background image

24

Gate/Duck

The Gate/Duck knob is a dual-purpose knob that allows you to either "duck" (dynam-

ically lower the level of the effected signal) while the original sound is above the 

setting of the Threshold knob, or, Gate the effected signal (dynamically increases the

volume of the effected signal) while the original signal is above the Threshold 

setting.

To make it easier to hear how this Gate/Duck works set the Pitch to 1200, Splice to

500, Delay to 500 and Recycle to 11 o’clock. This will create a repeating echo an

octave above the original signal that gets increasingly higher in pitch with each

repeat. 

Setting the Gate/Duck knob smack dab at 12 o’clock is the "off" position where no

Gate or Ducking will be employed. As you turn the knob clockwise you will begin to

add "Ducking" to the effected signal, which will 

decrease the level of the echoes as

long as the input signal is above the Threshold. The more you turn up the Ducking

the more you will decrease the level of the effected signal while the input is above

the Threshold setting. If you turn it all the way up the effect will totally disappear

while you are playing and as soon as the input signal drops below the Threshold the

echo effect will appear again. This is a really cool way to have the effect "move out

of the way" while you are playing and then reappear when you stop.

Turning the knob counter clockwise works in a manner inverse to the Duck. As you

crank the knob counter clockwise you will progressively 

lower the level of the effect

signal and turning it all the way counter clockwise will set the level of the effect 

signal to zero as long as the input signal is below the Threshold.

As the input signal moves above the Threshold the effect signal will reappear and

remain present as long as the input signal is above the Threshold. The effect sound

is "gated" based on the level and dynamic of the input signal. This too can be a 

really cool effect as you can be playing notes below the Threshold and creating these

swirly, echo wash effects that will only appear when you hit a loud note. 

Since the knob allows you to set the relative level of the effect signal from full on to

full off you can have the effect signal just drop by various amounts in the Duck mode

and in Gate mode you can set the effect to always be heard somewhat but when you

play louder the effect will come full on. There are a lot of creative possibilities for

sure. 

Lastly, under the Tweak menu you will find two additional controls: Attack and Decay

that are used to define how fast or slow the Gate/Duck action takes place. These are

discussed in detail under the "Tweak" section.

Summary of Contents for Crystallizer

Page 1: ......

Page 2: ...llizer 12 Real Time Processing RTAS or HTDM 12 Non Real Time Processing AudioSuite 13 Using Crystallizer Within Pro Tools 14 The Crystallizer Preset Library 14 Compare Button 15 Bypass 15 Using Parame...

Page 3: ...ontinued Pitch Offset 26 Splice Offset 26 Delay Offset 26 Attack 27 Release 27 Low Cut 27 High Cut 28 Summary 29 FINAL PAGE 30 Getting Help 30 The UltraFX Product Line 31 The UltraTools Product Line 3...

Page 4: ...am for letting us hi jack his wonderful collection of guitar pedals we ll return them soon we promise and for all the help and feedback along the way Wendy Letven for her amazing design work on the So...

Page 5: ...thm with a lot of feedback and delay that you could create these incredible Crystal Like echoes and shimmer ing effects that sounded absolutely incredible especially on guitar So a preset was created...

Page 6: ...eks that thirst for new ways to manipulate and mangle sound that are innovative unique and with sound quality that is in a class all its own While everyone and their grandmother is modeling older gear...

Page 7: ...stallizer CD into your computer s CD ROM drive and when the CD icon appears on your screen double click the Crystallizer installer program to start the process Follow any instructions included in the...

Page 8: ...er authorization So why should you bother with all this tedious registration stuff When the day comes that your pet boa constrictor swallows your iLok in the middle of a recording session and you NEED...

Page 9: ...is played and the slice of audio that is played back As the size of the slice increases so does the amount of delay between the original signal and the playback of the effected signal But this delay...

Page 10: ...the ceil ing To turn a knob down to the left counter clockwise click on the knob with the mouse and drag the cursor to the left or down towards the floor Mousing around in a circle doesn t really work...

Page 11: ...value by one and clicking once on lower button will decrease the value by one This is useful for tweaking a value by small steps Numerical Readouts Entering Values from the Keyboard For numerical read...

Page 12: ...Time Processing RTAS or HTDM As a real time plug in Crystallizer works a lot like a real hardware umm Crystallizer Whatever sound goes into Crystallizer comes out filtered and you can hear it as it is...

Page 13: ...ng the AudioSuite version of Crystallizer To do this first select the region of audio you d like to process from the Edit window of Pro Tools Then choose Crystallizer from the AudioSuite menu of Pro T...

Page 14: ...ate listening pleasure and for those who just can t wait we ve includ ed a bunch of carefully crafted creative cool presets with Crystallizer You might want to check these out as they not only provide...

Page 15: ...on Click on the compare light to toggle between the original preset and your current changes Bypass One of the more useful features on any plug in is the Bypass button Click on this to bypass the eff...

Page 16: ...to touch Please Note In auto touch mode the automation data you ve just recorded will be played back and any new control changes you make will be written over the older automation data To prevent thes...

Page 17: ...creating all sorts of wild and crazy effects Locking Crystallizer to Tempo and Down Beat One of the coolest features of Crystallizer is its ability to synchronize its sweep to the tempo BPM and downb...

Page 18: ...t the beginning of the session In order for tempo locking to be useful the down beats and tempo of your music needs to line up with the downbeats and tempo in your Pro Tools session If you ve recorded...

Page 19: ...r info about tempo maps and conductor tracks look at Chapter 21 of the Pro Tools 6 reference guide For info about Beat Detective see Chapter 22 and for info about the extremely useful tab to transient...

Page 20: ...o route the audio through Crystallizer Commit your effect to disk by using AudioSuite or by bouncing to disk 20 IMPORTANT Digidesign has a special low latency version of the Stream Manager driver for...

Page 21: ...oach may be slightly different than that of some other plug ins and we found this implementation to work best for Crystallizer Mix The Mix control is used to set the balance between the shifted sounds...

Page 22: ...true as you add more pitch shift Setting the Splice control to a high value of say 300ms or greater will result in a section of the input signal being grabbed and played back each 300ms and pitch shif...

Page 23: ...need to know that the setting of the Threshold defines when the Gate Duck action hap pens The Threshold control allows you to define a specific level as in loudness that the input must reach before t...

Page 24: ...again This is a really cool way to have the effect move out of the way while you are playing and then reappear when you stop Turning the knob counter clockwise works in a manner inverse to the Duck A...

Page 25: ...the midi clock Keep in mind that the Splice will be forced to restart at each downbeat based on the selected note length kind of like how oscillator sync works on a synth Tweak Button Pressing the Twe...

Page 26: ...tarts to shorten the right side splice length by the percentage shown in the numerical readout A setting of 25 indicates that the right side will have a splice length 25 shorter than the left side a s...

Page 27: ...nal is rapidly going above and below the Threshold setting the response of the Ducking or gating will be too slow to respond In this case you would need to lower speed up the Attack time so it can rea...

Page 28: ...of the knob is from 20 kiloHertz at the highest setting and to 500 Hertz at the lowest setting So as you turn the knob down or counter clockwise the frequency decreases and more of the high end of th...

Page 29: ...very kind of input signal The best way to learn how it works is to fire it up with a session filled with different types of sounds and try it on different tracks and with different settings Again you...

Page 30: ...ail us with the following info The product version and serial number The version number of your Pro Tools system and type of hardware e g Mix HD Digi 001 etc Your computer type and operating system ve...

Page 31: ...plain and simple Modeled after the warm sound of analog tape echoes FlangeThing A classic analog tape flanger with ultra smooth sound Reproduce analog flanging effects with the same kind of creative...

Page 32: ...nt to fix pitch without killing the performance PitchDoctor is the only option Speed Jaw dropping time compression expansion and pitch transposition that works incredibly well even on full mixes Wish...

Reviews: