One of the oldest and at the same time most respected plug-in companies is celebrating 10 years in the biz this year. I’m talking about McDSP. It’s no secret that that they’re also one of my personal favorites so I decided to ask Colin McDowell a few questions. Note that these questions were asked before the word on the Retro Series spread, still Colin gave us a few hints on what we can expect.
Ten years… Are you feeling old?
Yes – but it seems like we’ve only just started. There are plenty of new projects that await, and we’re eager to get to all of them.
Let’s continue where we ended the last time: any news on the development of the AU versions of your plug-ins?
I think folks are getting a little pissed!! Well, imagine someone asked you to take the last 8-10 years of mixes, and redo them for some new exciting surround format. Hooray and ouch! There would be the potential for new income with the new mixes, but you’d also have to keep on mixing stuff in the current format to keep your studio income at a ‘business plan level’.
We’ve got some ideas on how we’d like to proceed. We’re trying all of them. We’ve got a lot of code here! It does not help that the OS X, Apple hardware, etc. are moving targets.
In earlier McDSP plug-ins there was an analog saturation feature which made it possible to really push them, sort of like hardware. Could you please talk a little about this technology and why you left it out in later releases?
The analog saturation modeling (let’s call it ASM for now!) feature was born during the FilterBank EQ/filter plug-in development in 1998. The EQ, etc. curves looked good, but when ‘pushed’ as you say – the sound was BAD! High level inputs into a digital EQ can clip easily, so we needed a way to maintain signal resolution while creating an overshoot-range for high level peaks to exist in without causing digital clipping. At the same time, some kind of analog-sounding distortion was crucial in making the results subjectively pleasing. I’d say half this process was technical, and half was just listening and tweaking the available parameters.
For all EQ and dynamic range control (compressors) we’ve got some of this technology in some variant inserted in the audio chain. Products like the Revolver convolution reverb, and the ML1 mastering limiter do not have this kind of algorithm in it. Reverberated signals should not need the audio ‘push factor’, so we left it out (although I should comment that a compressor on the end of the Revolver signal chain might be a good addition, in which case we just might have to re-visit this). For the ML1 mastering algorithm – well, you have customers wanting to push peaks to the near 0.0 dB level – we needed to insure this was possible, and leave the ASM out of the equation. The ML4 mutli-band dynamics plug-in does make use of ASM in the crossover network and other locations in the algorithm – but at the final stage we let the ML1 do its thing by itself.
I know in our product lit lists where ASM is used in what products – we surely did not want folks to think we’ve moved on from that technology – we still have plenty of it going on in our products!
Scan from a magazine ad of the new Retro Series. Picture taken from thread on Gearslutz.
Twelve plug-ins in ten years, three of which were released in the last year. Can we expect to see as many in the future?
At Winter NAMM in Jan 09 you can expect 5 (FIVE) new products from McDSP. Sounds like some folks have already started talking about Retro Pack. Indeed we hope it will be cool. The main idea in this product line (yes there will be several) is McDSP is quite capable of creating vintage styled products, but with entirely our own designs, and heaven forbid, a new (yet retro!) sound for the pro audio folks out there. We’ll have official pics on our web site on jan 6.
We’re also working on getting McDSP technology on other platforms. But I cannot elaborate further at this time!
Please talk a little about the three latest plug-ins. What made you develope these particular plug-ins?
The FutzBox, DE555 de-esser, and the NF575 noise filter were created for the post production community. But these plug-ins are also great tools for the music production folks, and heck even the live sound customers are getting into them. These products were created to fill a few holes in the McDSP product lineup, and it was fun making them! The FutzBox in particular, was a great combination of engineering, graphic art, and some serious creative design. Take the SIMs – we know folks use convolution products for environment simulations – but a a great CPU expense. If a class of sounds could be modeled a different way, in a zero-latency algorithm, scalable / switchable on the fly – now that would be cool. That is what the FutzBox SIM section grew from – some new ideas on how to make the same kind of effects in a more efficient manner. And taking all those measurements was a lot of fun…too much fun…!
Don’t you think it’s damn close to a crime that McDSP doesn’t offer a delay? And I mean a badass delay, with saturation settings and everything…
Chrome Tone has a pretty good delay in it – in the Stack config – it has a trem, wah, amp, and a chorus/delay. It has a lot of good uses. But yet, to your point, a delay line with dedicated filtered / distorted capabilities…hmmm…! Meanwhile check out Chrome Tone and tell me what you like and want to have updated.
Any final words?
Shoot sorry this reply is kind of tardy! Its been another busy year at McDSP. We’re glad to be able to keep bringing cool products to the pro audio market. To another 10 years !!!
Previous interview with Colin McDowell
