Subject:New Spectron Plugin from Izotope

Posted by: MacMoney

Date:6/27/2003 8:01:55 AM

http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/spectron/index.html

The VERY cool guys from Izotope have just released called Spectron check it out!

(From the Izotope web page)
Spectron uses a spectral engine to split audio into thousands of frequency bands, apply effects independently to each band, and resynthesize the audio to create entirely new sounds.

Spectron can provide delay effects, but it adds the ability to selectively delay, feedback and modulate specific ranges of frequencies. Or it can sound like a flanger or chorus, but with additional spectral complexity and richness. It can filter signals, but unlike an EQ it has the unique ability to morph, modulate and harmonically filter sounds.


If you're looking for something new, you've come to the right place. Spectron can be swirly, funky, electronic, organic, ambient, trippy or retro. It can be a delay, chorus, filter, flanger, panner, morpher -- but not like any you've ever heard before.

Download the demo

George Ware

Subject:RE: New Spectron Plugin from Izotope

Reply by: L25

Date:6/28/2003 9:39:20 AM

I downloaded the demo. Similar interface to Trash. I like the presets in spectron much better. The pans are very cool, not your normal pan, it pans certain elements within the loop. Very easy to make loops sound like something different altogether. It is a bit slow to load, there is a delay bringing up the spectron window, and I did seem to loose some sync/tempo if I had several tracks using it. I got a price reduction ($49.) email right after downloading it.

Subject:RE: New Spectron Plugin from Izotope

Reply by: dkistner

Date:6/28/2003 10:32:00 AM

Yeah, I jumped on that email offer and am now playing around with Spectron. About to pull it into Acid and see what happens.

Subject:RE: New Spectron Plugin from Izotope

Reply by: L25

Date:6/28/2003 10:43:08 AM

I would like to know what you think, I am thinking about gettiing it, the offer is good through july I wonder why it is half the price as Trash?

Subject:RE: New Spectron Plugin from Izotope

Reply by: dkistner

Date:6/28/2003 8:01:52 PM

This is a GORGEOUS plugin. You can spend hours and hours and hours playing with it. It is very, very powerful. At the demo price, you'd be crazy not to get it. Crazy.

That said, here's my initial forays with Spectron in Acid. This is one cpu-intensive plugin. I tried it on the master effects with about six 4.5-minute one-shot waves, and it was blowing way on up there. I had better luck with a midi file (running 9 minutes long)and an instance of Chainer with Vivaldi MX loaded up on all 16 channels to (quickly) play it; still, cpu was rocking upwards of 50-60% a good bit of the time. Bypass Spectron and it drops by between 10% and 30%, depending on what transformations Spectron is running. This in Preview mode, mind you. I've got a 2 gigahertz system with 512 RAM, and it doesn't take long to run it on up there. (Well, what do I expect with pieces this long!)

Anyway....

So it occurred to me that the best way to benefit from this plugin is to use it to put effects on shorter loops, render them, then do the loop thing in Acid (which is what Acid is so good for) per the usual. Or just work with loops, with Spectron in the effects chain. Spectron has tons of presets, and they are very interesting, and you can make some very, very interesting ones yourself just by dragging things around and listening to what happens. I don't know a lot about how to "mangle" sound and all that, since I'm pretty focused on classical music, but even I can start to visualize what to do and how to empower myself by playing with this plugin.

So then I thought I'd export some loops out of my piece, maybe 8 or 12 bars worth, and see how Spectron handled running on a few of them. But my "Export to Loops" button is greyed out (with midi and with waves) and I couldn't get it to turn on again. That's never happened to me before...but of course I haven't exported any loops in a long time. So I'm going to quit for the day and maybe tomorrow I'll work on this some more. I'll have to find my Acid loops CD so I'll have some loops to work with.

Not much in the way of feedback, I know, but I wanted to give you something.

IMO, no matter what, you'd be crazy not to get this plugin at the discount price. You will definitely find a way to use it, and you will not be sorry. That morph feature looks very advanced; read all about it. I don't know how Spectron compares to Trash, which I don't have, except they seem to have copied sections from the Trash help file and forgot to change the name from Trash to Spectron. But I love this plugin. Easy on the eyes (that gorgeous blue), easy to knock around in, quite educational, and I expect the learning curve won't be too, too high to get really good at doing things with it.

The cpu management thing is, of course, a strategy issue.

Subject:RE: New Spectron Plugin from Izotope

Reply by: Erik_from_iZotope

Date:6/28/2003 9:13:26 PM

Hi there,

Thanks for the review dkistner :-)

The Export to Loops thing is very strange - I don't think we can make that happen even if we wanted to. I'm going to guess there was something else going on, but if not, please send us an email to support@izotope.com.

Spectron vs. Trash - maybe comparison to other stuff is the best way to explain. Spectron is a sort of spectral sound design effect - some of the presets and sounds remind me of NI Spectral Delay and Waves Enigma (two effects I personally like). You can get very esoteric delay and modulation effects. Trash on the other hand is centered around modeling amps and distortion. It also has filters and delays, but they're modeled after old "trashy" stuff - tape delays, analog delays, lo-fi samplers, etc.

Hope that helps somewhat - if not (or if you have other questions) don't hesitate to email me at erik@izotope.com

Cheers,
Erik
iZotope, Inc.

Subject:RE: New Spectron Plugin from Izotope

Reply by: L25

Date:6/28/2003 9:44:04 PM

thanks diane for your feedback today, you've been busy ;^)

I have also been looking at the PSP 84 plug which is very good, I like delay/reverb effects. I emailed izotope to see if they might consider a 4th of july trash-spectron blow-out bundle.

never hurts to ask...so far no response

jeff

Subject:RE: New Spectron Plugin from Izotope

Reply by: MacMoney

Date:6/29/2003 12:04:03 AM

I picked up Spectron this morning
Loaded it after today's session.
THIS PLUG IS VERY COOL!
The demos do not show how Spectron really shines
The Pans, Morph, Filters, and Delay are very cool!

Hurry up and buy it before the guys at Izotope put down the pipe!

George ware

Just kidding about the pipe Erik

Subject:RE: New Spectron Plugin from Izotope

Reply by: dkistner

Date:6/29/2003 7:46:20 AM

Oh, yeah...yeah...yeah....

First, Erik, that Export Loops thing has nothing to do with Spectron. I notice if I pull in acidized loops, I get the Export Loops. If I just select a loop region in a one-shot and try to export it, it's greyed out. That's just me not understanding how it works!

I pulled in three loops off my Acid content CD this morning, deliberately picking loops that don't even go together at all. Then I soloed each track, putting an instance of Spectron on it and cycling through the presets until I found one that made the loop sound really interesting. After that, I listened to them all together and made adjustments in the Spectron presets until they sounded like they went together. Some interesting stuff, too!

I mean, take that simple Rapoon Promo 5 and try the presets. Wow!

Then I exported the loops and had the Spectron-transformed loops just like that.

Two things I notice: First, surprisingly, adding instances of Spectron does not seem to boost the cpu usage like I would have expected it would. I stayed at about 50% with all of this loaded.

Second, when Spectron is first loaded, or when it's brought into focus, the cpu shoots WAY up there. 100% in a lot of cases. (I've got a P4, so maybe that's part of it). But once it settles down, it drops back down into the 30% range...as long as I'm not trying to play the audio while I'm doing this. Then, when I start the audio playing, it's at around 40-60%. I can live with that.

I know a lot of the sound manglers are going to love the morphing capability. But what I'm most attracted to right now is the ability to pan and delay by specific frequency bands. I downloaded/listened to the demo mp3s on the Izotope site, and I was most impressed.

So I'm quite happy. And Spectron is kind of widening my mind about different compositional things I can try. Great stuff.

Subject:RE: New Spectron Plugin from Izotope

Reply by: dkistner

Date:6/29/2003 10:34:36 AM

Oh, by the way, I should mention that I've been having some HUGE problems with my system as a whole, and it looks like I'm going to have to bite the bullet and reinstall everything from square one. I hope I can remember how to update Acid, etc.

So my experiences with the very high cpu usage with Spectron may be higher than one might usually expect. Spectron is cpu intensive, but maybe not THAT cpu intensive!