Hey, I really love Permut8. To me it's a multifx in which the fx is chosen by how you turn knobs and dials, it's extremely unique and musical. It's genious. It's setup in a way where you can't make it sound bad. Finally a plugin that doesn't think lo-fi equates to crapify. I love how you can dial in bit reduction by reducing the input volume so low that Permut8 can no longer sample the signal accurately and then adjusting the clock speed for variable lo-fidelity.

The noise and hum is great, I like how it adds grit, realism, and a distorted drone in the background. However, that 50hz tone can get in the way of musical notes.. yet i REALLY want to use permut8 as a bit reduction in musical situations. As a matter of fact, you really can't hear the full depth of Permut8 without sending it low level signals and boosting the hell out of it with compression. My favorite setup is MicroTonic --> Permut8 --> Ohmicide (used only for its PHAT compression) --> Vocodex (used only for its Sound Goodizer). This automatically compresses, boosts, and EQs the hell out of Permut8 making MicroTonic sound sooo badass. The noise and hum however become very prominent, perhaps a tad too prominent sometimes?

I know you wouldn't want to take the realism out of Permut8, butif there was an option to adjust the 50hz tone volume/pitch and adjust "analog noise" level, that would add another level of tweakability to Permut8. Maybe command prompt? May a "DIY" addition like the randomize button?

Thank you!
-Elan

- Elan Hickler wrote:
I know you wouldn't want to take the realism out of Permut8, butif there was an option to adjust the 50hz tone volume/pitch and adjust "analog noise" level, that would add another level of tweakability to Permut8. Maybe command prompt? May a "DIY" addition like the randomize button?

Hey Elan!

Yeah, I love bit reduction too. In fact the first prototype for a bigger Permut8 ("Crayfish") had operators that shaped sample values directly and not just operations on delay position. However I thought it became a bit too advanced for a first product of this kind, so I left it out. Instead I designed the input / output gain and D/A conversion so that you could set Permut8 up for bit-crushing like you just described.

The hum and noise adds to the realism and changes the way the feedback sounds, and it would go a bit against the product philosophy (of a realistic digital audio machine) to have a knob to adjust it. What I am considering though is a firmware replacement (that you access via the terminal) that could allow you to do various bit crushing effects without resorting to the input / output level trick.

However there is no easy way to "inject" custom firmware at specific positions in the original audio code, so I am not sure if / how the delay-modulating instructions will be part of such a firmware. I need to think about that some more.

Btw, thanks again for your lovely disturbed Permut8 demo. :)

Awesome! Thanks for the reply. I'll inject an idea for thought... Bit shuffle? KarmaFX Modular Synth has it... not sure if there's another name for it or how to describe it. I dunno, is it changing the position of the bit some how???? :blink: Edit: Oh and you can also disable bits.

- Elan Hickler wrote:
Awesome! Thanks for the reply. I'll inject an idea for thought... Bit shuffle? KarmaFX Modular Synth has it... not sure if there's another name for it or how to describe it. I dunno, is it changing the position of the bit some how???? :blink: Edit: Oh and you can also disable bits.

Cool idea. I played around with lots of different operations on bits when I prototyped "Crayfish", but not sure if I tried shuffling them (e.g. reversing or rotating a group of bits). I'll include that in the list of things to try.