TRASH RECIPES FOR BASS

Izotope TRASH RECIPES FOR BASS User Manual

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TrashTM Recipes for Keyboards

© 2004 iZotope, Inc. All rights reserved. iZotope, Ozone, Trash, and Spectron are either registered trademarks or trademarks of iZotope, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other product or company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Amplifiers, effects, and other audio products modeled, described, or compared in this document are mentioned for the sole purpose of identifying a product that was studied by iZotope and does not imply any cooperation or endorsement by the original manufacturer.

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Table of Contents

TRASH OVERVIEW ....................................................................................................................................... 4

Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 4

Using Trash................................................................................................................................ 4

SQUASH MODULE........................................................................................................................................ 7

Using the Squash Compressor................................................................................................ 7

Using the Squash Gate............................................................................................................. 8

Squash Meters........................................................................................................................... 9

Level Histograms ...................................................................................................................... 9

Squash Meter Options.............................................................................................................. 9

PREFILTER...................................................................................................................................................12

Adjusting Filters...................................................................................................................... 13

Selecting Filter Types............................................................................................................. 14

Envelope Filters ...................................................................................................................... 16

LFO Filters ............................................................................................................................... 17

TRASH MODULE..........................................................................................................................................18

Distortion Overview ................................................................................................................ 18

Trash Module Controls...........................................................................................................22

Trash Algorithm Reference.................................................................................................... 24

MULTIBAND MADNESS...............................................................................................................................28

Working with Multibands........................................................................................................ 28

Bypass a Band ........................................................................................................................ 28

Mute a Band............................................................................................................................. 28

Copy and Paste Settings Across Bands............................................................................... 29

Adjusting Controls in Other Bands....................................................................................... 29

Multiband Trash and Intermodulation Distortion................................................................. 29

BOX MODEL.................................................................................................................................................32

Box Model Controls:............................................................................................................... 32

Stepping Outside the Box...................................................................................................... 33

BUZZ MODULE.............................................................................................................................................35

Delay Types ............................................................................................................................. 35

Controls.................................................................................................................................... 36

TRASH RECIPES..........................................................................................................................................37

Recipe 1: Gimme Some Loving ............................................................................................. 37

Recipe 2: Whiter Shade..........................................................................................................37

Recipe 3: 2 AM at Caesar’s .................................................................................................... 37

Recipe 4: Whiter Shade..........................................................................................................37

Recipe 5: Herbie’s Fuzzy Wah ............................................................................................... 37

Recipe 6: Jarret’s Wah............................................................................................................ 38

Recipe 7: Chick’s Return........................................................................................................38

Recipe 8: Closer......................................................................................................................38

Recipe 9: Emulator.................................................................................................................. 38

Recipe 10: Bad Samples......................................................................................................... 38

Recipe 11, 12, 13: Radio Sampled......................................................................................... 38

Recipe 14: Sampled Tape Loop............................................................................................. 39

Recipe 15: Bad Breakup......................................................................................................... 39

Recipe 16: Hitting Metal.......................................................................................................... 39

Recipe 17: Microtronic............................................................................................................ 39

Recipe 18: Fat Resonator....................................................................................................... 39

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Recipe 19: Mellow Circuits..................................................................................................... 39

Recipe 20: Squishy Circuits................................................................................................... 40

Recipe 21: Cleanatronic .........................................................................................................40

Recipe 22: Dirty Circuits......................................................................................................... 40

Recipe 23: Notchatronic.........................................................................................................40

Recipe 24: Sweeping Notches............................................................................................... 40

Recipe 25: Craig’s Madness................................................................................................... 41

Recipe 26: Vibromatic............................................................................................................. 41

Recipe 27: Reverse Wah......................................................................................................... 41

Recipe 28: Ratsy A.................................................................................................................. 42

Recipe 29: Bass Tube Overdrive........................................................................................... 42

Recipe 30: One for the Road.................................................................................................. 42

CLOSING AND CONTACT ...........................................................................................................................43

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Trash Overview

Distortion might just be a single effect or algorithm, but to really get a good distorted sound requires a combinatio n of elements. We de signed Trash with this in mind, to provide you w ith all the tools you need to shape, compress, and distort your sound. It's important to understand distortion, of course, but the interaction with compressors and filters makes as much difference on the overall sound as which distortion effect you use.

Trash has six modules that each performs different functions. By combining all of the modules into one system, as opposed to individual plug-ins, Trash is able to process the entire signal chain at 64 bit precision: more dynamics, more accuracy and better Trash.

Introduction

First of all, why Trash Recipes for Keyboards? Sure, distortion on guitars, drums, bass…but keyboards?

Three words for you. “Gimme Some Loving”. Because a long time ago in a place far away…before soft synths, direct recording and physical modeling…keyboards were plugged into amps and played. There was a little distortion. OK, sometimes there was a lot of distortion. And from The Doors to The Animals to Deep Purple to The Spencer Davis Group – it was a beautiful thing.

Trash isn’t about “synthetic” sound. It’s when you’re looking for some organic, lifelike character for your keyboards. Tube distortion for that B3 synth. Funky filters and grit for those Clavinet patches. Fuzz and wah for that old Herbie Hancock sound. Distorted Rhodes when you’re feeling like Chick Corea. A little tape echo to for the final touch. That’s what Trash is all about.

Organic doesn’t need to mean old, though. That disembodied piano at the end of NIN’s Closer. Taking familiar sounds and putting a twist on them can create some great sounds. Kill drums. Mutate a piano. Trash a vibraphone. Take a horn part and degrade it into a lo-fi sampled loop.

And last but not least, Trash can make synthetic instruments sound natural. It’s tough to get a good real sound of a keyboard bass or guitar. We can’t help you strum the keys, but Trash loves it when you feed it guitars – real ones or not.

Using Trash

Trash is made up of six modules. Each performs a specific and important function in the generation of organic trash. By default, the order of the modules is as shown on the faceplate (and the order listed below) but you can change the order by clicking on the Graph button.

There are some practical advantages to integrating all of the modules into o ne plug -in. Most importantly, everything is processed at 64-bits. Chaining individual plug-ins together can’t provide that level of accuracy and dynamic range. As you start using Trash, you’ll recognize other benefits, such as the ability to save entire setups in one preset, selectively load and combine presets from different modules, and step back through a History (Undo) list that encompasses the entire system.

Squash: The Squash module provides compression/limiting and gating. Keeping in mind that most distortion is very level dependent (i.e. the louder the signal the more it is distorted), the Squash module can help control the peaks and even out your distortion. In addition, it's

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not unreasonable to be boosting your input >30 dB or more in Trash to get a strongly clipped signal. This also means that your noise floor is boosted 30 dB. And distorted noise does not sound very good. So the Squash module also serves as a noise gate to cut your noise floor down before gain and distortion is applied.

Prefilter: Since louder signals are distorted more heavily, shaping the frequencies of your sound prior to distortion is an important factor in getting a good distorted tone. Boost the highs with a filter, and those highs will distort before the mids and lows. Looking for a heavily distorted Marshall sound? Cut the mids to avoid distortion and muddiness in that region

. And in addition to fixed frequency filtering, the Prefilter module also allows you to sweep filters for auto-wah and envelope filter effects.

Trash: This is the heart of the distortion machine. A whole lot of waveform distorting algorithms to provide everything from tube saturation to rectified octave effects. But Trash goes beyond simple "single distortion". You can chain two distortions together to model the saturation of a 12AX7 preamp tube going into a 6L6 power amp tube

. Or, you can split the

signal into bands of frequencies and apply different distortions to different ranges.

Postfilter: Distortion generates additional frequencies of audio. Put in a sine wave and distort it, and out comes a whole bunch of additional frequencies and harmonics. Some of these you might want, others you might want to get rid of. Therefore, Trash provides a postfilter module to roll off harmonic distortion and shape the distorted sound to the get tone you want.

Box Model: It turns out that one of the best "postfilters" for distorted signals is a speaker/cabinet model. With a limited frequency range (most guitar amps rolloff around 5 kHz or so) they provide natural control of harsh upper frequencies. They also provide a smearing effect to smooth out harsh clipping and resonances and provide a natural decay. It's almost like distortion and amps were made for each other. Funny how that works out.

Buzz: OK, this is just a little icing on the Trash cake. But if you really want to go to the Fillmore, you’ve got to bring a delay for your distorted Rhodes. And to really do it right, you’ll need a special type of de lay. Chick Corea didn’t ha ve the luxury of some digital d elay plug-in. He used a tape delay that actually recorded his playing in realtime and played it back a fraction of a second later. A comp lete pain in the neck. Tapes wear out. Tubes burn out. The whole delay unit was big and bulky. But it had a sound that was completely unique.

So those are the steps in the chain. Control the dynamics, prefilter to boost the frequencies you want to Trash, distort it, postfilter and/or box model it to get a natural rolloff for the distortion, and optionally add a little echo for effect. There are a lot of options at each step of the way, but in principle that's what it all comes down to.

Now just to mention it, you don't have to follow that order. Click the Graph button in Trash and you can reorder the modules however you want. Sometimes you might want to put a wah (prefilter) after the distortion. Sometimes you might want to put a compressor after the distortion to serve as a limiter, as opposed to leveling the signal going into the distortion.

The cool kids call this "scooping the mids.” We're just geeks with guitars, though.

Tubes used in Fender amps

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So with that quick overview of the system, let's get into the individual modules.

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Squash Module

If you've got Ozone (and we hope you do...) this module is already familiar to you. It's a dynamics module, with compressor and gate functions. In the simplest sense, sound comes in and you can squash the high peaks or the low level noise, or both.

Why would you want to squash the peaks? Well, distortion distorts the peaks. Uncompressed, your level is probably pretty dynamic. Some high peaks, some medium levels, etc. The high levels will clip and the medium level will be clean – which could be exactly what you want for that "just clipping" sound. But in other cases, the variation from distorted to clean while you play isn't what you want, and this is where you can level it all off to give solid continuous distortion. A compressor can make everything becomes more or less the same level, so everything will be more or less distorted the same amount.

Using the Squash Compressor

The compressor sliders let you fine tune this "peak level" control.

Threshold: The compressor thre shold is the level at wh ich the compressor kicks in. So with a threshold of -10.5, this means that when the signal reaches or exceeds -10.5 dB the compressor will start working to compress it down.

Ratio: The ratio is "how much" the compressor turns it down. A ratio of 2, or 2 to 1, means that for every 2 dB above the threshold, the compressor will turn it down so that the output is only 1 dB above the threshold. So if you hit a note at -12.5 dB, with a threshold of -10.5 and a ratio of 2 the output will be only -11.5 dB.

So, higher ratios mean more "squashing" of the sound. At very high ratios the compressor

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can provide a sort of "limiter" effect, e.g. a ratio of 30 means that even if the input exceeds the threshold by 30 dB, the output will only be 1 dB higher.

To go one step further, we can also tell the compressor how quickly to turn the volume up and down with the attack and release controls.

Attack: The attack is the time in milliseconds that the compressor should wait before kicking in. A slower (higher) attack time means "wait longer before turning down the volume". So with a slow attack time, short peaks will pass through without being compressed. With a fast time, everything - even the initial fast peaks - will be compressed.

Release: The release time is the time in milliseconds that the compressor should keep turning down the sound before returning to normal. In other words, a peak comes through and the compressor kicks in and turns it down. When the peak is over, how long should the compressor wait before turning the signal back up? The answer is the release time. Slow (high) release times keep the level turned down longer even after the input signal has come down in level. So for a sustain effect, a long release time will keep the compressor working even after the natural sustain has dropped in level.

Gain: The last slider re lated to compre ssion is the band gain slider. Onc e you've compres sed or turned down the peaks of the signal, you can then turn up the output signal. The band gain allows you to do this - control the peaks then "make up" the gain to bring the overall signal back up to a strong level.

Bonus Tip: Trash has a preset manager that lets you selectively load and combine preset from different modules. For example, you can select to load just the Squash settings from a preset into your current settings. For more information on this check out the electronic help file that comes with Trash.

Using the Squash Gate

If you understand the compressor, the gate is very similar in concept but reversed. Basically, where the compressor lets you turn down sound that goes above a threshold, the gate allows you to turn down sound that drops below a threshold.

This is useful for tu rning down t he noise. Ba sically, at some po int the gu itar level die s away, leaving you in some cases with electrical or other noise. What you want to do is have the gate turn down the noise at this point. By setting the gate threshold, you're specifying that point. The ratio then tells the gate how aggressively to turn down the noise, and the attack and release control the timing of "turning it down" as with the compressor.

Setting a gate with a guitar (or any instrument for that matter) can be tricky if you don't have a good clean signal to begin with. It makes sense that if the guitar and the noise are at the same level, you can't turn down one with a gate without turning down the other. So the threshold starts to become a tradeoff of how much noise you can tolerate vs. how much you want to turn down the natural decay of the guitar. No easy rules here, just experiment.

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Squash Meters

Trash provides three types of meters for viewing the dynamics in the Squash module.

You can set options for these meters by right clicking on any of these dynamics meters.

Level Histograms

Level histograms provide a view of the audio level as a function of time.

As Trash processes audio, it calcula tes the leve l and displays it on the le vel histogram. Unlike a standard level meter, the level histogram provides a view of the history of the level over time. The height of the histogram represents the high and low levels of the audio, while the width of the bar indicates the most frequent levels. In the example above, most of the time the level of the audio was around -32 dB, although in a few cases the level was as high as -14 dB or so.

This meter is a powerful tool for applying dynamics. In the case above, we could apply some limiting or compression around -14 dB to bring down the edges of the top levels.

You can zoom in on the level histogram by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking on the meter. Ctrl+left click zooms in the meter, while Ctrl+right click zooms back out.

Reduction Meters

The reduction meter provides you with a readout of how much the dynamics is changing the level of the signal. You can set this to display the amount of compression and/or the amount of gating by right clicking on the meter.

In the screen above, the compressor at that point in time is compressing

or reducing the level of the input signal by 4.2 dB.

Curve Level Meter

The meter on the far right in the screenshot above is a traditional dynamics curve, where the x or horizontal axis is the signal going into the dynamics module, and the y or vertical axis is the signal coming out. Flatter compression curves means the signal is being flattened (compressed) more.

Squash Meter Options

Right click on the Squash Meters to bring up the options dialog below:

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Squash Meter Options

Enable histogram Turns on or off the level histogram meter

Enable gain reduction meter Turns on or off the gain reduction meter

Source

Sets the source for the gain reduction meter. "All" will

show the amount of reduction being applied by either the gate or compressor stage. "Comp" displays the amount that the compressor is reducing, while "Gate" will only display the reduction caused by the gate stage.

Show peak hold

Turns on or off the peak hold for the gain reduction

Peak hold time Allows you to set a peak hold time for the peaks of the gain

reduction meter

Enable curve level meter Allows you to turn on or off the dynamics curve level meter

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Bonus Tip:

As you make adjustments, Trash remembers what you've done and keeps it in a History list. Click the History button and you can go back any number of steps to a previous sound.

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Prefilter

As we mentioned in the introduction, prefiltering can make all the difference in getting a good distorted tone. Whichever frequencies are the loudest are the ones that will be distorted the most. Prefiltering gives you the control over the tone.

As an example, the plot below is the tone stack or prefiltering of a Fender amp. As an "EQ" setting this is pretty extreme - almost 20 dB of difference between the highs and the mids. Why the extreme range? First of all, nothing cuts through a crowded bar like some good high end distortion. Second, the middle frequencies, when distorted, can sound muddy. Cutting them before distorting lets them retain some cleanliness (?) yet still give the bite of high end distortion.

Other amplifiers show similar curves, with Marshalls having more "thud" around 100 Hz, and Vox shifting the dip up slightly for less "harshness" in the 1000 Hz region and less treble (compared to a Fender amp) in the high regions.

If you're interested in comparing the tone of different amps, check out the Tone Stack Calculator from

http://www.duncanamps.com/tsc/.

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Adjusting Filters

So let's shape some tone. Activate the Prefilter module and you'll see three circles on a spectrum.

Each of the circles represents a filter band. You can select them, drag them to other frequencies or gains, and adjust parameters such as width and resonance.

The Prefilter module has three circles or bands. You can grab a circle and move it up or down to change the gain, or left/right to change the frequency.

Some filters have horizontal handles on them that change the width of the filter, as shown below:

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Other filter types have vertical handles that change the feedback or resonance of the filter:

A couple tips on setting the filters:

1) Once selected, you can move a filter with the arrow keys on the keyboard.

2) If you hold down the shift key, the filter will be constrained to only move vertically or horizontally - whichever direction you initially move with the mouse.

Selecting Filter Types

By default, a low pass, notch and high pass filter are loaded. This lets you set a wide range of "tone shapes" by controlling the end points with the high/low pass filters and any cut in the mids with the notch filter.

However, you can select filters to be different types - different sounds, capabilities, etc. Select any of the filter bands (circles), and click the button in the upper left corner of the touchscreen that says "Sele c t ...". This brings up a list o f filt er types that you can us e , a ll o f which have slightly different sounds.

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As you explore other filters, you'll see that the spectrum is dimmed on the right side for some of the filter types. This indicates that this filter is modeled after a type that doesn't support filtering at those higher frequencies - the shaded area represents the highest point that the filter will reach.

Of course, all of the filters serve the same function - to boost or cut frequencies. How they go about doing it, however, results in different sounds and capabilities. For example:

Classic H Shelf and L Shelf: These are "clean" sounding shelf filters that let you control the cutoff frequency and gain for the ends of the spectrum -- very useful for setting extreme boosts and "shelves" or for mimicking the "tone control" of pedals and amps.

Synth Low Pass filters: These are modeled after synth and envelope controlled filters to provide "fruity" sounding overtones, such as those found in Roland 303s or analog synths.

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TalkBox filters: These filters accent the formant frequencies of different vocal sounds.

Envelope Filters

Just in case all the different filter types weren't enough...you can also trigger them to sweep around. They can be triggered by an envelope or level of the signal, like an "auto-wah", or triggered by a slowly moving oscillator or LFO. And since you have three filters, you can even have three different types moving in three different directions.

But for now, let's start simple. Select a filter, and you'll see options in the upper portion of the screen for envelope or LFO triggering.

Select the envelope trigger type and additional envelope trigger controls appear.

The threshold is the level at whic h the filter is triggered. Any level above the threshold will cause the filter to begin sweeping. Note that when playing your audio, a small level meter appears above the Threshold control to help you set an appropriate trigger point - typically triggering just below the peaks for an "auto-wah" sound.

The attack sets the time that it takes for the filter to move to its "target position" after the threshold is triggered, and the release sets the amount of time it takes to return to the original position after the level drops back down below the threshold.

The part of setting sweeping filters is the part that's the most fun - setting the target or destination for the filter when triggered.

To do this, you'll note that when you select a filter and set it to be envelope triggered an additional white circle appears. Select that circle and you can set and adjust the target filter point.

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Your target can be set to a higher frequency, higher level, higher resonance -- you can sweep or morph any filter parameter.

LFO Filters

Instead of triggering off the envelope of level of the signal, you can alternatively have a sine wave or other signal automatically sweep the filters.

To set an LFO filter, just select the filter band/circle you want to sweep, and select the LFO option for that filter.

The Period is the time in milliseconds it will take for the filter to sweep from starting point to ending point and then back to starting point. You can enter this period directly with the slider, or click the Tap Tempo button at the speed you want the filter to oscillate.

The shape button lets you select between different oscillator shapes. A sine wave (as shown above) will smoothly transition between end points, while a sawtooth (shown below) will rise smoothly from the start point to the end point, but then abruptly jump back to the starting point.

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Trash Module

So at this point we can use the Squash module to level out the signal, and the Prefilter module to accentuate frequency ranges. Which brings us to the reason for all of this in the first place: to trash stuff.

Distortion Overview

Most distortion is actually pretty simple in concept. You have a waveform (say, a sine wave) and you clip or chop off the peaks of it.

original sine wave hard clipped sine wave

Clipping the audio creates additional harmonics, as you can see in the spectrum below. Where the original sine wave was just a single frequency at 200 Hz, we now have harmonics at 600 Hz, 1000 Hz, etc.

And as we clip the sine wave even more, it starts to resemble a square wave, with a corresponding increase in harmonics.

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This is what we refer to as "hard symmetric c lipping", similar to what you would find in a fuzz box that uses silicon transistors.

We don't have to clip the peaks in such a hard or abrupt way, though. Instead, we can gently roll off the peaks when they exceed a clipping threshold, as shown below.

original sine wave smooth clipped sine wave

This also creates harmonics or "harmonic distortion", but with smooth clipping the level of the harmonics drops off more quickly at higher frequencies.

This is what call symmetrical soft clipping, and is similar to the sound created by fuzz boxes that use germanium transistors.

We don't have to chop off the tops and bottoms of the sine wave equally, though. We could use "asymmetric" clipping, where either the positive or negative cycle is clipped more than the other side (as shown below)

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This creates harmonics as well. The difference here is that even harmonics are being created, in addition to the odd harmonics we saw with symmetric clipping.

For our 200 Hz sine wave, we now have a 400 Hz harmonic (even), then a 600 Hz harmonic (odd), then an 800 Hz harmonic (even) - continuing up as integer multiples of the original sine wave.

This is asymmetric dis tortion, wh ich is the kind of distortion exhibited by tubes.

There are a number of reasons (or at least reasons to debate) why tubes are considered better sounding than transistors. The "harmonic" reason is that the even harmonics created by tubes (or any asymmetric d istortion) are roug hly octave multiples of the original input. An even harmonic of 200 Hz is 400 Hz. Since 200 and 400 Hz are roughly octaves of each other, even harmonics sound "musical" when combined.

At the same time, whether or not tubes sound good in hi-fi power amplifiers (which have extremely low distortion anyhow) is a very different debate from whether tubes sound good in distorted guitar amplifiers. What sounds 'good' in a guitar amp depends on what type of sound you're trying to get. If you want the brassy/reedy bite of someone like Dimebag Darrel from Pantera, you absolutely need odd harmonic transistor distortion. If you want the sound of an Ibanez Tube Screamer, ironically, you want odd harmonic transistor distortion. Of course, if you want a melodic "singing" clean blues guitar tone, then you do want those octave (even) harmonics you get from the tube distortion algorithms.

Another point to mention is that asymmetric clipping creates both even and odd order harmonics. Symmetric clipping only creates odd order harmonics. The overall number of additional harmonics created by asymmetric distortion is greater.

The point is that whe n it comes to distortio n, transistors and tubes all have their place. Even harmonics provide octave-like tones and odd harmonics provide edge. For soft/warm saturation a tube model sounds great. For heavy distortion you might want to put a symmetric transistor distortion in front of it, though.

Important Note: When browsing through distortion algorithms, keep the level turned down. Different algorithms distort the sound in very different ways, which can

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sometimes cause the level to jump between different algorithms. Intermodulation Distortion

With a single sine wave, distortion is easy to see in terms of harmonics and easy to control. Unfortunately, another type of distortion called "intermodulation distortion" comes into play as soon as soon as a signal with anything but a single frequency component is distorted (that would be anything but a single simple sine wave...)

Consider two tones - C (523 Hz) and E (659 Hz). Reasonable notes to play together. How would they sound distorted, though? Intermodulation distortion creates frequencies that are the sum and difference of the original tones - specifically 1182 Hz (somewhere between D and D#...) and 136 Hz (somewhere between C and C#). Not a well tempered combination of

notes.

So that's the problem - how to create nice harmonic distortion while minimizing intermodulation distortion. It's the reason that a guitarist might say of a pedal "yeah, it's OK for solo work but not for chords...". What they're really saying is that the harmonic d istortion is good for simple frequencies, but intermodulation distortion is too high for anything more complex.

Those are the basics of distortion, but there are other differences that make the difference between "simple distortion" and real modeled distortion. A couple examples:

• Overload Characteristics - how the tube or transistor behaves after it's been

overloaded. As one example, Fender amps are designed to be able to handle large bursts of input level...but only for a short moment of time. If you continue to feed it high gain it will actually sag and drop in level and distortion.

• Different stages of clipping. Our simple sine wave examples had a single "clipping"

point. In reality, there can be several stages of clipping as the circuit that we're emulating passes through different stages of overload. Or in the case of a triode tube, the distortion is a continuous and gradual effect, without any real definied clipping "point" at all.

• Tradeoffs between harmonic distortion and intermodulation distortion. You have to

have both, but there are many different ways to control how much of each.

So when your other guitarist asks why your Trash tracks sound so much more realistic than his Amp Tube 2000 Modeler, you can explain to him some of the reasons why.

Jon Lord of Deep Purple played a lot of very distorted parts in fifths, similar to a guitarist’s power chord. Take your standard A-E bar chord. A is 440 Hz, E is 659 Hz. These frequencies work well together, because they are separated by a ratio of 3/2. Even and odd harmonic distortion from one note tends to fall on the harmonics of another note. Even better, power chords can tolerate intermodulation distortion pretty well. The sum of 440 and 659 is 1100 Hz (C# above - not a bad frequency for a major chord). And the difference is 219 Hz - an octave below 440: a rare case where harmonic as well as intermodulat ion distortion creates tones in reasonably nice places.

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Bonus Tip:

When in the Prefilter or Postfilter modules, hold down the Alt key and you'll get a "solo" filter. This lets you h ighlight and loc ate frequencie s before actually c hanging the setup of

your filters.

Trash Module Controls

Taking a minute to look over the controls on the Trash module screen:

Input Gain: the gain going into the distortion module. More input gain typically means more trash.

Overdrive: For most distortion modules, the amount of distortion. Works in combination with the Input Gain to overdrive and distort the audio.

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Mix: Lets you control the mix of distorted sound (100) and unprocessed original sound (0).

Output Gain: If you've cranked up the input gain and/or overdrive, the output gain lets you

turn down the level after it's been distorted.

Character: Some distortion algorithms have additional parameters. For these algorithms, the Character slider becomes enabled to allow you to further customize the trashing. Trash Algorithms

The most interesting parts of the Trash module are the trash algorithms. You can select from distortion, overdrive, retro fuzz and more.

Each algorithm has a brief description. For example, the Drive-Tube Drainer is a 12AX7 tube simulation. And you know that this means that it's probably asymmetric5 (even and odd harmonics) and has some type of soft clipping or distortion (which it does)

Bonus Tip: Here's an easy way to remember even/odd/asymmetric/symmetric. Symmetric clipping is even on both sides and asymmetric clipping is uneven. Now just remember that what you want to think is wrong. ☺ Asymmetric (uneven) gives even harmonics and symmetric (even) gives odd harmonics. Dual Stage Distortion

One thing that makes Trash significantly different than most distortion or so called "amp sims" is that it allows you to chain two distortions together. It's the difference between sounding like a distortion pedal or plug-in and sounding like an actual amp with a complex rich sounding distortion.

In a push-pull amp the tubes are setup to give symmetric gain, but we're just talking about individual tubes themselves.

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For example, most gu itar amps have mult iple stages of distortion and saturation. A preamp tube, often a 12AX7, provides a first stage of saturation. This is later followed by power tube saturation (6L6, EL34...). Preamp distortion has a buzzy sound to it while po wer tubes have a "crunch". Like real amps, Trash lets you use them together. You can even create hybrid transistor/tube amps, or model stomp boxes that combine fuzz with other effects (like a Fuzz Face, which we'll build later).

Setting up dual stage distortion is as easy as selecting the tab labeled "Second" on the Trash module. This brings up a second page of controls, representing a second stage of distortion, which you can set independently of the first page.

So, for example, let's say you wanted to create a generic Marshall amp. The preamp tube is usually a ECC83 (12AX7), which matches up to our Tube Drainer algorithm in Trash. So you'd put that as the first distortion.

For the second distortion, use the "Nasty Boy" algorithm. This is a model of an EL34 pentode tube, which is used in many M arshall amps for the power tube.

Keep in mind that the output gain for the first (preamp) distortion is going to be feeding the input of the output (power amp) distortion. Using the gain controls on the two distortion pages, you can adjust for preamp saturation and power amp saturation. And FWIW, most of the "crunch" you hear from distorted guitars is attributable to power amp saturation. It's good to trash the signal a little bit with the preamp stage, but leave enough dynamics and clean signal going through the first (preamp) distortion for the power amp stage to trash in the second stage.

And as we said before, the prefiltering and postfiltering/box model makes all the differe nce in the tone of your distortion. One of the Allston or Worcester box models complements the Marshall distortion, and a little "upside down" EQ curve as shown below for the prefilter stays true to form as well.

Trash Algorithm Reference

Trash has a lot of algorithms, ranging from traditional distortions to iZotope creations to special effects (uncontrolled static, the intermittent crackle of a poor electrical connection,

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etc.). Descriptions of some of them are provided below to help you in choosing and combining them:

Cracked Actor and Actress6: Distortion that compresses, then peaks, then falls off in a very nonlinear way (like an amp). Tube like-in principle (they started with a tube model) but we tweaked them until we had something even more sp ecial. Very sensitive to in put gain, but if you use a compressor to level them off then set the drive just right they can be very useful.

Distropia and Ten Inch Spike: Soft clip algorithms similar to the effect circuits found in many stomp boxes. As such, these two make great components for stomp boxes simulations, especially if you chain them with some tube models.

Elastic Trash and Rubber Hammer: Really interesting overload properties with squishy "rubber" sounds. We're not aware of this type of algorithm used in any stomp boxes or amps so we don't have an example to give you for comparison. Like the Cracked Actor/Actress algorithms, these can sound great with the right levels.

Harmonic Control, Slight Twist, Little Popper: These are exciter algorithms, which can either add harmonics or expand the signal. They can be good by themselves in small doses as exciters, or put before other distortion algorithms as "drivers".

Bonus Tip: When setting controls, a few shortcuts for you:

1) To enter numeric values directly, clic k the number lab el of the slider , enter the value you want and press the Enter key

2) Select the control with the mouse (or Tab key to it) and use the arrow keys to adjust it. Use Shift+arrow keys to adjust in larger increments. Use PgUP and PgDown to adjust in even larger increments. And use Shift+PgUp or Shift+PgDown to move in even even larger increments.

3) Our favorite one: just hold your wheel mouse over a slider and roll the wheel to adjust the slider.

4) Double click a slider to set it back to zero.

Amp Drainer: This is a model of a triode tube, commonly us ed in power amps. Goo d by itself or used after other distortions.

Amperical: This is the 6L6 tube used in many Fender power amps. Sharp sound, but gets a little muddy in the low-mids under high distortion.

Blues Driver: Similar to circuit found in many "overdrive" pedals. Odd harmonics, use lightly as a "booster".

Crunchy Grunge and Grungey Crunch: Gradual saturation algorithm with odd harmonics.

Double Stages: Similar to the Blues Driver in concept, but with two gain stages (Character

slider controls the second gain stage.)

Harmonic Control: Strong even harmonics - good in small doses for clean tube sound.

Yes, we're Bowie fans.

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Mirror Overdrive: Transistor distortion model with strong odd harmonics

Nasty Boy: EL34 tube model, used in Marshall amps. A hard "crunch" saturation character.

Push Pull: Class A push-pull amp model. Symmetric saturation with crossover distortion as

found in push pull amplifiers

Tape Saturation: Tape saturation model. Use after other distortions for a "tape" finish

Tube Drainer: 12AX7 preamp distortion - a triode tube used in many guitar preamps.

Acid Fuzz: Very asymmetric and level sensitive fuzz clipping algorithm

Bit Alias, Bit Wrench, Cheap Digital: Lo-fi digital trash algorithms where the Character

slider controls the degree of digital lo-fi (e.g lower bit rates and sample rates)

Garage Fuzz, Smooth Fuzz, Straight Fuzz: Traditional fuzz algorithms using either silicon or germanium transistors.

Wrectifier: A rectifier where the Character slider controls the degree of "rectification". Basically flips the negative portion of the waveform back over to create Octavia effects. When Character = 0, there is no effect. When Character = 0.5, the signal is half wave. When Character=1.0, the signal is full wave rectified.

Character= 0.5 (Half wave rectified)

Character = 0.75

Character = 1.0 (full wave rectified)

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Bonus Tip: Right clicking on meters will bring up an options screen for the meters. If you right click on the main input/output level meters on the right side of Trash you get the options screen below.

In addition to meter display settings, Trash offers a "Gain when bypassed" option. This lets you set an offset gain that is only applied when the Trash bypass is switched on. When working with Trash, you'll find that many settings affect the gain. To compare Trash on with Trash off, this option lets you account for any level differences so you're just hearing the effect of a box model, trash algorithm, etc.

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Multiband Madness

Here's where things get really wild. The Squash, Trash, and Postfilter modules in Trash are "multiband" and allow you to apply processing independently to up to four frequency ranges.

This opens up a lot of possibilities. You could, for example, heavily compress the lows of a guitar and let the highs go through uncompressed. You could gate just the high frequency noise of a recording. You could apply fuzz distortion to the lows of a guitar and tube saturation to the highs.

Working with Multibands

How do you do this? Well, if you know how to use the Squash, Trash and Postfilter modules using them in multiband mode isn't much different. As an example, let's take the Trash module. Click the "single band" button in the upper right and the Trash module becomes a multiband trash module.

The ranges (or cutoffs) of the three bands are shown at the top of the multiband modules with the two vertical lines. You can adjust the cutoffs by dragging the cutoff lines to the left or right with the mouse.

Note that the cutoff frequencies that you set will apply to all multiband modules. The cutoff frequencies can be adjusted from any of the multiband module screens, and the new cutoffs will apply to the other multiband modules.

Bypass a Band

You can bypass the processing for a specific band (or bands) by clicking on the box labeled "B" in the upper left corner o f t h e b a n d. T h is allows you to hear the audio within that band, but without any processing for that band.

Mute a Band

You can mute a band b y c lick ing on the box labe led "M" in the lowe r left cor ne r of th e ba nd.

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This allows you to adjust multiband processing by hearing only the audio within the non-muted bands. Solo a Band You can solo a band by holding down the Alt key and clicking the box labeled "M" in the lower left corner of the band. Change the Number of Bands You can choose to split the audio into 1, 2, 3 or 4 bands. To add or remove bands, right-click on the mini-spectrum and select "Insert Band" or "Remove Band" as shown below:

Copy and Paste Settings Across Bands

Using the same right-click menu, you can copy settings from one band and apply them (paste them) to another band. This is helpful, for example, for duplicating settings across bands in the multiband squash module.

Adjusting Controls in Other Bands

When you select a control, horizontal lines appear on the multibands. These lines allow you to adjust the control that you've selected for other bands, without having to switch to that band. So for example, in the screen below, the lower band is the selected band, and the input drive control is selected. You can adjust the input drive control for the middle band as shown by simply dragging the vertical line in the middle band.

Multiband Trash and Intermodulation Distortion

Multiband processing offers more than a lot of creative possibilities - it also provides a solution for the intermodulation distortion problem. Remember that issue? It's the one where if you apply distortion to audio, the sums and differences of all the frequencies of the input signal are created in the output (distorted) signal. And a guitar creates a lot of frequencies. That means a lot of sum/difference frequencies are generated and appear as intermodulation distortion.

Unless… we split up the audio prior to distorting it. If we distort bands or ranges of frequencies individually, and then recombine them, we get all the benefits of harmonic distortion, with significantly less intermodulation distortion. It's amazing how simple this is and how well it works.

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Check out the American Thang and American Thang Multiband presets. The only difference between the two is that the Multiband one uses three bands of Trash. The same trash settings are used in each of the three bands - it's just the simple process of splitting up the audio and letting Trash process ranges of frequencies independently that improves the sound. That "mud" or at least "not harmonic noises" you hear in the mids and lower mids from the single band preset is the intermodulation distortion. With the multiband preset, the mids and lower mids are still distorted, but with clarity.

So here's a simple trick to make any distortion sound better.

5) Get the distortion the way you want it in single band mode.

6) Right click the spectrum and copy your settings

7) Switch to multiband Trash

8) Use 3-4 bands, centered around the 100-800 Hz region. It doesn't matter exactly where they are - just place them around that region.

9) Right click each band and paste your trash settings.

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The only downside to this? Multiband processing takes more CPU, because you're essentially running an additional trash module for each band that you're processing.

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Box Model

One of the best postfilters for a distorted sound is a good old speaker and cabinet. The cabinet adds a little resonance and reflection, the speaker adds a little natural compression to smooth it out. And the cabinet and speaker work together to filter and shape the tone.

The Box Model screen provides modeling of cabinets, speakers and other devices. It provides natural postfiltering of distortion, as well as modeling transient and dynamic characteristics of speakers and cabinets.

Box Model Controls:

Input and Output Gain: These controls set the input and output gain through the box model.

Mix: This control sets the mix between the box modeled signal (100%) and the unprocessed

signal (0%).

Microphone Type: You can select the type of microphone used to capture the output of the box model. In most

cases, a dynamic microphone will be suitable, but you can experiment with a condenser mic for a broader "higher" frequency response or a ribbon microphone for a warmer response.

Separation and Spread: Stereo tracks are processed through the box modeler in stereo and mic'ed with a pair of

microphones. By default, these microphones are aligned. You can place one microphone closer to the box by adjusting the separation control. This offset in distance creates a delay between the two channels causing a stereo effect. In addition, you can control the distance

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between the two microphones with the spread control. Larger spread values result from microphones that are further apart from each other.

The Spread control has no effect unless the microphones are separated from the box model by some amount. In other words, controlling how far apart the microphones are has no effect if they are both the same distance from the box model.

This effect only works on stereo tracks. To create a pseudo-stereo track from a mono track, create a stereo track and copy the mono track to the left and right channels in your host app. Adjusting the microphone placement will then mimic the sound of a stereo pair of mics rotated or offset on a single speaker. What's an Oakdale Amp?

You'll notice that there aren't any Marshalls, Fender, Vox, etc. listed as box models. We decided to create our own names, for two main reasons

1) The box model is a model of the cabinet and the speakers, and not the entire preamp, tone stack, power amp, etc. It would have been more accurate perhaps to call a Vox amp a "Celestion" box model, as we were modeling speakers and cabinets, and it was a company called Celestion that made the actual speakers for many of the Vox amps. But it's a Vox cabinet, and that's the name people associate with the sound. Tough call.

2) It's not going to sound like a Vox until you combine it with the right EQ, compression and tube saturation. Since Trash gives you the flexibility of combining different amps, tubes and filters with different cabinets, you could make a Vox cabinet sound more like a Marshall amp than a Vox amp if you used Marshall tube and EQ settings. We couldn't really say "this Box Model sounds like a Marshall" when it was just one component of the sound.

So with that disclaimer as to why box models are just a portion of the total amp sound, here's a partial cross-reference for people like you that care enough to get into the product.

Allston and Worcester models: Marshall sounds

Oakdale models: Vox sounds

Princeton model: Matchless sound

Lincoln, Boxboro, Cambridge: Various Fender sounds

Stepping Outside the Box

Traditional box models are all well, good and necessary. But the joy of Trash goes beyond sounding traditional. Under the Device and FX settings are box models that can seriously warp your sound. Some are based on devices such as phones and pianos (that is, a speaker inside a piano). Others are just synthesized from scratch and don't have "real world" equivalents. Check out the Aluminum Dust and Electric Shock models for some "amp-alternative" sounds...

Actually, they're all names of towns in Massachusetts. It turns out that our state has a lot of towns that sound like amps (Boxboro, Rockport, etc.). OK, basically, we had to come up with a lot of names so this seemed to work.

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Bonus Tip: Our philosophy in making effects is to get the best sound possible regardless of how many numbers we have to crunch and how much CPU that uses. If you're running amp modeling, meters, mu ltiband effects, two stages o f distortion, sweeping filter s, all at 64 bit precision, well, that's a lot of effects processing going on. Here are some tricks you can use to reduce the CPU in a "preview" mode.

Under the Options screen there are specific CPU options:

Always Process as Mono: To save CPU while previewing, you can choose to have stereo tracks processed as mono through Trash. Selecting this option saves CPU power.

Oversample Distortion: Distortion creates high frequency

harmonics, which can cause aliasing. Selecting this option allows distortion to be processed at oversampled rates in order to reduce aliasing. Selecting this option requires significant CPU power, but can be used for mixdown.

Box Modeler Trim Level: This option sets the accuracy of the box modeling. Higher levels will provide more accurate box modeling at the cost of higher CPU processing

Alternate Box Modeling: When running at very low latencies on some processors, enabling this option can reduce CPU consumption. On other processors or at high latencies this option will increase CPU consumption, so you should experiment to see whether it helps your particular configuration. Note that Trash's output will be the same regardless of whether this option is enabled or not.

In addition, you can bypass modules that you're not using to save CPU power, disable meters (right click on the meter for display options), and disable the cursor and dialog box animation in the Options screen.

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Buzz Module

You don't necessarily need a trashy delay to get a good trashy sound, but trashy delays sound very good.

To this end Trash provides a delay module -- with tape, tape/tube, analog, digital and lo -fi digital delays.

The upper portion of the module sets the delay parameters, while the lower portion provides an EQ for specifically shaping the response of the delayed portion of the signal. This filter section in this Buzz module only affects the delayed signal - not the dry signal.

Delay Types

You can select the type of delay with the controls in the upper left corner:

Tape: A straight tape delay effect with saturation and wow/flutter. Similar to an Echoplex EP-3, which combined a tape delay with transistor electronics. The beauty of this type of delay is the way that it degrades with each repeat, and has slight modulation due to the randomness of the tape reels.

Tape/Tube: A tape delay effect with additional tube saturation properties, similar to the original Echoplex EP-1.

Analog: A lo-fi analog delay pedal based on a bucket brigade circuit complete with smearing and analog degradation. Pretty poor dynamic range, pretty bad frequency response, slurring degradation with each repeat. A really great sound.

Lo-Fi Digital: A lo-fi digital delay effect, similar to the first digital delay stomp boxes. Not the "best worst" delay effec t ( m o re like the "worst worst") b u t e ss e n t ial if you're doing lo-fi digital 80s stuff.

Broken Bit: A digital delay effect with infinite feedback on the lowest bit, similar to a faulty

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"stuck bit" delay

Digital: For completeness, a pure, clean digital delay. Of course, you can always filter the delay to round it off, but there isn't any saturation, wow, flutter, modulation or other randomness as with the organic analog models.

Controls

Dry Out: Sets the output gain of the dry/undelayed signal

Wet Out: Sets the output gain of the wet/delayed signal

Spread: For stereo tracks. Sets the stereo spread of the signal, from mono (0) to extra wide

(2)

Delay: Sets the delay time in milliseconds by default. In the Trash options screen, you can have the time displayed in tempo (beats per minute) instead. You can also set the delay time by tapping the "Tap Tempo" button.

Feedback: Sets the gain of the delay feedback. Higher values will result in longer audible feedback times, i.e. more repeats.

Trash: Sets the amount of degradation for the delay. For example, higher Trash values for tape delays results in more saturation. Higher Trash values for lo-fi digital delays results in more bit truncation and aliasing.

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Trash Recipes

With a whole lot of theory behind us, it's time to have some fun. Let's put it all together and serve up some Trash.

Recipe 1: Gimme Some Loving

Little Stevie Winwood gives us this classic distorted organ sound. Pretty simple preset – we’ve boosted the upper midrange with the prefilter to accent the distortion in that region, added some tube amp distortion, and filtered it back down with an amp model.

Try adjusting the input gain and overdrive in the Trash module for different degrees of distortion, and selecting other amp models for different tones.

Recipe 2: Whiter Shade

Similar in concept to Gimme Some Loving, we’ve prefiltered to boost the highs, added a little tube distortion, and postfiltered with the help of an amp model. A little less overdriven a nd a different character, but a definite classic sound.

Recipe 3: 2 AM at Caesar’s

OK, you need that lounge electric piano sound for this one. This is the preset for that 2 AM nightclub sound in a Las Vegas lounge. A little distortion from a dull sounding amp and some cliché echo. Like a little bit of heaven on earth.

Recipe 4: Whiter Shade

For a standard wah or "auto-wah" effect, we're using a clean Low Pass filter at about 500 Hz which sweeps up to 1500 Hz or so when triggered by the envelope.

The envelope attack and release are set pretty slow - 100 milliseconds is a good attack range (simulating a foot going down on a pedal) and 200 milliseconds is a good release range (typically your foot moves back slower to bring the wah pedal down to the original position)

The key to a "wah" sound is the small resonant peak at the tip of the low pass filter before it drops off. This peak gives the pedal a ringing or "pseudo-vocal" resonant sound.

Try adjusting for greater resonant peaks - you can even have the filter start with a low resonance peak and have it sweep up to a higher peak.

Recipe 5: Herbie’s Fuzzy Wah

In honor of recordings like Herbie Hancock’s “Crossings”,

this preset uses an envelope triggered filter combined with some fuzz pedal distortion.

When working with envelo pe controlled filters

Filters that change frequency based on how loud you play.

, the order of the effects can make a difference

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on the sound. If you put the envelope controlled filter before the distortion, the filter will open up when triggered and drive the distorted sound. If you put the distortion before the filter, the entire signal will be distorted before the filter, and you'll be revealing or "unfiltering" the distorted signal as the filter opens up.

Recipe 6: Jarret’s Wah

From the Fillmore, Keith Jarret playing the organ through a distorted wah. Note on this preset that the threshold for the envelope filter is set really low, meaning that pretty much anything you play is going to trigger the filter. The control over the “wah” lies in the attack and release times for the filter – shorter attacks give it a quicker wah.

Recipe 7: Chick’s Return

This one was sent in to us by a Trasher known as Dr. Apostrophe on the kvr-vst forums. It’s an excellent preset for the Chick Corea “Return to Forever” sound – distorted Rhodes, triggered wah, tape delay – nicely done.

Recipe 8: Closer

People know a piano when they hear one. We have such a strong reference point of what it *should* sound like that any mutation makes it stand out even more. A good example is in NIN’s Closer – that eerie, wobbly piano that ends the song. Because we know it’s a piano, we know there’s something wrong with it, which makes it stand out.

Our Closer preset pays tribute to that piano mutation. The “wobbly” sound is an LFO filter that’s changing gain, not frequency, so it has a bit of a tremolo effect to it.

Recipe 9: Emulator

The E-MU Emulator is a c lassic 8-bit digit al sampler, origina lly used by Bowie, Depeche Mode and others. It’s a great lo-fi sound, that’s cheap and dirty but still smoothed out by the use of actual analog filters.

Our Emulator preset uses the Bit Wrench distortion algorithm followed by the Bit Aliasing algorithm. The Bit Wrench is digital truncation, where the Character slider controls the number of bits. Turn up the Character and you get less and less bits, and more lo-fi. The Bit Wrench Character slid er co ntrols t he sa mpling r ate – turn it up an d you ge t lowe r and lo wer sample rates.

Recipe 10: Bad Samples

The Bad Samples preset takes this idea even further into the depths of lo-fi sampling, with extreme bit truncation and frequency cutoff. Try it on some drums, vocals – even grab a section of a mix and use it for a lo-fi special effect.

Recipe 11, 12, 13: Radio Sampled

While on the topic of takin g pa rt of a mix an d u sing it as a lo -fi s pe cia l effe ct , che ck o ut t he Radio Sampled 1, 2 and 3 presets. They use some strange distortion called “Radio Contact” go give the effect of a poorly tuned radio. Radio Sampled 3 adds an algorithm called “Uncontrolled Static” before the Radio Contact distortion, to give some semi-random static noise.

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Recipe 14: Sampled Tape Loop

Of course, before digital samplers – even really bad ones – samples were looped off of good old fashioned tape. Our Sampled Tape Loop preset gives this to you in a trashy way, with a good amount of tape saturation and compression.

Recipe 15: Bad Breakup

Until now we’ve been doing pretty straightforward distortions – using tube saturation, tape emulation, etc. But there’s a world of fun in the rest of the Trash distortion algorithms as well. When applied to synths, they can take straight, predictable patches and turn them into uncontrolled monsters.

The Bad Breakup preset uses, ironically, the “Bad Breakup” distortion algorithm. It’s one of those algorithms that has a mind of it’s own – creating clipping, generating harmonics, gating, etc. Changing the Overdrive slider brings it from somewhat controlled to outright noise. Have fun with it.

Recipe 16: Hitting Metal

In addition to the strange sounds you can get from the “alternative” distortion algorithms, there’s a lot of fun to be had with the box models as well. The Hitting Metal algorithm uses a model of a snare drum – that is, a speaker mounted inside a snare drum. As the speaker moves, it excites the springs on the snare to give an edgy metallic sound.

We’ve also used an LFO to sweep a filter on this one. Note that the LFO shape we used was random, so as you hold down some keys the filter seems to have a mind of its own.

Recipe 17: Microtronic

Back when analog keyboard synths came out, guitarists wanted something of their own to make strange electronic sounds. Companies like Electro-Harmonix responded with products like the Microsynth: an automatic LFO swept filter with all sorts of strange fuzz and octave sounds. The irony is that nowadays artists like The Crystal Method are taking the pedals and using them on keyboards to get an edgy but analog-organic sound.

Our "Microtronics" pre set p ays trib ute to this bo x, wit h a swe pt LFO d riving a wave rectifie r, which in turns feeds a smooth fuzz. It's not the sort of thing you want to play chords with, but for those leads it might be just the thing.

And just to mention it, even though we only have one LFO filter sweeping in this preset there's no reason you can't take the idea even further with a couple other sweeping filters.

Recipe 18: Fat Resonator

Moog filters - such as the MoogerFooger - are known and loved for their extreme resonances and their signature "bwow" sweeping sound. While in concept similar to an autowah (play loud and it opens up the frequency range), Moog filters sweep quickly to give more of a synth sound and less of a "foot on the wah pedal" sound.

Check out our Fat Resonator preset to hear what we mean.

Recipe 19: Mellow Circuits

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Sure, the extreme resonances or whistling/swooping sounds you can make with Moog filters are fun. But the "bwow" sound of the filter itself is great, even without extreme resonances.

The "Mellow Circuits" preset captures the warm "retro" sound of the filter without the resonant peaks. Of course, you can season to taste - more resonant, distortion after it, etc.

Recipe 20: Squishy Circuits

In this one we've used t he "flavor" of an old analog M oog filter, and swept it to a triangle LFO. Why a triangle? Because in analog circuits, a triangle is much easier to generate (less components and cost) than a sine wave. That's also why many tremolos on vintage amps are driven by triangle waves, in case anyone ever asks you...

If you match the LFO of this preset to the tempo of your song, and set the delay time as well you can get a really great sweepy echo vibe going.

Recipe 21: Cleanatronic

In the 70s, Electro-Harmonix also brought us a funky envelope filter called the Mutron. From funk guitar to Stevie Wonder' s clavichor d, this pe dal gave a g reat squelc hy sweeping sound.

Our "Cleanatronic" preset pays tribute to the funk of yesteryear, with a resonant and saturated low pass filter triggering as you play. It's a clean tone in general, with just a little tape saturation to round out the feel.

Recipe 22: Dirty Circuits

The Mutron sounds great clean, but can sound even better when you feed it into a nice tube saturated amp. Our Dirty Circuits preset exemplifies this, letting the output of the Mutron drive a slightly dirty amp.

Recipe 23: Notchatronic

The Mutron was somewhat unique in the sense that you could set it to sweep a lowpass, bandpass, or high pass filter. A popular modification was to rewire the circuit so that you could also get a sweeping notch filter from it. Notch filters have a sort of "phaser" sound to them, and this mod gave you a sort of "envelope controlled phaser".

We admire those people that voided their Mutron warranty by taking a soldering iron to it, and pay tribute to them with our Notch-a-tronic preset.

Fun things to try: Add additional sweeping notch filters, and try it in combination with different distortion algorithms such as fuzz.

Recipe 24: Sweeping Notches

The great thing about analog filters is that they have magnitude and phase characteristics.

We can use this quality to create some interesting sweep effects. Check out the Sweeping Notches preset. We have three narrow notches of filters which are all sweeping to their own LFOs. It's not the filtering that catches the ear as much as the phase effects of the filters sweeping and interacting with each other. You hear a sort of watery sound - not quite a phaser but something like it - in the upper midrange of the bass.

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To fool around with this, try slow sweeps in general (>1000 ms) and pass them through the 300-3000 Hz region for the most audible effect.

Recipe 25: Craig’s Madness

Craig Anderton has come up with a number of unique ideas and circuits for creating effects. Not the least of which, in t he context o f Trash, was his mult iband Quadr afuzz circuit plug- in. You could say we liked that idea.

There's another circuit that Craig came up with that we also remember - an envelope triggered phaser. The idea being that you could sweep the notches based on the level of your playing - sort of across between an auto-wah and a phaser.

We don't have the circuit around anymore, so we can't say if this sounds anything like Craig's project. But it's there in spirit.

There's a ton of possibilities with this one. Fool around with different sweep ranges and attack/release times. Or maybe make two notches sweep up in frequency when triggered and one sweep down.

Recipe 26: Vibromatic

Here's another use for LFOs - tremolo effects. We can fake a tremolo with Trash by using a straight shelf filter and modulating not the frequency, but the gain. Check out the Vibromatic preset. A shelf filter is sweeping up and down in gain to create the modulation in level. Not exactly how a tremolo works in a strict technical sense, but does the job really well change the speed of the tremolo with the LFO period, and the amount of the effect by moving the start and end points of the shelf filter further apart. We’ve put an old amp model on it for effect, but that’s optional…

. You can

Fun thing to try: Combine sweeping of the gain with some changes in frequency or resonance to get strange hybrid phaser/tremolo/filter sounds.

Recipe 27: Reverse Wah

The general rule for wah pe dals is t hat as yo u "open it up" it re veals more of the h igher e nd frequencies. Back off and the filter sweeps down to just let lower frequencies through.

Does it have it be that way? We don't think so. What if opening up the wah meant filling in the low frequencies? Instead of a low pass filter sweeping up, it was a high pass filter sweeping down? Crazy?!?!

Check out the Reverse Wah preset. Play harder and you get more low end. Lighten up and

Just as a footnote, vibrato and tremolo are sometimes confused. Vibrato is modulation of pitch or frequency modulation, while t remolo is modulation of level or amplitude modulation. Many amps and pedals that have "vibrato" in the name are really tremolo effects. One exception was the Magnatone guitar amp. Developed in the 50s, it was the first guit ar amp with re al Vibrato. U. S.Patent # 2,988, 706 if you're curious how they did it. Another way to do it is found in Leslie rotating speakers. These have both amplitude modulation, when the speaker turns away from you, as well as frequency modulation due to the Doppler shift of the speaker moving towards you then away from you. Same reason that a police siren sounds higher pitched as it moves towards you and drops in frequency when it moves away from you.

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the tone is restricted to just the high end. More of an “owww” pedal instead of a “wahhh” effect. Lots of fun.

Recipe 28: Ratsy A

For guitarists, nothing says 80s metal like the ProCo Rat pedal. It’s also a great nasty sound for keyboards. It uses hard diode clipping to create rough symmetric clipping. Nothing soft or smooshy about this one. Give it a shot.

Recipe 29: Bass Tube Overdrive

Just to make sure we touch on the idea – Trash can be very useful for adding some realism to bass and guitar patches. The Bass Tube Overdrive adds some compression, tube saturation and bass amp modeling to make a bass synth a little less synthetic.

Recipe 30: One for the Road

With all this emulation of old equipment and stuff that’s already been done, we don’t want to leave you with the wrong idea. The best part of Trash is creating your own sounds – effects that have never been heard before. So we leave you with the “One for the Road” preset. We weren’t trying to do anything but make something that sounded different. A random prefilter LFO using a TalkBox formant filter, a wave rectifier followed by a tube distortion, a strange box model….that’s what Trash is all about.

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Closing and Contact

Whatever you do with Trash, we hope that this guide has been helpful and that you enjoy using Trash. We tried to focus on some applications of Trash specific to keyboards, but there’s no reason you can’t use ideas and presets from our bass, drums and guitar guides on your keyboard tracks as well.

More guides:

http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/trash/guides.html

More presets:

http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/trash/more_presets.html

If you have any questions, suggestions or simply want to share some Trash ideas or presets, please drop us a line at izotope@izotope.com.

Have fun, The iZotope Audio Team

http://www.izotope.com

Izotope TRASH RECIPES FOR BASS User Manual

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Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual