Advent Day 22

Day 22 of our BOOM Library SFX Advent Calendar brings you another SIDE RAFFLE (besides the BIG RAFFLE for the Grand Prize that runs the whole 24 days).

Today we’re raffling off another copy of the legendary LEXICON PCM TOTAL BUNDLE which contains ALL GREAT LEXICON products including the highly acclaimed reverb plugins that are still the go-to reverb plugins in many many studios.

(The winner will be announced on January 4th on Facebook).

How can you win?
Just join our BIG RAFFLE that we announced on day 1 (click here) and you’re in for the side raffles. Join the raffle by liking, sharing, commenting our Facebook Page AND the Raffle-Post on Facebook.com/boomlibrary, following us and retweeting our Raffle-Tweet on Twitter/bomlibrary and by subscribing to our newsletter here on www.boomlibrary.com. Each action that you take will increase your winning chances. If you’re already following us or you’re already a newsletter subscriber, then you’re automatically participating in the raffle.

Our Sound Designer and Creative Director Axel Rohrbach has tested the TOTAL BUNDLE and shared his thoughts with you on day 7 – as we’re raffeling off another copy of it today, let’s recall the review:

LEXICON TOTAL BUNDLE – by Axel Rohrbach

I think everyone is familiar with the smooth an natural sounding hardware reverb 224 or 480 or 960. The Lexicon reverb plug-ins offer the same quality as the hardware but as a plug-in, bringing this studio legend into your host. We use the reverb a lot, especially for bigger halls or smooth and long plates. I would love to see a true surround version here, but it still can be used as multi-mono multichannel to work around this.

Anyway, I don’t want to focus on the reverb right now, this should be well known. Instead I would like to mention the other effects which come with Lexicon’s PCM Total bundle. Those are the following 7 plug-ins: Pitch Shift, MultiVoice Pitch, Chorus, Resonant Chords, Random Delay, Dual Delay and the Stringbox. Those effects are mostly based on delay algorithms, something Lexicon for sure is extremely experienced in doing.

The user interfaces are well made and in the same style and feel as the reverbs, insuring quick familiarisation and offering a nice overview of the most interesting visualisations and a thought through collection of usable parameters. However, there is more under the hood, accessible via the edit buttons. One can dive pretty deep into parameters there, all automatable.

Resonant Chords:
Resonant chords is basically a very short delay with feedback, that produces resonating frequencies depending on the (short) delay time. But, that is only the theory. Resonant chords lets you define musical frequencies / tones and delays per one of the four delays per input, resulting in arpeggiating effects.

Stringbox:
The Strongbox is something like an undamped piano, triggered by an acoustical input that lets the piano strings ring. There are numerous ways to alter the outcome. This one can create harmonic, musical chords. However, I use it mostly to create shimmering cluster effect, especially known from Asien games or casual games. But also something similar as the Star Trek beaming sound can be achieved here.

Chorus:
In general this is a simple chorus effect – but in my opinion one of the best and most warm sounding out there. I love placing this one a bus with a pretty high low-cut to smooth out transients and creating shimmering high end frequencies. Especially being able to delay some chorused voices is a pretty neat feature.

Time for an example. This is the original sample – one cannon shot out of the “Historical Firearms – Designed” library.
For best audio quality, you can download each audio file in 96kHz via the soundcloud player download button

Cannon Shot with LEXICON Chorus

Dual Delay, Random Delay and MultiVoice Pitch:
Those three, especially in combination, are a very serious weapon in all kinds of situations. Especially the random function together with the panorama possibilities and pitch shifting of the MultiVoice Pitch are really what I was looking for a long time. When it comes to explosions, gun shots or such things, I made up a channel with a series of those plug ins to beef up tails and create some natural sounding echoes.

I tried this often before with a bunch of different other delays, but I had simply no success without using tons of busses and plug ins.
Those plug-ins are my go to for artificial outdoor reverb, which is just so damn complex, that those Lexicon effects are the only practical solution I currently know of. Adding outdoor impulse responses it gives you even bigger sounding disaster events.
This chain also offers a very flexible stereo solution, ranging from ultra wide to mono, but most important from moving the image from wide to narrow during the delay array or any other possible direction.

Again the original sample:

And now the Cannon Shot with FX Chain

Thanks Axel.

So now it’s up to you: join our ADVENT RAFFLE and win a copy of the LEXICON TOTAL BUNDLE.