Category: Audio Damage

Information about my business, Audio Damage, Inc.

Introducing Quanta

As one can easily see from the date stamps below, this is the first entry I’ve made here in years. It’s also the first entry in even longer which constitutes more than something of the form “here’s a photo”. I wrote a few paragraphs rambling about why this is the case, but they ended up seeming silly and unnecessary. Long story short: there haven’t been posts for a long time, but here’s a post now, and there may or may not be more soon.

The main point of this post is to mention that we (Audio Damage, that is) recently released a new software synthesizer called Quanta. It’s a sort of hybrid of granular synthesis and subtractive synthesis, with a bunch of unusually versatile modulation sources, full MPE compatibility, and a lovely UI. Here’s our video advertisement, thanks entirely to Chris: read more

Job Satisfaction

If asked to describe what motivates the work I do, I’d say this: I like making tools for musicians. It’s profoundly satisfying to know that I make stuff that people use as part of their creative processes, their self-expression. The icing on the cake is when I make some sort of contribution to the activities of an artist whose work I personally enjoy.

Unlike many other companies, Audio Damage does not make public the identities of our customers, even the famous ones. We consider our transactions with our customers to be private, and disclosing their identities for the sake of promoting our products, while always tempting, is not something we do. However, every once in a while, the opposite happens: the customer mentions us. read more

Snapshots From The Trash Audio Synth Meet

Anything that happened two weeks ago is ancient history as far as the internet is concerned, but nonetheless here are some snapshots I took at the Trash Audio synth meet [announcement here and follow-up post here; the latter has a video with a lingering shot of my forearm]. I had every intention to at least introduce myself to all of the other manufacturers, but we got a slightly late start setting up and once the doors opened to the public it was busy. Aside from a few bored-looking individuals who I took to be the significant others of some attendees, I think it can be said that a good time was had by all. Chris and I certainly had a good time, taking turns demoing our stuff and answering questions while the other retreated to the outdoors for an ear break. (The organizers of the meet very sensibly prohibited the use of loudspeakers, but it was loud nonetheless–unavoidable in a large room with hard surfaces and lots of enthusiastic people all talking at once.)
Many thanks to Surachai, Mike, Steve, and everyone else who organized and/or helped. Thanks also to everyone who stopped at our table, and special thanks to my cousin Jesse and Rebecca for dropping by. read more

Now Available: Audio Damage Hardware

Something really exciting happened in the middle of the flood, but I didn’t mention it at the time because, well, it was in the middle of the flood. What happened was Audio Damage’s debut as a maker of synthesizer hardware. Yes, just after our 10th anniversary as a corporation, we announced not one but three Eurorack-format synthesizer modules. They are: DubJr, a delay; Grainshift, a pitch-shifter based on granular synthesis; and Errorbox, a bit-crushing digital-distortion effect. Here are photos of them: read more

10 Years of Damage

It was 10 years ago today that Audio Damage became a corporation, and hence today marks Audio Damage’s 10th birthday. The company is really a few months older; Chris and I were working together before we incorporated, and we registered the domain name some time in August ’03. Today’s the official date, though, so happy birthday to us.

AudioDamage_Robot

Audio Damage Releases Bitcom

Audio Damage recently released Bitcom, a new plug-in that couples an unusual digital distortion generator with a step sequencer. You could say that we’re getting back to our roots with this product; Bitcom damages audio like nothing else. Bitcom went on sale Thursday afternoon and has been selling briskly already.

Bitcom screenshot

You can read more about it, listen to some audio demos, and buy your very own copy for just $39 at the Audio Damage website. Also, the first review (that I know of) is online here at the new-and-nifty Voxcaliber music and recording news site; it also has some audio demos. read more

Announcing Filterstation

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I’ve been remiss in tooting my own horn by mentioning that Audio Damage’s latest product, Filterstation, is now available. It’s a dual filter plug-in with 12 different filter types, three routing modes, a tempo-syncable LFO, and an envelope follower. There’s also a dual XY control for sweeping the frequency and/or resonance of either or both filters. Also of note is this is our first plug-in in Steinberg’s VST3 format, along with the usual VST2 and Audio Unit versions. All have both 32- and 64-bit binaries on both Windows and OS X. read more

Autumn, Maybe?

The first signs of autumn may have arrived. We just had two straight days of overcast, rainy weather (which is unusual for here), and it’s still cool-ish today. I noticed on the first day that some of the trees nearby are starting to change color. Personally I’m ready for a change in season. It’s been a hot summer and I have no objection to cooler weather.

In other news… Um… Well, there isn’t much other news, I guess. I’ve been toiling away on Audio Damage’s latest creation. It’s not a terribly complex plug-in but we decided to switch to Steinberg’s VST3 format as the basis of our products. We think that this is the most future-proof approach to building plug-ins currently, since Steinberg provides code to turn VST3s into Audio Units and VST2s, and also covers the 64-bit versions. We hope that Steinberg’s backing of this system will help isolate us from whatever surprises Apple throws at us next. We’re also building our own platform-independent preset system, something which Chris has been trying to talk me into for years. So, we’re doing new and interesting things, but this means learning a new plug-in framework, which–as is par for the plug-in development course–is not particularly well documented. It is kind of fun to be doing something different, however. read more