Craig Grove BSc (Hons)

Craig has been working in recording studios in the West Midlands area for over 25 years and is also an accomplished software engineer. In 1983 he built his own MIDI interface and wrote one of the first sequencer packages. He also managed to turn his BBC micro into an 8-bit sampler. Since then Craig has been involved with many software projects as diverse as control for Nuclear power stations and the NASA space-shuttle programme (honest!!).

In 2006 Craig was employed as a Senior Design Engineer for Peter Gabriel's Solid State Logic (SSL), one of the world's foremost professional audio manufacturers, and is currently the plug-in writer for the Duende platform writing software for DrumStrip, X-ISM, X-EQ and X-Comp. Prior to this, Craig was a lecturer in Music Technology at Kidderminster College, teaching up to HND level. He was also one of the producers for Robert Plant's MAS record label.

Craig is also a musician (keyboards) and has been performing in bands since the 80s.

Here are a few (fairly simple) free VST plugins that may be useful. They were written as part of the 'Music Technology' course at Kidderminster College - teaching the fundamentals of how audio processes worked and how to create plugins. If you try them and like them, or have suggestions for improvements then feel free to let us know at:

stormrecordingstudio [AT] hot [NO SPACE] mail [DOT] co [DOT] uk

Simply download these files, unzip them, and place the .dat and .dll files in your VST Plugins folder.

DrumTrig - Drum Sound Replacer

By using this plugin on single drum tracks like Snare or Kick you can replace the sound with any sample (.WAV file) you like. Great if you've tried everything to salvage a poorly recorded drum sound and got nowhere!

If you like this plugin but fancy something a bit more sophisticated, have a look at Drumagog. It's not free but it has a lot more features.

Controls:

WAV - The sample to play when the unit is triggered
Threshold - Signals above this level will trigger the unit
Retrigger - A time delay between triggers, to stop false triggering
Output - The overall volume of the sample playback

Exciter - An Aural Exciter

NEWS: If you want to see this plugin in action visit US studio Pipeline Audio where it has been used in an audio tutorial entitled Exciting the Snare. This tutorial (and others) was created by studio guru Aaron Carey. He has spent a great deal of time providing these tutorials and would welcome any feedback or comments.

This plugin creates extra high frequencies based upon what's already there in the upper mids. This is done by applying a gentle distortion (clipping) to the upper mids, such that the harmonics generated add to the high-frequency components of the signal.

Try this on drum overheads, hi-hats, flute or whatever you fancy really.

One word of warning, the effect is very addictive. Gently does it!

Controls:

CutOff - Signals above the Cutoff frequency will be processed
Drive - The amount of distortion applied to the signal (you need less when CutOff is low)
Amount - The amount of processed signal applied.

Please note. This plugin does reduce the overall signal level very slightly when amount/drive is low. This is so that the unit does not provide 'too much' signal back to the host application.

STThick - Stereo enhancer

This should be used on single, mono tracks, but do NOT place it in the 'insert' section of the track (Cubase) as this will not give you a stereo output. Instead use it in the Mixer.

One common way enhance the stereo image of a track is to do the following:

1. Make two additional copies of the track
2. Delay the copies slightly
3. Pan one of the copies full left and the other full right
4. Make one of the copies out-of-phase so that the effect doesn't sound strange in mono.

If that sounds a bit too much like hard work, then this plugin does it all for you! Try it with overdriven electric guitar to get that 'wall of sound' effect common to tracks by Evanescence etc.. We think you'll be pleased.

Controls:

Delay Time - The amount of delay
Mix - The mix between the original (centre) signal, and the delayed signals

Transient Designer - Drum Transient Processor

This plugin isolates the attack transient of a percussive sound, from the body (or sustain portion) of the sound, and gives you levels to control the amount of each one.

This plugin seems to work best on percussive sounds like drums, bass guitar, acoustic guitar etc (try it with a drum loop). With it you can make the signal sound huge (less attack, more sustain), you can bring the sound forward in the mix (more attack, less sustain), or BOTH!!

Controls:

Input - The amount of signal fed into the unit (too much will distort the Attack detector)
Attack - The amount of attack transient
Sustain - The amount of body

Please note. This is purely a MONO plugin, you if you want to use it with stereo material, use two of them!