Cranesong

Phoenix II is an update of Crane Song's suite of TDM plug-ins designed to emulate the unique properties of a magnetic tape machine. Phoenix II runs both NATIVE and DSP on Avid's PT 10 AAX format. Phoenix II uses 32 bit floating point math and has a lower noise floor than the original release.Designer Dave Hill has crafted this software with the same attention to detail he used to create the electronics for ATR Service's much heralded "Aria" discrete tape recorders.  His intimate knowledge of analog electronics, as well as decades of experience as a recording engineer has spawned a very useful, musical suite of plug-ins.  The Phoenix II process not only incorporates the nonlinear saturation characteristics created by magnetic tape itself, but also includes the interrelation of an analog tape recorder's record/reproduce electronics and equalization curves.  Phoenix II is a ground-up application derived from HEDD technology, and specifically engineered and optimized for Avid's PT 10 architecture.Phoenix II has five different tape-analog characteristics, The type is selected with a switch for easy comparison between the types, and the brightness is also selected with a switch.  Gold is the position where the color is approximately flat in frequency response, with Sapphire being a brighter, and Opal being a warmer tonality.  A level control determines the amount of the Phoenix II process integrated into the audio signal, and an input trim determines "how hard you hit the tape." Because the DSP process is level dependent, the input level trim control has been improved and an output trim control has been added.   The input trim can also be used to prevent clipping in the rare cases where clipping may be a problem and bringing up the level of a track for an increased amount of color.  This can be useful on material that is hitting close to or at digital zero and on material that has a low recorded level. When the input trim and output trim controls are at 0dB, (no change in gain) and no tape process is being added to the sound, the plug-in is bit accurate, meaning the output exactly matches the input. 

PHOENIX is a TDM plug-in suite for Pro Tools HD that is designed to put analog color into the digital domain by increasing apparent loudness without increasing gain (e.g., by modeling analog tape compression). The result is that added realism that is missing in many modeled synths, EQs and digital samplers. The five different "flavors" of PHOENIX can result in a much more musical and satisfying sound.Each one of the five different TDM plug-ins emulate different tape characteristics. Each one also incorporates a color change button allowing three choices to modify the process per plug-in. The Gold button is the position where the color is approximately flat in frequency response, with Sapphire being a bit brighter and Opal having a warmer tonality. A level control determines the amount of the PHOENIX process integrated into the audio signal, and an input trim determines "how hard you hit the tape." Because the DSP process is level dependent, reducing the input level will also cause a change in sound.The input trim can also be used to prevent clipping in the rare cases where clipping may be a problem. This can be useful on material that is hitting close to or at digital zero. When the input trim is at 0dB, (no change in gain) and no tape process is being added to the sound, the plug-in is bit accurate, meaning the output exactly matches the input.The PHOENIX suite contains five separate plug-ins:Luminescent is the most neutral sounding process of the five.Iridescent has a similar magnetic character, but with a fatter bottom and midrange. This plug-in is the most similar to the tape knob on HEDD-192.Radiant is characterized by a more aggressive compression curveDark Essence is even more aggressive. (The effect is a color with a wider frequency range--when used on a vocal Dark Essence can reduce sibilance problems by increasing the apparent loudness of the rest of thesignal.)Luster starts more gently than the other four processes, but becomes as aggressive as Dark Essence when the process is at full scale.

Peacock can be used on a stereo bus to create the classic vinyl sound.  On individual tracks it is also very useful in creating large fat sounds, smoothing of the harmonic content and making a nice smooth vintage sound on vocals and other instruments.There are three main controls; Harmonic, Dynamic and Color.  The Harmonic and Dynamic controls interact and control the level of the harmonic distortion.  The Color switch changes the character / interaction of the controls and sets the maximum amount of midrange / LF color and the HF compression characteristic.  The Dynamic control is the tricky one, what is does is time modulate the distortion components which are very frequency dependent due to the RIAA curve.  There are two main components that cause time modulation in a vinyl record.  The first is due to the cutter and the playback stylus not having the same shape, this is called tracing distortion the other is tracking distortion due to the playback systems miss-alignment and the inability to perfectly follow the grove in the record. The Dither control adds noise that is the spectrum of record noise.  It modulates some of the internal functions an adds dither to the audio path at a level for 16 bit ditheringColor = Gold is an extremely close match to the test material which is a record and the original wave file.  It has been optimized at 96K but will work fine at other sample rates. The Silver setting is lighter setting and coloring increases in the order of the settings; Silver, Gold, Rich, Fat, Deep.   Silver is also the brightest setting.  The amount of time modulation with the Dynamic control is level dependent and has a maximum range.  It is more of a matter of finding the control position that is optimum.   Pushing it to higher levels creates ugly sounds.  The code prevents this.