Xenon for $69 or less?

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buzzsmith
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Re: Xenon for $69 or less?

Post by buzzsmith »

Downloaded and authorized. I never did see the iLok authorization option, so I did the native authorization.

The instructions (to me) were not crystal clear, but maybe that was an "age thing"! :wink:

Anyway, now available as a non-restricted plugin in my 8.06 template.
I also took a few more seconds and reauthorized "PSP PianoVerb" since I switched operating systems and primary HD recently.

Merci...

Buzzy
Early 2009 Mac Pro 4,1>5,1 3.33 GHz Hex Core Intel Xeon OS X 10.8.5 SSD (32 gigs RAM)
DP 9.51 PCI-424e / original 2408, 2408mkII, 24I/O, MTP-AV

Yamaha C7 Conservatory Grand
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BKK-OZ
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Re: Xenon for $69 or less?

Post by BKK-OZ »

I went looking for some information on the presets that come with Xenon, and found the post below on their forum.

You can see the original thread here.

  • Now a few words about presets:

    - the 'limiter' presets (the first four) are aimed at (guess what? ;\) limiting. They allow you to reduce the peak/average ratio (called crest factor) and raise the loudness of the mix to some extent by 'clamping' the transient peaks. Those peaks usually last for very short time and don't contribute to overall loudness. By limiting them you get some place (headroom) which allows you to increase the level of your entire recording

    - the 'loudness' presets are more aggresive. Besides limiting the transient peaks these presets use leveler which alters the macrodynamics of your audio. Very loud, fragments, which cannot will be further compressed without ugly artifacts, will be pre-attenuated prior to limiting). This pre-attenuation allows you to drive the limiter (as set by input knob) to greater extent without risk of severe pumping. Use these presets when you want to sound 'loud'. However, be aware that it might destroy the song and its emotions. The difference between quite and loud fragments will become less dramatic. Also, keep in mind that radio stations add their own, very aggressive and (usually) ugly-sounding multiband compression to their content. Adding another stage of compression to already loud audio can result in flat, horribly-sounding results.

    - CD Master - these presets are combinations of the previous ones with added dithering/noise-shaping. This process adds some carefully-shaped noise to the audio which allows for greater-than-media perceived dynamic range. It only makes sense to apply dithering if bit-depth of your audio is greater than that of the media you master for (CD, f.ex. is 16 bit). If, f.ex. your sequencer or editor works in 32 or 64 bits and/or your audio was recorded with 24 bit ADC dithering will make it possible for your CDs to sound as if their dynamic range was greater than 16 bits. It might sound weird, but this is how our brain works (we are capable of hearing the harmonic sounds which amplitude is far lower than the noise they are buried within). Be sure to never apply dithering twice! If you're unsure about how it works, read some papers. The simple nice analogy that might help is thinking about the printout of the black-and-white photo, containing various shades of grey, with printer which is only capable of printing black dots or leaving the space white. Even though your picture consists of only black dots, by looking at it from some distance you can see the greys. Your printer is only two bit (black or white), but you can see the grey areas. This is similar to how dithering works for audio. It adds some noise, but increases perceived dynamic range

    - recon - these presets are not what you think. They use oversampled sidechain/metering and can control the intersample peaks. The explanation is quite complex and you must know a great deal about the design of DAC and the process of reconstruction. Usually, unless your DAC converter analog circuit is of very poor quality and doesn't have enough headroom to cope with those peaks (which are seldom greater than 3dB) you won't hear any difference. This option is rather for audio purists

    - tv - these limit the peaks to -10dBFS instead of 0dBFS. Your audio level will be much lower. Most tv stations have some guidelines about peak audio levels. They cannot exceed some threshold (ceiling). One of the reasons is that the carrier could be overmodulated during transmission (airing), interfering with other broadcasters etc.

    - cine - these presets use K-Systems metering with K-20 scale, which is designed for controlling the level of compression of cine sound (the typical dynamic range of the movie sound is much greater than CD)

    - other presets are ... just fun
Cheers,
BK

…string theory says that all subatomic particles of the universe are nothing but musical notes. A, B-flat, C-sharp, correspond to electrons, neutrinos, quarks, and what have you. Therefore, physics is nothing but the laws of harmony of these strings. Chemistry is nothing but the melodies we can play on these strings. The universe is a symphony of strings and the mind of God… it is cosmic music resonating through 11 dimensional hyperspace.
- M Kaku
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MIDI Life Crisis
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Xenon for $69 or less?

Post by MIDI Life Crisis »

Not at my 'puter at the moment but I believe that info can also be called up from the plug at any time by clicking on the "?" or maybe another icon. It calls up the PDF that was installed in what I seem to remember residing in the home/documents/PSP folder.
2013 Mac Pro 32GB RAM

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Dan Worley
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Re: Xenon for $69 or less?

Post by Dan Worley »

Great info, Bob. Thanks for sharing it.
BKK-OZ wrote:I went looking for some information on the presets that come with Xenon, and found the post below on their forum.

You can see the original thread here.

  • Now a few words about presets:

    - the 'limiter' presets (the first four) are aimed at (guess what? ;\) limiting. They allow you to reduce the peak/average ratio (called crest factor) and raise the loudness of the mix to some extent by 'clamping' the transient peaks. Those peaks usually last for very short time and don't contribute to overall loudness. By limiting them you get some place (headroom) which allows you to increase the level of your entire recording

    - the 'loudness' presets are more aggresive. Besides limiting the transient peaks these presets use leveler which alters the macrodynamics of your audio. Very loud, fragments, which cannot will be further compressed without ugly artifacts, will be pre-attenuated prior to limiting). This pre-attenuation allows you to drive the limiter (as set by input knob) to greater extent without risk of severe pumping. Use these presets when you want to sound 'loud'. However, be aware that it might destroy the song and its emotions. The difference between quite and loud fragments will become less dramatic. Also, keep in mind that radio stations add their own, very aggressive and (usually) ugly-sounding multiband compression to their content. Adding another stage of compression to already loud audio can result in flat, horribly-sounding results.

    - CD Master - these presets are combinations of the previous ones with added dithering/noise-shaping. This process adds some carefully-shaped noise to the audio which allows for greater-than-media perceived dynamic range. It only makes sense to apply dithering if bit-depth of your audio is greater than that of the media you master for (CD, f.ex. is 16 bit). If, f.ex. your sequencer or editor works in 32 or 64 bits and/or your audio was recorded with 24 bit ADC dithering will make it possible for your CDs to sound as if their dynamic range was greater than 16 bits. It might sound weird, but this is how our brain works (we are capable of hearing the harmonic sounds which amplitude is far lower than the noise they are buried within). Be sure to never apply dithering twice! If you're unsure about how it works, read some papers. The simple nice analogy that might help is thinking about the printout of the black-and-white photo, containing various shades of grey, with printer which is only capable of printing black dots or leaving the space white. Even though your picture consists of only black dots, by looking at it from some distance you can see the greys. Your printer is only two bit (black or white), but you can see the grey areas. This is similar to how dithering works for audio. It adds some noise, but increases perceived dynamic range

    - recon - these presets are not what you think. They use oversampled sidechain/metering and can control the intersample peaks. The explanation is quite complex and you must know a great deal about the design of DAC and the process of reconstruction. Usually, unless your DAC converter analog circuit is of very poor quality and doesn't have enough headroom to cope with those peaks (which are seldom greater than 3dB) you won't hear any difference. This option is rather for audio purists

    - tv - these limit the peaks to -10dBFS instead of 0dBFS. Your audio level will be much lower. Most tv stations have some guidelines about peak audio levels. They cannot exceed some threshold (ceiling). One of the reasons is that the carrier could be overmodulated during transmission (airing), interfering with other broadcasters etc.

    - cine - these presets use K-Systems metering with K-20 scale, which is designed for controlling the level of compression of cine sound (the typical dynamic range of the movie sound is much greater than CD)

    - other presets are ... just fun
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Tritonemusic
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Re: Xenon for $69 or less?

Post by Tritonemusic »

Dan Worley wrote:Great info, Bob. Thanks for sharing it.
I second the thanks. One thing I thought was an extremely important point in the link provided was:
You hardly ever should use the presets as they are - you definitely need to adjust:
1. input - it controls the amount of limiting. The desired amount depends not only on your preferences and the standards of the music genre you master, but also on the amount of compression applied during mixing
2. release - you need to tweak this one to find the sweet spot between loudness and pumping/distortion
3. bit depth (if using Xenon dithering) - to match your destination media resolution.

It is essential to set above parameters every time you process new audio, so please learn to listen to the way they affect the sound
DP 10.13, OS 13.6, iMac Pro (2017) 3.2 GHz 8-Core, 32 GB RAM, MOTU M4
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BKK-OZ
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Re: Xenon for $69 or less?

Post by BKK-OZ »

MIDI Life Crisis wrote:Not at my 'puter at the moment but I believe that info can also be called up from the plug at any time by clicking on the "?" or maybe another icon. It calls up the PDF that was installed in what I seem to remember residing in the home/documents/PSP folder.
Yeah, I checked the manual first, but it doesn't say anything about the presets, hence the need/desire to look for some info on them.
Dan Worley wrote:Great info, Bob. Thanks for sharing it.
Thanx for the thanx, but for the record, the name ain't Bob.
(I've been called much worse though!)
:P :P :P
Cheers,
BK

…string theory says that all subatomic particles of the universe are nothing but musical notes. A, B-flat, C-sharp, correspond to electrons, neutrinos, quarks, and what have you. Therefore, physics is nothing but the laws of harmony of these strings. Chemistry is nothing but the melodies we can play on these strings. The universe is a symphony of strings and the mind of God… it is cosmic music resonating through 11 dimensional hyperspace.
- M Kaku
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MIDI Life Crisis
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Re: Xenon for $69 or less?

Post by MIDI Life Crisis »

OK, I'll spell it out. The manual is accessible from the plug; "?" in bottom right hand corner.

It's also a PDF in your home folder/Documents/PSPaudioware.com along with any other manuals from PSP. I printed mine out. Much of the time they are talking waaaaaay over my little head.

I push button; it make sounding better. Super-terrific happy sounds and much wouder.
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Dan Worley
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Re: Xenon for $69 or less?

Post by Dan Worley »

BKK-OZ wrote:
Dan Worley wrote:Great info, Bob. Thanks for sharing it.
Thanx for the thanx, but for the record, the name ain't Bob.
(I've been called much worse though!)
:P :P :P
Oh, then you're not my uncle. :wink:

Sorry about that.
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BKK-OZ
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Re: Xenon for $69 or less?

Post by BKK-OZ »

MIDI Life Crisis wrote:OK, I'll spell it out. The manual is accessible from the plug; "?" in bottom right hand corner.
No need to spell.
Got that, read that, saw that before I made my post.

The post covers the presets, the manual does not.

Yes, push button is good. Me like push button too.
Cheers,
BK

…string theory says that all subatomic particles of the universe are nothing but musical notes. A, B-flat, C-sharp, correspond to electrons, neutrinos, quarks, and what have you. Therefore, physics is nothing but the laws of harmony of these strings. Chemistry is nothing but the melodies we can play on these strings. The universe is a symphony of strings and the mind of God… it is cosmic music resonating through 11 dimensional hyperspace.
- M Kaku
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BKK-OZ
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Re: Xenon for $69 or less?

Post by BKK-OZ »

Dan Worley wrote: Oh, then you're not my uncle. :wink:
Sorry about that.
Forgiven, brother.
Cheers,
BK

…string theory says that all subatomic particles of the universe are nothing but musical notes. A, B-flat, C-sharp, correspond to electrons, neutrinos, quarks, and what have you. Therefore, physics is nothing but the laws of harmony of these strings. Chemistry is nothing but the melodies we can play on these strings. The universe is a symphony of strings and the mind of God… it is cosmic music resonating through 11 dimensional hyperspace.
- M Kaku
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