I really like the Half-Speed plugin

I used this on steel guitar with a setting of 1 bar and 1.5X which I think gives a 5th harmony. Wow that really takes things into outer space. I am unfamiliar with this type of effect.... is there a pedal or commercial VST that does this sort of thing?

The delay from the input does not appear to be fixed so I can't tell what is really going on.

In terms of how the effect works, it's actually quite straightforward. There's a loop buffer whose length is set by the LENGTH parameter, and a playback head that reads from that buffer at reduced playback speeds like 1/1.5, 1/2, or 1/4. Conceptually, it behaves like a delay with a slowed playback head.

I don't know of any VSTs that behave in exactly the same way, but you might be able to get a similar result using granular plugins with very minimal settings.

I'm not in front of it now, but I used the steel guitar doing a slow gliss because it usually makes it quite apparent what is going on. What it sounds like is that there is some kind of level trigger that hits when you start playing and you hear the pitched delay and dry, then a short while later there's no delay at all. There is a Hard/Soft setting for the on and off gates (fade in/fade out). And so I am wondering if there is some level triggered aspect to it. It doesn't sound quite like a pitch down going into a delay.

The GIF below shows roughly what’s happening internally. Incoming audio is continuously written into a loop buffer whose length is defined by the LENGTH parameter (the long white line represents the record head), while a shorter playback head (shown in yellow) loops through that buffer at half speed.

The plugin used here, ExFragments, isn’t a perfect stand-in, since its playback head length (grain size) is limited to a maximum of one second and it doesn’t loop, so it can’t reproduce the exact same behavior. However, the underlying idea is the same.

Because the playback head is free-running, the result can sound somewhat random. However, since it’s synced to the sequence, you should hear the same result each time playback starts from the beginning.

The fade in/out controls are simply there to avoid clicks at the start and end points of the playback buffer.

Digital Larry wrote: is there a pedal or commercial VST that does this sort of thing?

I believe that Air HalfSpeed also has a VST version. You can also take a look at CableGuys Half-Time or ShaperBox.

I think you can also get a less featured but similar effect with looper and pitch shifting pedals.

It doesn't say there's a VST available.

https://www.akaipro.com/mpc-air-half-speed.html

It's pretty unique, however it works I really like it on the lap steel.

DL

Lampdog wrote:Scroll down the page, read the text.
"avail for mpc desktop"
so... insert mpc software as vst in your daw.
No traditional vst.

Oh, ah-ha. Thank you.

Maybe I'll give that a shot next time I use the DAW (which is almost never but I would like to get some of these MPC things completed for posterity).

DL

This seems to have a similar feature set with 3 bands as a bonus:
https://initialaudio.com/slowmo2-halfti ... ct-plugin/

Masi wrote:This seems to have a similar feature set with 3 bands as a bonus:
https://initialaudio.com/slowmo2-halfti ... ct-plugin/

Whoa!

Not a vst, but both the opz and the opxy have a similar function but way, way, way better and more controllable. That and the master harmony function are the main things I miss from those. I really hope Akai can study what they did with those and get some of that here. Basically you have complete control over the speed, the amount of signal from the loop mixed in, and you can p-lock these settings on any step. I guess now we can do the latter, but it would be cool to have automation over the speed the tape is running.. I got really insane with that thing.

P.S, now that I think more about it, I wonder if the new double tape plug in can get similar results, because I think that can control the tape speed in real time…. I need to mess with it more.

mottsquad wrote:

Digital Larry wrote: is there a pedal or commercial VST that does this sort of thing?

You can also take a look at CableGuys Half-Time or ShaperBox.

From the looks of it, Cableguys Half-Time is 1:1 feature wise with Akai's Half Speed.