Crane Song Peacock User Manual

An AAX Plug-in

OPERATOR'S MANUAL

Version 1.05

December 7, 2013

LTD.

2117 East 5th Street

Superior, WI 54880 USA

tel: [phone]

fax: [phone]

www.cranesong.com

© 2013 Crane Song, LTD. Subject to change without notice. Printed in the U.S.A.

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 dithering

Color = 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 seting 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.

The plug-in can introduce large amounts of second harmonic distortion resulting in a large fat smooth sound.

Useage

The user must be aware that vinyl records will not record high level HF signals; the signal must be 20 db down from
the maximum level in order to record tones going up to 20 KHz. A full level signal at 10 KHz will result in lots of
distortion. Peacock will do the same thing, 0 dbfs at 10 KHz is a mass of ugly distortion and not proper operation.

When working with sources that have large HF content one must keep in mind that there is a maximum HF signal
level. HF compression will happen first, and then if it is pushed to far there will be some distortion. This is normally
not a problem with program material. However vocal sibilance can be a problem and may require de’ssing or a
reduction of the input signal level. Something like a tambourine that has a level of -3 dbfs can also end up with large
amounts of HF distortion if one is not careful. Load the Tambourine pre-set to look at the control settings. Harmonic
= 17, Dynamic = 16, Color = Silver. If the level is low it is possible to turn up the Harmonic control, but if the signal it
hot, turning up the control will quickly result in distortion due to the HF compression. Another solution for HF distor­tion is to back off the level of the HARMONIC control if it is not possible to change other factors.

The Harmonic control changes the level of the non time modulated harmonic effects and the HF compression. As the
Color control setting increases from Silver to Deep the level for HF compression reduces in amplitude and the amount
of the low midrange color increases. The LF cutoff of the midrange color also reduces in frequency as the Color
control setting increases from Silver to Deep. The how much of these effects are determined by the Harmonic
control.

The Dynamic control does two main things. The first is it time or phase modulatates the harmonic content. There is
a maximum amount of time modulation so turning the control to max does not always result in more of this effect, is
it more a matter of finding an optimum level. The time modulation does what the tracing and tracking distortions in
vinyl record playback does. On a sine wave test signal it will bring the second harmonic content forward in time with
respect to the main part of the signal. The second thing the control does is it adds some midrange second harmonic
color. As the Color control is advanced from Silver to Deep the maximum amount of the harmonic color increases
and the LF cutoff is reduced in frequency. The harmonic distortions in the Dynamic control are different then that of
the Harmonic control. As with the Harmonic control the midrange color increases as the Dynamic control it turned up
with the Color switch setting determining the maximum amount. The Dynamic control determines the level of the
combined midrange color and time modulation. The Dynamic control will soften transits due to the time modulation

There are several presets that can be used as staring places in selecting a sound.
Take the time to play with them; it is a helpful learning tool.

The three vinyl presets were made by careful matching to reference disks. For better understanding the Shibata
stylus has less tracing distortion and other advantages due to its shape as compared to the Elliptical stylus. This is
especially true on the inner record diameter where the HF distortion can become ugly. The other presets were
arrived at during the mixing of rock songs

Use it on tracks, stripes and the mix output, and on stereo vocal stripes. Something very interesting happens when
used with HEAT. Peacock will soften a sound but it can also act is a way that makes things sound like they were
done together, not overdubed.

CLICKING ON THE TEXT WILL CAUSE THE SWITCH TO UPDATE.

SILVER is the least colored, DEEP is the most colored

RA with Peacock

A useful sound using two plug-ins on a snare drum is use the RA plug-in with the Low Level = 95, Peak = 80, Hard­ness = 100. Follow this with Peacock; Color = Fat, Harmonic = 60, Dynamic = 67 for a starting place.