U-he Ace CableDrum - free soundset

CableDrum is a small, free soundset for U-He Ace softsynth. It contains 32 presets suited for minimal / tech house genres. Drums & percussion, raw basses, a few exoctic groove-sequences, synthsounds...

Don't forget to visit CFA Sound website - there are more soundsets (commercial) available.



Download: cfa-sound.com

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Angular Momentum Freehand

Angular Momentum Freehand is quite unique freebie - I find it useful especially for basslines. First of all - Oscillators. There are three oscillators with 135 factory waveforms each. Each oscillator has a wavedraw ability which means that you can draw your own waveform or generate the random one. Neat :) Like I said, AM Freehand is nice for all kind of evolving sounds but, in my opinion, it shines especially for wobbly bassline sequencies. Why ? It offers double FM CV Sequencers as well as pitch sequencer. Each sequencer has neat "smooth knob" which creates the smooth curves (it reminds NI Massive curve abilities a little bit but of course it's not as sophisticated - it's just a smoothness).

AM Freehand is offered as free plugin, limited with 8 voices, 100 presets (which to be honest I don't like :) ) and as donationware plugin which brings 32 voices and additional presets.

Small example: Sequencer (with smooth knob automated) + LFO


Download: AM Freehand

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Basics of FM Synthesis - NI FM8

Frequency Modulation synthesis basics - Native Instruments FM8 synth used as an example.



and the second video - How to Create Telephone Sounds.



Feel free to visit nextstepaudio.com - there are more useful videos available (ie. some stuff for Logic users)

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Creative phase cancellation effect

Phase describes where in it's cycle a periodic waveform is at any given time. The relationship in time of two or more waveforms with the same or harmonically related periods gives us a measurement of their phase difference. Phase cancellation occurs when two signals of the same frequency are out of phase with each other resulting in a net reduction in the overall level of the combined signal. If two identical signals are 100% or 180 degrees out of phase they will completely cancel one another if combined.

Phase cancellation is handy if you want to, ie. extract vocal part from the song. You just need a track with vocal part and instrumental (dub) version of same track. If the signals are identical, you just need to invert phase of the instrumental version and every signal (except vocal) will be canceled.

But it's just one, pretty common usage - the video shows more interesting examples, usable for DJs and producers. It's helpful when building DJing effects, as it allows to utterly mutilate / phase / beat-repeat / delay / etc. the high frequencies of a track, without affecting the bass and kick in any way. One of the limitations of classic effects is that they apply to the entire audio stream, so they can make the kick messy or otherwise cause the energy of the track to drop. Isolating the bass and leaving it untouched avoids this problem entirely.



You can download the Ableton Rack shown in this video here

ps. the sound quality is not the best one but I find this video quite handy :)

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Image-Line Drumaxx

There are only few percussion synthesizers available on the market. Most recognized freebies are MiniSpillage (Mac OSX only) and e-phonic Drumatic.
How about commercial stuff ? There's a whole pallette of D16's products - recreations of classic Roland drum machines and there's Sonic Charge MicroTonic (89 $), which a lot of producers seem to love.

2010 year seems to be a Drum / Percussion synths year. First Audio Damage released their new toy - Tatoo (79 $) and now we have another entry - Image-Line Drumaxx. It's a percussion modelling instrument which gives you total control over 16 physically modelled drums that can be routed to independent outputs for external effects processing. I didn't have enough time to fully explore it but it sounds very good and I love the workflow - was able to create interesting drums section very quick.

Best thing about it ? It's a quality product which can compete with other percussion synths but until 31th March 2010 it also offers amazing pricing model. I know it's February but so far it's the biggest bargain of the year :) You can pay what you think Drumaxx is worth with a minimum price set to 9 EUR / 13 $.

Previously, I was wondering: why do I need a drum / percussion synth if there are tons of drum samples ? First Ableton Collision (uses physical modeling technology to reproduce real-world instruments such as xylophones, marimbas and glockenspiels - it turned out to be a great instrument for these short blips, plucks we hear in Minimal / Tech House for example) changed my mind. Just like all of these percussion synths, it gives a lot of flexibility - which means a lot of new ideas and ... fun :) Grab the Drumaxx before the "promotion" is over.

ps. There are some bugs with Mac OSX version and Logic DAW so download demo and test it. More info here.

PRICE: minimum 9 EUR / 13 $ (until 31th March 2010)

More info: Image-Line Drumaxx

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Digital Illusions - Wusikstation soundset released

Digital Illusions - a soundset for Wusikstation V5 comes with 63 dreamy, warm, with a small touch of analogue feel, presets suited for all kind of music genres.
All presets are available as WusikPRST files - native Wusikstation's preset format.



Just like my other releases, Digital Illusions soundset is available at unbeatable "price" - just donate any amount you want (if you have some moral problems with it then 5 $ will make me happy) and the soundbank is yours. Donations are used to keep vstcafe.com and designasound.com websites alive (aye, and a little bit of beer :) ).
Please allow up to 24 hours for donation processing.

Don't forget to download and test free, demo soundbank (which contains 14 presets) as Digital Illusions requires some Wusik SoundSet files.


Each demo sound is produced by one instance of Wusikstation - no presets layering, no external effects used

More info: Digital Illusions - Wusikstation V5 Soundset

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Casio CZ-101 & Novation X-Station Free Samples

Xavier from www.plasticalien.com has released two sample packs. The first one contains 21 free Casio CZ-101 sounds, recorded in 24-bit, separated into bass, leads, pads and drums. The second has 30 Novation X-Station 24-bit sounds separated into bass, leads, pads and drums. Overall, that's more than 200 mb samples.

Download: plasticalien.com

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