Live 6 Users: Multiband Splitter rack...

Nogi · Post by **Nogi** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 6:00 am

Working on some stuff for mastering and made this - a very rough multiband splitter. It may save someone some work. Based on the 'Sweepable Crossover' rack concept posted in Tips/Tricks. For now, I just dropped in eight instances of 'Reverb' as place holders for your favorite mastering tools. It starts with a LO cut to trim the junk then splits the remaining audio into five bands: [SUB] - [LO] - [LO MID] - [HI MID] - [HI] The outer most rack controls correspond to the frequency for each split and the LO cut freq. Feel free to improve (or correct, I'm sleepy) this effort and post. I am trying to keep it as Live plug-in native as possible. Cheers.

[ LINK SUPERCEDED SEE BELOW FOR UPDATE.]

Nogi · Post by **Nogi** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 4:06 pm

UPDATED: Added a display so you could see the freqs you are assigning each band instead of referring to a chart or going deep into a rack. Also, you can bypass the rack by solo'ing the DISPLAY channel instead of turning off the entire rack. Replaced 'Reverb' placeholders with more relevant devices. [Same link above for update.]

sweetjesus · Post by **sweetjesus** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 4:07 pm

will download n try in next few days or so but keen to knwo if you have done any analysis to see if there is any crossover bleeding between frequencies?

Nogi · Post by **Nogi** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 4:15 pm

I steepened the crossovers by adding poles to the EQ8 instances over the original 'Sweepable Crossover' idea which helped a ton - compare the LO CUT with and without the added poles for easy comparison. I've used four of the eight for each instance. I haven't tried it with more yet. Also. the freqs assigned correspond roughly to the highest point of the LO PASS side of each band.

LINK SUPERCEDED SEE BELOW FOR UPDATE.]

Nogi · Post by **Nogi** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 8:51 pm

BUMP: Simplified this a bit and posted new version, same url. Multi pole EQ worked worse than single pole for band isolation. Tried auto filter as well. Single pole was best by a mile.

Nogi · Post by **Nogi** » Sat Apr 14, 2007 1:26 am

Download now includes a sample mastering preset for fun. The user just needs to slap a limiter on the end.

Nogi · Post by **Nogi** » Sat Apr 14, 2007 7:11 pm

Today, I put a copy of the band splitter rack on five separate return tracks and solo'd each band then dropped SPAN on after them to see what things looked like. This may actually be a good way to work as you don't have to work inside the splitter rack itself - which can be tedious. (You do have to make the same freq split adjustments in every track, however, which is probaby equally tedious if you don't have a controller.) You can just chain effects in each return track specific to each band. Obviously, there can't be any 'bleed' (for me, meaning the same content in multiple bands causing phase issues) per se with the perfect phase cancellation but it is pretty difficult to isolate frequencies in the wider bands due to the rather gentle slopes of the EQ8 pole(s). Maybe more tighter bands is the answer. I still haven't given up on auto-filter as a possibility or perhaps some combination of the two.

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Sat Apr 14, 2007 9:04 pm

Nogi wrote:Obviously, there can't be any 'bleed' (for me, meaning the same content in multiple bands causing phase issues) per se with the perfect phase cancellation but it is pretty difficult to isolate frequencies in the wider bands due to the rather gentle slopes of the EQ8 pole(s). Maybe more tighter bands is the answer.

The high-end multi-band processors, software as well as hardware, use subtle phase-shifting in the crossovers to cancel out the overlaps, but it's mainly an issue of getting the curve right.

Nogi · Post by **Nogi** » Sat Apr 14, 2007 10:35 pm

Nogi wrote:Maybe more tighter bands is the answer. I still haven't given up on auto-filter as a possibility or perhaps some combination of the two.

EDIT: When I typed, 'more tighter', I meant 'more' and 'tighter'. Sorry for anyone who suffered through that.

Machinate wrote:The high-end multi-band processors, software as well as hardware, use subtle phase-shifting in the crossovers to cancel out the overlaps, but it's mainly an issue of getting the curve right.

'Subtle' and 'high-end' are definitely out of the question.

However, this tool is surprisingly useful to me the way it is. (Thanks, ethios4!) I'm going to try some things along those lines to see if I can make the bands a bit more discrete. Obviously, the flexibility of having this completely Live native (aside from missing a great limiter/ditherer) would be a boon.

OT: 'Saturator' as a HI band exciter is AMAZING (though a little goes a very long way).

[Galo] · Post by **[Galo]** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 5:31 pm

Man that thing is awesome,.... thanks a lot

Nogi · Post by **Nogi** » Wed Apr 18, 2007 3:41 am

Thanks, man!

I just did a revision that will suit people with more CPU horsepower a bit better. It is a much improved interface but the trade off is that it runs about 20% on my Core2Duo - but might as well let the computer do the head scratching, eh? It is hugely inefficient and redundant right now but I'm still tweeking the setup I want to use so I left in a bit more flexibility than will ultimately be necessary.

EDIT: v2 was superceded as I noticed the v2 was having low end bleed issues. The convenience of having an active 'DISPLAY' on each band was the culprit. Added a single DISPLAY (keep muted for sonic purity). CPU use now down to 18%: http://www.base2research.com/abletonstu ... erv2.1.zip

I'm still working on a better filter set. Your comments and contributions are welcome.

Cheers.

Nogi · Post by **Nogi** » Wed Apr 18, 2007 5:56 am

BUMP for revision. Anyone that downloaded v2 please switch to v2.1. A minor fix to restore sound quality and slightly less CPU use. See notes above for details.

http://www.base2research.com/abletonstu ... erv2.1.zip

ethios4 · Post by **ethios4** » Mon May 14, 2007 8:57 pm

Nogi wrote:However, this tool is surprisingly useful to me the way it is. (Thanks, ethios4!)

Glad you find it useful! Robert's solution for creating the crossover made it possible. I just saw your work on this...I was thinking of building a multi-band version of the crossover...I'll check out what you did. Thanks!

piZMo · Post by **piZMo** » Fri Oct 26, 2007 12:52 am

Bumped.

This is just what i was looking for/thinking about, well a tri-band crossover actually but close enough, wow the (fairly useless until now) search function worked for me for once!
Took a look at the multibandsplitter, very nice, really like this 'display' feature too, but as he says it does hit the CPU. Hopefully refining this to a tri-band i can get the CPU cost down.

Excellent work ethios4/Nogi thanks a million.

Nogi · Post by **Nogi** » Fri Oct 26, 2007 9:08 pm

Thanks! I have an updated version but am waiting until I get a hold of Live7 to investigate the possible advantage of the new HQ mode of EQ8.