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If my SONAR could only be like PHOTOSHOP...!


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Adobe PHOTOSHOP incorporates two features that I love, features I wish could somehow be translated to audio in SONAR.

 

1. "Feather": PHOTOSHOP lets you "soften" the effect of any filter or command you execute by softening the edges of your lasso selection. This way, the effects of the applied filter can be made imperceptible, without rigid, telltale edges. The degree of Feather, in pixels, is user-adjustable from 1px to 250px.

 

2. "Fade": In PHOTOSHOP, after you've applied any filter or command to your image, there is a FADE command, in which you can globally fade the effects of what you've just done, after the fact. If the overall effect, let us say, of the filter you've just applied is basically correct, but too harsh, you can smoothly ratchet it down using the FADE command. This gives you that "final touch" of perfection to any command you apply to your image.

 

I've thought for some time: wouldn't it be so cool if SONAR (or one's other DAW of choice) offered homologues of these two commands? Thus:

 

Applying an audio filter effect such that the ear cannot discern precisely where it begins and ends within a clip, and doing it consciously in real-time?

 

Or, after an effect has been applied to a clip, to be able to smoothly "ratchet down" the overall effect of that filter, in a global fashion-- rather than UNDO-ing it and starting over?

 

These are my biggest "wishlist" items for SONAR or any other DAW.

 

 

Thoughts?

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Originally posted by rasputin1963


Applying an audio filter effect such that the ear cannot discern precisely where it begins and ends within a clip, and doing it consciously in real-time?

 

 

Do you think this would be sort of like crossfading an effect in? Or morphing?

 

The latter would be interesting, but what parameters would you have Sonar choose? It would vary greatly from effect to effect.

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Originally posted by Anderton

Copy a track, and apply the effect to one track but not the other. Bring in and out to taste
:)

 

Craig, you've put your finger on the very innovation I'd like to see... How cool would it be to create a region with "feathered" edges (ie., crossfaded) without duplicating the track or even duplicating the clip? Just as in PHOTOSHOP, one could simply select a region, then dial-in a "feather" value...

 

And, Ustad, with the second feature, PHOTOSHOP also allows you to indicate how the already-assigned effect is to be diminished (namely, the Layer Mode combinations). If somehow SONAR could give you several parameter options about how the effect was to be ratcheted down...

 

This is pie-in-the-sky thinking, of course, and automating parameter envelopes can accomplish a great deal, but still.

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Yeah...while expressing my enthusiasm about the POD, I made a comment to an engineer at Line6, back in '99, about the idea of a guitar that could sound like different guitars; he got kind of bemused about it, and made a not-mean-but-not-taking-me-very-seriously-and-kind-of-snide comment about "well, sure...why not make pickups that sound like any guitar, y'know? Where does it end?"

 

And now, we have the Variax.:mad:

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Originally posted by Anderton

Copy a track, and apply the effect to one track but not the other. Bring in and out to taste
:)

 

Or... route the track through a bus and apply the affect and any automation to the bus 'track'... (you can turn on 'track preview' or whatever it's called to make it easier to visualize/navigate.)

 

 

But Craig's suggestion is nice and direct and doesn't boggle the mind... ;) I've used it for 'morphing' one sound into another and, depending on what you're doing, it's simple and straightforward.

 

 

Great thread idea, BTW!

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I would imagine that you would have to have several different parameters specified, including wet/dry, filter level, pan, bandwidth, frequency boost/dip level, frequency setting, delay length, reverb length, and a few other things that I can't think of right now. This should be able to be done by many DAWs right now, although it might not be the easiest thing to do.

 

For many of those, instead of trying to bang my head against the wall automating something, I print it and then crossfade or manipulate it via volume, pan, etc. (Craig suggested this already). That way it's all there, I've hand-manipulated the effect, and I have it there to further manipulate or crossfade or EQ or whatever as I see fit.

 

I'm really into printing effects, partially because that's how I started recording (analog), partially because I've always had limited gear and that was a way of using a piece of gear over again instead of tying it up in mixdown, partially because I like to commit to effects as part of the overall sound, and partially because when I go to archive the sound, I don't have to worry about whether I will have access to a particular plug-in or hardware in 5 years. The sound is already there.

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Originally posted by offramp

Yeah...while expressing my enthusiasm about the POD, I made a comment to an engineer at Line6, back in '99, about the idea of a guitar that could sound like different guitars; he got kind of bemused about it, and made a not-mean-but-not-taking-me-very-seriously-and-kind-of-snide comment about "well, sure...why not make pickups that sound like any guitar, y'know? Where does it end?"


And now, we have the Variax.
:mad:

 

Every truly revolutionary idea is shot down multiple times before anyone will buy into iit. It's a healthy pre-filter that (usually) keeps totally insane ideas from taking off too much.

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Originally posted by Anderton


Wouldn't that be pretty much the same thing as a wet/dry control?

That's how I interpeted it. But he's also seems to imply a "global" wet/dry for effects. Not a bad idea, but I'm not sure how useful.

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