Hi everyone - Just a home hobbyist here. I'm trouble shooting some problems I'm having now using an EMT 140 tacked onto the end of a delayed signal (the delay is Cubase's ModMachine).

I'm not sure yet which side of the aisle the problem lies, so I'm looking at both. I hope someone can help me out with a question on the EMT 140 side please. On the louder parts of the audio (lead vocal), I get a metallic 'kind of' overdrive-sounding tone. It doesn't sound exactly like digital distortion, but it is there.

The signal is delayed by 1/8T, and the EMT 140 is down around 1% mix, with no predelay. I noticed from my DAW metering that the loudest parts feed the EMT-140 at around -0.5 dBFS (the actual raw signal peaks at around - 10 dBFS). Is -0.5 dBFS enough to put the EMT 140 into distortion?

Or should I just focus on something else to figure out where that sound on the louder passages is coming from? (I should say also that the EMT 140 output meter is occasionally in the lower end of the red, but definitely never 'pinned'). Frequent Poster Posts: 3688 Joined: Fri Jan 10, 2003 12:00 am Location: San Antonio, TX USA. Wonks wrote:Can't you just lower the input signal and find out? Hi Wonks, thank you for the reply! I did in isolation, and it was fine, but it's the combination of ModMachine and EMT 140 that brings it out (and me to my knees). ModMachine in isolation is fine too.

Jun 10, 2013. Jamstix 3.6.5. And Jamstix 4.0. Absolute VST3. 418 Carrier Landings. Pixton Music claytonpixton.com shouldbefamous.com (my podcast). Most power-management-stuff was turned off from before - except for the 'Universal Serial Controllers' you mention. So I did as you said. I also turned off a.

SO I'm thinking I'm not being really efficient in trying to figure out what's going on, having spent literally hours trying to figure it out (lowered the ModMachine and/or the EMT 140 mix, change the output filtering on the delay, etc., etc.). I can make the bad sound go away, but only by lowering the delay mix to the point I hardly have any delay any more Frequent Poster Posts: 3688 Joined: Fri Jan 10, 2003 12:00 am Location: San Antonio, TX USA.

OK, just set the same thing up on my PC and yes, it's the signal going in too hot. Majesty 2 Fantasy Kingdom Sim Serial Number. Why not set up two FX channels, one for the delay and one for the EMT.

You can set the delay FX channel output to feed into the EMT FX bus, so that you can send some vocal to the delay (on fully wet), and you can then also send some vocal to the EMT and some delay signal to the EMT as well. Or else just stick a compressor or something with a level control in before the delay as an insert, and bring the level down by a few dB? Jedi Poster Posts: 4740 Joined: Wed May 28, 2003 11:00 pm Location: Reading, UK. Wonks wrote:OK, just set the same thing up on my PC and yes, it's the signal going in too hot.Thanks for checking, Mr.

As much as I am able to, I have become a slavish disciple worshipping at the feet (of the gainstaging goddess ), and have been giving myself small pats on the back for making modest progress in that regard. But I never considered a signal of less than 0 dBFS could be too hot for a plug-in! Some more details on what I'm trying to do: no EMT on the vocal, only on the delay. The vocal is routed to the delay/EMT, and sent dry to the main vocal sub-bus. In this setup, I am adjusting the ModMachine Mix% to give me more or less delay, values on the mix knob are around 30-40 or so. Wonks wrote:Why not set up two FX channels, one for the delay and one for the EMT. You can set the delay FX channel output to feed into the EMT FX bus, so that you can send some vocal to the delay (on fully wet), and you can then also send some vocal to the EMT and some delay signal to the EMT as well.

Or else just stick a compressor or something with a level control in before the delay as an insert, and bring the level down by a few dB? In your set up, which plug-in got overloaded by the. Bob Bickerton wrote:I'd set up the delay and reverb on different busses, send to delay buss and then send the delay to the reverb buss. Bob Yes sir, after I shut down the DAW early this AM and cried 96 tears I took some notes about what I'd try next.

Bhavaprakasha Nighantu Pdf Editor there. And that is exactly what I was thinking of! I can try Mr. Wonks gain reducer as the first insert on one or both to give me a better idea of where the problem lies.

Thank you, Bob! Frequent Poster Posts: 3688 Joined: Fri Jan 10, 2003 12:00 am Location: San Antonio, TX USA. You're overthinkng this way too much, and you're at risk of overcomplicating it now, too. Fact 1: standard sample peak meters on DAWs and elsewhere don't show intersample peaks and can easily under read by up to 3dB, depending on material. If you're seeing -0.5dBFS peaks going in the chances are it's clipping internally because. Fact 2: most plugins now use internal oversampling, so will quite probably overload if there are intersample peaks and it is designed to behave like the analogue original.

Fact 3: the EMT plugin is closely modelled on an analogue plate that was designed, like all pro-analogue gear, to operate wih a nominal 20dB headroom margin. Fact 4: If you hit a real plate with a +20VU signal it would sound pretty horrid too! The obvious and simple answer is just to back the FX chain levels off a bit -- no need to furthur complicate things with a compressor which will do the same thing anyway (while simultaneously messing up the decay tails) -- and it will sound fine. Crank the output level as necessary to restore the desired effects balance within the mix. There's really no need to have peaks above -6dBFS anywhere within a mix, ever, anywhere. As for the serial FX chain versus parallel bus configurations, the latter is the old school technique which is also more versatile and more efficient from a CPU load perspective.

I'd routinely do it with separate FX busses too because that's the way I think and was trained to work. But since most plugins have a wet/dry mix control these days, there's nothing wrong with just dropping the effects straight into a channel or group if that's what you want (and have the processing power to cope). Moderator Posts: 19759 Joined: Thu Jul 24, 2003 11:00 pm Location: Worcestershire, UK •. Hugh Robjohns wrote:Fact 1: standard sample peak meters on DAWs and elsewhere don't show intersample peaks and can easily under read by up to 3dB, depending on material. If you're seeing -0.5dBFS peaks going in the chances are it's clipping internally because.

Fact 2: most plugins now use internal oversampling, so will quite probably overload if there are intersample peaks and it is designed to behave like the analogue original.Thanks for the reminder about intersample peaks. That makes sense, and is a little embarassing that I didn't remember that. Hugh Robjohns wrote: The obvious and simple answer is just to back the FX chain levels off a bit -- no need to furthur complicate things with a compressor which will do the same thing anyway (while simultaneously messing up the decay tails) -- and it will sound fine. Crank the output level as necessary to restore the desired effects balance within the mix.

I was reading the recommendation for the compressor to be used as simply a gain reducer, i.e., with ratio 1:1, no makeup gain, etc. That wouldn't mess up tails, would it? In any case, I was going to see if the trim knob in the Cubase channel would do the same thing as what you suggested, backing off the level (don't want to mess with the fader too much because I have a send on that channel, and would almost certainly one day forget to set it to pre-fader). Hugh Robjohns wrote: There's really no need to have peaks above -6dBFS anywhere within a mix, ever, anywhere. Ever.THIS is something I have struggled with. I've gotten all my audio recorded down to peaks of -10 dBFS, or lower.

But my sub-buses, (e.g., 'Vocals' which have lead and background vox going into them, and each of those quite possibly have parallel compression, so there is a total of maybe 4 audio streams going into the overall 'Vocal' sub-bus). I have no idea how to keep those levels low. All those individual channels just add up!!

Of course I can do it by dragging my faders all the way down, but I am also trying to set things up so the faders are *somewhat* near the sweet spot, not way down at -40-50 dBFS just so the main sub-busses have lower signals. (Just kidding, you and the other guys are helping lots of course, I know I'll get there eventually. It's on my list!).

Hugh Robjohns wrote: As for the serial FX chain versus parallel bus configurations, the latter is the old school technique which is also more versatile and more efficient from a CPU load perspective. I'd routinely do it with separate FX busses too because that's the way I think and was trained to work. But since most plugins have a wet/dry mix control these days, there's nothing wrong with just dropping the effects straight into a channel or group if that's what you want (and have the processing power to cope). Thank you for that perspective, and for your kindly spending time and effort to help another poor slob trying to make some sounds they are reasonably happy with to share! Frequent Poster Posts: 3688 Joined: Fri Jan 10, 2003 12:00 am Location: San Antonio, TX USA. Update: The horrible overload sound wasn't caused by peak signal strengths as measured by the Cubase meters.

And it wasn't an EMT thing (problem present with it bypassed). The problem is entirely associated with ModMachine, Cubase's delay. In combination with a certain vocalization that just causes it kaniptchens. I looked at things 5 ways from Sunday tonight. After excluding the EMT, I turned down the input into ModMachine by 18 dBFS, no delay heard of course (and no bad sounds), and then gained it back up immediately after ModMachine - delay heard AND the horrible metallic sound.

The ModMachine's mix was only at 60 (out of 100). Then I realized it was only on the loud word 'MY' that the sound was heard. Other words, with even larger peak signals, were OK; and softer versions of 'MY' were OK also. The actual vocal itself peaks at about -12 dBFS, including the word 'MY'.

I looked at the word 'MY' on the waveform, and there really wasn't anything like a plosive I recognized. But, when I applied a fade in to that word, the problem went away. How weird is that! So I've got my vocal slap back delay, with a little EMT 140 on the back of the delayed signal, and I'm pretty happy now, except when I think of the frogging *hours* I spent trying to get to this point. Though, as always, the hints and suggestions from you guys helped connect some more neurons for me (though I do only have two, and they are connected by a spirochete ), so thanks again for everything. Frequent Poster Posts: 3688 Joined: Fri Jan 10, 2003 12:00 am Location: San Antonio, TX USA.

All contents copyright © SOS Publications Group and/or its licensors, 1985-2017. All rights reserved. The contents of this article are subject to worldwide copyright protection and reproduction in whole or part, whether mechanical or electronic, is expressly forbidden without the prior written consent of the Publishers. Great care has been taken to ensure accuracy in the preparation of this article but neither Sound On Sound Limited nor the publishers can be held responsible for its contents.

The views expressed are those of the contributors and not necessarily those of the publishers. Web site designed & maintained by PB Associates & SOS.

So here’s a fun thing that took me all of 10 seconds to learn – Send the output to another track (#2 shown here), recorded as audio and MIDI (on the original Jamstix track #3), then send the MIDI output from #3 to another (in this case Coyote WT/GM2 on Track #1), and play both back panned hard right and left, with additional MIDI coming from the live play. Have to admit – this was a LOT easier to learn quickly than when I was fiddling with 5 trying to learn it sufficiently for 2 months to do something like this.) Kind of wish had support for Jamstix (self-generating VST instruments don’t work well in ). But at least (working the other way around) works fine with, so getting those basic song templates in to be worked on is still very easy. And a minor thing, it took me a few more minutes to figure out how to open a multi-track correctly in Reaper. My initial instinct to drag-and-drop it into a track resulted in very odd looking squished MIDI stuck into a.

View ->Media Explorer What we really wanted was under View ->Media Explorer (which allows you to navigate to the desired MIDI (or whatever) file: Imports of multi-channel MIDI should look like this (allowing the natural splitting of channels into separate tracks – and synchronizing the tempo setting at the same time): Then it looks like we’d expect in a plain sequencer. Finding out that Reaper 4.14 (whether 32- or -bit version) works with Jamstix 3.30 (another latest release) on 64-bit, only completely when Run As Administrator is checked for Reaper. Without, Jamstix produced output, but was unable to load its own sound engine and stayed silent (though if routed to, you could hear the drums fine). Still evaluating the merits of running 32-bit DAW’s (shown below – more VSTi’s recognized): Versus 64-bit Reaper: In both cases, I’m testing sending a 2nd MIDI stream from Jamstix to drive the EZDrummer track (to use the EZD sound kits).

Reaper is available at Jamstix is available. History: I bought one of these to have more fun with a Nintendo Wii during,,, etc.: Lots of people stared at the back of the control unit and thought (Hey, it’s got! See right-side of unit photo below) But alas, no, it was for “future expansion” as a MIDI In (?more triggers?) Sowe wait for technology to finally catch up and listen to all the complaints about lack of cross-talk adjustment, velocity curves, gain adjustment. And then delivers it with their – street-priced around $130, it can handle 10 dual-zone triggers. Plus hi-hat pedal and dual-footswitch (for changing kits and patches and such).

With a handful of 1/8 to 1/4 stereo adapters (the little black thing next to the original drum plug), you convert the Logitech triggers into the right plug size for the standard Trigger iO MIDI unit. Out goes MIDI to what have you (or just use to your computer and play using the built in sound-card, if that’s what you have).

For Windows, you could use, or for Linux perhaps. I use both since there are great analog and digital kits in my keyboard arranger, but having real samples works well, too. Trigger iO also comes with a from which has a few nice sampled kits in it.

Anyway, with the Trigger iO you can adjust all the velocity curves and various settings to tune the rather stoic Logitech triggers into very playable surfaces, and get 2 things back out of your original purchase. Or an for about $300 that actually sounds decent and a lot more playable than a Pyle or ION kit (and still controls RockBand, Guitar Hero, Band Heroetc.).