MIKE PAYNE: Hello everyone and welcome to Crosstalk Episode 29. I'm your host Mike Payne and I'm here with Drew Krag.

DREW KRAG: What's up, world?

MIKE PAYNE: What's up, Drew? What's going on, man?

DREW KRAG: Not much. Same old [EXPLETIVE], different date.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah. I like your T-shirt, man.

DREW KRAG: Thanks.

MIKE PAYNE: Very cool.

DREW KRAG: I like it.

MIKE PAYNE: Is that a medium?

DREW KRAG: No. Actually, it is a large.

MIKE PAYNE: A large? Okay. Cool.

DREW KRAG: I just haven't washed it yet.

MIKE PAYNE: No. At least that with warm water.

DREW KRAG: Yeah.

MIKE PAYNE: And Grizzly Adams.

DAN AGOSTO: What's going on, bear?

MIKE PAYNE: What's going on, buddy? [LAUGHING] All right. So, this week we're going to catch up on the listening test we had on episode 28. We're going to check out what software synths or software samplers and ROMplers we used for that test. In addition, we're going to do another one this week with brass, and that should be pretty telling and pretty interesting, so we'll check that out. Next, we'll try out the Blue Cat Audio FreqAnalyst Pro, which is a freeware -- actually, the Pro is not a freeware but there is a freeware version of that, frequency analyzer available as Direct X or VST. Also, we got a distortion pedal to play with, blah blah blah, the Fender Blender. We're going to check that out, and fortunately we got Drew Krag right next to us, who's going to play some guitar on that and I bet it's going to be amazing. I bet he's going to do some finger stuff at the end. I guarantee it.

DREW KRAG: This guy really likes to talk me up.

MIKE PAYNE: I do. I mean it's easy.

DAN AGOSTO: I want to hear some pinched harmonics personally.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah?

DREW KRAG: Never. I'm never going to do any of those things.

MIKE PAYNE: I foresee it happening.

DREW KRAG: Whatever.

MIKE PAYNE: It's going to happen.

DREW KRAG: Whatever.

MIKE PAYNE: All right. So yeah, stay tuned and check out this episode. It should be a lot of fun. Also, before we get started, I got to pay the bills. Actually, there aren't any but we're going to pay them anyway. Be sure to send us an email if you want to talk. Send us an email at crosstalk@gearwire.com. We love hate mail. Send as much as you got. And additionally, check out the forums at forums.gearwire.com and we will play.

We are going to pick up something we started on the last episode, number 28, when we did an orchestral synth sample listening test.

DAN AGOSTO: A little shootout.

MIKE PAYNE: A little shootout. We listened to a bunch of some lovely, lovely church music that Mr. Dan Agosto himself wrote, and we tried to figure out which was which and -- well, we actually didn't but --

DAN AGOSTO: Well yeah. This was basically very vanilla test just to see which people liked the best and --

MIKE PAYNE: As opposed to a very kinky test.

DAN AGOSTO: And -- yeah.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: Okay. Gotcha.

DAN AGOSTO: But anyway, we had some response. We had about 11 people get on the forums and vote for which one they wanted the best, and you know --

MIKE PAYNE: So wait, all 11 of our viewers the most?

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

DAN AGOSTO: No. We have hundreds of people who watch the show. It's just a lot of people don't want to get involved for one reason or another. But definitely, if you do get a chance, go to our forums, go to the Crosstalk section, it's pretty close to the bottom...,

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: And we'll have one up for this brass one as well, and that will -- hopefully, we'll get a better response to that one.

MIKE PAYNE: Nice, nice.

DAN AGOSTO: It was pretty good though.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: A lot of people looked at it.

MIKE PAYNE: Mmm hmm.

DAN AGOSTO: A lot of people looked at it, and a lot of people I think downloaded the samples and actually listened but just didn't take the time to vote. But we did have, most of the people voted for three, which what you liked...

MIKE PAYNE: Right.

DAN AGOSTO: ...and what Drew liked as well.

MIKE PAYNE: Right.

DAN AGOSTO: A few people voted for two and a few people voted for four.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay.

DAN AGOSTO: Which is kind of interesting. So, let's listen back and I'll tell you guys which ones are which.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYS BACK SAMPLE ONE]

DAN AGOSTO: Okay, so we don't need --

MIKE PAYNE: Was that number three?

DAN AGOSTO: That was number one.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay

DAN AGOSTO: That was actually the Roland XV-5050.

MIKE PAYNE: Hmm.

DREW KRAG: Hmm. Not bad.

DAN AGOSTO: Pretty surprising. Not bad for a ROMpler synth from the '90s. Okay, and here's the second one.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYS BACK SAMPLE TWO]

DAN AGOSTO: And that was actually the EWSQL Silver Edition.

MIKE PAYNE: Huh.

DAN AGOSTO: A lot of people actually noticed that because they knew that the EWSQL actually has panning built into it.

MIKE PAYNE: Right. Right.

DREW KRAG: Yeah. I was going to mention that.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah. I own that one, and I wasn't even able to tell. I guessed it was going to be number two or number three but I couldn't discern.

DAN AGOSTO: A few people were able to guess that on -- well, one person guessed that on our forum and another person guessed that on a different forum.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay. Nice.

DREW KRAG: You can definitely hear like the spread of the strings.

DAN AGOSTO: And the next one is the one that pretty much everyone liked the best.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYS BACK SAMPLE THREE]

DAN AGOSTO: That one actually had, you know, the best sort of I think low-end punch, which what people liked the most.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah. The warmth really stood out on that one.

DAN AGOSTO: That was the VSL.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay.

DAN AGOSTO: So, you guys liked that one the best.

MIKE PAYNE: That's pretty grand.

DAN AGOSTO: But of course, you know, it's a smaller library. This is just the one that comes with Komplete 3 I believe.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay.

DAN AGOSTO: So it's not anywhere near the full VSL library but...

MIKE PAYNE: Right.

DAN AGOSTO: It's a nice sample.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

DAN AGOSTO: Okay. Let's do the next one.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYS BACK SAMPLE FOUR]

DAN AGOSTO: That was the MU-100R.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay.

DREW KRAG: Wow.

DAN AGOSTO: The oldest of the ROMplers.

DREW KRAG: It's really not that bad for what it is.

MIKE PAYNE: It's not bad.

DAN AGOSTO: What I noticed is it's not actually a true stereo sample, which was interesting but they actually did this some sort of chorusing effect going on.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay.

DAN AGOSTO: So it's what kind of gives it that little cheaper older feel.

DREW KRAG: You can hear it really in the lower registers of notes, you know.

DAN AGOSTO: Definitely. All right, number five.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYS BACK SAMPLE FIVE]

DAN AGOSTO: I'm not sure about you but that was my least favorite.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay.

DAN AGOSTO: That was the Motif.

MIKE PAYNE: Wow.

DREW KRAG: Almost sounds like there was some oohs and aahs mixed in there or something.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. It sounded very synthetic, and you know I've actually read on certain places where they would review synths that pretty much everything about Motif everyone loves except for the pads.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: And I think this is sort of an illustration of that.

MIKE PAYNE: Nice.

DAN AGOSTO: All right, and then number six I would probably by process of elimination know what this is.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYS BACK SAMPLE SIX]

DAN AGOSTO: MUSE. SONiVOX MUSE.

MIKE PAYNE: Yup.

DAN AGOSTO: I didn't like the attack on that one.

MIKE PAYNE: See, I didn't like the attack on the fourth one.

DAN AGOSTO: The MU-100R

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: The thing about the SONiVOX MUSE is that, see I was feeding the exact same MIDI through all of these, and it's not exactly scientific but, you know, with some sort of extra, you know, MIDI, extra time spent, you can probably make that sound pretty good. It's just right out of the patch, you know, just the blank patch, vanilla patch, it didn't really have the type of attack for that sort of section.

MIKE PAYNE: Gotcha.

DAN AGOSTO: But maybe for a different type of, you know, piece.

MIKE PAYNE: Right. Right.

DAN AGOSTO: Mini piece.

DREW KRAG: It's got kind of a gritty, kind of a low-mid to it I was noticing.

DAN AGOSTO: It does. It's definitely not my favorite for that. Of course, SONiVOX is sort of a do-it-all --

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: Or the MUSE is the sort of a do-it-all sample set.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: They have, you know, they have other orchestral sample sets that would be used for that but, you know, MUSE at least has that.

MIKE PAYNE: Right. Right. I also want to commend you on your composition. I think that you can definitely get a job writing music for Japanese role-playing games.

DAN AGOSTO: [LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: I think that's perfect a perfect fit.

DREW KRAG: That's where you're going with it. I like it. [LAUGHING]

DAN AGOSTO: All right. So we'll just take a few seconds to --

MIKE PAYNE: I'll make some calls and see what I can work out for you.

DREW KRAG: [LAUGHING]

DAN AGOSTO: Well, last time you guys were saying, the last time I did something like that, or actually the first time I did something like that, you said I could get a job in Bollywood.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

DAN AGOSTO: Then the second time it was that video game piece.

MIKE PAYNE: Right. Right. I like that. All right. So next up, we've got another orchestral sample listening test. This week, we'll be checking out brass samples across the same three hardware ROMplers and three software samplers we tried before. With any sample sets, brass is typically the most telling as is it is where most samplers fail. Let's see who can stand up to our listening test this week on brass samples. Let's check it out.

DAN AGOSTO: All right. Here's number one.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYS BACK BRASS SAMPLE ONE]

DAN AGOSTO: Hmm.

MIKE PAYNE: Wow. I'm impressed by that one.

DREW KRAG: Not too bad. Throw a little reverb on it, and, you know.

DAN AGOSTO: That was just dry.

MIKE PAYNE: Um, that first note. Was that the brown tone?

DAN AGOSTO: It might have been, but are you all right?

MIKE PAYNE: I'm okay. I'm okay.

DAN AGOSTO: Do you need [OVERLAPPING]

DREW KRAG: What's that smell?

MIKE PAYNE: Did you guys think I'm on a weird [INDISCERNIBLE]? [LAUGHING] Woo!

DAN AGOSTO: All right, so number two.

MIKE PAYNE: Cut. Cut.

DREW KRAG: [LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: Just get going.

DAN AGOSTO: Number two.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYS BACK BRASS SAMPLE TWO]

MIKE PAYNE: Boo.

DAN AGOSTO: You didn't like that one.

MIKE PAYNE: No.

DAN AGOSTO: I just -- I'm having a headphone problem.

MIKE PAYNE: In fact, you can sample me singing boo in a bunch of different pitches, and then put that MIDI to it.

DAN AGOSTO: [SINGING] Boo, boo-boo-boo, boo, boo. I'll do that for next week.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay. That'll be number seven.

DAN AGOSTO: So, what didn't you like about that one.

MIKE PAYNE: Play it again really quick, just the first couple of seconds.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYS BACK BRASS SAMPLE TWO]

MIKE PAYNE: Okay, those higher trumpets just sound --

DREW KRAG: The attack sounded more realistic on the first one

DAN AGOSTO: Okay.

DREW KRAG: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: I think the first one did sound a lot more real too.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYS BACK BRASS SAMPLE THREE]

MIKE PAYNE: I like the trumpets on that a lot better. They sounded, I mean, very real. The tuba was a little --

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. It was a little weak. It wasn't quite as strong.

MIKE PAYNE: But I like those trumpets quite a bit.

DAN AGOSTO: Cool. So that was number three.

MIKE PAYNE: They sounded real but I don't know how well they sound recorded. It sounds like you can't do too much of them, unless -- Does that software have reverb within it?

DAN AGOSTO: I turned like -- For this test, I kind of turned off reverb for the ROMplers.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay.

DAN AGOSTO: Because all the patches in ROMplers, I don't know but --

MIKE PAYNE: But that sampler had -- that software sampler had reverb in it?

DAN AGOSTO: It probably did have some reverb in it.

MIKE PAYNE: Oh, I just got you to tell me that it's a sampler, a soft sampler.

DAN AGOSTO: It -- I mean it could have been a ROMpler with some reverb on the sample too.

DREW KRAG: Touché. Touché.

DAN AGOSTO: I don't know. Hard to tell.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

DAN AGOSTO: All right. So that was number three.

DREW KRAG: Mike Payne.

DAN AGOSTO: Here's number four.

DREW KRAG: Private Eyes.

MIKE PAYNE: Software private investigator.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

DAN AGOSTO: Who loves you, baby.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYS BACK BRASS SAMPLE FOUR]

MIKE PAYNE: I'm just stunned by the realism there.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. That one had some reverb on it.

DREW KRAG: [LAUGHING] But I mean I like -- What was that? Number four?

DAN AGOSTO: That was four.

DREW KRAG: Um, that would be good like different applications I think. That one was a little bit more like in your face.

DAN AGOSTO: It sounded kind of like pop brass almost.

DREW KRAG: It sounded like a different dynamic of sample like maybe it was mezzo forte as opposed to pianoforte or whatever.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. That's true too.

DREW KRAG: Whatever, but I would use that one more in like something that is a little bit louder.

DAN AGOSTO: Mmm hmm.

DREW KRAG: Where the first one sounded to have that more kind of quiet almost like French -- what is it? Flugelhorn or what is it? French horn?

DAN AGOSTO: French horn. Yeah. It had a lot more of French Horn in it. It did.

DREW KRAG: Oh. There you go.

DAN AGOSTO: Definitely.

DAN AGOSTO: See, this one I thought was a little fake sounding.

MIKE PAYNE: See, I didn't know we're going to use the synth from the Nintendo 64.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: I didn't know that was number six.

DAN AGOSTO: Well, which one do you think that would be then?

MIKE PAYNE: The old Yamaha.

DAN AGOSTO: The MU-100R?

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: Well, we'll see about that.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

DAN AGOSTO: All right. Was that number four or five?

MIKE PAYNE: That was number four.

DREW KRAG: That was four.

DAN AGOSTO: Okay. Here's five.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYS BACK BRASS SAMPLE FIVE]

MIKE PAYNE: I liked it.

DREW KRAG: I liked the lower -- What is that? A trombone or trumpet?

DAN AGOSTO: the --

MIKE PAYNE: The tuba.

DREW KRAG: I'm sorry. Trombone or tuba?

DAN AGOSTO: I believe it was a tuba. Yeah.

DREW KRAG: I like the tuba sound.

MIKE PAYNE: I was a trombone player for a long time.

DREW KRAG: [IMITATING A TROMBONE GLISSANDO] Whump!

DAN AGOSTO: So, you know the bones.

MIKE PAYNE: I do know the bones very well.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: Very well.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: No, that was -- Yeah, that was a tuba but the attack was kind of slow on that. I don't know if that was default, if you can actually edit that.

DAN AGOSTO: For most of the --

MIKE PAYNE: Within that sampler.

DAN AGOSTO: For most samplers and ROMplers.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: There's different attack settings with different patches in the ROMplers. In the samplers, you can just choose different samples, of course, that have different attack. I chose the most vanilla attack that I could find, you know, just something that fit across the board.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay. Gotcha.

DREW KRAG: I like that one.

MIKE PAYNE: That's good.

DREW KRAG: Just the tuba side of it.

DAN AGOSTO: Very dry. Very dry.

DREW KRAG: Yeah. The tuba side of it.

DAN AGOSTO: You just need some reverb on it.

DREW KRAG: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: All right. Six.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYS BACK BRASS SAMPLE SIX]

MIKE PAYNE: Motif.

DAN AGOSTO: Okay. Your guess is the Motif.

MIKE PAYNE: My guess is the Motif.

DAN AGOSTO: All right. I think this one sounds pretty real, not as real as some of the other ones, but it's kind of something like you'd hear like Vangelis use or something like that.

DREW KRAG: Sure.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: It kind of has a little bit more digital edge to it or some sort of synthetic edge to it I think that can be really nice but isn't completely --

DREW KRAG: You got to make it work.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. It's not completely convincing.

MIKE PAYNE: I could be wrong about my guess but I own the ES5.

DAN AGOSTO: It definitely could be.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah. [LAUGHING]

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: Okay. Gotcha.

DREW KRAG: Fair enough.

MIKE PAYNE: Fair enough.

DAN AGOSTO: All right. So, as with last week's program, or last -- That was a couple of weeks ago.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: As with the last program, we're going to have these samples up for download at full frequency 48k, 24-bit so you'l be able to listen to them yourselves. You could also, you know, listen to this show, and it's not going to be as high quality if you listen to it with the movie but you can still take a guess if you'd like. Go to our forums. There'll be another sticky, and please vote because we'd really like to get some feedback going on how our viewers feel about the different sounds.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah. Those of you who took place in the last one, thanks a lot. Hope that was fun.

DAN AGOSTO: Oh, and actually special thanks to Creations who actually took the MIDI sample that I had and put it through the Philharmonic, the Miroslav Philharmonic.

DREW KRAG: Oh, nice.

DAN AGOSTO: Those are pretty nice. He needed two different patches with that, and also Dimension Pro, the Cakewalk Dimension Pro, and also an Edirol VST I believe.

MIKE PAYNE: Gotcha. Gotcha.

DAN AGOSTO: And so, if you want to hear those as well, those are on the sticky for the string ensemble test.

MIKE PAYNE: You know what we should do when we do another orchestral listening test like this to see if we can get the -- if somebody can choose them all correctly, see if we can get them a copy of like EastWest Quantum Silver.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. We can definitely do that. Let's see if we can -- If we could hook it up, maybe we'll have to call our friends at EastWest or maybe VSL.

MIKE PAYNE: There you go. There you go. Cool. All right. Oh, and if anybody wants to use the music that Dan wrote for each of those samples in their Japanese role-playing game, they are available for license and I will take a cut of that for finder's fee but --

DAN AGOSTO: Get a hold of us at crosstalk@gearwire.com.

MIKE PAYNE: Yes.

DAN AGOSTO: If you'd like to purchase.

MIKE PAYNE: Exactly or myjapaneserpg@gearwire.com.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. Let's set that one up.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah. Let's do that.

DREW KRAG: [LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: All right. Blue Cat Audio's FreqAnalyst Pro is a very cool and very free little frequency analyzer. FreqAnalyst is not only an accurate frequency analyzer but it has some interesting functionality like the ability to export signal data as MIDI allowing for some interesting creative effects. Let's dig in to that.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. So let's take a look at FreqAnalyst.

MIKE PAYNE: The FreqAnalyst.

DAN AGOSTO: And I did a video on this already so we won't go.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay.

DAN AGOSTO: And there is actually another one coming up. There's a lot of features in this but, you know, it's just a slick looking plugin. Overall, I think that's the biggest thing about it, other analysts don't always look as good for this cheap.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: So, we'll just play back something real quick.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYS BACK A TRACK THROUGH BLUE CAT AUDIO FREQANALYST]

DAN AGOSTO: Here's the spectrum view. You can offset the -- basically the loudness so I can move it to a spot where it's easier for you to see. You can type in, you know, different levels for different things. Spectrogram is probably my favorite view.

DREW KRAG: Nice.

MIKE PAYNE: Nice.

DAN AGOSTO: Everyone likes that. You don't get that in every analyzer, and output. This is basically telling you the pitch center of basically each of your channels, so now it's getting silence so it's kind of freaking out, but if we go back. It's just telling you what's going on in each channel as far as pitch data.

MIKE PAYNE: Right.

DAN AGOSTO: And then their sum together. As long as you see they're pretty similar, you know you're doing all right. And pretty similar thing over, it's summing together the -- all the different frequencies and telling you where the average -- where the most energy is across both channels.

DREW KRAG: Ah, that's interesting.

DAN AGOSTO: So it jumps around and it's getting lower you see, so it gets -- when it's down there, that means that the whole spectrum is sounding, you know, bassier.

MIKE PAYNE: Right. Gotcha.

DAN AGOSTO: So, you know, if you know you want to -- your average to be around 500 Hz, you know, you can kind of use this to EQ it that way.

MIKE PAYNE: Nice. Nice.

DAN AGOSTO: So, we won't go into depth right now, but this brings up an interesting subject if you guys use a frequency analyzer, anything like this, visual aids, to help you do any sort of your work.

MIKE PAYNE: I generally don’t. Most of the work that I do, like I said before, it's hip hop, and when I'm composing an instrumental, generally I'm working with samples and things like that and I don't have to really get into anything like this until I get down to the master, so in that sense it could be, you know, pretty valuable to me but I just haven’t gotten into it. Part of the reason is I haven't wanted to spend money on one, and this kind of solves that.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. This is a pretty affordable one. I think you can buy like all their plugins for like 300-something dollars and [OVERLAPPING].

MIKE PAYNE: And there is a free version of this?

DAN AGOSTO: With just FreqAnalyst, yeah, and there is also like digital peak meter.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay.

DAN AGOSTO: And there is a pro version of that. They do have, you know, some free plugins. Yeah, definitely one of the cool things you can do with this is set a parameter to, you know, to record basically an envelope data, and then you can assign that data to anything else, so you can kind of use it to basically to ride a fader for you.

DREW KRAG: Cool.

MIKE PAYNE: Nice.

DAN AGOSTO: What about you, Drew? Do you use?

DREW KRAG: I don't use it primarily for like mixing or anything like that. I do use frequency analyzers for actually figuring out what any sort of bias that my rooms have. I record in a lot of various types of rooms from like dead rooms to, you know, medium sized live rooms to very large live rooms, and what I'll do is I'll just take a very clean dry signal of an instrument and then record the same instrument in the big room, and then run them both through the frequency analyzer and see what frequencies become biased, see what frequencies pop out, and then I know a little bit more about the room I'm dealing with and how to record in it and more importantly how to fix it.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. That's a pretty good idea. One thing that might be kind of cool to do is that you could do with the frequency analyzer like this is you could record say an impulse response. You guys know impulse responses.

MIKE PAYNE: Absolutely.

DAN AGOSTO: Record one for a nice room like the sweet spot between the speakers in a nice mixing room, and then bring that to your studio, play it back, freeze, you know, freeze the data that comes up, and then you can open up another frequency analyzer and use that to move your room EQ, the EQ for your room.

MIKE PAYNE: Interesting.

DREW KRAG: That's a good idea. That can make your room sound.

DAN AGOSTO: Definitely, and there's all sorts of things in here. There's a zoom feature that let's you really, you know, move in to the frequencies that you want to look at, and it gets pretty precise as well. You can control the precision to be low so you can sort of see, you know, how your ears would hear it but you can also turn it up really high and be really critical and really like sort of scientific about it, you know.

MIKE PAYNE: Right.

DAN AGOSTO: Because when there's like tiny little peaks, you know, it's more -- you don't really notice it. You more like feel it, so it allows you to tailor the data that you're seeing onto, you know, what you want to do whether you're mastering, you might use less precision, but if you're like EQing a room, you might use a lot more.

MIKE PAYNE: Right.

DREW KRAG: Sure.

MIKE PAYNE: Cool.

DAN AGOSTO: It's a pretty cool plugin, and we have one video up already and we will have another video up probably next week just because there is a lot that you can do with this so that you can -- There's this whole matrix up here that we even didn't get into in the last video.

DREW KRAG: This is Blue Cat. Is this free?

DAN AGOSTO: No. This is one of their paid plugins. You can get it from their site. They're all direct downloads from the Blue Cat Audio web site, so check out the Blue Cat Audio web site if you are interested in purchasing any of their plugins including the FreqAnalyst Pro.

MIKE PAYNE: And presently, they're just Direct X and VST, correct?

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. That's it.

MIKE PAYNE: Gotcha.

DAN AGOSTO: So you got to have --

MIKE PAYNE: A wrapper or a PC.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. I don't believe that --

MIKE PAYNE: You can wrap it on Mac.

DAN AGOSTO: Don't quote me on this but I'm not sure. I don't think they work on Mac.

MIKE PAYNE: Gotcha. Gotcha.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING GUITAR]

MIKE PAYNE: All right, so that's about enough software. We've got a hardware demo to do here. We've got the Fender Blender, and Mr. Drew Krag on the Fender TC-90.

DREW KRAG: That's right.

MIKE PAYNE: So let's see what we got here.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE FENDER BLENDER]

DAN AGOSTO: All right. So here's our clean sound. This is Drew's preset on the pod. All right, and with this pedal, as with the good amount of fuzz pedals that you see out there, as soon as we turn it on we're going to lose a little volume even though we got the volume all the way up, so.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE FENDER BLENDER]

DAN AGOSTO: It just drops a little bit.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE FENDER BLENDER]

DAN AGOSTO: So on this setting, I have the sustain up just slightly. The tone is pretty far out, and this is pretty much what makes the Fender Blender a Fender Blender. It has a blend knob, so if we turn that all the way down, which is this right now, it is sort of mixing the fuzzed out tone with the clean tone.

MIKE PAYNE: Right.

DAN AGOSTO: And we can see, if I start to turn that up, we'll hear more distortion.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE FENDER BLENDER]

DAN AGOSTO: And turn down the tone real quick, and get that fuzzy sort of thing going on.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE FENDER BLENDER]

DAN AGOSTO: Turn it up, it's got a lot more.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE FENDER BLENDER]

DAN AGOSTO: And this thing also lets you boost the tone. It's got a tone boost right here. One of the things about it though, no LEDs...

MIKE PAYNE: Right.

DAN AGOSTO: ...if you noticed, so you don't even know if the pedal is on more or less if a tone thing is on.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah. I can't tell if it's on or off right now. Yeah.

DREW KRAG: You got to use your ears.

MIKE PAYNE: [LAUGHING]

DAN AGOSTO: It's off. Sometimes it’s hard to tell. You can --

DREW KRAG: I have to admit I don't really like that, especially for the tone boost, you really --

DAN AGOSTO: That's kind of -- It's not that subtle as you know.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE FENDER BLENDER]

DAN AGOSTO: I'll hit that tone boost.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE FENDER BLENDER]

DAN AGOSTO: You kind of tell it there.

DREW KRAG: As you can see, it's making it a lot louder too.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. If turn up the sustain more, that's with the tone boost and the tone all the way up, and the blend all the way up, so this is like our nuclear position.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE FENDER BLENDER]

DAN AGOSTO: All right, I'm going to turn the tone boost off and then turn our tone down.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE FENDER BLENDER]

DAN AGOSTO: And it definitely gets a lot, you know, warmer, fuzzier.

MIKE PAYNE: Right.

DAN AGOSTO: And now I'm going to hit the tone boost here. Actually I'll turn down the tone.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE FENDER BLENDER]

DAN AGOSTO: So it definitely adds a lot volume, and if you're plugged in to a real amp, it would have a different response, so this is still off, and the back on.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE FENDER BLENDER]

DAN AGOSTO: It sounds like, with the tone all the way down and the tone boost on -- yeah, turn that down a little bit. It seems like we have the tone all the way down and the tone boost on. I'm going to turn it off and turn the tone all the way up.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE FENDER BLENDER]

DAN AGOSTO: So we never have like a crossing point really because I have the tone all the up and the tone boost off and it's not as distorted or brittle or fuzzed out as it was with the tone boost on and the tone all the way down..

MIKE PAYNE: Right.

DAN AGOSTO: So that tone boost is really giving you a lot of difference there. Mix in some of that clean in there.

DREW KRAG: When you get a lot of gain on it, it almost reminds me the way it kind of cuts out sort of. Sort of reminds me of like --

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. The [OVERLAPPING]

DREW KRAG: Yeah. It almost reminds me of like the RAT, kind of. Not the way distortion sounds but the way it kind of cuts.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. I think a lot of fuzzes do that, but this is with some of the clean mixed in.

DREW KRAG: I can hear it. That's a cool sound.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE FENDER BLENDER]

DAN AGOSTO: And with the tone boost on now. So that's really -- This is the knob that really does it, that makes them say a unique pedal.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE FENDER BLENDER]

DAN AGOSTO: Actually it's quite similar to one of Britton's pedals. He has the Ampeg Scrambler, I believe, it's called. I think it does pretty much the same thing and it looks very similar.

MIKE PAYNE: We should get them to bring that in.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. We definitely should.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: If we get to bring his cell phone.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE FENDER BLENDER]

DREW KRAG: It' pretty cool

DAN AGOSTO: How about some harmonics. Can we? Are harmonics working all right?

DREW KRAG: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Here we go.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE FENDER BLENDER]

DAN AGOSTO: I'll pop you out a little bit.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE FENDER BLENDER]

DAN AGOSTO: They speak pretty well, especially since we're going through an amp simulator.

DREW KRAG: Oh. There we go. There it is.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE FENDER BLENDER]

DREW KRAG: If you have this cranked throgh an amp, it would just be insane.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. It would be insane. It'll probably feedback a lot.

DREW KRAG: It's a pretty quiet pedal.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. It is. Turn everything up.

DREW KRAG: That's not bad.

DAN AGOSTO: It isn't, then we have the noise get off on the POD, so.

DREW KRAG: And mind you, I'm on a single-coil setting so if I get rid of that.

DAN AGOSTO: All right. [LAUGHING]

[DREW KRAG PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE FENDER BLENDER]

DAN AGOSTO: So it does win points for being quiet.

DREW KRAG: Yeah. Yeah. Nice, free quiet.

MIKE PAYNE: Nice.

DAN AGOSTO: Sweet. Well, I think that's pretty good for this pedal. It's a good...

[DREW KRAG PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE FENDER BLENDER]

DAN AGOSTO: Sesh, a little knob turning sesh.

DREW KRAG: [LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: Sesh. [LAUGHING]

DAN AGOSTO: [LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: Oh, here we go. Here we go.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE FENDER BLENDER]

BRITTON WETHERALD RECORDING: Yeahow!

MIKE PAYNE: Featuring Drew Krag's hands.

BRITTON WETHERALD RECORDING: Gearwire! Watch our videos! Yeaow!

[DREW KRAG PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE FENDER BLENDER]

DREW KRAG: Yeah. All right.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

DREW KRAG: That's enough.

MIKE PAYNE: All right. Well that concludes Gearwire Crosstalk number 29. Thanks everybody for watching. Thanks Drew...,

[DREW KRAG PLAYING GUITAR]

DREW KRAG: Oh.

MIKE PAYNE: ...thanks Dan, and thank you guys in the background. You guys are great.

BACKGROUND GUYS: Woo!

MIKE PAYNE: You make it all worthwhile. All right, I'll see everybody next week. Later.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE FENDER BLENDER]