> news
Get with the programmers Find out how this innovative new plugin development house put together their marvellous musical software
Beatskillz
Gaurav Dayal
For those that don’t know, what’s your history in music, composing and product design? Why did you start up Beatskillz? GD “I’m a computer engineer by education, and I was the very first guy in India to write a MIDI sequencer in C++ as my final-year project. Once I graduated, I was lucky enough to have a super career in India as a composer and producer, selling over 10 million records. “I’ve always preferred analogue gear, even though I was born in the digital age. The inspiration behind Beatskillz really has been my own approach to production – I wanted tools like i had in the analogue world: chains of processors set up to do the job easily, without distracting from the creative process.”
Your plugins focus less on visualisation and metering than others do. What’s the philosophy behind leaving these components out? GD “This is not a new approach – I feel that just because ‘we can’ in the digital world doesn’t mean ‘we have to’. I don’t want to make technicians out of producers and musicians. “In all cases, we do feature awesome visual feedback – even our first product Slam Dawg featured output meters for response, and it went on to be a top-selling product that even major plugin companies are now happy to take ideas from. Things that make you feel like you’re working with something tangible are more popular and valuable in my opinion.” Plugins such as Slam Pro and Slam Dawg feature simplified controls on the surface. How complicated are they underneath? GD “Slam Pro features very very complex algorithms and technology. The Bass section, for example, features a mix of processes from EQ to sub-harmonic generation and a touch of multiband compression… and then comes the heat, with four flavours of distortion – we had to spend months getting the emulations perfect… and it’s just one knob for the user!”
“Finally, we applied some maths from the 1800s…”
What coding or technology did you implement within Bounce and Valvesque to separate them from the abundance of compressor and distortion plugins on the market? GD “For Bounce, we studied how transients actually work in such a short period of time, and developed multiple stages of detection and frequencydependent detection. Valvesque was very very hard to do as well – it was modelled on a popular british tube distortion preamp. We tried waveshapes, and other available technology, but finally, we applied some maths from the 1800s, which offered a new way of capturing multistage distortion and transformer signal paths. We call it RTT (Reactive Transients Technology). This enables us to now make products which sound like real distortion units. I would also like to thank my additional programmers Carlo Castellano and Aaron Leese for their brilliant work and collaboration.” What’s next for Beatskillz? GD “We’re creating a new limiter plugin which will be free for the audio community – a very transparent limiter and volume maximizer. Besides this, we have a new tape machine emulation, and some virtual instruments coming up this year. Also a brand new platform for loops, which will hopefully revolutionise the way people use and purchase loops online.” URL www.beatskillz.com 12 / Computer Music / January 2017
oeksound soothe
Ringing resonances and harsh frequency peaks are the bane of many a mix engineer’s life, but here’s a plugin to tackle them. soothe was originally conceived as a vocal processor, but oeksound say it’s capable of suppressing whistles, noises and harshness in everything from individual instruments to the master bus. In technical terms, it’s a dynamic equaliser with adaptive frequency bands and adjustable sensitivity, and is apparently “free from pre-ringing, crossovers, and summing artefacts.” Priced €149, soothe is out now for Mac, with a Windows version in the pipeline. URL www.oeksound.com
AudioThing The Orb
This new formant filter aims to give any sound a human-like drawl, simulating the vowel characteristics of the human voice. There are four vowel sets, Male, Female, Child and Custom, with the latter allowing you to define your own set of vowels. Three LFOs are on-hand to modulate the vowel itself, the formants’ resonance, and Drift, which offsets formant frequency. For those into DSP tech-specs, The Orb’s formant-fiddling trickery is accomplished using a trio of zero-delay feedback band-pass filters. The Orb costs €49 and is out now. URL www.audiothing.net
Sonimus TuCo
The analogue-modelling masters behind Burnley 73, SonEQ Pro, and Satson CM have created their debut dynamics processor. Based on variable mu valve compressors, TuCo is not a direct emulation of any specific piece of gear, instead being an original Sonimus design. Sonically, they say it exhibits “subtle and natural compression at low amounts, and plenty of punch at higher settings”. Features-wise, you’ve got four dynamics modes (slow/fast compressor and slow/fast limiter), four stereo modes, dry/wet mix, sidechain high-pass filter, tube saturation, and more. TuCo is out now, priced $74. URL www.sonimus.com
Audiority Harmonic Maximizer
From the minds behind our own TS-1 CM transient shaper comes this multiband exciter and loudness-shaping plugin. The exciter spans six bands, each with adjustable Frequency and Gain, while the Maximizer section offers Drive, Blend, Push and Gain controls. Auto-gain and auto-release are part of the spec, and there’s input/output metering on hand to further keep your levels in check. Sonically, Audiority claim the plugin will “make your tracks powerful and more alive”. You can get it right now for €45. Check out our review on p103! URL www.audiority.com