didn't match the language inside.)

On another note, I always suspected it wasn't actually four singers, and at least one singer was doing double duty. I remember thinking two of them had awfully similar voices.

Mike - remarkable. Back in those heady days, EW were quite the gaslighters, weren't they?

Nick P, talented guy, forever curmudgeon.

Ok, can’t resist. About 10 years ago I had an idea to write a short bullshit operatic aria using my bullshit phony legit voice to sing it. I made up a sort of romance language to sing it in. Sent it into my publisher who got a bite on it, but the client wanted to know what language it was in and the translation. I told the publisher I had made it up and it meant nothing. Publisher said “funny!”, client laughed and signed off and they ran it.


https://www.ljnmusicandsound.com/consone/

Damn, that's really, really good, Larry! Seriously, had you told me that was from a legit opera record, I would have believed you.

(Don't take offense that I sound surprised. It's just that I've heard your normal songs, where your voice also works well. But they're sooo different, I wouldn't have expected you could also do legit opera.)

Back to the point of your post, though, weren't you even just a liiiiiittle bit tempted to sneak in a line that meant "My farts are like perfume"?

Thanks, Mike. I can’t do legit opera at ALL, but I can fake a lot of different stuff. Writing and singing that piece in a made up language was a big hoot! It took me three hrs from conception to “mix”. The biggest hoot, though, was somebody actually licensing it and assuming it was a real language.

As to sneaking in a fart joke, well, I would have had to have a translation for fart in my made up language, and who would care??

Guy Rowland wrote: ↑Dec 02, 2025 1:12 pm Ach.

I have Glow by Waves Alchemy and it does everything I want from an RMX16 clone. Well now there's a bundle of this plus three more for £19 at Plugin Boutique til Dec 7:

Glow - RMX16
Radiance - EMT-140
Dawn - EMT-250
Pulse - PCM-60

https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/ ... erb-Bundle

I've only just clocked they also have Magic 7 - a Bricasti M7 clone - for FREE. All the time. Okay its convolution vs algorithmic, but it's very well thought of.

Need to add this to the Free thread OP.

EDIT - WA say on GearSpace there is also DSP involved - "There are a bunch of features that operate on top of the convolution, like the ensemble effect, air, smoothing etc - all those things are DSP".

Lawrence wrote: ↑Dec 03, 2025 9:25 am Nick P, talented guy, forever curmudgeon.

Ok, can’t resist. About 10 years ago I had an idea to write a short bullshit operatic aria using my bullshit phony legit voice to sing it. I made up a sort of romance language to sing it in. Sent it into my publisher who got a bite on it, but the client wanted to know what language it was in and the translation. I told the publisher I had made it up and it meant nothing. Publisher said “funny!”, client laughed and signed off and they ran it.


https://www.ljnmusicandsound.com/consone/

It IS really good! Talented chap...

Guy Rowland wrote: ↑Dec 02, 2025 1:12 pm Ach.

I have Glow by Waves Alchemy and it does everything I want from an RMX16 clone. Well now there's a bundle of this plus three more for £19 at Plugin Boutique til Dec 7:

Glow - RMX16
Radiance - EMT-140
Dawn - EMT-250
Pulse - PCM-60

https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/ ... erb-Bundle

I now have a spare Glow licence (RMX16) - if anyone can use it, PM me.

I fixed one irritation in Cubase.

I have - surprise - a lot of reverbs and things were generally getting out of hand. It's particularly annoying when reverbs are essentially emulations of hardware but they aren't called the Lexicon PCM60 or whatever, they have a name like "Purple Simon" and when I look in the list it means nothing to me. And you can't rename the plugin.

Cubase has the Plugin Manager and realised I'd been missing a trick the whole time - just create submenus of each model of hardware and put the plugins in that. Easy to compare choices now too. Blindingly obvious, never thought of it before.