AES in general
 

Just some information that I thought I would share. I saw three software exhibits that just blew me away. First, being a Serato Pitch user, I went home and immediately upgraded (free) to 2.4 as it has some great new features and to me, still sound the best when it comes to time compression and expansion.

Second is a hat's off to Steve Massey. He had a small booth and was demoing all of his plug-ins that people are raving about. They are fabulous and you can download demo versions of most plug-ins for free and they don't have a time limit. You just don't get any presets and there are no bypasses on some of them. The L2007, and the CB4 along with the tape head all sound great. He's also got a distortion plug-in that looked interesting, modeled after the rat. I used the L2007 in conjunction with Master-X and it worked quite well. I think Izoptope is probably the "one" for people who are willing to shell out a couple of hundred bucks but this is free and it works great. Hat's off Steve!

Third was a total blow out for sample library lovers. Chris Stone's company "Audio Impressions" makes a PC based midi driven sample library that is so impressive that I was left sppechless. He did a demo for me of all orchestral stuff and the nuances that he captured, along with the GUI he designed himself was beyond words. I don't have enough energy in me tonight to tell you of all the fantastic sounds, feature, and ease of use that his orchestral stuff sounded, but it was as real as anything I've ever heard, times 10. He is truly a genius. You'd have to experience it to believe it. I was truly dumbfounded, and I am not impressed that easy.

At any rate, that's my report on some of the software that I saw.

P.S. Pro Tools new midi and it's eleven plug-in ROCKS!

Re: AES in general
 

This was the 17th AES show I've attended since my first one in 1992, and by all means the most depressing one.

It was tiny (10 short isles, took me less than 2 hours to walk the entire floor), many name vendors were missing, while others who did exhibit think they might not bother next year.

I might be wrong, but it seemed like there were no more than 500 visitors, super light attendance. It is about time someone at AES understand that San Francisco is a wrong city to host this event, only LA and NY (really only LA).

PT8 was the only announcement worth mentioning, and indeed it loox and feelz great, with lots of cool new and useful features.

The most noticeable element was the older age group most attendants belonged to. The AES has miserably failed in streaming new blood into the organization, the blood of today's mainstream users.

NAMM is where these users can be seen, and I suspect the AES show will eventually get absorbed into either the NAB or NAMM shows.

Aside from catching up with a handful of colleagues and old friends, it was 100% waste of my time and $.

Bummer.

Re: AES in general
 

What was the Eleven Free plugin like?
did they show it?
what were the limitations?

Re: AES in general
 

Sorry it was such a bummer for you. :-( Scott :)

Re: AES in general
 

Cool! Someone filled the niche of the soon to be extinct gigastudio! I'll have to check this out for sure... Right up my alley.

EDIT: Just checked their website, this is definitely something I'm interested in. Did they mention anything about price? It looks really cool. Looks like they have an ethernet-based audio transfer, like the muse receptor audiowire - no audio interfaces to buy, cool. I'm assuming this isn't available yet, as their website has a few dead links on it.

Re: AES in general
 

You know, we didn't talk about prices as we were just kind of hanging out throughout the afternoon, but I am calling him tomorrow and I will know more. Lots of irons in the fire with this one and Chris is absolutely brilliant. I will try to let you know. I will tell you this., it was amazing, and one of the most amazing demos I've ever seen. He designed EVERYTHING from the GUI to miking the orchestras, to making it real user friendly. I was blown away. Stay tuned and feel free to contact me at my own address goldrecordings.com

Re: AES in general
 

This is exactly what composers like me have wanted for a long time. Right now I have several machines synched up, it gets the job done but it's something that just slows down my productivity because it's so complex.

Part of the problem with what's available right now is that orchestral VI's are designed just as a plugin... and even the plugins like philharmonik that are supposed to be orchestral plugins, are still based on VI plugins - which are meant to trigger samples of anything, not specifically orchestral instruments. (Hows that for a run-on). What is left out of their development is the idea that a composer is going to tweak midi to get a realistic sound, but then have to tweak it again so the score makes sense. This hasn't been an issue for me(yet), but I know it is for a lot of composers.

I know samplecell really well, so I obviously have quite a few samplecell cards, but it just can't load enough to compete with what a newer computers can handle these days.

Keep me posted Scott, thanks for letting all of us know about this.

Re: AES in general
 

No problem John,

I don't have as much at stake as maybe you do, at this point and time. I've only done one major motion picture, but I really was put back in my seat when Chris showed his product to me. If you go to youtube.com and look up audio impressions, you'll see Chris Stone (Big silver haired guy-not the wrestler) doing a demo. The picture doesn't give the GUI justice but you can still hear to a certain extent, how great he's planned on fixing all the things that you and I know make for crummy emulations. When I was right there on the piano bench with him, and able to see, and hear what he was doing, it was what we've been waiting for. It doesn't even require an audio card to move it from computer to computer. In his case, he designed it on a PC platform for affordability reasons, but he says an ethernet or firewire cable will dump it right into pro tools.

You can move orchestral instruments from their usual places to anywhere you want. It does pizzicato, legato, combinations of that and more. He also has the Haas effect and fletcher munson curve considered in his code. The GUI is intuitive and easy. I feel like after one demo, that I could do at least half of what he showed me. Try youtube! I think you'll get a great demo. I'll keep reporting. I am supposed to speak with him tomorrow. Have a good night!-Scott:-)

Re: AES in general
 

It has RTAS support?!! This is huge. Right now the only thing I can think of that is similar is the muse receptor, which has a similar protocol, but it's only AU or VST. It may work as RTAS with a VST-RTAS wrapper, but this has not been proven. And while cool, the muse really isn't set up for the specific purpose of orchestral arrangement, it's more of a general use machine.

I have also experimented with plasq wormhole, a freeware vst/au ethernet audio plugin. It works, but when unwrapped in pro tools(at least 6.4.1 anyways) the graphics are screwed up enough where you can't see what you're doing with it. After playing with it for a little bit I just lost interest because it was more of a pain than I wanted to deal with.

Looking forward to hearing more about it.

Re: AES in general
 

Hey John,

Not sure about the RTAS support, but I will find out. O spoke with the marketing manager today but they were loading out at AES and he was in a fog. I will speak with him tomorrow, and if things go as planned, I may "really be in the know."