Fxsound Alternatives
Akinlolu Bellotti
I use WinAmp, VLC, and Windows Media Player on a pretty old system, and seldom experience any glitches. LatencyMon can help you identify the cause of your stutter issue, and perhaps carefully adjusting your Power settings could help as well.
Thank you @jamiowonders for your support to FxSound.
Sorry about the issue with the notifications. I understand that it would be very annoying to see the notifications being displayed even after disabling it.
We just completed the development of next release and in the process of testing it. So, we can prioritise fixing the notifications issue in the following release (1.1.21.0).
I read a bunch of threads like the one you shared, none of them help. I did try fxsound for a while and tried different workarounds, I am on a fresh installation of the latest windows 10 version now and the problems are exactly the same.
The notifications appear, when I start windows, when I switch off fxsound, when I change playback device, I think also when changing eq settings, all of this using the shortcuts. I disable them everytime but then after a reboot they all are back.
Yes. I recognize that problem and I solved it in a similar way. Before we get into that - you can read the EDID string from your monitor in Device Manager. The brand/model name is either there or not there. The question is for my own research and probably does not have any bearing here.
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When it comes to treating vocals, we generally think first of compression and reverb, but there's a wealth of other vocal treatments that may not be quite so obvious. Not all are applicable to all styles of music, but it's still worth trying them at least once, just so that you know what they sound like. There isn't space here to explore every effect in detail, but you should find something to inspire a bit of vocal creativity!
Noveltech's Specific Vocal Enhancer plug-in for the TC Powercore platform can help to bring an airy gloss to your vocals.The type of compressor you use also makes a difference, because compression straddles the line between effect and processor, in that it can alter the perceived character of the sound, as well as control its dynamic range. All compressors increase the average level of the sound as a direct result of bringing the level of the quieter notes closer to the level of the louder ones. The subjective effect, though, is also influenced by the attack and release times of the compressor, and by the amount and type of distortion it adds. As a very general rule, the most transparent compressors (those that reduce the dynamic range without affecting the subjective sound too much) use VCA gain-control elements, while those using FETs, tubes and opto devices tend to add a little more character. Generally, a vocal compressor needs to be set up with a fairly fast attack time (just a few milliseconds) and with a release time in the order of a quarter to half a second, but you can sometimes fake the more obvious aspects of an opto compressor's character by using a long attack time and a fast release on a compressor that is normally fairly transparent-sounding.
Of course, you need to be aware that the more compression you use (in other words the higher the gain-reduction meter reading), the more gain will be applied to low-level sounds relative to high-level sounds, a consequence of which is that unwanted low-level sounds, such as noise or the spill from headphones, will become more obvious. Where the recording is being made in an imperfect room, the room ambience will also become more pronounced when you add compression, which is why it is essential to record vocals in an acoustically treated space, even if the treatment is only a duvet behind the singer.
Audio Ease's Altiverb, and similar convolution plug-ins, can offer interesting and authentic variations on the 'telephone' vocal effect.The convolution process is best known for its ability to capture reverbs and ambiences, but it is equally applicable to short delays or devices that produce predominantly tonal changes. Plug-ins such as Altiverb from Audio Ease can be used to create this type of effect, in this case if you download additional impulse responses from the Audio Ease web site (free to registered users). One of these sets includes impulse responses (IRs) taken from small transistor radios, telephones and so on. The transistor radio IR sounds extremely convincing when used to squeeze a voice into a narrow part of the spectrum, and because the IR is able to capture the more complex tonal attributes of the system being measured, the result is somehow more believable than if you used simple EQ filtering. If you don't have Altiverb, there are alternatives, such as Logic Pro's Space Designer or the freeware, PC-only SIR, as well as online resources such as Noisevault ( ), where you can download IRs.
If you have the tools to capture your own IRs (either built into the convolution plug-in, such as with Space Designer, or a stand-alone impulse-capture application like Fuzz Measure), you can easily create your own effects by taking IRs from small speakers, transistor radios and guitar practice amps. While you're at it, you can also take IRs from toy microphones with springs inside, cassette recorders (to give you that real squashed tape effect) and even tape echo units, if you can get your hands on one for a couple of hours.
Leslie speaker emulators like Logic Pro's Rotary are a well-known processing trick for organs and guitar sounds, but they can also add that special something to vocals, and can even make a vocal line sound like an instrument. Tape echo units are now fairly rare and quite expensive, but fortunately there are numerous hardware and software solutions that use programming to mimic the distortion, filtering and pitch instabilities of tape echo. Not only is their cost a fraction of that of their hardware counterparts, but the tape won't break during some vital solo! You can also get impulse responses from tape echo machines for some convolution reverbs, but because of the long delay times involved, this can be excessively hungry on CPU resources unless you're after a simple slapback. I'll often use a subtle repeat echo mixed in with a reverb to fatten a vocal, but I also like that slapback effect for certain productions where you need just a single short delay (typically 80 to 150ms) high in the mix.
Of course if you have an open-reel tape machine lying around that uses separate record and play heads, you can also use this as an echo unit, simply by feeding it from the send on a mixer, setting it to monitor the replay head, hitting record and then bringing its output back on another spare mixer channel. If you turn up the same-numbered send control on that channel, you'll feed some of the tape's output back to its own input, producing repeat echoes. The fader controls the echo level, while the send control governs the time the repeats take to die away. The delay time and subsequent repeat time depends on the tape speed. A speed of 15ips (inches per second) usually gives a nice slapback effect, but if you need a longer delay, you can patch a conventional digital delay unit before the tape machine and set it to 100 percent wet. The tape machine will colour the sound in exactly the same way as when used on its own, but now you have a delay time equal to the tape delay plus the digital delay.
In this DAW age, you can do much the same thing by processing a copy of an audio track to reverse it, adding 100 percent wet reverb, printing or bouncing the reverb to make it permanent, then reversing the resulting reverb track before running it back alongside the original track. You may need to adjust the timing of the reverb track relative to the dry track for the best results. You can also do the same thing very simply using any convolution reverb that allows you to reverse the impulse response, by copying the audio part to a new track, adding the reverse convolution reverb (again, 100 percent wet), then sliding the treated track forward so that the reverb builds up just before the start of the dry audio track.
Another favourite of mine is to pitch-shift the audio up an octave before feeding it to a delay or reverb, a technique that adds a surreal shimmer to the sound. I've discussed this before in the context of guitars, but it can also be very effective on vocals. Alternatively, if you want to be more subtle, you could try using pitch correction on the reverb feed and adjusting the severity of the pitch correction, so that the reverb sound is just slightly different in pitch and character to the original. What you end up with is not quite normal reverb and not quite artificial double-tracking but combines a bit of both.
Whatever sort of music you usually make, it's always a good idea to push outside of your comfort zone, experiment and try something new, or try combining some existing techniques in unfamiliar ways. The resulting effect is often more than the sum of its parts and might just give you the unique sound you've been striving for.
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