For EXS and Emagic effects plug-ins: see the same question in the Arrange window chapter of this FAQ.
It's the extension Logics plugins settings use when you save them. Just place them in the appropriate directory: <Logic application folder>/Plug-in Settings/<plug-in name>.
The purpose of this chapter is to help setting up the Evoc to run in Logic, and cover a number of points I found somewhat confusing after first trying out the Evoc. For a comprehensive reference, the manual is, of course, the first address the user should refer to. It is not my intention to try to describe in detail any of the parameters of the Evoc - the manual does an admirable job here. Rather, this is a "get you started" chapter based purely on my own initial experience after having tried the demo, before I bought the Evoc, and encountering some aspects of setting it up which to me at the time were somewhat unclear.
The first thing to be aware of is that the Evoc 20 in actual fact consists of three devices, namely the Audio Instrument "Evoc 20 Polysynth" (PS), the Evoc 20 Track Oscillator (TO), and the Evoc 20 Filterbank (FB). Each of these three devices comes with selections of presets, to illustrate the various sounds and effects which the Evoc is capable of creating.
On first examination of the presets, the first (pleasant) surprise you get is seeing different categories of presets, and then realising what this means - let us take the example of the Evoc 20 PS. It has two categories of presets "001 Pure Synth" and "002 Side Chain Input". Those already familiar with side chains may grasp what this means. Those who aren't may want to study this FAQ's chapter on sidechains.
The Pure Synth presets are for when you want to play the Evoc 20 as a "normal" software synthesizer/sound generator with an external keyboard, or using already recorded Midi notes. More interesting is the category "Side Chain Inputs". If you select one of these, and try to play the Evoc as you did with a "Pure Synth" preset, you won't hear anything! Curious? This merits a closer look...
I have set up a very simple audio environment to illustrate one way to use the Evoc to get that classic "robot chorus" vocoder vocal sound. I think this is the sound that most people associate with a vocoder (it certainly was the case with me), and, when asked by recording clients for "that robot voice sound", this is usually the one which, when they hear it, immediately causes the "yeah, that's what I mean" response.
This environment consists of the EVOC 20 polysynth, with audio side-chained into the Evoc, which is being played through MIDI. This highlights the most important concept you need to understand regarding the Evoc 20 PS - you have to play it, regardless as to whether you have Synth or Side Chain presets. We need just one Audio Track, one Bus, one Audio Instrument and one Output object. In the picture you see them as Track 1, Instrument 1, Output 1-2 and Bus 1. Of course you also need the above mentioned MIDI source -- in this case any keyboard connected via a MIDI-in to Logic will do.
Set up the Audio Instrument with the EVOC 20 PS. Select preset 002 "Side chain input" - 025 "wide heaven". Set up a vocal take on the Audio Track. Let the Audio Track's output go to Bus 1, and set this Bus's output to Output 1-2. Make sure you can hear the audio on playback through your outputs. Now, on the EVOC 20 PS, select Track 1 from the "Side Chain" popup. You still aren't going to hear anything other than the non-processed audio, because the "PS" in Evoc20 PS stands for "Polysynth", and that means it needs to be played, or triggered through MIDI notes. So, in the Arrange window select the track assigned to Instrument 1, make sure that the vocal on Track 1 is being played back, and now start to play a keyboard, making sure that you can't hear any preset coming out of that keyboard itself.
You should hear the EVOC processing and "vocoding" your vocal. To get the full effect, muting bus one, as shown in the screenshot, will remove the dry, non-vocoded sound, leaving you the "wet" sound of the EVOC processing the vocal. Note: since sidechains get their signal before it reaches the source-object's fader (pre-fader), a slightly different setup could have been used as well: omit the Bus and set Track 1's output to "Output 1-2" directly. Now adjust the volume on the Track 1 channel strip: the vocoded signal won't be affected, so you can safely drag the volume fader all the way down to mute the dry signal and get only the wet signal.
I have chosen preset 25 as it represents for me the typical vocoder sound, but you should of course now start to play around with the presets, until you find one which approaches what you might be looking for, and of course, go ahead and edit the preset! A favourite of mine is to automate the parameter "formant shift". This can be very effective in "tracking" the frequencies predominantly being played back by the Evoc. The other very useful thing at this point is to play an appropriate accompaniment on the keyboard. Finally, knowing the vocal melody obviously helps to find the right vocoded "harmony".
Another use, of course, would be in a live set up to trigger vocoding of live vocals or any other audio being played. This requires that your Logic/Evoc equipped computer is patched into your live sound system, so you need to give this some thought, and discuss it with your sound personnel.
The next one to try out, which is actually a lot simpler, is the EVOC 20 FB "Filterbank". This is available as a normal plug in effect, as opposed to being an Audio Instrument, so you can use it in a variety of Audio Objects including Inputs, Outputs, Bus Objects and Aux Objects. The important thing to note here is that there is no side chain input, as opposed to the Evoc 20 PS and Evoc 20 TO. I suggest experimenting with preset 009 Waterspheres-JV, for some exotic sounding sweeped/phased filter effects.
With the Evoc 20 TO we have a third plug in, also an effect, but this time with side chaining. Once again we have two sets of presets. "001 Pitch tracking" and, "002 Side Chain Inputs". Pitch tracking can be used as an effect just like with the Evoc 20 FB by inserting it in an audio object and letting audio pass through it. With a side chain input you have the opportunity to trigger using a side chain as we did with the Evoc 20 PS, only this time you don't have to involve a keyboard or other MIDI, rather the trigger comes from an audio object.
Let us set up another simple example to illustrate this. This time we use two Audio Tracks. One has audio which is routed through the Evoc 20 TO input , the other will be used as a side chain source. Set this up as shown in the screenshot.
Here, the Evoc 20 TO is inserted into the Audio Track containing the vocal (track 2). Two very important parameters here are "Analysis in" and "Synthesis in". You can use these to decide which of the two signals is used to trigger the other, in other words, even if you have set up the Evoc 20 TO on a track with a vocal take, and are using a Guitar track as side chain input, if you set Analysis in to "Track" and Synthesis in to "SideCh" the sound you will hear is actually the guitar, as opposed to the vocal, which is now the analysis, or vocoder, for the guitar. Setting both parameters to the same value means that the processed sound is being analyzed and vocoded by itself. Once again, experimenting with the Evoc TO in this setup will help show what it is capable of. Don't forget to try different sound sources - what may not work on a vocal could be just right for a keyboard pad, or rhythm guitar, or some sample FX and so on ....
You can upload/download ES1 patches at http://www.onelist.com/files/logic-users/ES1/. Feel free to add your patches. People can share their patches very easily this way.
In the ES1 window, set the Audio track or Bus that you want to process as sidechain. On the ES1 Arrange track, program notes for the rhythm you want to gate the sound after.
You have to either mute the Audio track or set the Track Object to "no output" to hear only the ES1 sidechained version. There is a special ES1 preset for audio side chaining. (Basically it's: Set "Oscillator" to "EXT". Set the vertical Mix slider all way down to "Sub" ("Wave" is on top).)
Note: in the chapter on Effects, a similar question, also using the ES1, is answered.
If you've created an EXS instrument which is only used in this particular song, you don't want it to show up in the instrument list of other songs, since otherwise you might end up with a listing of a zillion song-specific instruments one day.
Make sure your song is saved in its own folder (which is a Very Good Idea anyway). In this folder, create a new folder, called "Sampler Instruments" (i.e. identical to the Sampler Instruments folder which resides in your Logic application folder). Save the EXS instrument in this folder. Now when you load this song, the EXS instrument menu will have a sub-menu with the name of your song, and the song-specific instruments will show up under this sub-menu. If you load another song, the sub-menu won't be present and hence you keep a "clean" instrument list.
This can only be done for parameters with a checkbox and the "Group" popup menu, and not for parameters with a value-field. Select all zones whose parameter you wish to change. Press Option [Ctrl] while clicking the checkbox in one of the zones or groups. This will set the corresponding parameter in all selected zones or groups.
Note: the above only works on the currently selected zones. To select several zones at once, you can either lasso them (in the lower part of the window), or shift-click (in either the lower or upper part of the window) to select non-adjacent zones. If you want to open all the zone-boxes at once, Option [Ctrl] click the small triangle on one of the zone-boxes.
You don't. The EXS is not a multitimbral instrument, as opposed to the VST sample player version of the EXS, the EXSP. If you still need multitimbrality, for example because you have a sequence that contains data on various channels and for some reasons you don't want to "Demix by channel", then there is a workaround though. Just remember that it's a workaround.
In the environment, in the Audio Mixer layer, create a new Channel Splitter (New menu). Cable outlets 1-16 (or however much you need) into different Audio Instrument channel strips. In each channel strip, insert an EXS instance (so that's up to 16 EXS's). Pick the proper EXS instrument for each channel/EXS-instance. Assign the multitimbral track to the Channel Splitter. Done.
Samples: these can be stored anywhere, on any disk. When you load an instrument, Logic will simply scan all connected disks until it locates the samples. The location of the samples will then be written in the instrument file (the xxx.exs file), which will thus be altered. Next time Logic has to load the instrument, it will thus find the samples a lot faster
Instruments: instrument files (the xxx.exs files) have to be stored in the Sampler Instruments folder inside the Logic application folder. You can store them someplace else, as long as you put an alias [shortcut on PC] to the files (or to the folder containing the files) inside the Sampler Instruments folder.
Also see the question "How do I save my song-specific instruments without cluttering the instrument-list?" above.
When the EXS loads an instrument, it looks in the instrument file (the xxx.exs file which resides in the Sampler Instruments folder inside the Logic application folder). This file contains the full paths to the samples. If this path is wrong, because you moved the samples around, or because you got the instrument files from someone else, the EXS starts searching all your connected harddisks to locate the samples. Once they're found, the new (and now correct) path is written to the instrument file (which is thus physically altered). Since searching your harddisks can take a while, you can experience long load times.
Logic 4-5: The foregoing suggests a nice way to solve this problem once and for all for Logic v.5 and earlier.
Note that if you have any duplicate samples, the EXS will halt and put up a dialog asking you which sample to use. It's mighty annoying if this happens with the 2nd instrument, and you only find out the next morning...
Logic 6: Logic 6 has the Project Manager, which makes another approach possible, although the Logic 4-5 solution is of course still a possibility.
N.B. Logic seems to ignore the name & selects duplicates by file length & type: sometimes it comes up with 3 choices, all with a different file name. Just select the one with the identical name (which is usually the 1st option)
I also noticed that once you did the scan & referenced the files, you can move your samples to a different folder. Rescanning the drive seems to automatically rebuild the references. I would however not rely on this, as I didn’t have time to test it thoroughly!! There might be other issues I’m not aware of but so far I haven’t had a problem!
You can control the Cutoff and Resonance controls at the same time by clicking on the little link symbol between the Cutoff and Resonance knobs. Y axis affects the Cutoff, X axis affects the Resonance.
Question: Does one get the benefit of 32 bit float after samples have been imported from, say, gig format? Or does the benefit only occur if the samples are imported with 32 bit mode active?
Answer: As far as Gig conversion goes, all the conversion is doing is extracting the 16 bit wavs from the gig archive and storing them as 16 bit wavs on disk. Gigasampler does not yet support 24 bit audio formats.
The 32 bit preference thing is merely a CPU saver. All audio passing through the audio engine is in 32 bit float format. So, if you have not activated 32 bit float setting in the EXS24 prefs, the samples load into RAM in 16 or 24 bit format -- whatever they are in on hard-disk.
Before each voice can be processed by the EXS24 it has to be converted on the fly to 32 bit float -- this process consumes CPU cycles. If you activate the 32 bit setting in the prefs this conversion takes place during loading of the instrument to RAM and you save on CPU when the instrument is playing. Of course this method takes up more RAM.
This benefit is probably negated if you have disk streaming active as the conversion of samples streaming up from the hard disk has to happen on the fly. With streaming active only the initial attack of samples is stored in RAM -- the rest streams up from disk as needed. This might explain the limitation on the sample start modulation (set it all the way up and you are still only a little way into the sample) -- if it was otherwise the whole sample would need to be in RAM for instant response.
Open an EXS instance, then click the Edit button to bring up the Instrument Editor. There in the File menu you'll find "Preferences". The last two items in the Preferences dialog are "previous/next instrument". You can assign notes, program changes, controllers, etc., to trigger patch changes.
If you have an external faderbox with buttons, you could program two buttons to send out e.g. controller 20 and 21, and have the EXS respond to that. You could also create two buttons in the Environment window, cable them into the To Sequencer object (Clicks & Ports layer), set their range to "0 0", set their Out definition to CC20 and CC21 respectively, and set the EXS preferences to have CC20/21 be prev/next instrument.
Question: I've got a mixed mode Akai CD Rom (part audio, part Akai format samples) that I'm trying to convert for use in EXS24. However, the Mac can only "see" the audio part of the CD.
Answer: In OS9: You need to use the 1.3 Apple CD/DVD driver. Newer versions see the audio and don't report the rest of the CD.
You can get the 1.3 version at http://www.chickensys.com/translator/download. Put it into your Extensions folder, enable it in the Extensions Manager, disable the old one, restart, and the EXS should now see the CD. Don't use the 1.3 version for daily use; the 1.4 version is more stable and reliable, so if you're done importing, disable 1.3 again and enable 1.4.
First, you need to use a Multi Channel version of the EXS24 or whatever sampler you are using. I.e. in the Audio Mixer, locate an Audio Instrument channel strip, click on the instrument-insert slot, and pick the EXS from the "Multi Channel" submenu instead of the Mono or Stereo submenu.
Associate your samples with Groups, e.g. Snare, Kick, Hats, etc. Then pick suitable outputs for your Groups -- if your samples are stereo choose stereo pairs. I use a standard set for all my multi-out kits of stereo samples: Kick: Main Outs, Snare: 3-4, Hats: 5-6, Toms: 7-8, Cymbals: 9 -10, Percussion: 11-12, etc.
Note: You can also assign individual outputs at the Zone-level and thus don't have to use Groups. Using Groups only makes things more convenient when you're dealing with lots of samples (as is typically the case with drum sets).
Set up some Aux Objects in the Audio Mixer. Make a set of stereo ones if your samples are stereo and have some mono ones for mono samples. Then choose the outputs of your multi-channel instance of the EXS24 as inputs for the Aux objects. So for my set -- Aux-1 gets outputs 3-4 from the EXS24 MC , Aux-2 gets outputs 5-6 from the EXS24 MC and so on.
This is a tedious process to do over and over so the easy way is to do it once and save the song as a template for songs where you will use multi-out drums and name your Aux objects -- e.g. Hats, Snare, etc., so you know what is what in the mixer.
Here's a little tip, this is what I am doing now for some time and it seems to be a proper method, at least when you plan to use REX files as some "generic loop material" with the EXS (which I prefer over using them straight on audiotracks). On my harddisks I have 3 identical directory trees:
Now, what you can do is the following:
Question: Is there any way I can program a crossfade between 2 groups with a MIDI controller ? I know how to switch from one group to another with a MIDI controller or a keyswitch, but I have not found any way to make a crossfade between 2 groups.
Answer: Use the Modulation Matrix. Select the Controller you plan to use as the Source ("Src") and "Sample Select" as the Destination ("Dest"). Click the Edit button to open the Instrument Editor. Then use the "Select Range" parameter on the Groups in the Instrument Editor to determine which samples will play at various values of the controller. Save the instrument when you're done and close the editor window. Then in the EXS interface, use the "Amount" parameter (right above the 1st section of the modulation matrix) to dial in the amount of crossfading. Use the "Type" popup next to the Amount parameter to determine the kind of crossfading.
Example: if you want to crossfade between patch A and patch B with the mod wheel, pick Controller #1 as Src, Sample Select as Dest, choose 0-63 as the Select Range for group A and 64 to 127 for group B.
Question: I need to assign a little pitch variation to note-velocity. Isn't the "pitcher" slider (in the main interface of the EXS) intended for that? Why doesn't it work? Or: work only with the glide control turned up?
Answer: Read the EXS-manual, page 49, to see what the 'pitcher' does. It is directly connected to the glide parameter, and so not helpful to achieve what you want. To get the effect you're after: in the EXS's modulation matrix, pick "Pitch" for Dest, and "Velocity" for Src. Drag the little green triangle a bit up. Done.
Yes, every Fat-EQ band has its own amount of CPU usage.
I think the channel-strip EQ's use less CPU than the plug-ins, but according to Emagic themselves the algorithms are of lesser quality as well.