Having worked on several classical and piano-oriented sessions, I’ve had the opportunity to hear gorgeous grand pianos in their native habitat. But it spoiled me. When I had to use sampled pianos in other types of productions, it always seemed something was missing.

This tip puts some of the low-end mojo back into sampled pianos. Sure, it’s done with smoke and mirrors, not by having wood interact with a room—but check out the audio example at the end, and you’ll hear what Beethoven has to say about it.

How It Works

The bass enhancement occurs by mixing a sine wave behind the main piano sound, but only in the lower octaves, and very subtly. This adds bass reinforcement that you won’t find in samples.

Set up a Multi-Instrument (sorry Artist users, this is a Pro version-only feature) that combines the piano of your choice, like the Presence Acoustic Full, and Mai Tai (fig. 1).

Figure 1: Multi-Instrument setup for grand piano reinforcement.

For Mai Tai, you want the simplest sound possible—one sine wave oscillator, no modulation except for an amplitude envelope, no random phase, and no effects other than EQ. By turning the Filter cutoff down to around 100 Hz or so, turning Key tracking all the way down, and using the EQ (in the bass range) to take out all the highs, we now have the sine wave tracking your playing on only the lowest notes (fig. 2).

Figure 2: Mai Tai sine wave reinforcement preset. Sections that aren’t used are grayed out.

Tweaking

The Mai Tai’s level setting is crucial. You want an almost subliminal effect—something you don’t notice unless you mute the Mai Tai. Check out this audio example, but note that I’ve mixed the Mai Tai up higher than I normally would, so you can hear what the sine wave adds to the piano sound. Also note that even with the extra emphasis on the lower octaves, you can’t hear an added sine wave on the higher notes. This is important for a realistic sound.

Finally, although I’ve emphasized using this with piano, the same technique can add a commanding low end to other sampled instruments, like acoustic guitar—yes, you can change your parlor guitar’s body into a jumbo—no woodworking required!

The Attack Delay effect, used primarily with guitar, fades in a note or chord over the initial attack to give a more pad-like sound. The effect feeds audio into a gate with an attack time, and triggers the gate when a note or chord hits.

However, you need a brief silence between notes or chords (I prefer using this with chords), so the gate can reset prior to initiating the next attack. It’s kind of annoying to have to modify your playing style to accommodate this pause. Also, if the gate threshold is too high, you won’t hear any note—and if it’s too low, you might lose the attack effect. Attack Delay stompboxes can be iffy, which may be one reason why you don’t see one on every pedalboard.

Nonetheless, this can be a beautiful effect when done right…and as the audio example shows, Studio One can do it right.

Attack Delay Setup

The key is to insert the Gate in the track you want to process, but not trigger the Gate from that track. Instead, you create a copy of the original track, and optimize it for triggering the Gate. The copy then controls the Gate through its sidechain (you don’t listen to the copied track).

(Optionally, before setting this up, consider compressing or limiting the original guitar track so that it has a longer sustain. You don’t want the guitar to fade too much before the attack fades in.)

Fig. 1 shows the mixer setup. The GtrPadTrig track’s pre-fader send goes to the Gate’s sidechain. Turn down this track’s channel fader, because we don’t want to hear the copied track. The guitar track in the audio example inserts Ampire before the Gate, and reverb after the Gate. The reverb adds an ethereal quality as the guitar fades into the chord.

Figure 1: Mixer setup.

Next, prep the control track in the Edit window. Open the Audio Bend panel (to the right of the speaker icon in the Edit window toolbar), right-click on the Event, and choose Detect Transients. If necessary, adjust the Bend Marker Threshold (or remove and add Bend Markers) so that Bend Markers appear only at the beginning of chords or notes (fig. 2).

Figure 2: The beginning of each chord has a Bend Marker. This shows the waveform prior to splitting.

Mind the Gap

Right-click on the Event, and choose Split at Bend Markers. All the Events will be separate and selected. Click on the right edge of any Event, and drag to the left. Because all the Events are selected, this opens up a gap before all the chord attacks (fig. 3).

Figure 3: The control track is on the top, and the audio we listen to below it.

Now start playback, and adjust the Gate parameters. This is a little tricky at first, because you want the Threshold set so that triggers coming in from the sidechain open the Gate, coupled with a Release time that’s short enough so that the Gate doesn’t shut off immediately. I usually leave about a 100 ms gap between chord attacks, and set the Gate release time to 60 ms. Your mileage may vary.

If the triggering isn’t reliable, adjust the Threshold, gap length, or Release. To edit the gap, select all the events and vary the right edge of one of them—they’ll all move together. Sometimes, there might be one obstinate note that doesn’t trigger correctly, in which case you can select only the Event before it, and vary its gap for reliable triggering with the next chord.

Yes, this takes a little effort to set up, but it’s cool. Besides, there’s nothing wrong with exploring an effect that remains somewhat rare, because it’s hard to get right—fortunately, Studio One can get it right.

The problem: I was using one of Chris McHugh’s acoustic drum loops from the (sadly, no longer available) Discrete Drums sample library. However, it had been recorded at a slower tempo, and when sped up, it was a bit too “busy” in places.

The solution: Drum Replacement with Studio One, Pro EQ, Gate, and Melodyne, so I could edit Note data into the part I wanted.

Getting Started: Step by Step

1. Copy the drum loop to a new track, because we’ll want to re-visit the original one for each drum. We’ll start by replacing the kick.
2. Use the Pro EQ as an Event effect to dial in the kick drum’s fundamental (fig. 1.) Combine a steep high cut with a low-frequency boost at the kick’s main frequency to isolate the kick from the rest of the track. Note that the sound doesn’t matter, you just want readily identifiable peaks. However, do avoid distortion, so Melodyne can represent velocity well.

Figure 1: EQ settings to isolate the kick’s fundamental.

3. Render the Event. This may leave some lower-level drum sounds or ambiance, so add a Gate, and set the Threshold to pick up only the kick drum’s peaks (fig. 2).

Figure 2: Gate settings to isolate the kick’s peaks.

4. Render the Event again, select it, and choose Edit with Melodyne. Now the kick part looks like fig. 3.

Figure 3: The Event on the left is the drum loop after EQing the kick. The Event on the right is the same one after gating. The lower blobs are the result of choosing Edit with Melodyne.

5. Drag the Event track into an instrument track, and now you have note data for the kick.

Prepping the Note Data

The note data length will vary. To tidy up the part, set all the drums to 16^th or 32^nd notes with Action > Length (fig. 4).

Note that Melodyne picked up on some low-velocity kick hits too (pretty cool). You could assign these to a different sample of a kick hit softly. Fortunately, the Discrete Drums library includes samples of the individual drums. So, I could load the samples into Impact XT, and this way the sound would work with other loops from the same collection. Since the drums are multi-sampled at different velocities, I selected all the notes, and used Studio One’s Transpose function to set them to the same pitch as the kick samples.

Hi-hat was the most difficult to convert to Note data, because snare hits can produce transients that extend into the hi-hat range. A 48 dB/octave low-cut combined with a major high-frequency peak did a decent job of isolating the hi-hat, but the frequency was extremely high and Melodyne wasn’t too happy about that. Transposing the Event down an octave or so before applying the gate made the hits more Melodyne-friendly.

Clean Up

I was taken aback at how well this technique was able to translate the acoustic drum loop into Note data. The best aspects were that it preserved the human timing of a real drummer, and Melodyne did a good job of preserving the dynamics. The only needed fix was removing a few notes caused by loud snare hits that came through on the hi-hat track, and of course, editing the data to create the part I wanted—done!

Ampire has a User cab that can load impulse responses. You knew that, right? What you may not know is that you can load stereo cab impulses, and they magically make the User cab stereo. If you’re thinking “but creating impulses is such a hassle,” it’s not—let’s get started.

How It Works: Overview

Start by downloading the 44.1, 48, and 96 kHz stereo impulses. These are 1-sample spikes, so if you listen to them, don’t expect a thrilling audio experience. To create the impulse response, load a stereo impulse into an audio track, but no other audio—just the impulse. Send the audio to two cabs, set up in stereo (e.g., using two FX Channels, panned as desired). Don’t include any amps or effects—only the cabs. Bounce or otherwise mix/export the result. This is the stereo impulse response.

Step-by-Step Instructions

For the sake of example, we’ll assume you want a 4×12 M65 and a 2×12 VC 30 as your stereo cabs, but you can use any cabs you want, including cabs from other amp sims. Referring to fig. 1, this setup works for Artist or Pro.

Figure 1: Setup for creating a stereo impulse response.

1. Create a stereo audio track, and load the impulse that matches the song’s sample rate.
2. Create two FX Channels.
3. Insert an Ampire into each FX Channel. Make sure that amps and effects are bypassed.
4. Choose the 4×12 M65 cab for one Ampire, and the 2×12 VC 30 for the other one.
5. Create a pre-fader Send to each FX Channel from the Stereo Impulse track, so you can turn the Stereo Impulse track’s fader down.
6. Pan the FX buses as desired to create a stereo image for the two cabs.
7. All the faders and Send levels should be set to 0 (except for the Stereo Impulse track fader, which should be all the way down). Note that the Send levels default to -6.0, so set these to 0.

Create the Impulse

1. Click on the Stereo Impulse, then type Shift+P to set the loop indicators to the impulse length.
2. Select Song > Export Mixdown. Choose the appropriate options (fig. 2). 64-bit float works fine for this application. Also check Import to Track.

Figure 2: Export your Impulse Response so you can use it with Ampire.

3. Click on OK. This creates a track with an Impulse Response that’s the same length as the original impulse, and imports the new Impulse Response to a Song track.
4. Normalize the Impulse Response you just created to around -3 dB.
5. Create a folder for your stereo impulse responses, open it in the Browser, and drag the normalized Impulse response into it. Your work is done.

Fun Time!

DOWNLOAD THE IMPULSES HERE

Create an audio track, load Ampire, plug in your guitar, and select an amp. Choose the User cab, and then click on the + symbol in the Mic A: field. Navigate to where you saved the impulse response, load it, and kick back with your cool stereo cab.

To get you started, the folder you downloaded with the impulse also has stereo Impulse Responses for the M65+VC30 and 4x10American+2x12Boutique stereo cabs. Try them with the new High Gain and Painapple amps…you’re gonna love ‘em.

Now through the end of Nov. 2021, — get $30/€30 cash back on AudioBox iTwo Studio at participating dealers!

If you or someone you know is getting started in music, audio production, or content creation, there’s never been a better time to buy the AudioBox iTwo Studio! It includes everything you need to start producing music out of the box: The AudioBox iTwo USB audio interface, HD7 headphones, an M7 microphone, and Studio One Artist—a $99 USD value!

Here’s a great review of the AudioBox iTwo Studio from Music Radar: “If you want a quick and easy start in computer-based recording, you’ll find it in this competitively-priced package.”

Read the whole review here.

And here’s a great overview from Rob Chapman on the entire bundle:

The fine print:

USA and Canadian customers can get their $30 off instantly at participating dealers.

European customers need to use the rebate form, linked below. Qualifying territories include: Germany, UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Austria, Ireland, Hungary, France, Spain, Portugal, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.

• Click here to get the AudioBox iTwo rebate form [PDF]

To find a dealer outside of the USA, click the links below!

Alfasoni
Amazon DE
Amazon ES
Amazon FR
Amazon GB
Amazon IT
Amazon NL
Amazon SE
Audio Visual Comm.
Bax
BiMotorDJ
Everest Music
GAK
Gear4Music
Global Mastering
Guitar Guitar
Hangszerplaza
IT Music
Juno
Just Music
Klangfarbe
Madrid Hifi
Mango Sound
Michenaud
Music Bros
Music Maker
Music Matter
Music Store
Musicopolix
Musikhaus Kirstein
Musikhaus Thomann
Reynolds of Raphoe
Rockamusic
Scan
Session Music
Sonovente
Tamsta
Woodbrass

Now through the end of Nov. 2021, — save $30/€30  on the PD-70 dynamic microphone at participating dealers!

Whether you’re starting your first podcast, telling your YouTube subscribers about the latest trends, or running a program for your local volunteer radio station from your living room, you need a microphone that will bring your voice to your listener with clarity and warmth. The PD-70 is built to capture the spoken word cleanly and clearly while eliminating mechanical noise and breathiness that can get between you and your audience. Thanks to superior off-axis rejection, you can set up your broadcast studio in just about any space—and unwanted reverberance, electrical hum, and the random car driving by will be left behind, leaving only the pristine, natural sound of your voice.

You also get Studio One Prime and the Studio Magic software suite—over $1000 worth of software!

Here’s a great review of the PD-70 from ThePodcastHost.com: “…a beautiful mic with great frequency response and sensitivity, capturing the chest tones and that broadcast sound with low noise and terrific clarity.”

Read the full review here.

The PD-70 has fast become PreSonus employees’ go-to mic to record vocals for our River City Sessions. Check it out in action on a male rock vocal with The Hitchhiker:

The fine print:

USA and Canadian customers can get their $30 off instantly at participating dealers.

European customers need to use the rebate form linked below. Qualifying territories include: Germany, UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Austria, Ireland, Hungary, France, Spain, Portugal, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.

• Click here to get the PD-70 rebate form [PDF]

To find a dealer outside of the USA, click the links below!

Alfasoni
Amazon DE
Amazon ES
Amazon FR
Amazon GB
Amazon IT
Amazon NL
Amazon SE
Audio Visual Comm.
Bax
BiMotorDJ
Everest Music
GAK
Gear4Music
Global Mastering
Guitar Guitar
Hangszerplaza
HW Audio
Juno
Just Music
Klangfarbe
Knight Sound
Madrid Hifi
Mango Sound
Michenaud
Music Action
Music Bros
Music Maker
Music Matter
Music Store
Musicopolix
Musikhaus Kirstein
Musikhaus Korn
Musikhaus Thomann
Reynolds of Raphoe
Rockamusic
Scan
Session Music
Sonovente
Sounds Around
Stars Music
Tamsta
Woodbrass

Now through the end of Nov. 2021, — save on $30 on Eris E5 and $35 on Eris E5 XT studio monitors at participating US dealers!

Sound better for less! We’re offering a significant discount on the Eris E5 and E5 XT studio monitors! 

With their smooth, accurate frequency response; powerful amplification with tons of headroom; and acoustic tuning functions that ensure you always get the best sound, it’s no wonder that Eris-series studio monitors have been a runaway hit since their introduction. The Eris E5 XT offers deep lows and a wide, more controlled sweet spot—thanks to its EBM waveguide design—and even won a Sound on Sound SOS Award in 2020.

But we understand that the classics never go out of style—so the original Eris E5s are on sale as well! From now until the end of November, you can get a pair of our classic Eris E5 studio monitors for just $199.90!!

Of the Eris E5 XTs, Mixdown said, “You know ‘em, you love ‘em. These things punch way above their weight, and are more than suitable for any calibre of musician to perform, record and critically listening to audio on – for their price-point, it’s amazing how accurate these monitors sound. ” Read the full review here.

No rebate form or mail-in required. Automatic savings at your dealer of choice in the USA!

Find a dealer near you!

From now until Nov. 21, 2021 — save an additional $20 on the class Blue AudioBox 96 Studio at participating dealers in the USA!

If you or someone you know is getting started in music, audio production, or content creation, there’s never been a better time to buy the AudioBox 96 Studio! It includes everything you need to start producing music out of the box: The AudioBox 96 USB audio interface in class blue, HD7 headphones, an M7 microphone, and Studio One Artist—a $99 USD value!

Here’s a great review of the AudioBox Studio from All Things Gear: “If you’re just starting to get into recording, or are a singer/songwriter looking for a portable interface to take on the road with you, then the PreSonus AudioBox USB 96 recording interface is an excellent option.”

Read the full review here.

No rebate form or mail-in required. Automatic savings at your dealer of choice in the USA!

Note: This offer is only valid on the classic Blue edition of the AudioBox 96 Studio. The 25th Anniversary Edition is also on promo in the U.S. for $199.95.

Find a dealer near you!

You can record most hands-on control changes as automation by using Control Link, which has always been one of my favorite Studio One features. However, not everything exposes its parameters to automation—so let’s explore track-to-track recording, and embed your hands-on control changes as audio.

How to Set It Up

With track-to-track recording, you record the output from a Source track into a Target track. Set the Target track’s input to the Source track (fig. 1). You’ll monitor the Source track, not the Target track. So, turn the Target track’s fader down (the input monitoring setting doesn’t matter). Select record mode for the Target track. Note that track-to-track recording is inherently a real-time process.

Figure 1: Setup for track-to-track recording.

Of course, you’re not limited to recording the output from another track—you can record any Output, Aux Track, or Bus (but not FX Channels). As to why this is useful, I’ve found four main applications.

Hands-on control for external hardware. Although you can automate some external hardware effects parameters with MIDI, that’s not always the case. Older effects, stompboxes, and analog hardware that was intended to be set-and-forget (e.g., tube preamps whose saturation you might want to vary over time) can’t be automated. Insert Pipeline in the Source track, set up Pipeline to bring the hardware’s ins and outs into the Source track, and then you can manipulate the effect’s controls while recording the results into the Target track. If you need to make changes, re-do the recording (although you may only need to punch a section).

Capture random effects processes. Several effects have randomized functions, so they never play back audio quite the same way twice. Recording audio from a Source track with this kind of effect inserted captures the resulting randomization. If you don’t like the results, try re-recording until you have something you prefer. Note that this can also record the output from an Instrument track that includes a randomizing insert effect.

Capture touchscreen control gestures. Studio One’s multitouch effects are very touch-friendly, and touchscreen gestures can connect with automation. But sometimes, it’s great having that palette of controls right in front of you, where you can change control settings on the fly while you get into the improvisational heat of the moment. When these effects are inserted in the Source track, you can record the audio caused by the real-time touchscreen changes into the Target track.

Accommodate what you can’t automate. This is a weird use case, but it’s another example of why track-to-track recording is useful. To compare the different cab sounds in the Line 6 Helix, I wanted to record an audio example of a guitar riff while I changed the amp sim cabs. But you can’t automate cab selection, and with 41 cabs, I didn’t want to have to stop, change the cab, and re-record the next example. So, I just looped the guitar riff, recorded into the Target track, and clicked on a different cab when I wanted to record it.

There are probably other applications I haven’t considered—so if you think of any, please mention them in the Comments section!

Don’t leave home without PreSonus.

Nathan certainly didn’t forget to bring his ATOM SQ along for this amazing songwriting excursion into the Colorado Rockies!

PreSonus, Wherever sound takes you.