"Distortion is your friend!" [H]

No, seriously: Try to add a little bit of saturation and/or distortion to your signal. Our samples are so clean that they can take a good bit of additional harmonics before things get really nasty.

If you are working with Cubase SX or Nuendo, you could experiment with Magneto, for example, or even the little ValveIt-plugin. Other options are PSP's Vintage Warmer, or Voxengo's Warmifier or TubeAmp, and quite a few more. For ProTools, I prefer CraneSong's Phoenix-plugin, which I used on several mixes that you can listen to on our Demo-site.

Shelving down the extreme treble of certain instruments may help to achieve you goal, too, like a soft shelving-EQ starting at 6 kHz, with an amount of -3 dB, for starters. For a real "old school"-sound I like to have a sharp, resonating shelving-EQ around 4 kHz, cutting everything above by 12 or more dB (... this is for your silent-movies soundtracks, though [;)] ...)

...I'm sure that other forum-members will give you more hints soon.

HTH,

@Inteleky said:

Any one have a good technique to make the sound of VSL have more of a 'matte' finish and less of a 'glossy' one? Perhaps using giga's built in filters, compressor, eq, VST, or gigapulse?

Right now the only effect I use is the large gigapulse hall. I'm trying to get it to sound throatier and dirtier. I'm using snare, timp, stings and horn. Does anyone have any insight they can share?

Thanks.

Here' a "backdoor solution" for you. Go to our new web site, www.soniccontrol.com where we have a GS3 forum specifically for GigaPulse, The forum is manned by Larry Seyer who created the Larry Seyer Reverb that comes with each GS3 and GigaPulse. Larry can give you some really excellent insights as he's a professional recording engineer with 9 Grammy's to his credit.

Ok, sorry, only several "Amadeus"-awards (the Grammy's Austrian equivalent) on my side, this makes me a less insightfull professional recording engineer, obviously! [:D]

Hmmm....Amadeus DOES have that ring of eternal history about it. Steeped in musical tradition, eternal strength, orchestral wisdom type award, it certainly sounds very important.

And a DAMN good name for an award.

Still, one day i hope to get a LUDWIG VAN B award, and then I'll really know i've made it!

Incidentally, Shostakovich was actually the first to receive the 'Lenin' award for music, a considerable accolade at the time in Russia , but he refused, insisting that Prokofiev should be the first. The authorities duly awarded Prokofiev the iniital award, and Shostakovich took the second. Dmitri Shostakovich was admired by all for this act, including several in the government of the time. He nearly lost the award however when he wrote and first performed his Eighth Symphony, because the authorities claimed it sounded 'too Western', but several powerful people in the government, and favoured intelligentsia insisted the great composer was entitled to have a 'weak moment' musically, and he not only kept his award, but continued to enjoy a relatively safe existence. Later, the government of the day, had a big change of heart, and encouraged the playing of the eighth, citing the composer's ability to write Western music, 'better than Westerners.' It was a time of uncertainty for intelligent people of creative and scientific pursuits, and although Shostakovich took his chances, his unhappiness stemmed in the main from personal demons rather than daily direct intimidation from the government.
Great composer, in testing times, who stuck to his craft and wrote music we can all admire and enjoy.


Regards to you all,

Alex.

[H]

@Dietz said:

"Distortion is your friend!" [H]

No, seriously: Try to add a little bit of saturation and/or distortion to your signal. Our samples are so clean that they can take a good bit of additional harmonics before things get really nasty.

If you are working with Cubase SX or Nuendo, you could experiment with Magneto, for example, or even the little ValveIt-plugin. Other options are PSP's Vintage Warmer, or Voxengo's Warmifier or TubeAmp, and quite a few more. For ProTools, I prefer CraneSong's Phoenix-plugin, which I used on several mixes that you can listen to on our Demo-site.

Hmm, plugins... Sound great to me, thank you for the advice everyone. Is this possible o do within gigastudio? I know this sounds pretty bad, but I mix directly in giga... [[:|]] Can compression help this process in any way? Thanks again for listening to my persistant questions!

The question is who you'd rather have tell you to use Magneto or Vintage Warmer - Larry or Dietz. [6]

@Nick Batzdorf said:

The question is who you'd rather have tell you to use Magneto or Vintage Warmer - Larry or Dietz. [6]

I'm sure this is meant to be humorous, I'm just not tracking with the humor. With all respect to Dietz, I'd talk with Larry because he had a signficant hand in developing GS3. So when you can talk to someone directly who had that much involvement, I think it's a good think to follow up and ask him.

I'm not trying to be obnoxious, Peter. Of course Larry's great - we all know that. And his drum library is as good as any sample library on the planet.

Dietz has been involved with VSL's development since early on, though, and having heard some of his work (for example the Kuno Schmidt [spelling?] demos on this site) I think he's at least equally qualified to comment on it.

My point was just that both guys are likely to say the same thing. The sound Inteleky is after isn't going to come from eq or convolution, it's going to come from grit.

And I'd also add my opinion that the GigaPulse medium hall is difficult for me. There are a lot of excellent impulses that come with G3, but that hall just sounds too brassy for my taste.

However, I don't think that's what Inteleky is talking about - although I could be wrong.

@Nick Batzdorf said:

I'm not trying to be obnoxious, Peter. Of course Larry's great - we all know that. And his drum library is as good as any sample library on the planet.

Dietz has been involved with VSL's development since early on, though, and having heard some of his work (for example the Kuno Schmidt [spelling?] demos on this site) I think he's at least equally qualified to comment on it.

My point was just that both guys are likely to say the same thing. The sound Inteleky is after isn't going to come from eq or convolution, it's going to come from grit.

And I'd also add my opinion that the GigaPulse medium hall is difficult for me. There are a lot of excellent impulses that come with G3, but that hall just sounds too brassy for my taste.

However, I don't think that's what Inteleky is talking about - although I could be wrong.

Since the question involved GigaPulse, I merely suggested that he contact someone who had a hand in developing the program. It doesn't have to be one person or the other, he could contact both and see what each says!

Fair enough.

Peace!

@Another User said:

The sound Inteleky is after isn't going to come from eq or convolution

That is, unless you use the convolution engine to produce grit, which you can do with some of those models.

@Dietz said:

Ok, sorry, only several "Amadeus"-awards (the Grammy's Austrian equivalent) on my side, this makes me a less insightfull professional recording engineer, obviously! [:D]

Fantastic! I never knew that about you. These are the kinds of things you should be publicizing. Again, my point with contacting Larry is that he had a hand in developing GS3 and created the Larry Seyer Reverb that comes with GS3 and GigaPulse. Part of the posed question involved GigaPulse, hence my reference. No slight intended, Dietz.

@Nick Batzdorf said:

Fair enough.

Peace!

Shalom.

@Dietz said:

Ok, sorry, only several "Amadeus"-awards (the Grammy's Austrian equivalent) on my side, this makes me a less insightfull professional recording engineer, obviously! [:D]

Fantastic! I never knew that about you. These are the kinds of things you should be publicizing.

Actually I admire the people who do get awards and don't mention it on every occasion... however surely it's a nice thing to have such a good reputation in background accompaning the work you are admired for anyways (I think Dietz hasn't recieved one for his work for VSL yet).

PolarBear

Nice, very specific advice Dietz - immediately useful & much appreciated! I like the Vintage Warmer a lot too and it's great value. The Sonalksis EQs have a nice character too, not too "clean".

It's kind of funny to "mess up" the VSL Sound but also fun, like being allowed to get your clothes dirty as kid....[:)]!

Peter, thanks for the tip about Larry, too......great for GS3 Users!

Nigel

If you have a UAD-1 effects card, you can try putting an 1176LN compressor in the chain to add some "crunch" to the audio. It may not be the type of distortion you want, however. I REALLY like it on drum tracks, so it may be useful for your snare/bassdrum tracks. The 1176LN is also available as hardware, in case you want to go that route.