Re: 'Plex noise gate

[kflint@annihilist.com (Kim Flint)]

At 11:45 AM 3/29/97, David Myers wrote:
>Kim:
>
>I've been waiting for a response to my post of a few days ago, but all 
>I've
>heard from you is something about onion soup, so I'll try the direct

I never said a darn thing about onion soup! I was talking about 
accordians. :-)


I didn't get your original post, sorry. In general though, the deal is 
this:

I stopped working for Gibson about 10 months ago, and don't pretend to
speak for them or their divisions. (like Oberheim)  The help I give on
echoplex questions is totally voluntary, and not out of any obligation. I'm
proud of the thing and the work I did on it, and I just want to see people
enjoy it and use it well. My real life is very demanding, and I actually
have very little time for these sorts of questions. And I do get a lot of
them. I'm more than happy to help, and I try my best to give people good
answers, but sometimes it takes me a while to get to it. So please try to
be patient.

I don't mean to jump on you, and normally don't feel it's necessary to make
silly statements like this. It's just that I've received email recently
with a lot more "angry customer attitude" than seemed necessary. Sort of
like the author thought I was a Gibson representative or something. If
Gibson/oberheim/whoever has wronged you somehow, please direct your anger
at them and not me! They have customer service people available for you to
abuse. Mostly, those folks will be able to take care of your problems and
as far as I know are reasonably good at that. I will be more than happy to
help you if I can, but my motivation will be remarkably lower in the face
of overtly misdirected hostility......

Thanks for listening to me vent. Now, your question:

>approach.  In brief, the noise gate is ruining everything I've tried to do
>lately.  Hit a big distortion chord and let it die out gradually-within a
>few seconds the gate starts chopping it up.  Most of my sounds are being
>pumped like this, and I'm hoping there is a way to get around the gate.
>Please?!  I don't care so much about improved "undo" performance-with this
>gate, I'll have to look elsewhere for my main looper.
>
>Thanks-David

This was discussed to death a few months ago and I currently don't have the
time or energy to do it again, so for the full version you ought to check
the archives. A synopsis:

- There is a noisegate on the echoplex that makes the Undo function
  much more usable.

- A few people find it annoying, and probably don't realize how equally
  annoyed they would be if it wasn't there.

- There is currently no way to adjust it or turn it off.

- One imperfect work-around is to increase the input levels a bit to
  make sure you are further above the gate threshold.

- Another suggestion is to use a compressor.

- The designers of the echoplex are very sorry if you are affected
  by this problem.

- Said designers (Matthias, Eric, and myself), at the expense of
  personal lives and relationships, will be developing and releasing
  echoplex software upgrades this year. The second of those will offer
  an adjustable gate threshold. We do not yet have a release date for
  that. Please avoid asking questions about upgrades for now, because
  spending our very limited free time on your question means less
  limited-free-time for working on the software! Appropriate
  announcements will be made at the appropriate time.

- We do hope you can be patient and wait for us to finish this work,
  and hope that the wide variety of other echoplex features and
  applications can bring you some solace and pleasure in the mean
  time.


hope this helps,

kim

______________________________________________________________________
Kim Flint                   | Looper's Delight
kflint@annihilist.com       | http://www.annihilist.com/loop/loop.html
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