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Welcome to Numerical Sound  
   
 
Bruce Botnick comments on Impulse Responses
 
In the Nov/Dec issue of TapeOp magazine Bruce Botnick (Doors albums, Jerry Goldsmith, Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album) says "The best impulse responses I have ever heard are from Pure Space...Ernest Cholakis out of Canada is the genius/mad scientist who..." Read More
   
 
HIR Wins Sonic Joy Award 2008
 
Numerical Sound has just won a Sonic Joy Award 2008 for Hollywood Impulse Responses from AudioNewsRoom.
   
 
Wusik Sound Magazine Review
 
"Which brings me to my conclusion: if you want realistic reverbs, HIR is not only one of the highest quality offerings out there but also the lowest priced and most flexible...An excellent buy, both for the value and the performance." from the review of Hollywood Impulse Responses by Per Lichtman. Read the review (Select "Human Impulse Responses" from the menu at the lower right).
   
 
Praise for HIR
 
"...if you're into sound-design and you'd like to have that "larger than life" sound on your tracks, I would get it as quickly as possible..." from the review of Hollywood Impulse Responses by Audio News Room. Read the review.
   
Numerical Sound
Inspired by Gould
 
Here is recording that was inspired by Glenn Gould's 1981 performance of the Aria from Bach's Goldberg Variations. It was rendered with ProAudioVault's Blüthner Digital Model One, Apple's Logic 8 with Kontakt 3 and uses the Hollywood Impulse Response number 101 mixed in at -20db relative to the dry level. Play recording.
   
 
Tempo Variations
 

Tempo variations are essential for a realistic midi performance. What is surprising is how complex and changing they are. Here is the graph of the quarter note tempo variation (bars 1-39) of the great French pianist Pascal Roge performing Gymnopedie No. 1 by Eric Satie.

Here is a midi sequencer based on these tempo variation on a sampled piano - the Blüthner Digital Model One. These tempo variation clearly add to the musicality of a midi sequence. Play recording.

   

Leading-Edge Audio Technology

Numerical Sound is a leading-edge audio technology company that sells unique content tools to aid professional and amateur musicians in producing contemporary music.

Innovative Audio Products

Numerical Sound has led the way in development of innovative audio products, such as

  • DNA Groove Templates, which extracts of the feel of world class musicians, has been adopted by all the major music sequencers, including Digital Performer, Cubase, ProTools, Logic and Cakewalk.
  • Drone Archeology that has been used extensively in many Hollywood feature films, film trailers as well as documentaries and TV shows around the world by a long list of very well known film/TV composers.
  • The critically acclaimed Pure Space Classical and Pure Space Film CDs that capture reverberation impulses that can be used by all the major convolution programs for playback of extremely high-quality reverb.
  • Sonic Trace Piracy Detection, a technique for tracing - and helping to diminish - music CD piracy.

For the the contemporary musician/producer/composer/DJ there are audio sampling CDs of great drummers that includes the midi file and the DNA groove templates of their feel.

  • Clyde Stubblefied who played with James Brown and played on the Funky Drummer, Cold Sweat, I've Got a Feelin, Mother Popcorn, Sex Machine and Say It Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud. Stubblefield has also played with Bootsy Collins, Maceo Parker.
  • Bernard Purdie who has played on countless recording (over 4000) and played on recordings of Steely Dan, Marvin Gaye, The Manhattans, The Jackson Five, Gladys Knight, Isaac Hayes, Donny Hathaway, B.B. King, Joe Cocker, Aretha Franklin, Miles Davios, Hall & Oatsm Al Kooper, Herbie Mann, Todd Rundgren, Cat Stevens Quincy Jones, Paul Simon, Percy Sledge, Nina Simone, James Brown, King Curtis, Grover Washington, Roberta Flack to name a few.
  • Sly Dunbar who played on many recordings including Bo Marley, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh, Grace Jones, Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, Herbie Hancock, Shabba Ranks, Maxi Priest, Chaka Demus & Pliers, Apache Indian, Snow, Cutty Ranks, Black Uhuru, Yellowman, Gregory Isaacs

DNA Groove Templates

The DNA Groove Templates were designed to enhance your midi compositions by adding feel or humanizing your sequences so they sound natural and sound like they were performed by great musicians. You can quickly apply different groove templates to different midi tracks in order to create a realistic ensemble or band sound. You can also change the overall feel from a soft shuffle to a hard shuffle to a straight 16th note feel by simply selecting a midi track then applying appropriate groove template.

This process moves all the selected notes a fraction of a beat to match the groove template which is virtually impossible to do manually. The process greatly enhances midi composition and reduce the countless hours of midi editing required to make a sequence "sound right".

Numerical Sound has released groove templates of several world famous drummers such as Bernard Purdie, Clyde Stubblefield and Sly Dunbar as well as Jazz, Pop/Rock and R&B Collections that are based on classic songs that have lasted the test of time.

Many of Numerical Sound drum loop CDs come with DNA Groove Templates and high definition Midi files of the exact drum arrangement so you can first hear then select the right feel of the song you are working and use either the drum loop, midi file or DNA Groove template to enhance your composition.

Super High-Quality Reverberation

With the advent of real time convolution now available in Apple's Logic, Digidesign's ProTools, Cakewalk and Digital Performer sequencers as well as VST, AU and RTAS plug-ins programs such as Altiverb, Pristine Space, TL Space super high quality reverberation is now possible. What was needed is great sounding reverb impulse material to create high definition virtual reality spaces. Since 2003 Numerical Sound has created the "best sounding" reverbs anywhere regardless of hardware/software. In fact you can even place any of your music tracks to sound like they were recorded inside the Great Pyramid of Kufu in Egypt!

In 2008 Numerical Sound released a reverberation impulse product called "Hollywood Impulse Responses". Besides adding the "Hollywood Sound" ambience you can even alter the timbre of your source material so that the resulting sound is brighter or darker than the original recording. This gives the musician/composer the flexibility of changing the overall sound of a track in one simple step. Gives the user a world class sound but priced for both proressional and amateur musicians.

Over the years many well known musicians, composers and producers and engineers have used Numerical Sound products such as Jan Garbarek, George Duke, Herbie Hancock, Don Grusin, Oscar Castro-Neves, Hans Zimmer, David Newman, Alan Silvestri, James Newton Howard, Mark Isham and Bruce Botnick.