Original subtitles

hey there jeff manchester manchester

music

welcome now i'm not in my space normally

i'm in a different space and i will talk

about that in a future video what i want

to focus on

in this video is a continuation

in a series that we started off with

called why is everybody in love with x

plugin the first video i did in the

series was about the fabfilter pro q3

you can check that out i'll leave a link

to it

today i want to talk about another

plugin that shows up on

top 10 20 lists of the year or of all

time

best plugins of all time you've seen it

in listicles articles you've seen it in

tutorials

it's decapitator by a company called

sound toys

it's a saturation device we're going to

go over what makes it special why do

people use it how do you get the most

out of it what does everything do all

the buttons and knobs and dials so

stick around and let's jump in all right

so here we are

in logic i have a drum loop set up i

find that this is the best kind of audio

material to use if it's a voice or

anything else people get pretty tired of

it but

we just have some drums they sound like

this i'm going to

turn this guy off

[Music]

as clean a loop as i could manage guys

so

this is decapitator it's pretty simple

very skeuomorphic it looks like

something that exists in the real world

that's because they've

adopted some of the knobs and things

like that but it's actually very much

its own design

and what it really represents i think is

a hybrid of classic

pres kind of lined up here on the bottom

we'll go over the styles a minute but

this is what it is it's got a little vu

meter it's got you know

knobs and dials and stuff like that it's

it's meant to make you feel like you're

using a piece of rack mounted gear

except you're in your digital audio

workstation so again

i said this was a saturation tool and

you guys can hear

some of the stuff that it's doing but i

also love to visualize the changes

tonally that a piece of gear imparts on

you know a sonic artifact a drum loop

anything else that's why i have insight

here

it's going to be a really good way for

us to you know confirm visually the

things that we're hearing

with our ears and you'll see what i mean

more about that in a minute but

first off let's just talk about what is

happening in decapitator

as far as i know it cannot get any

bigger or smaller this is kind of its

size we have a drive parameter we have

punish we have

some things to help kind of shape the

tone an output

an auto thing here we'll talk about that

in a minute a mix

knob and then there's a little thump

thing as well and a steep thing and then

we have our

styles down here and this is really

where the money is these different

algorithms

so let's start off here uh just by

you know starting at default i'll just

bring things back to default and i'll

get this playing i'll turn this on

and then what i'm going to do is bring

up the drive we're stuck on the a style

here i'll talk about what that is in a

moment but let's just first

bring the drive up to here what we get

[Music]

so obviously we are adding a lot of

crunch a lot of saturation to the point

where

things are kind of distorting and

pulling themselves apart technically in

audio anytime you change

an audio signal you're distorting it but

here we really mean it you're

adding distortion saturation it sounds

like you're turning up the overdrive on

a guitar

and that's because we have here this

drive parameter

and what this is going to do is push the

signal deeper into decapitator and the

more the signal is pushed

well the more it distorts and drive is

also kind of a gain thing so that's why

if you noticed when i bring the drive up

the output goes down all the way to 24

decibels so

it is scaling this automatically that's

what this auto thing is doing right here

to make sure that we don't kind of blow

things out and we get a nice kind of

reciprocal

volume and saturation um i guess

volume decrease saturation increase of

course we can unlink those guys

so that when i turn this up we just stay

here at zero decibels closer to uh you

know the kind of loudest level but it's

going to get pretty loud pretty quick so

have a listen i've disabled

auto so now it's not going to scale and

i'll bring the drive

back up

so obviously because we're in the

digital space we have floating point

processing we're not really going to be

too uh injured with any kind of

distortion or clipping but you can see

why they scale it over here

just so you don't get an overage that's

so kind of unacceptable and kind of

offensive so once again

[Music]

it scales really nicely

[Music]

now this kind of effect is very

pronounced for a couple of reasons you

know we can do the best we can to

control the output here it's on auto but

we also have this mix parameter

which is kind of like a parallel

processor it's how much of the

mixed signal we want to blend in with

the dry in this case we have it all the

way to wet so what we could do

if we wanted to be kind of careful is

bring up the drive here but keep the mix

at around 12 o'clock or midnight

sometimes they say at the top

of this dial so that we have a nice

blend of dry

and wet signals and it's not too kind of

distorted and saturated so let's listen

to that

i'll do the same thing keep the mix at

you know midnight and bring the drive up

and leave the auto on so we're still

[Music]

scaling

[Music]

so now would be a good time to do a

little before and after now that we have

a bit more of a

subtle effect of the saturation

occurring here so i'll turn this off and

on

[Music]

so that's a nice way to be a bit more

conservative with the effect

you know what if you want to distort it

to crap go ahead and do that but

the mix parameter here is a nice kind of

safety to make sure that you're getting

the best of both worlds

now i want to talk more about some of

the other things that we have

around here before we get into the

styles which is where the kind of money

is like i said earlier we have a thump

kind of dial switch when i turn this on

i think it adds a bit of a boost on the

low end the manual didn't say exactly

where

in the spectra things are going to be

boosted but i'm going to guess

and we can again do more than guess we

can kind of

check the spectrogram out that we're

probably around 60 hertz or 70 hertz

a bit of a bump there you have to be

careful because some of these styles

these algorithms these pieces of gear

they've modeled things after and put

into these various buttons here

impart their own kind of low end boost

so you don't want to double things up

and have things get really muddy

but i just want to let you know thump is

just that a bit of

a kind of gut punch here with a bit of

low end information

uh boosted now low cut i mean it's a low

cut you're

basically doing what's called a high

pass you're allowing the highs to pass

with that low cut so

as i bring this from 20 to 1k have a

listen

let's go back and bring this over here

that sounds probably a little better

[Music]

right so low cut means a high pass means

we're allowing the highest to pass you

guys have all done this before you get a

shelf and you just kind of

you know scoop around uh from the bottom

to the top of the spectra and

now just nothing but you know high tones

are kind of uh

remaining there double click to return

things to zero

at least that kind of usually works oh

it's because the default here is twenty

000

or 20 hertz rather that's really really

awesome i love that you can just double

click and return things to the default

position

love it instead of having to command or

shift or controller option click

now the tone is going to kind of balance

things toward a brighter or darker

tonality

let's do that again just bring this down

to

[Music]

dark

[Music]

nice so i should mention that the low

cut acts as though you have

a filter some kind of you know frequency

tool eq tool before

decapitator you know even exists so

you're basically

telling how much of the signal you want

to go into decapitator

the high cut which we'll talk about now

is not acting that way the high cut is

taking into account the saturation but

what you're going to be able to do

is make the saturation a little bit

warmer by not allowing the highs the

saturated highs to be kind of as

pronounced at least that's kind of how i

understand it so it is factoring in you

know you're kind of scooping out

as though there's an eq kind of after

the decapitator here that's affecting

the saturated high frequency signal so

let's have a listen what that sounds

like i'll start at the default here and

go all the way to one kilohertz so we'll

start at 20 and go down this is a bit

like

a low pass allowing the lows to pass but

because it's built into decapitator

it's not quite that simple but let's

just listen to it

[Music]

so in this way my highs are a little

less saturated the lows still

are everything below uh you know one

kilohertz ostensibly is still saturated

a bit more control i guess it's less

kind of tinny and kind of grungy at the

top

let's uh check this

[Music]

so what i'm imagining here as i

visualize this is a much steeper

kind of filter shape that is you know

restricting

saturation from the highs that's kind of

what i what i think about it sounds

much more kind of aggressive than when i

have it kind of

down over here

[Music]

i want to try these changes to the high

cut with my mix parameter all the way to

wet this is going to sound a bit crunchy

let me back off a bit more on the drive

and the output goes back accordingly

[Music]

[Music]

and just because we're hanging out here

let me bring steep up and

this i think will create an even steeper

kind of filter shape let's have a listen

i mean you can even see it here i'm

going to pause inside you can see how i

in real time you know

how we basically um prevented high

frequency information from entering into

the signal here

uh at least visually so we really

scooped out the highs

uh using you know from this fully

saturated signal so

you know this is pretty pretty dramatic

maybe this is going to

make it sound a bit more kind of limited

and vintage and sound i'm not really

sure i don't play too much with the high

cut

but if you you know wanted to visualize

it that's what's happening right there

and of course we have the mix at 100

wet so we really get the kind of

pronounced scooping out

of of the highs that high cut there or

that low pass let me bring this back

now there's a couple more things i want

to talk about before we go into the

styles

and that's this punish knob so knob it's

a button

this sounds kind of cool but it's

actually just adding about 20 decibels

of

gain that's all it's doing so if you

have this all the way on wet

i mean and you hit it it's going to

sound like you just

turn things up cleanly about 20 decibels

so let's have a listen to that

[Music]

that's all there is to it if we bring

the mix back a little bit more

it's not going to sound so kind of

crunchy and and crispy but let's have a

listen here

[Music]

all right so now that we know everything

that happens here up top what all these

guys do i'm going to return things again

right back to the default because now

what i want to do is explore i'm going

to get this off pause

i want to explore all the different

algorithms so what these

letters represent are different pieces

of gear that the

soundtoys team have kind of

discombobulated disassembled and then

kind of sampled and modeled

so they can kind of fit them into these

various

um you know algorithms here so that you

can play with things

as far as i know you can't actually

combine stuff together you can only do

one of it

one at a time maybe i'm wrong i'll hit

command a little bit like i would to get

a couple words highlighted at the same

time in a non-contiguous way that

doesn't work yet so just one at a time

but i guess you could have a couple of

decapitators and then you know blend

things together by yourself in fact

they do have a great rack where you can

just add a whole bunch of different

things i don't know if you can add two

instances of the same decapitator

plug-in maybe you can maybe you can't

but

if you wanted to get around it you could

do that but anyway let's start with

a so a is you know think about it you

know from a ux experience they wanted

this to be the very first one that you

hit

you know this is like you're going to

demo it you want to listen to it so they

wanted to make sure this one was

really good and i see a lot of people

kind of sticking with a

it stands for ampex 350 tape drive

preamp i've never got to play with it

myself but

what i notice here and what i've read

and heard is that it is probably one of

the smoothest forms

of saturation coming out of the

decapitator so

let's play with it we'll go you know

kind of wet and dry

i'm going to leave it here at about five

right there

you've been listening to it before but

just for the sake of going through all

them let's go from dry to wet

with this algorithm

[Music]

so

[Music]

so to my ears it is smooth i mean i

would never really bring it here

all the way to wet and we do have a

pretty conservative amount of drive

our output is is you know kind of

staying put according to where the drive

is so

i'd probably back it off here you know

leave it around there or so so that it's

not all the way wet but again

we're making this video to show you how

this thing sounds so i want to make sure

it gets across so if the examples are a

bit exaggerated that's why

[Music]

all right so the next one that we have

here is e spoiler alert this is my

favorite

of the algorithms and this is based on

the chandler emi tg

channel which is i think an eq and mic

pre combined into one this is abby road

blah blah blah

the thing i really like about this is

you can really hear

a kind of nice top end to this

which you might want to control for with

a high cut or you know with the tone

if it's too bright for you and a nice

kind of beefy low end which i really

like so

what i'm going to do is play this

same as i did before i want you to take

a look as i switch between a and e i'll

do that in a minute so you can see in

the spectrogram

how much brighter e is compared to a and

beefier the low end is too and again be

careful with this thump

toggle because you could turn this on

and because

e the chandler emit channel algorithm

adds a bit of low end as far as i know

you could be doubling up on that and it

starts to get really muddy really messy

really fast so anyway

let's just hear it and then i'm going to

compare both and we'll look at it in

insight so

let's leave the wet here at 100 for

consistency and bring the drive

up with e

[Music]

now i haven't gone too far up the drive

dial here but already

things really open up sorry to you know

cut in because i know you guys are

listening but i just

right away instant tone that's what i

like i'm going to shut up and do it

[Music]

again

[Music]

so we're getting a little bit you know

crazy as we went up the drive dial

so what i'm going to do just so i can

get some of the expressiveness of this

algorithm out is just back off a little

bit on the mix

maybe 12 so we don't get too much

distortion but again maybe that's what

you want

but i'm going to back it off so that i

can really crank the drive without

getting into too much trouble

[Music]

so much more shimmery and shiny that's

what i really like about it

what i'm gonna do is bring the wet up a

little bit more

leave it around there and i'm going to

toggle between

the a and e here so you can see

i'll show you how i'm going to do that

in a minute and hear the difference now

first of all i got to tell you

time in the spectrogram left to right

are frequencies 100 hertz all the way to

20k

this is how i like to look at audio when

i'm kind of

trying to visualize it in a spectrogram

which is just an fft kind of

representation of frequency

but just you know low frequency stuff is

going to be at the bottom high frequency

stuff is going to be at the top and

brightness in a spectrogram corresponds

to loudness so how loud something is

if it's a little louder it's going to be

a little brighter than other aspects in

the spectrogram so just know that

and let's compare the two so we'll start

with a

[Music]

okay so we see some activity on the

bottom those are our kicks and then we

have our kind of

mid-range stuff here upper mids and our

kind of nice you know

the symbols and stuff at the very top

here so i'm going to reset this

i'm going to play it again and then i'm

going to switch between the two a and e

so we'll start with a for a couple

seconds and then go to e and we'll

compare them in the spectrogram

so i'm not sure if you can see it but we

have

you know this is when we were on a okay

the first one

the ampex 350 tape and then we went over

here

it happened pretty quickly to the e

so a little bit brighter a little bit

more information on the top you see we

have a little bit more kind of gray up

here

and here we get more solidness kind of

filled out that's because

stuff from 10k and up is getting you

know accentuated and filled in so again

our tree tops at the very top here a bit

more solid compared to these guys

you have these kind of holes here and

that's because not as much information

is being excited and then

kind of represented up there i just like

to i know it's kind of nerdy i like to

kind of see how everything's coming

together over here so let me actually

back off a little bit more bring this to

12 o'clock so it gets so much distortion

and i'll leave the drive where it is and

let's do another little before and after

here

starting with a

[Music]

so

[Music]

so to me those high hats really come out

more and of course something i haven't

done

is a before and after of just the e the

chandler emi tg channel so i'll do that

with the power button here so here's

before and after starting with

after

[Music]

and before

[Music]

cool again that's my favorite one but

you know

you guys probably have your favorites

let's move on to n

n stands of course for neve in this case

the neve 1057

and it sounds like the manual kind of

says very solid

let's bring this all the way up to wet

so we can get a real nice sound here

i'm going to bring the input now i'll

just leave it kind of where it is and

see if i can get a good level

so here is turn this on the n

style

[Music]

all right let me back off a little bit

on this guy

[Music]

okay so here's before

[Music]

before

[Music]

and after

[Music]

if you know if you can't hear me or if

this isn't obvious enough just wait for

the little vu meter to start kind of

bopping its head and you know moshing

let's go to the last two

which are both from the acclaimed

thermionic culture

vulture distortion device now t

stands for triode it's a type of tube

and p stands for pentode it's also

a kind of tube as i understand it and

both i think are a little bit better for

instruments whereas um a e and n

so a again ampex the chandler emi and

the nev107

1057 are a little bit better for like

multi-purpose stuff

i find these guys are kind of well

suited to guitars specifically the

triode which we're going to hear right

now the pentode

um or sorry the the tryout is a bit

better for like

general stuff but really good on guitars

whereas the pentode

i find is like just like amazing for

just guitars so anyway

even though we have drums here so let me

start with t

and let me find a good level again these

guys all kind of distort and pop out a

different

kind of in different ways with different

parameters so

i'm kind of finding my footing here

trying to show an even keeled

example of all the styles

[Music]

that sounds pretty good let's do some

before and afters before

[Music]

let me crank the wet a little bit more

to see how far we can get away with this

[Music]

sound

[Music]

it's pretty gnarly let's finish here

with the pentode

tube settings i'm going to put things

back to around midnight here on the mix

knob

and back off on the drive until i

feel like it's sitting good

[Music]

really nice and kind of just boxy in a

good way so before and after years

[Music]

before

[Music]

so

[Music]

now one thing we didn't really go over

here with before and afters is the thump

and that's because to be quite honest

with you sometimes i can't really hear

what it's adding it might be one of

those things where i need a sub to

really

feel it and experience it but i'm going

to turn it off uh

on and off with all of these styles here

to see if we can kind of catch

something uh kind of livening up um

i am gonna turn the drive up to about

five that scales nicely

we'll leave the mix at around well let's

leave it not too far away from

the top there and let's turn it on and

off

so let's start with a work our way down

to the pentode tube

[Music]

so i'm definitely hearing a bit more of

a thud on the kick

when i turn the thump up so i feel like

it's coming through

actually on the ampex 350. let's try it

on the e

start with it off and then turn it back

on

[Music]

i'm hearing it there too it's not as

pronounced as

the ampex but i am hearing something

they're changing

in the low end um let's keep going here

with the neve

before and after

[Music]

let's keep going with the triode

definitely hearing it there let's try

with pentode

[Music]

if anything it's not so much sub i'm

hearing it's a kind of fullness

if that makes sense i'm not really sure

if that makes sense at all and it'd be

hilarious if soundtoys was like

yeah actually that doesn't do anything

because you have this thing turned off

and then my entire credibility is

undermined anyway

um there's also a whole bunch

of really amazing presets um

you know and i mentioned this earlier

this can be on a master bus it can be on

drums guitar whatever you see they've

thought of that

with a whole bunch of really great

different you know presets for you so

why don't we actually go through some of

those right now and see now that we know

what these styles do which ones light up

and contribute to the sound so let's

start with drums

uh let's do lo-fi kit

there we go now i just want to make sure

it doesn't kind of skip what i put here

did that just happen to work out that

the pentode was

the style on that one okay yeah it did

so all right let's

start with the lo-fi kit

[Music]

[Music]

so i mean it occurs to me that maybe

some of these guys are supposed to be on

individual things not so much on you

know

the entire drum kit so maybe we're not

doing a very good job here but

just wanted to show you a lot of stuff

you can do in here

um very easy plug-in to use it's kind of

cheeky and fun that it's called the

decapitator

you know it's not subtle it's like going

to take your head off attitude for a vu

meter

punish like it's clearly designed to

encourage you to have fun and jump in

and just play with it

i think maybe that's part of why this

thing is you know

in everyone's session from you know

i don't know beat makers to you know

guitar guys

like you know i'm trying to think here

cla

to you know tony maseratis and the like

so anyway

let's end it here all right thank you so

much for watching do you have questions

do you have

strong opinions about this plugin do you

have it do you not have it do you not

want it do you want it now

i want to know let me know in the

comments as always thanks for stopping

by

and see you in the next one