Here are this weekend’s deals from 4Pockets.
- Chameleon Sampler – $12.99 to $6.99
- MeloVox Vocal Harmony – $14.99 to $9.99
- Vocal De-Esser – $9.99 to $6.99
- Drum Surgeon – $9.99 to $5.99
Chameleon Sampler
Chameleon is an AUv3 compatible sampler instrument plugin for your favourite DAW.
The program can run as a standalone app in order to record audio samples from the internal microphone or professional audio interface. It also supports incoming Inter-App Audio connections for sampling directly from other iOS applications, however it is primarily intended to be used as an AUv3 Instrument plugin for applications such as Cubasis, AUM, Auria, Meteor, Gargeband etc. The plugin can additionally be loaded as an AUv3 effect in order to record audio passing through it from other AUv3 Instrument sources, which makes it a very versatile and useful tool.
So what is a sampler? A sampler is a device that allows you to imitate other instruments with just a few short audio snippits. Although it comes with a library of presets it also allows you to create your own. You do this by recording multiple audio clips and mapping them to the notes on a MIDI keyboard and Chameleon does the rest using a sophisticated pitch shifting algorithm to fill in the blanks. Recorded samples can either be layered or mapped freely over a 7 octave range and saved as individual presets. Presets are then organised into custom categorised banks which can be exported and shared with others.
Just think, you can sample all your favourite synth sounds and carry them around on your iPhone/iPad without the inconvenience of lugging heavy gear around with you. Sample anything from musical instruments to vocal snippits, drum machines or ambient noises. The possibilities are endless.
Recording is incredible easy. Just create a New Patch and press record. Chameleon will wait for you to play a note before recording begins. Once recorded press the LEARN button and tap the note range on the virtual or MIDI keyboard to map the sample. Repeat this as many times as required, tweak the settings and save your patch. Additionally you can setup loop points with the ability to apply crossfade. If all that sounds too complicated, just press auto sample and let Chameleon do all the sampling for you.
Chameleon also has a quite sophisticated arpeggiator which allows you to create complex mixtures of notes and chords with glide, hold and re-triggering options.
On board reverb, digital delay and chorus effects are available to give your samples a more polished touch. We also include 4 touch pads for quickly dialing in on a sound or for easy effect automation. Configurable touch ADSR and modulation options are available too.
Chameleon can also import audio samples using iOS Files integration or you can make use of Copy / Paste to quickly drop one of more samples into a patch. You can also freely edit samples using the built in tools such as normalise, fade in, fade out, crop, clear options etc.
You can run Cameleon as a standalone app and map external MIDI keyboards (Bluetooth MIDI support also included) and perform audio sampling outside of your DAW. This is provided for convenience since you can’t record input when hosted as an AUv3 Instrument plugin.
MeloVox Vocal Harmony
MeloVox is an AUv3 vocal harmoniser designed to allow up to 5 simultaneous harmonies. You can either choose to have MeloVox automatically generate harmonies by listening to live input and creating harmonies based on the pitch of the incoming vocal, or you can use MIDI input to choose how to pitch the harmonies.
You can choose from one of two algorithms, one more suitable to vocals which includes formant preservation, and another more traditional option for instruments.
Unlike many pitch shifters, MeloVox is build on a phase vocoder capable of formant preservation, meaning much more natural sounding vocal harmonies. This is especially noticeable when pitching a vocal up an octave, which results in what is often called the Mickey Mouse effect. This is due to the fact that all frequencies are transposed up, along with the respective peaks in harmonics. This results in a sound which the vocal tract is incapable of producing, so it no longer sounds like a natural voice. MeloVox fixes this issue by preserving the formants.
MeloVox is capable of producing up to 5 additional harmonies on top of the original vocal, and how it does that is down to the control mode setting. There are 5 different modes to choose from including Auto Sense, Fixed Pitch and three MIDI controllable modes called Chords, Melody and Vocoder.
Auto Sense mode detects the frequency of the incoming vocal, and automatically harmonises using the specified key and scale. Fixed Pitch allows you to specify fixed offsets in a scale without the need to detect pitch. Chord and Melody modes use incoming MIDI data to precisely control the harmonies using MIDI notes from your master keyboard or DAW. And to top if off we have a traditional 12 band Vocoder which is incredibly easy to setup and use due to its internal carrier source.
MeloVox includes a build in noise gate to remove unwanted background noise that helps with pitch tracking, and a vocal doubler which adds a spacious stereo effect to any monophonic vocal. MeloVox also features a 10 Band EQ add a reverb. All effects can be applied to either the original vocal or just the harmonies.
A built in preset manager helps organize presets into categories using drag and drop, and the Set List can be created to provide quick real-time switching between presets and snapshots during a live session. You can even add your own acappella vocals to test out your presets as you create them.
Vocal De-Esser
De-Esser is an AUv3 Compatible plugin for your favourite DAW such as Cubasis, Auria, AUM, Meteor, BM3 (does not work as a standalone app).
This is actually a trio of effects all rolled into a single package which are ideally suited but not limited to voice recordings (De-Esser, a Vocal Doubler and a Noise Gate).
This De-Esser is a great tool for removing sibilance from your vocals. Sibilance is the harsh over emphasising of phonetics such as ‘ss’, ‘sh’, ‘ch’, ‘th’ etc. which tend to be made worse during the recording process. This plugin has two modes of operation, ‘standard’ and ‘multi-band’ which can be used to effectively remove this kind of problem.
The standard mode emulates the ducking of a volume control just like mixing engineers used to do in the good old days, but in this case uses a compressor driven by a filtered band of the input signal that contains the problematic frequencies. This is a common and effective method which has been tried and tested for many years.
The multi-band mode uses a similar filtering mechanism to isolate the effected frequency band and applies a compressor to just that range in isolation. This method gives much more pleasing and natural results as it retains the overall volume level and only effects the specified frequency range.
We also included a Vocal Doubler which simulates a multi-track vocal recording. It uses sophisticated techniques that eliminates the phase cancellation issues associated with layering vocals in this way. You have complete control over delay time, levels and stereo field placement.
Finally this package incorporates a Noise Gate, to remove unwanted background noise from your recording. Fully configurable threshold, attack, release and dB reduction settings are available.
A visual frequency display helps you quickly find and isolate the effected frequency ranges which can also be turned off to reduce CPU load. 4 different visual modes are available to help visualise issues. A siblance filter preview button lets you listen to the problematic frequencies in isolation and a limiter is available to make headroom for the vocal doubler.
Drum Surgeon
DrumSurgeon is an AUv3 plugin designed for use in your favourite DAW such as AUM, Cubasis or GarageBand etc.
Drum surgeon is a dynamics / transient processor specifically designed for fine tuning your drums. So your drum sounds are lacking punch and lost in the mix? This is where Drum Doctor can really help by allowing you to literally shape and boost your kit to break through the mix safetly and without clipping.
The attack or onset of a sound is known as its transient. By controlling the level, shape and duration of these sounds, you change the dynamics of a drum track to achieve that perfect tightness, while boosting them to give your kick the right punch and snare the right amount of bite.
Use the saturation to overdrive your mix prior to shaping. This can drastically change the character of some drum sounds at the filtering stage. The single LP/HP filtering knob lets you quickly find the tone that suits combined with the 8 band EQ to define your sound.
Finally the intensity knob allows you to control the level of dynamics applied to your mix. Automate this in real time when you want to relax or accentuate your drum track during your song.
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