Cookie crumbles anyone?

Modularmind

Two intriguing boxes that’s been on my wish list for a while is Biscuit by OTO Machines and the Geiger Counter by WMD. For those of you not familiar with them, they both focus on the sort of crunchy sound you get from bit reduction, but with different approaches. I tried replicating them on the G2 and came up with…well, not so satisfying results for different reasons. But I took what I think is the best pieces of both replicas and put them into one single patch that suited the G2 sound/modules and the interface better. I've also tried fine tuning the "gain stages" and overdrive circuitry. I'm quite happy with the result. It have satisfied some of my appetite for the sound of sweet, crunchy crumbles… Hope you like it!

I've tried my best to make the interface as logical and fast worked as possible. These are the paramater assignments:

A1:1 – Ovderdrive/PreAmp gain before the bit reduction
A1:2 – Drive/gain level after the bit reduction into the wave shaper
A1:3 – Sample rate reduction
A1:4 – Bit masking (smoother bit reduction than with the digitizer module)
A1:5 – Filter frequency
A1:6 – Filter resonance
A1:7 – Dry/Naked sound level
A1:8 – Wet/Dressed sound level

A2:1 – Wave shaper on/off
A2:2 – Wave shape selection
A2:3 – Filter type (LP/BP/HP/BR)
A2:5 – Bit reduction bypass
A2:7 – Clock divider (sets the speed of the sequencer modulating the filter)
A2:8 – Filter sequencer on/off

A3:1 – A3:8 – Offset setting for each of the 8 steps in the filter sequencer

E1:1 – E1:8 – Settings for the noise gate and input/output

/Mm

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grimley · Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2011 12:20 am Post subject:

Awesome!! I've been getting some really aggressive bass tones out of this. Thanks!

iPassenger · Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2011 3:08 am Post subject:

Looking at the bit masking part of your patch (on the jpg, not loaded it up yet). Is that providing you with stages of bit reduction between say 7 bit and 6 bit?

If so that is smart, I take it sounds better than just using the bit quantization in the digitizer?

Have you tried using the SeqCTR module to do wave shaping? It might help get you more of the WMD style processing.

If you prepare the signal before you send it into the seqctr, e.g. make it positive only and use a mixer to scale it down to say 25%.. It means you can just use say the first 4 sequencer levels to create your waveshaping, easier than trying to use all 16. I found that using 9 seq steps tended to produce the best results whilst still keeping it easy to use.

Anyway I've been meaning to load this patch up, so I'll try it tonight and thanks for posting.

Smile

Modularmind · Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2011 3:38 pm Post subject:

iPassenger · Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2011 4:14 pm Post subject:

The patch above is really cool.. Got some great sounds from it running the MD and Octatrack through it.. Got a good recording but ended up clipping it so I'll do it again..

Also I'll knock up an example of that seqctr module I was on about for waveshaping tomorrow night and add it to this thread.. I thought I might have already posted it but it doesn't look like I have.

iPassenger · Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2011 11:14 am Post subject:

Like the attached:

It only uses the first 9 steps to shape the signal, you could of course use more.

If you keep step 5 at zero you avoid a DC offset but sometimes it is nice to have one, so just gate the output.

I've filled the 8 vars with different shapes, with 1 sort of bypassing it.

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Modularmind · Posted: Fri Nov 25, 2011 6:29 am Post subject:

Thanks for posting this example, I will check it out tonight!

If understand it right you use the mixer to scale down the constant amplitude of the osc to 50% so it only uses the first 9 steps in the CtrlSeq. And since the signal is symmetrical you don't have to split the signal in positive and negative, right? But how about when you feed it with external audio that's not symetrical, would you have to split the signal in two, and what happens with DC offset then? Also, external audio is not of constant amplitude unless you compress it really hard, so what would be the best way to scale that kind of signal?

In my Geiger Counter patch I have borrowed a wave shaper patch from Fozzie (user here) where the signal is split into positive and negative with a rectifier and there is a higpass filter that supposedly takes care of the DC offset. But I'm not into the technical side of these things and can't tell wether that works as intended or not. My biggest issue though with that patch is to get the amount of wave shaping/distortion I want without clipping/overloading the CtrlSeq. Only way I have found so far is to use a compressor, but I don't want to compress the audio too much. Ideas on this would be very helpful.

Cheers!

iPassenger · Posted: Fri Nov 25, 2011 7:36 am Post subject: