Emulating PCM42 trick ITB

[Ermz]

Anyone found a good way of doing it?

I've tried hitting one side of my rhythm guitar tracks with the Echoboy Limiter, but it's not quite the same thing. Is there any dynamics/distortion plug-in that can attain results similar to the PCM42 when overdriven?

I hear PSP's emulation doesn't have the input/output limiter modeled unfortunately.

 

[John_C]

I did get some good results once with variety of sound ferric tds going into some delay (can't remember which)

Can't compare to the pcm24, never having used one, but it did produce a pretty cool effect. Didn't use it in the end in the mix as the guitars were sloppy enough already without any extra smearing.

 

[amarshism]

I've taken my rhy gtr bus and sent it to another one and reversed the panning, chucked on a stereo delay with a 15-30ms delay at 100% with different times on either side and just gritted it up slightly with a sansamp plugin. Worked alright for widening them but I don't rly understand what's necessary about overdriving the input of the PCM? Is it just to change the tone slightly to aid in perceived width? Wouldn't any grit really suffice if this is the case?

 

[Pedro Teixeira]

I've taken my rhy gtr bus and sent it to another one and reversed the panning, chucked on a stereo delay with a 15-30ms delay at 100% with different times on either side and just gritted it up slightly with a sansamp plugin. Worked alright for widening them but I don't rly understand what's necessary about overdriving the input of the PCM? Is it just to change the tone slightly to aid in perceived width? Wouldn't any grit really suffice if this is the case?

I'm not entirely sure but I believe it has to do with having another layer with a slight different sound which helps to perceive spatial differences, if you had with the exact same sound it probably wouldnt sound as "wide" due to your ears perceiving the exact same tone/distortion/grit/whatever. Correct me if I'm wrong though as I'm not speaking by experience but by what seems logical to me.

 

[crillemannen]

Ermz, why dont you just buy one of ebay?? They aren't that expensive really. I think i had quite good results using Echoboy on those settings you suggested. It definitely add some mids and widened the guitars.

But i've put Echoboy and put it on a AUX and then blended it with the Rythm guitars, so its kind of parallel compression to guitars.

 

[Ermz]

I've considered it, Christian, but it seems like a hefty price to pay for what's ultimately just a little niche 'trick' which would only work on rock stuff anyway. I'm fairly certain there has to be a good way to get comparable results ITB. Any saturator with good dynamics handling/chopping should be able to thicken the sound of one side adequately. My next stop may be Decapitator for this. Soundtoys know what's going on with saturation.

 

[Melodeath]

Would anyone mind explaining this PCM42 trick? It seems to be arbitrarily secretive according to my google search...

Something like jacking up the input, delay of 0, and turn output down? Then you add this to the original guitar track, or you put it on the opposite side?

 

[Sickan]

Ermz, about the Decapitator - what are you usually using it on?

 

[Sickan]

TesslaSE fucks with the stereo width... At least the old one I used.

 

[Mikaël-ange]

EDIT: Ermz, could you please post the link to the samples you recorded with a real pcm some time ago, so i can compare?

Erm didn't post any sample about pcm42 trick. It was C_F_H_13

 

[mjlaudio]

lots of the older digital delays have limiter chips in them the yamaha rev5 the roland sde 1000-3000 spx90 you can overload any of them and get the same kinda vibe. and you can get them super cheap....you could probably find just the chip and if you were really electronically gifted make a straight pcm trick limiter.......errrr actually i think i might do that...

I just used the real pcm42 on gtrs on a mix and it was cool because it was the trick but it really didn't do anything to the sound that was THAT important.....definitely not 1000 dollars important...........maybe 300 dollars important, and not really that different from when I've overdriven other units.

on a side note if you have a smart c2 put it on crush and use that on guitars...i thought it sounded awesome on the guitars. it wasn't compressing much though. i am pretty sure there is some kind of eq in the chain or to the side chain that adds mids(note) to the gtr.

 

[Melodeath]

I just downloaded the PSP42 demo to give it a try and see if it did model the input section of the PCM42 or not. I'm not sure if it's limiting the signal, but it is DEFINITELY saturating it when you crank the input. And I don't think it's internal clipping of the plug-in, because if you print the track, you don't have any clipped/flat-tops

 

[C_F_H_13]

Erm didn't post any sample about pcm42 trick. It was C_F_H_13

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/338356/PCM42 TESTS/GTR CHANGING TONES.wav

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/338356/PCM42 TESTS/MONO GUITAR NORM.wav

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/338356/PCM42 TESTS/PCM ON FULL X2 ON LEFT GTR.wav

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/338356/PCM42 TESTS/REGULAR STEREO GUITARS.wav

Don't remember what I did for any of these so don't ask.

 

[Ermz]

Do you guys think an L1 would do the job? It seems chasing limiters rather than saturators would have more of the desired effect.

Thanks for posting those clips again CFH. I lost them since that last time they were posted.

 

[Melodeath]

Did you actually try the PSP demo? It is most certainly doing something with the input knob in the red

 

[fitzrangerhoodngarb]

Do you guys think an L1 would do the job? It seems chasing limiters rather than saturators would have more of the desired effect.

Thanks for posting those clips again CFH. I lost them since that last time they were posted.

I've never opened up a pcm42 but it's probably something as crude as back to back diodes in the input section. Something like a prism overkiller might do the trick if that was the case.

 

[Joshua Wickman]

What are you trying to do?

Sorry im totally lost on this trick.

 

[amarshism]

Widen the stereo image

 

[fitzrangerhoodngarb]

I just had a squiz at the circuit (so I'm off work sick and bored). Some seriously old-school circuitry. There appears to be several limiting stages, one in particular is a clamp circuit that is like an op-amp version of a zener diode clipper I mentioned above. The others are optical.

For the tone shaping part of the equation I'd suggest some combination of brickwall limiting (maybe experimenting with different overshoot characteristics and possibly several stages a la the real thing), harmonic enhancement/excitement/enrichment or plain old distortion, and bandpass filtering. Maybe some kind of bit reducer/crusher would be worth a try too cause some of that would surely be happening going through all that old-schoolery flip-flop action.

The widening bit would be a function of the delay time. Group delay wouldn't be long enough to do anything substantial by itself.

All totally uninformed speculation on my part. Maybe buying an old unit would be a better idea!

 

[Ermz]

Thanks for looking into that fitz. So not an easy solution evidently. I've fired off an e-mail to PSP to clarify whether they have bothered emulating these limiter stages.

Are you sure that the widening is a function of the delay time? I initially thought this as well, but all a subtle delay did was shoot the rhythm tracks so they sounded out of time with each other. It's intentionally offsetting the performance to be less tight, and I didn't like it whatsoever. What created the widening effect, for me, was changing/thickening the tone of one side to be different to the other.