When Eyes Can Replace Ears

[sorohanro]

Ive been reading lately, here and on other music related forums, about people starting having problems with their hearing.
How can you deal with that when your biggest passion s music, mixing and producing ?
Well, as an imperfect solution come analyzers.

This is, of course, an imperfect solution but came in handy also for people without disabilities but just with a fatigued hearing (after hours of mixing) or just a double check.
Some sound editors have that useful tool but most of sequencers/ multitrackers need a third party plugin.
Here's a list of some good free analyzers:

Sonogram sg-1
SG-1 gathers some features which are usually isolated in other sonogram tools.
It works in real-time. It continues analyzing in the background, and only stops when you freeze it. Both in frozen or running mode, every time you click or drag within the sonogram area, frequency and amplitude rulers highlight the values corresponding to that point.
A little LED-like screen shows you in detail analysis information and parameter modifications, or the transport position when idle.
Available as Win VST.

Voxengo Span
SPAN is a real-time "fast Fourier transform" audio spectrum analyzer plug-in for professional music and audio production applications.
Available as Mac AU, Mac VST, Win VST, WIN64 VST.

Seven Phases Spectrum Analyzer
Spectrum Analyzer is a real-time spectrum analysis VST plugin. An unique (and quite experimental) feature of the plugin is its detached spectrum display window, freely resizable independently of host application capabilities.
Available as Win VST.

Bs-Spectrum
Bs-Spectrum is a FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) spectrum analyzer which can show linear or logarithmic frequency visualization.
Available as Win VST and Mac AU.

DetectComp
DetectComp is a more complex analyzer, which offer "realtime multi-criterion numerical analysis" :
- High and low velocity
- Stereo deviation
- High and low frequency mean
- Compression statistical indicator
- Peak and RMS progressive values
- Velocity Distribution computation
- Frequency Distribution computation
- Velocity and frequency evolution (20'' / 8' periods)

say what ? many of those terms are too much for me... still, looks impressive.

Available as Win VST.

Last on this list I left my favorite one.
MultiInspectorFree
MultiInspectorFree is a 31 band spectral analyzer with multitrack functionality. It incorporates a standard third octave frequency analyzer. Center frequencies of the bands are based on the ISO 266:1997 standard (20 Hz to 20 kHz). Pink noise will appear flat in the frequency spectrum. MultiInspectorFree supports up to 4 instances at a sample rate of 44.1 kHz.
MultiInspectorFree visualizes up to 4 different audio signals in real time in one window .
Available as Win VST, Mac VST and Mac AU.

Those are "the really good ones". My personal favorites are "Seven Phases Spectrum Analyzer" and "MultiInspectorFree" but there are more free analyzers "out there".
Blue Cat's FreqAnalyst (this react too slow for me), s(M)exoscope by Bram from Smartelectronix (somehow weird showing and also slow reacting), DtBlkFx by Darrell Barrell and FREE Oscilloscope which I didn't tried yet.
FL users have "Eye Candy" and the oscilloscope which I never got hang of :)))

Happy trying of those ;)

[BigRed]

At 4/25/10 04:39 PM, sorohanro wrote: Ive been reading lately, here and on other music related forums, about people starting having problems with their hearing.
How can you deal with that when your biggest passion s music, mixing and producing ?

I was thinking a lot about that the other day. Particularly either losing my hearing, or my voice. I feel like it would absolutely tear me apart and I'd have a tough time dealing with it. The movie "It's All Gone Pete Tong" is about a DJ who loses his hearing and how he deals with it. Real interesting to watch.

Those links look very interesting, do you have any examples of people who produce their music in this fashion?

[sorohanro]

At 4/25/10 04:56 PM, tingtonger wrote: Those links look very interesting, do you have any examples of people who produce their music in this fashion?

... me... ?
Sometimes.
After mixing same material a lot, I stop hearing things, I get used to the mistakes, I ca't really tell if it's good or bad, so I use those.

[djInTheDark]

Wow, thanx for this! I really needed some new analyzers, I didn't have anything that I was happy with. I had the Bismark and Voxengo for a while but then I cleared my copy and forgot about them.

[Envy]

My hearing will always be perfect.

[sorohanro]

At 4/25/10 06:33 PM, Envy wrote: My hearing will always be perfect.

Sorry to break your illusion, after 21 years age, kind of your hearing keep loosing decibels and hi frequencies...
Of course, you can find 60 years old guys with better hearing than young ones, but if you're in a stressful environment (noisy city, factory, symphonic orchestra, rock live sound technician...etc), your hearing will soon be "less perfect".

[amaterasu]

At 4/25/10 06:33 PM, Envy wrote: My hearing will always be perfect.

Hoping that's sarcasm

[Envy]

I figured you guys would know I'm never serious by now.

[SessileNomad]

At 4/25/10 09:08 PM, Envy wrote: I figured you guys would know I'm never serious by now.

i accepted this long ago...

seriously...every post ive ever seen by you is like...wtf...why does he even bother

[Envy]

At 4/25/10 09:34 PM, SessileNomad wrote:

At 4/25/10 09:08 PM, Envy wrote: I figured you guys would know I'm never serious by now.

i accepted this long ago...

seriously...every post ive ever seen by you is like...wtf...why does he even bother

I got bored of being serious. There's no point on this forum anymore.

LOL COZ IM BETTUR DAN ALL OF YOOZ AT EVERYDING SOZ I CAN AKT LIEK IT

[blackattackbitch]

At 4/25/10 10:20 PM, Envy wrote:

LOL COZ IM BETTUR DAN ALL OF YOOZ AT EVERYDING SOZ I CAN AKT LIEK IT

Envy, when I first came to this forum and saw your posts, I thought you were a troll hahaha

[B0UNC3]

At 4/26/10 12:34 AM, blackattackbitch wrote:

At 4/25/10 10:20 PM, Envy wrote:

LOL COZ IM BETTUR DAN ALL OF YOOZ AT EVERYDING SOZ I CAN AKT LIEK IT

Envy, when I first came to this forum and saw your posts, I thought you were a troll hahaha

He is...... :)

</spam>

[sorohanro]

Happy to see that people are so interested... interested into trolling.
Thanks for the spam.
Anyway, more stuff to spam about:

Just today released:
Oszillos Mega Scope
Oszillos-Mega-Scope is a BPM-synced oscilloscope with support for multiple inputs. It gives you a visualisation of the waveforms you feed it. This can be handy in different situations like compressor-fine-tuning, sound design, drum programming, etc.
Features:
- Supports multiple Channels.
- Supports different zoom-levels (1/32th note to 16 bars).
- Two different visualisation modes (separate waves, combined waves).

[Offgore]

I could use one of these... My ears get stressed after about a couple hours of mixing/ mastering. Thanks soro.

[Step]

I have been saved.

Thanks a BUNCH soro, your helpful... ness knows NO BOUNDS.

[Quarl]

This makes me wish reason had vst support :P

[thecoreman]

At 4/26/10 08:51 AM, sorohanro wrote: Oszillos-Mega-Scope is a BPM-synced oscilloscope

What do you mean, "BPM-synced"? I don't understand how something like that can be.

Also, GREAT thread and cool links, thanks a lot!

[sorohanro]

Glad that I could find something useful for you guys :)

At 4/26/10 10:50 AM, Quarl wrote: This makes me wish reason had vst support :P

Well, you can always use Reason in Rewire. I think that Reaper support it, FL support it for sure and my favorite DAW of the moment, Mu.Lab support it also.
The free version offers rewire only on one channel, but the unlimited one supports multiple inputs and outputs, so you can route every mixer channel separately and put a VST "toy" on everyone. Not to mention recording audio...

At 4/26/10 03:22 PM, thecoreman wrote: What do you mean, "BPM-synced"? I don't understand how something like that can be.

Sincerely, I have no idea :)))
I found it just today and I didn't had time to test it yet.
What seemed interesting to me was the support for multiple inputs.

[Envy]

At 4/26/10 03:22 PM, thecoreman wrote:

At 4/26/10 08:51 AM, sorohanro wrote: Oszillos-Mega-Scope is a BPM-synced oscilloscope

What do you mean, "BPM-synced"? I don't understand how something like that can be.

Also, GREAT thread and cool links, thanks a lot!

Maybe it can figure out the BPM of the song, allowing for more accurate representations of levels. But I'm not sure why youd need it to figure out of BPM for you, as your ears keep pretty good BPM when listening and analyzing a song while youre listening to it.

[durn]

At 4/26/10 10:50 AM, Quarl wrote: This makes me wish reason had vst support :P

Someone on the propellerheads forum created a combinator that uses the vocoder as a spectrum analyzer display. It's pretty neat. Can't find the english instructions but there's a video in German that shows you how to do it step by step (don't need the instructions, can just watch what they do) :)

http://www.gotmyidea.com/16986-reason-sp ectrum-analyzer.php

[sorohanro]

At 4/28/10 11:07 AM, durn wrote: Someone on the propellerheads forum created a combinator that uses the vocoder as a spectrum analyzer display.

Brilliant !!!
Never thought of it.

[EmperorCharlemagne]

If I ever lose my hearing I think I'll just devote myself fully to reading/writing, and humming loudly to myself.

[poopr1221]

Just gonna say this:

DtBlkFX is a fucking INCREDIBLE plugin for glitching the shit out of sounds. I've created some AWESOME spectral weirdness with it. Highly recommend it.