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Make Noise Plexiphon Deep Dive w/ Tom Erbe — Transcript

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0:05[music]
0:14[music]
0:16So, hi. I'm Tom Erbe.
0:18I spent
0:20a year designing this sort of reverb,
0:23sort of echo device called the
0:25Plexophone. And I just wanted tell you a
0:28little bit about it, how it works
0:30inside,
0:31you know, what I was going for when I
0:33made it. Um
0:35Now,
0:36I work with Make Noise, but it's a
0:38pretty,
0:40you know, they don't really tell me what
0:42to do at all. It's just, I come up with
0:44ideas and usually we try designing them
0:47and, you know, I I build things and send
0:50them the code. They run them, and
0:53some, you know, it's like it's like when
0:55you play your music in front of your
0:56friend,
0:57you know, when it's not working right
0:59away, you know.
1:00So, we we we've shuffled a lot of ideas
1:03together until something starts to
1:05happen. One thing I've learned through
1:07this process is to make sure my ideas
1:10are pretty
1:12well thought out before I send them to
1:14him because you don't want to just, you
1:16know, stop a project just like that. So,
1:19this is this is what I did with the
1:21Plexophone. It came after a project
1:23where I was going to have like a uh
1:26a time-stretching module. And it was
1:29working, but it just didn't fit the
1:32modular sort of environment.
1:35Uh it was just not
1:38it wasn't interactive enough. It sort of
1:41gave a big, beautiful sound, and that
1:45was it. So, we, you know, we'll get back
1:48to that again, I'm sure. Um so, the
1:50Plexophone, I
1:52Make Noise basically um
1:55made a new uh signal processing board.
1:59And uh I can hold it up here, but we're
2:01not on that right now. But uh it's it's
2:04a signal processing board, and they were
2:07able to get some nice AKM converters on
2:11there. They put a much higher speed
2:13processor. They put the memory chip
2:16right opposite the processor so that
2:18everything worked really well, low noise
2:21and all that. And so
2:24when they did this
2:26board, I was able to sort of revise some
2:29of the ideas I wanted to do and do them
2:33a little bit better. So
2:35one of them is with the spectrophone
2:37here, which I'll
2:39I don't know if we're looking at the
2:42We're on the slides now. That's fine.
2:45Okay. So So this was the first one I did
2:47on the the new processor, and
2:50we could take advantage of much more
2:52processing. I was able to do spectral
2:54analysis without using FFTs, just using
2:57band pass filters.
2:59I have, um,
3:00you know, it's like 256 band pass
3:03filters plus 256 oscillators running at
3:06the same time, which is all happening,
3:09you know, digitally, of course. But
3:11doing that kind of arithmetic sample by
3:13sample and calculating all the phases
3:16and all the way, for example by sample,
3:17it takes a lot of processor. So
3:21this was one advantage. The other thing
3:23is they now gave me multiple outputs. So
3:27with the spectrophone, we had eight
3:28outputs, so I could assign different
3:30outputs to different things like I'm
3:32able to have a sine wave come out for
3:34each channel. I'm able to have sub sub
3:37you know, a sub harmonics come in and
3:40able to split the harmonics, even and
3:42odd harmonics, which is sort of a nod to
3:44Buchla
3:45and the spectral processor he made. It
3:47It's just like this idea that you can
3:49get the you know, quite different sounds
3:51and spread them stereo, etc. So,
3:56most of you know, I'm sure all of you
3:58know the Erbe-Verb. Yes? Okay. So, this
4:01is the reverb I did at first and there
4:04we had a much more primitive hardware
4:06and it was an upgrade from the Echo
4:10Phone, which is the first module I did.
4:12But but it still could only do so much.
4:15So, what I decided to focus on with the
4:19Echo with the Erbe-Verb is to have a
4:22reverb
4:23that was not modeled after a room,
4:27first off. I wanted it to be
4:30functional reverb. It does what we use
4:33reverbs for and
4:35what I thought of that is reverbs kind
4:38of like compression, but it's like
4:40compression in the time domain. When we
4:42compress sound, we we reduce the dynamic
4:45range, we fill in our sound and as a
4:49when you're mixing, you get that sort of
4:51presence of everything when you
4:53compress. And sometimes you go too far
4:56and it's like you're so present, you
4:58can't get away from it, you know? So,
5:01with reverb, you're filling in an echo,
5:04you're filling in between the notes. So,
5:06you have the same sort of
5:09function. With
5:11the Erbe-Verb, I thought, "Okay, this is
5:13all I'm thinking a reverb is. I'm not
5:15going to try to emulate a room. I'm just
5:17going to try to make it work in a lovely
5:19way so that it can fill in after the
5:22sound, but since it's on a...Okay, other
5:27thing: I've been a sound engineer for a
5:29while, and one of the frustrating things
5:32with three verbs is
5:34they're not ever that interactive. I
5:37mean, I started with the PCM 70 and the
5:39QuadraVerb and David knows this pretty
5:41well.
5:42Um you remember working with those
5:44devices. Oh, he's Okay. But um, we you'd
5:49always have to go into a menu and you'd
5:51always tweak things and they just
5:53inhibit your creativity. They you know,
5:55you don't just get in there. You might
5:58learn the reverb enough to say,"Okay,
6:00the Lexicon concert hall patch is my
6:03go-to patch."And then you might go in
6:05and tweak that a little bit. But,
6:07tweaking it while it's happening,
6:09automating the parameters, especially in
6:12those days, all that was very hard. Um,
6:16you'd have to set up a MIDI sequencer
6:19and have it, you know, modulate the
6:21parameters and play it back like that.
6:23So, with the modular, it's like
6:26you can tune things in quickly.
6:28You know, you have a space to explore.
6:31Uh, the reverb had
6:33if you don't count wet dry mix, it had
6:36seven knobs, seven eight knobs, and you
6:38could just dial them up and get all
6:40sorts of sounds right away. So, my
6:43design goal there was to first
6:46don't worry about it being a room. You
6:48know, do things that are not room-like
6:51at all. So, the one of the first things
6:53was to add a granular processor to it.
6:56I'm probably going too long in the
6:57reverb, but I added a granular processor
7:00which allowed me to have wall sizes,
7:03you know, if we do think it as a room,
7:04that change. Suddenly, we have a big
7:06room, small room. We have this
7:09fluttering room. And, also,
7:13do something you can't do in the room.
7:14Have your reflection go over 100%.
7:18You know, have the room start
7:19amplifying. And with that,
7:23you have to add other things like
7:24compression, filtering, things to rein
7:27it in so that you can work it against
7:30itself. So, for me, it was a way of
7:32making something
7:34that each part of it would push against
7:38the other parts. And how you set it up
7:41could, you know, you could re-reach
7:43these states really quickly, but also
7:45you could sort of push it away from
7:47those states and get it back in and, you
7:50know, have a sort of more of a a flow
7:52feel with with prob-with um, you know,
7:56just uh twiddling the knobs. This is
7:58something all of you know, you know,
8:00with with this is the
8:02this is the attraction of modular
8:03synthesis. You have these knobs, you
8:05can,
8:06you know, just start performing those
8:08things. Um
8:11The other thing as course I love about
8:12modulars you
8:14you forget what you're doing instantly.
8:15So, you you know, and that was kind of a
8:19goal with our verb as well. Let's Let's
8:22pack things in so tightly that yeah, you
8:25can tweak it right into where you want
8:27it, but you tend to lose your place. And
8:31every time you do the piece it's going
8:33to be a little bit different, which for
8:35me is like, this is a great thing. Um
8:39you know, I I remember talking to a
8:40student who made an electronic piece and
8:43they
8:45lost the file. And I just said,"Well,
8:47just go back and make it again."And they
8:50were like,"Like how?"I said,"Well, just
8:52use the same thoughts, you know, just
8:54try to replicate."And, you know, they
8:57they found that you can you have this
8:59sort of live performance aspect to
9:01making pieces, which is really nice. So,
9:04I'm really getting off topic. Sorry.
9:07[laughter]
9:08So, with the Plexichone, I decided take
9:10another thing. I have a lot more
9:12processors, so I thought,"Let's take
9:14advantage of this."
9:15Um I'm going to go to this next slide.
9:16Do we have slides now?
9:19Okay. So, here's the air verb and uh
9:22it's
9:24this is removing all the all the
9:26modulation, but basically the reverb is
9:29four delay lines. And uh out of each
9:33delay line is a matrix. And in here the
9:36matrix is just an a series of uh summers
9:40and uh subtractors
9:42that uh combine the signal so that when
9:45you get to the bottom
9:47each one of these outputs has all four
9:49signals.
9:50And each one of these outputs uh
9:53has the four signals combined a
9:54different way.
9:56So now you have four different signals
9:58that are all combining all the delays.
10:03And at the same time each one of the
10:05different
10:06combinations. So if you mix them
10:08together, you're going to get other
10:09things happening, more complex things
10:10happening. I mean, what this does
10:14uh
10:15well, once you go through the little
10:17multiplier with our feedback and go back
10:20into the delay
10:22suddenly things become much more complex
10:25and you build up density of echoes very
10:27quickly.
10:29Now this is a four delay matrix
10:32with four in and four out and it gets
10:35sort of complex.
10:36One thing I had to design the delay
10:39times really carefully
10:41to get it away from completely resonant.
10:44Now I like okay, this it's no secret I
10:47like metallic reverbs. I like resonant
10:50reverbs, but still you have to be able
10:52to get that uh sound, you know, and
10:54that's So I spent a lot of time with
10:57that, but with four it's hard. So
11:01what I and this is both channels by the
11:03way on the Erbe-Verb. Uh one of the
11:05reasons we kept it as one channel input.
11:08There are other reasons, but they're
11:09more more uh packaging oriented. Um and
11:13then the two outputs are just various
11:15combinations of the four outputs. So I
11:18each I made four mixes for the actual
11:20outputs. So that's not in the diagram.
11:23All of that is stuff that was done on,
11:25you know, early reverbs and you can read
11:27the patterns and read their design, but
11:29I borrowed a lot from that technology
11:31and
11:33by the way, I gave a talk on this, so I
11:35shouldn't do it again. There was I did a
11:37I did a talk at Santa Barbara, UC Santa
11:39Barbara, and it's online, and I go
11:42through the history of reverb and how
11:43that all influenced me. So, let's skip
11:46to the flexatone.
11:48Bigger matrix equals more density. So,
11:51as soon as I make the matrix bigger,
11:53things are going to get denser more
11:55quickly.
11:56And it's going to act more like it's
11:58going to have a more spacious more
12:00diffuse feel very, you know, very
12:02quickly. And so, here's
12:05the uh one channel of the flexatone. So,
12:08it went to an 8 by 8 matrix.
12:11And um there's now three stages of
12:14combination, so two to the three gives
12:16all eight signals. And we have these
12:19combinations down here.
12:21I went to this this was my first
12:24experiment was patching this together,
12:26and I patched it together in PD, and
12:28listened to it, and tweaked it, and then
12:31I went to a 16-channel version, and I
12:34realized the 16-channel version
12:37stayed too much in the beautiful range.
12:40And then it was hard to get it not to be
12:43beautiful. So, I thought,"Okay, let's
12:45just go for 8 by 8. This is a good space
12:48to be. It gets to that really lush sound
12:50quickly, but we can distort it and
12:53change things."So, here's the next
12:55thing.
12:57And this is what
12:59I'm still not certain what the right way
13:02to do here. One thing you do when you
13:04design a reverb is you
13:08tweak the delay times.
13:10And the delay times need to be
13:13s-uh
13:15designed so that you don't get common
13:19echo times in there. If you do have a
13:21common echo time among two delays, like
13:24one is two times the other or something
13:27like that, you'll get a resonance at
13:28that frequency.
13:30Um and it's just like being in a room
13:32where there's a mode and you excite it
13:34with your bass guitar, you know, you
13:36just can't it's just overwhelms it. Um
13:39so, there are different ways of trying
13:42to get rid of that. What I finally and I
13:45tried the way that a lot of people uh
13:47suggest in textbooks is to use prime
13:50numbers.
13:51But what you soon realize is that things
13:53don't just go through one delay line,
13:55they also go through two delay lines.
13:57They go through three and each one of
14:00those paths is another combination of
14:03delays. So, you have
14:05you you realize that
14:07if two of these delay lines, if you add
14:10them together,
14:12if that corresponds to another delay
14:13time that's in there, it's going to
14:15cause resonance.
14:16So, you basically have to do this big
14:19combinatorial search. And that's what I
14:22ended up doing. I made a lot of
14:24spreadsheets, and I had, and I did some
14:28you know code where it was doing
14:29recursive searches for things. And, but
14:33what I...my criteria ended up being
14:36some, some stuff that I read in the old
14:39Audio engineers Handbook, in the in, in
14:42the chapters that F. Alton Everst did it
14:44on room design. And he talks about how
14:47to make a room sound good, and that sort
14:50of unlocked the key. I was able to go to
14:52there and say,"Okay, these are the delay
14:55times."And then I also had uh a a grad
14:59student working with me and basically we
15:01competed with each other. Who can make
15:04the best sounding one? And so, we'd come
15:06back each week and like,"Hey, here and
15:07then finally we're borrowing each
15:09other's coefficients and you know, it it
15:11got quickly to a really nice sounding uh
15:14you know, even reverb.
15:16Um
15:17but then the next thing is to modulate
15:20the delay time. One thing that I like is
15:23that you can turn this size knob and
15:26just
15:27take the reverb to a very small room to
15:30a very large room. Now, I know that's
15:32not realistic.
15:34I mean, it's maybe an obsession with old
15:36Batman TV shows where the room starts
15:38shrinking, but
15:40uh I wanted just this feeling of
15:42collapse and this feeling that you can
15:45modulate it and have a sort of uncertain
15:47space.
15:48Um if you're doing anything in sound
15:50design or anything in music where you
15:52want to convey a feel of unease, you
15:55want something familiar like the sound
15:57of a room, but adding some unfamiliar
15:59elements like the modulation,
16:02quickly you realize that this isn't
16:04right. This is not I'm hearing something
16:06I'm familiar with. It's not working
16:09quite right. Some And it's something
16:12conscious
16:13that the player is changing it and
16:15there's that's where it you know, it has
16:18a lot of power.
16:19Um so, table the modulated all the way
16:22down to a very small delay time, it
16:26gives me, you know, quite a big sound
16:28palette.
16:29One
16:31problem though.
16:32When you drop things down to a small
16:34delay time,
16:35things start resonating.
16:37And the reason is we're now pushing
16:40all these frequencies close to each
16:42other
16:43and we're going to get more ringing in
16:46that way.
16:48Uh
16:48So, and also the accuracy is not as good
16:51when you get smaller. You have just you
16:54know, so many samples. Um
16:57So, it does tend to ring more on
17:00the uh on the smaller size. But the
17:03other thing, it's just physics. If you
17:05have like a big gong
17:07and you hit it in the center, you get
17:09this wash of nice, you know, even sound
17:14that can pulsate and change and modulate
17:17and you don't hear repetitions. You just
17:19hear this wonderful evolution. But if
17:22you make something that's very small,
17:25it's hard to get it to ring in that same
17:28manner.
17:29If you make it, you know, even with I'm
17:31able to add feedback, but then the
17:33ringing gets more pronounced. The top,
17:35you know, harmonic comes out. So, this
17:38is this is a feature, not a bug. Okay,
17:40as a sound engineer,
17:42I always felt
17:44I can't get a good sound unless I can
17:46get a bad sound.
17:48If I can turn a knob up to the point
17:51where it's not getting better, it's
17:54getting progressively worse, I know
17:55where my limits are. So, for me,
17:58and sometimes you want it to get there.
18:01Sometimes you want to like add an
18:02aggression or add a darkness or
18:05something beyond that. So, it's always
18:08been uh
18:09a goal to have a range that's beyond
18:12tasteful, you know.
18:14And uh working with uh you know,
18:16Eurorack companies, you can go beyond
18:19tasteful and most people are okay with
18:21that. Um
18:24Okay.
18:25Now, this is the tricky bit
18:28and I had this idea, well, if I have
18:30this complex matrix of pathways,
18:34why don't I just chop off some pathways
18:37and start turning into a simple delay?
18:41And so, if you follow this and I might
18:43go
18:45here.
18:46If you follow the pathway and I think I
18:48I don't think I got it all correct in
18:50this drawing, but if you go from the
18:51first one,
18:53it goes down here through this path
18:56because I eliminated half of the
18:57pathways. So, there's only one inlet
19:00here.
19:01This goes then to this channel. This
19:02comes down,
19:04goes that channel, this goes up to this
19:06channel,
19:07down here,
19:09down there, up to the channel, and so
19:11on. And it basically traverses the whole
19:13thing. Um it turns out it's it's just a
19:15simple echo. It acts just like a simple
19:18echo and uh
19:20you know, the complication is just all
19:22these pathways and these inversions.
19:25But, if you take a same one signal and
19:28put it through an equal amount of
19:31inversions and non-inversions, you're
19:33going to just get either a simple
19:34inversion or non-inversion at the end.
19:36All of these reduce.
19:38But, what I thought would be cool is if
19:41these things could sort of appear and
19:45disappear progressively. So, that I had
19:47a knob that I could go from reverb to
19:51echo. And this is, you know, what I
19:54designed uh this took a long time. It,
19:58yeah, it was very easy to explode. This
20:01distorted many, many times. This had uh
20:05my wife yelling, "What happened?" you
20:08know, often. Like, "What What are you
20:10doing?" Um
20:11And also, I do like working with loud
20:14subwoofers and, you know, it can it can
20:16be exciting.
20:18Um but yeah, this I finally, you know,
20:22got the math done, so it didn't explode.
20:25And
20:27then beyond that, uh once I had two
20:30channels,
20:31I wanted to make it be able to go from
20:33stereo to mono, but not in a normal way.
20:36So, what I did is I made pathways
20:39between I'm giving you all my design
20:40secrets, and they're on film now. Okay.
20:43[laughter]
20:45Um Tony's going to kill me.
20:47Um anyway, you you make these pathways,
20:50and
20:51as these path these cross pathways take
20:54over, and what I do is I I remove the
20:56original pathway
20:58and replace it with a cross pathway, the
21:01two channels start getting connected.
21:03And when you turn up the gain between
21:06these, at first. It's going in itself
21:10and then over to the other. So, you get
21:11the sort of back and forth shuffling
21:14that happens at different delay times.
21:16But, when you pull it full up, suddenly
21:18it stabilizes as one big
21:21sort of mono stereo. It still has a
21:24spatial character. The sides are
21:26different, but you're not Everything's
21:29in the same space though. It's a stereo
21:31thing in that I'm talking in this room
21:35and we're in one space now. And my voice
21:38is going everywhere, but we have reverb
21:39and it's definitely stereo.
21:41So, this was the other design goal was
21:44to do this.
21:45Then, I got lots of little extra
21:47details.
21:49And this is all the stuff that I worked
21:52a lot of it's just stuff I worked out
21:54with Make Noise. One thing I always like
21:56an input gain that can go past one.
21:58And I was talking at me about this that
22:02if you go past one with your gain,
22:05it distorts, you know?
22:07But, if you have a small signal coming
22:08in, it doesn't distort. So, for me as a
22:11sound engineer, I want to have a little
22:13bit of boosting available. And I know
22:15the problem is
22:17uh
22:18some people will find that, "Hey, this
22:20is distorting when I turn it all the way
22:21up." So, I just thought we we got to
22:24leave this in. I also then put a lot of
22:26compression inside to to sort of save
22:29myself.
22:30Uh that would come active when it went
22:32over went over one. Uh the second thing
22:35was to just put an input mute so that we
22:38could rhythmically
22:40mute the signal coming in or keep it
22:42muted all the time and rhythmically let
22:45different little notes or beats into it.
22:48And that way giving you something where
22:51it's like this selective reverb. It's
22:53just only really pulling different
22:55elements in.
22:56Um
22:58more than 100%feedback. It's what I did
23:00with Erbe-Verb. It's what I did with
23:02Echophone, and in this case
23:05instead of letting it
23:08go full distortion like both Erbe Verb
23:10and Echophone have a distortion stage at
23:15the end. When it gets loud, it starts
23:17distorting. And that's a feature of
23:18those.
23:20This one I used more compression to
23:24sort of softly control it and make the
23:29the feedback when you go above 100. Be
23:32more like like an old guitar pedals that
23:34would call themselves a sustainer pedal.
23:37You know, this is to get it into sustain
23:39and to get a signal that well, yes, the
23:41reverb's fully swamped, but you know,
23:44it's a choice whether you want that or
23:46not.
23:47Um
23:48and uh
23:50yeah, I've I listed a few more things. I
23:53quickly listed these last night. Um
23:56plexus control not completely linear. It
23:59um
24:00I let it blow up a little bit, you know.
24:03[laughter] I didn't erase all the
24:05irregularities when you go from delay to
24:08to reverb. And I just wanted to have
24:11some like surprises as you're working in
24:15there. Okay, so the rest I guess I
24:18should demonstrate a little bit of this.
24:21And I've already talked 25 minutes.
24:23Okay, so if we switch over to overhead,
24:26have we done that?
24:28Okay, excellent. So, let's see.
24:31I'm going to I have a patch in here
24:33already, but I should show you what I'm
24:35doing.
24:35Um so, I have two outputs on the
24:38Spectraphone.
24:40And these here
24:42this is just a left and right
24:45or rather odd and even. So, patch these
24:47into the output.
24:50And
24:52now you can hear it leaking through
24:54already even though that's turned all
24:55the way down.
24:56Um
24:58[music]
24:59[bell]
25:03So, this is an FM mode on the Spectra
25:06phone.
25:11Also, which has has two feedback paths,
25:14so it does chaotic chaotic FM.
25:18But, I'll put it here in just straight
25:19FM.
25:22[music]
25:24And this knob then acts like an index.
25:30So, I can get some rich tones, which
25:32aren't
25:34[music] and not mistakes with FM. Like
25:36I've seen a lot of much Well, I won't
25:38critique anything, but I try not to make
25:40mistakes. I try to make it sound good
25:42and not alias, etc.
25:45Um so, we'll put these in here.
25:47And this is just uh
25:50you know, I have the the Walga Bug doing
25:52a
25:53clock, and this is going into Rene
25:56as the sequencer. Sequencer is just
25:58picking pitch. You know, simple demo
26:01patch.
26:02And then we'll take the input of the
26:04the Plexi phone and [music]
26:17[music]
26:21So, something with some bass.
26:24And this is
26:25This is something I wanted to have work
26:28on this reverb is to be able to actually
26:29get some bass through it.
26:32Okay, so right now it's mix is
26:36at zero, so we're hearing just the
26:38source. [music]
26:43And yeah, we can
26:44bring the level up quite a bit.
26:47[music]
26:51So,
26:52it's clipping a little bit.
26:55[music]
26:56Not bad.
26:59But yeah, we can use that for a lot of
27:00gain.
27:01[music]
27:03Okay, let's let's set up the reverb
27:05then. So,
27:06normal reverb setup
27:09I again
27:10I'm on
27:12I have some audio engineer quirks. I
27:15like the normal setting
27:17to be with all the knobs at noon.
27:20That's like except for plexus which will
27:23head that over to uh
27:26to the reverb side of things. So, now
27:30[music]
27:35[music]
27:39[bell]
27:42sort of a short reverb, medium reverb.
27:45We can bring the size up.
27:48[music]
27:53[music]
28:05[music]
28:09Okay. Now, with this, yes, I if I'm at
28:13this much time
28:15we'll hear a mix of them again and I'll
28:17bring up the plexus control so you can
28:18hear it to go to delay and back again.
28:21What you'll hear is the reverb
28:23will start getting these clusters of
28:25sounds instead of um a full sort of
28:29smooth reverb. It'll start breaking up
28:32and then it breaks up further and
28:33finally it just ends up with a single
28:36uh echo.
28:38[music]
28:43[music]
28:48[music]
28:57>> You know, it might be more audible at a
28:59high frequency.
29:10[music]
29:10And now let's go back to reverb.
29:19[music]
29:21And all the way.
29:25[music]
29:26And I particularly like the things that
29:28are kind of in between. It has that kind
29:31of feel.
29:33Okay, this is a good time to bring in
29:35the coupling of channels.
29:40I don't know how well you can hear a
29:41stereo in here.
29:50And then when you bring it all the way
29:51up
29:54[music]
29:55becomes one space.
29:57[bell]
29:59[music]
30:02Okay, that's my most subtle control by
30:04the way, the coupling.
30:06When I first sent that to make noise,
30:08Dale said
30:10"What does it do?"
30:11[laughter]
30:13And I said, "Okay, just wait. Just wait.
30:16Just let me play with it." And after a
30:18while I got certain combinations where
30:20suddenly things were like flying back
30:22and forth and you know, like, "Okay,
30:24we'll keep that one." You know. Um so, I
30:28have to admit, right now from my
30:29perspective behind the speakers, it
30:31sounds like, "Okay, it's not doing a
30:32lot." But uh
30:35[music]
30:39There's coupling at halfway.
30:47[music]
31:00Okay, now
31:02the
31:03the two EQ knobs are on the right.
31:07One of them is in the feedback path. And
31:09one of them is on the output.
31:11So when you have it in the feedback
31:13path, that allows you to have
31:15your reverb to the sound to be
31:17progressively filtered as it's sort of
31:20like as it stays in the room and
31:22reflects back and forth, you lose more
31:24and more high frequencies.
31:27And in this case, that's mostly what
31:30this is doing. But at the same time, I'm
31:33also changing the absorb or rather the
31:37sort of diffusion. And I thought of
31:39different materials that I would like it
31:41to fade through. And so I tried to
31:43emulate the diffusion of those materials
31:46correlated with how much high
31:48frequencies I was removing. Now, that
31:51means I made a choice as to what you're
31:53going to get here. You know, of course
31:55if we had two knobs here, we get more.
31:57But the other thing, okay.
32:00One thing I was really interested in was
32:02getting a module out there that was
32:04smaller.
32:05And believe it or not, if you want to
32:07know what makes a module cost more, it's
32:10the number of knobs and the size.
32:13And it's just that's manufacturing
32:16costs. And that's all the things that
32:18could go wrong. Um but
32:21the processor is pretty cheap, the
32:23memory's pretty cheap. It's just really
32:25this construction. So I wanted to get
32:27something small. So the idea of
32:29adding another knob to make
32:31you know, more possibilities, it was one
32:34place we decided to combine them. But I
32:37did combine these two knobs in the herb
32:40verb as well, these two parameters.
32:42Though, in the herb verb it's it's
32:44slightly different way of doing it. Um,
32:47but, okay. So,
32:53if we turn this down,
32:57[bell]
32:58we retain all the bright frequencies.
33:02We turn it up,
33:04[music]
33:09[music]
33:10we get a nice decay of those
33:12frequencies.
33:13[music]
33:21[music]
33:22Okay.
33:24The fine The other EQ is the output EQ.
33:28And this is um
33:29it's actually several um
33:32several shelving filters.
33:35For those of you who work in a studio,
33:36you'll know what this does. And the
33:38shelving filters allow me to have pretty
33:40flat uh frequency responses in ranges.
33:43And as you're turning the knob, it's
33:45actually changing the size of the
33:47filters a little bit. So, the frequency
33:49points change a little bit, but also the
33:52gain changes. So, I mean,
33:55really it's going from boosting the
33:57highs and cutting the lows to boosting
33:59the lows and cutting the highs on the
34:01output.
34:03But, I wanted it to do a lot, you know,
34:05to have a really massive effect,
34:08which, you know, I hope I got there.
34:10But, you know, it's it's This is one of
34:13those knobs that's hard to design
34:14because depending on what you're putting
34:16into it and how you're feeding back, you
34:19can get all these different ranges of
34:21sounds that sometimes, I mean, often
34:24you're just exploding the output. You're
34:27just putting too much output. Let's uh
34:29bring the tones down in frequency again.
34:33[music]
34:39Oops.
34:40I was turning the knobs on the mini
34:42phone. That won't work.
34:45[music]
34:51[music]
34:57[music]
35:05[music]
35:13[music]
35:15Okay, I couldn't resist. Sorry.
35:18Then
35:20for high frequencies [music]
35:22the neutral point is actually right
35:24around there at 2:00.
35:26And that's because
35:29people love boosting the low
35:30frequencies. People love cutting the
35:33high frequencies. Those are really
35:34satisfying sounds.
35:36Boosting the highs and cutting the lows,
35:38here's where we're in the realm of
35:40irritation, which
35:42is another lovely thing, but it also
35:45sends to 10 send people to the doors.
35:48So I can boost them,
35:51but it's definitely not as dramatic.
35:56Let me turn the volume up.
35:59[music]
36:08[music]
36:15[music]
36:25[music]
36:36[music]
36:42[music]
36:49[music]
36:55[music]
37:00[music]
37:15>> Okay. So,
37:17beyond that, we found that we had this
37:19codec, which had four inputs
37:22and four outputs.
37:24And we actually are not using two of the
37:26outputs, but
37:28we thought, "Okay, these two of the
37:30inputs we can use for voltage control,
37:33and that gives us full sample rate
37:34voltage control."
37:36And what we found were the nicest things
37:38to control
37:40were the um the size of the room.
37:44Uh and here I think I have this running,
37:47right?
37:49Um
37:50let's
37:52[music]
37:59[music]
38:28[music]
38:36[music]
38:45[music]
38:51>> Now the other thing that is nice is to
38:54modulate the output filter.
38:56Cuz there we can get these
38:59Let me bring some sustain in here.
39:03[music]
39:08[music]
39:16[music]
39:23[music]
39:31[music]
39:34Or even modulate with the sound. I don't
39:36know if this is going to do anything
39:37audible. We'll try.
39:39[music]
39:41Okay, it's too subtle.
39:43Um
39:44[music]
39:52[music]
39:55Let me get that.
39:57[music]
40:02[music]
40:04Okay, that's
40:08[music]
40:14[music]
40:21[music]
40:22>> Okay, so
40:23that one didn't work out so well in
40:25demo, but it was wonderful in my studio
40:27yesterday. I got I assure you.
40:30Um, anyways, this is this is pretty much
40:33it. I mean, there's more little things
40:35that more little details I worked on,
40:37but
40:38uh
40:39we yeah, we I spent like 9 months
40:41designing it.
40:43Uh the really it really accelerated when
40:46I started working on just the
40:49the structure of the reverb.
40:52We threw out a few ideas. We thought
40:54it'd be great to use velvet noise at one
40:57point for uh early reflections, but
41:01we just found that everyone was going
41:03"What's that? And why is that there?" To
41:06me it sounded really cool, but it was
41:08just kind of like not it didn't belong
41:10there. Um, there was more stuff what the
41:14done with the early reflections, but
41:15right now we have early reflections
41:18increasing with the size. They are not
41:21the same echo times as the rest of the
41:25internal echoes, so they're a little
41:27decorrelated with it as well, but gives
41:29it a little more feel to it. There is no
41:32pre-delay.
41:33Uh if if you know what you use pre-delay
41:37for, it's to give you the sense of the
41:39size of the space. It's the amount of
41:41time before you hear the first
41:43reflection.
41:45But I thought, well,
41:46everyone needs to buy a Mimeophon
41:48anyway. No, [laughter]
41:49everyone probably has a everyone
41:51probably has a delay of some sort, and
41:54they can patch up the pre-delay. And one
41:57thing that you try to resist is putting
42:01everything into one module.
42:04Uh it really makes you think like you're
42:07offering people a lot, but at the end it
42:09sort of takes away from the patchability
42:12and the modularity of things. It also
42:15sends the price up of a single module.
42:17We did it I think a little too much with
42:20the Spectro phone. I mean, I know that
42:23Make Noise wanted to make a big, you
42:25know, sort of you know, whatever.
42:28You know, they're sort of Cadillac
42:29module. And they said, "Well, if you
42:32want to use that much power, Tom, you
42:34have to make it take up a lot of room
42:36because everyone's gifts are going to
42:37run out of power." So, there are these
42:39kind of things we worked on. Yeah, but
42:42I really like the smaller modules that
42:44have their own identity. And yeah, we
42:47can pack a lot into them, but some of
42:50the choices with packing a lot are you
42:52going to put a lot in that sort of makes
42:54a continuous thing that all works well
42:56with each other. And that's what I tried
42:58to do with the Plexi phone. With the
43:00Memo phone, it was more like packing
43:02lots of different, you know, sort of
43:04toys that you could add to your sound.
43:07So, everything we packed in Plexi phone
43:09or the Memo phone was just like, "Oh,
43:10this add this changes it you know, echo
43:13in a totally different way." And and of
43:16course, some things aren't buttons
43:17because going in reverse is so, you
43:20know, on or off. But,
43:22that's all I have to say about the Plexi
43:25phone. And thank you. Um, should we go
43:28to questions?

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