As was guessed by several people when I recently touched upon this topic, we've trekked down in to the cobwebbed cellars of the Audio Damage IP Storage Bunker with the special low-illumination blue-beamed flashlights normally reserved for the spooky parts of X-Files and Law & Order: SVU episodes, and returned to the daylight with a dusty tome, on the leather-bound hand-tooled cover of which was written "Ronin: The Road To Madness."

The screenshot above (click for full size) shows the results of that quest. Like Lovecraft's Elder Gods, Ronin has returned from the blackest depths of the Cœlestial Æther to walk the Earth once more, sowing destruction in its wake. Changes? Many or not much. Depends on how you look at things, I suppose. Enumerated:

New UI. This is the most obvious change. I did an entirely new UI, and in doing so have hopefully made it much easier to figure out what the hell is going on. I've also inexplicably made it look like Mac OS 6. I can't explain that. It just ended up that way.

AU. Yes, there is an AudioUnits version. Ronin's undersides are now up to snuff with the rest of our product line, and this means full MIDI learn (VST) and AudioUnits.

DSP. Actually, this is worth mentioning inasmuch as it isn't changing at all. Period. The new Ronin will cross-load presets from the old Ronin, and instantiate in its place. Internally, it is as it ever was. Dare I use the word "vintage" to describe the sound engine? Yea and verily, I do so dare.

The Price. For the few (and I hope proud) that bought the original Ronin, this will be an entirely free upgrade. It will appear in your account in the AD store in place of the old one. For those brave souls willing to risk their sanity (and their tweeters), the new Ronin will be US$49.00, instead of its original price (which was, if you're curious, US$69.00.)

Now, before you Ronin nUbs get too excited, I should point out a couple things. If you're a more recent convert to Audio Damage, you might have a particular idea of the "sound" of our plug-ins. You might go so far as to say that we make things that are "rough around the edges," or "heavy-handed," or, if you're feeling salty, "Full Of Techno." Our more recent plug-ins are to Ronin as a new-born kitten is to a pit bull that has been beaten with a garden hose daily for a year straight. This plug-in is a dose of Heavy Duty.

For starters, you can route the output of any block to the input of any block, including itself. You also have full unhindered access to the feedback loop of the delays. The delays can do unity feedback, and they also have the same looping engine as Dubstation. (This plug-in is, in fact, the source of that looping engine.) As such, there is virtually no limit to how this plug-in can be routed. We normally build in limits to our plug-ins nowadays that inform how they'll be used, but in Ronin there are nonesuch, except that we're (reasonably) certain you won't set your speakers on fire.

So, final warning: it is pretty easy to get this plug-in in to an unstable configuration where it self-resonates/oscillates/gyrates/salivates. On the other hand, it's also really easy to make a simple tempo delay. But that's like using an Abrams Main Battle Tank to go pick up your Sunday paper and danish. If you're thinking to yourself "self, this has two tempo-synced delays and two filters, and panners and stuff! It's like 5 plug-ins in one! An audio toolbox!" Well... I'd reconsider that purchase if I were you.

But if you like looping, noise, feedback, or any combination thereof, filtered or not, this is your pony, right here. All you need to cover Merzbow's Greatest Hits is a little burst of noise to excite the delays and you're off to the races. I would submit that there isn't another plug-in out there that does what Ronin does. There's probably a good reason for that, now that I think on it...

Anyways, our status right now is that the Time is not quite Nigh. The Windows version is about 90% done (just missing the MIDI input, really), the Mac VST version is in more or less the same state, and the AU has been built but is missing presets. So it won't be very long. Next week at some point, I'd imagine.

Anyhows, I might have something pretty cool to show you later tonight. In the mean time, hey, look. Someone made a hardware version of Replicant. At least, that's what I thought until I figured out it was just an Arduino with some LEDs and buttons controlling a fairly simple Max/MSP buffer-fun patcher. Now, for the record, this isn't really a simple operation. But it's not Ultra Tough Guy Hi-Technical. It's just plain old-fashioned tough guy.

What do you do to recharge your songwriting batteries? These yearly trips for me out to the complete and utter desolation of the Oregon/Nevada border completely bleach my mind, and when I come back I'm Full Of Techno™ for months to come.

I do realize that everyone has different methods, and it's time to share. I won't be chiming in on this thread at all, as I'll be in a part of the state completely immune to the electromagnetic spectrum, so no cell phones, no internet, no Twitter, no Michael Jackson conspiracy theories. Just me and my Silvertone archtop and the sagebrush. So it's up to you guys to make it interesting. You know the drill. Type at you when I get back.

Speaking for myself, I'm getting things ready for RT60 rehearsals. This involves deciding on a final gear complement for our live shows. We'll actually have quite a bit of Analog Shiny on stage for the gear whores out there. Speaking just for myself, I'll have my MKS80 and CS5 for certain, as those two synths plus piano will be able to replicate almost all of my actual "played" parts on what we've done so far. What I do need, though, is a perfect working condition TX802 or TX81Z. If anyone has one they aren't using, I'd be more than happy to take it off your hands. Drop me a line if you have such a thing. There's a ton of 81Z action on eBay and it would stand to reason at least one of those people reads this site.

(To address the obvious first comment in that regard, no, I won't use FM8 or a different FM synth. All props to NI, and I'm a proud and frequent user of FM8, but RT60 is a soft-synth-free zone. And we can argue the semantics of "soft synth" when describing a digital box later. You know what I mean.)

And finally, this Crumar Performer. It's got a couple things wrong with it, and I'm debating whether to go Whole Hog like I did with the CS5. Mechanically, it needs all the sliders on the front panel replaced. Electronically, the resonance isn't working, but I think that's probably due to the slider. Cosmetically, the end cheeks need to be replaced. Still debating as to whether that's a good idea or not.

In other news, the RT60 "demo" is about finished, and we're going to begin shopping for labels and such in earnest. If you're a reader of this blog, and you work at or own a label that releases electronic music, and that label isn't run out of a Starbucks, feel free to drop me a line and I'll send you linkage to the material. In order to nip the inevitable "why don't you put it out on Positron?" question in the bud, we'd prefer to concentrate on the music and the performance for this one. Marketing an album takes too much time and money away from where I'd like to aim it.

And finally, has anyone called the Moderat album "epic dubstep" yet? I think that's a good name for what they make.

One of the things that makes Jeremy a fun collaborator is his militant insistence on running virtually every sound through his seemingly bottomless arsenal of analog effects. If it can alter a sound and doesn't have AES/EBU I/O, he owns at least one example, if not a pair. Stereo, doncha know...

The only way in which he and I really differ in this regard is in the means with which we apply effects, not the quantity, although quantity has a quality all its own, of course. He likes to print his analog effects, while I'm more of a "let's insert an H8000 or Lexicon 300, or some of my ten million plug-ins while it's coming off the tape" kind of guy. (Point of order: RT60 instrumentation is 100% "real," and our recording medium is analog tape, but when we're mixing, we're alowed to use plug-ins and digital effects.) One of our early arguments was based around the fact that I'm not a fan of phasers, while he most definitely is. I won that one, only barely, and I think he still slips in the occasional pass with the SPH-323 when my attention is elsewhere. Fair enough. As long as we don't end up sounding like ELO, I can live with it.

But those differences aside, we do see eye to eye on this: every sound is more better with a heaping shovelful of effects on it. Obviously, my opinion in how those effects should be applied is heavily biased, as is his, but we agree that nothing should survive to the final mixdown unscathed by compression, modulation, delay, filtering, and reverb. We tracked a 303 for a song yesterday, and were quite pleased with ourselves when we decided to only compress it.

Me: "Man, it's really in your face when it's dry and loud like that."

Jeremy: "Oh, hell yeah!"

Me: "I think a little Dimension D might make it really pop..."

I think the only reason the 303 sounded so present was that everything else in the song was burbling away in a stew of analog delay and spring reverb.

Anyhow, my Secret Effects Weapon is, of course, the H8000. It isn't such a secret, really, but by virtue of the fact that Eventide has only made 600 or so of them, I'm one of only 600 or so people in the world to have one, which makes it the next best thing to secret in this day and age. But I'm of the over-arching opinion that, since electronic instruments are all essentially identical, the occasional circuit-bent Furby notwithstanding, effects make the sound. What's your Secret Effects Weapon? Do you leave everything chained all the time? Or do you "design" each sound individually? Is "too much effects" like "too much Chopin?" That is to say, a physical impossibility?

Purple Audio hooked a brother up with some custom-machined aluminum knobs for the World's Most Expensive CS5. Much thanks to Andrew + Ed, and now the little feller (the which definitely needs a name by now) has controls befitting its status. The only thing left is the pitch bend wheel, and this little piggy will be done.

Flash forward to today. As in right now. My PC is tied up for the next several hours as it renders a 3DS Max file out in to a 30-second MOV of the RT60 staging, with music, moving lights, and the backing video playing. The only thing missing are little polygon flavored versions of Jeremy and I. (And really, I'm not any good at character modeling or animation, or I'd probably have done that too.)

I'd show it to you guys once it has rendered, but (a) it would spoil the surprise, now, wouldn't it? And (b) it's a pie-in-the-sky production idea that probably won't survive a meeting with my American Express card, nor the dives we'll likely end up in. But a boy can dream.

In any event, am I the only one that does this? Obviously the laptop jockeys don't really get to play in this particular party, as there's not much to grabbing a cocktail table and putting your MacBook Pro on it. But for those of you with bands, do you pre-visualize your stage show in some way? If not, why not?

Now, I'm a big believer in the theory that any sound can be made interesting, no matter how banal, if you just keep slapping effects on it. BRIZBOMB is a fellow traveller on that road, although one could make the argument that he's reached the event horizon, as far as effects go.

Pictured above is his instrument, a timeline of the creation of which you can see here. You might look at that and say "what, does this dude own a pawn shop or some shit?" The answer would be "yes." In any event, there are some fairly rare pieces in that rack, including something I've never, ever seen before, a Musitronics Digital Delay. Didn't even know there was such a thing.

BRIZBOMB makes, unsurprisingly, noise, and is based in Vancouver, WA, which is just like Vancouver, BC, except actually not so much. There is a YouTube channel here if you want to get your noise on. I gotta say that I do like his style.

EDIT: Bah. This is why I don't do gear posts any more. Matrix beat me to the punch on this by like 4 months. But on the bright side, you guys have short memories.