Chrome Tone

Chrome Tone brings the world of custom guitar amps, boutique outboard gear and pedal effects inside your Digital Auido Workstation.

The Chrome Tone collection of effects includes distortion, compression, gating, chorus, flange, EQ, wah, tremolo, spring reverb and tape delay effect. These are all designed with sonic flexibility for a myriad of applications from guitar, keyboards, drums and even voice. Chrome Tone brings the world of custom guitar amps, boutique outboard gear and pedal effects inside your Digital Audio Workstation (DAW).

A Look at the Chrome Tone Amp Configuration

The Chrome Tone Amp has five distortion modes for everything from light grit to full shred. Distortion Drive and Frequency controls allow fine tuning of the distortion tone. The Amp also includes a full featured noise gate, compression and sustain circuits, low cut filters, shelving and parametric EQ, a guitar cabinet simulator (great for direct recording), and a reverb.

Five distortion modes for light to heavy distortion. A sixth mode incorporates a manual band pass (wah) filter with a distortion mode.
Fully programmable Gate to remove unwanted signal. Very useful for noise reduction in the signal path, particularly when large amounts of distortion are selected.
Compression and sustain circuits to augment the recorded performance. This section can also increase the overall signal level in the Distortion section.
High pass filtering, shelving and parametric EQ.
Four guitar cabinet simulations, plus a direct mode.
Spring reverb.

The Dynamics and Auto Section

The Chrome Tone Wah is a full featured modulated filter, configured as a Wah in default mode, and as a variety of other filters as per the 14 selectable types available. The Wah, like the Tremolo and Chorus configurations, has a Dynamics and Auto section for triggering modulation of the Wah filter, Tremolo gain, or Chorus delay length.

The Dynamic section acts as an envelope follower with adjustable attack and decay times. A threshold determines the triggering level of the envelope follower. The amount of effect the envelope follower has on the Wah, Tremolo or Chorus is determined by the Depth control. The amount of affect the envelope follower has on the Auto section's LFO Rate, Shape, or Depth is determined by the Mod control. Inputs to the Dynamic section are not limited to audio - side chain audio, MIDI note or velocity, and any of the 128 MIDI controllers can be used as the modulation source.

The Auto section is a configurable LFO (low frequency oscillator) used to modulate the Wah Tremolo or Chorus with a periodic waveform. There are two waveform shapes that can be mixed in realtime, and the second shape can be a multiple of the first. MIDI beat clock syncing is available along with a groove control.

A Look at the Chrome Tone Wah

The Chrome Tone Wah has much more than the standard wah pedal offers. Three types of band pass (wah) filters are included, plus multiple low pass, high pass, and phasor filter configurations are available with 12, 24, and 36 dB/oct slopes. All filter configurations have selectable frequency and Q values. Using the Chrome Tone as a Wah, the wah-effect can be created in one of three ways:

Move the frequency control itself (manual wah)
Modulate the frequency control from a base setting with the Dynamic section (enveloped wah)
Modulate the frequency control from a base setting with the Auto section (auto wah). These three techniques can be extended to any of the other filter types in the Wah configuration.

The Q, or resonance, control, provides emphasis at the selected frequency, or at the currently modulated frequency. This can create filter effects commonly associated with synthesizers. The selections, bandpass, low pass, and high pass all come in 1/2/3 modes, corresponding to 12/24/36 dB per octave slopes. The intensity of the resonance increases with steeper filter slopes.

A Look at the Chrome Tone Tremolo

The Tremolo effect is the modulation of the volume (gain) of a signal path. This effect is common in guitar and keyboards, and a variety of other instruments. The beating, or volume movements can add life to an otherwise dull performance.

The Chrome Tone Tremolo uses the same Dynamic and Auto sections found in the Wah configuration to modulate the gain in its tremolo circuit.

The Chrome Tone Tremolo section has two controls to adjust the Tremolo effect.

Mix - the amount of dry (unaffected) signal and wet (tremolo'd) signal.
Range - the overall modulation range from both the Dynamic and Auto sections.

A Look at the Chrome Tone Chorus

The Chrome Tone Chorus section contains five controls to adjust the Chorus effect.
Chorus Type - selects between Flange, Chorus 1, and Chorus 2 modes. In the Stack configuration, an Analog Delay mode is also available for up to 1 second of analog delay.
Delay - the total delay line lengths used to create the delay modulated effect.
Feedback - the amount of delayed signal feed back into the input of the delay line/s.
Mix - the balance between the dry (un-delayed) and wet (delayed) signals.
Range - the overall modulation range from both the Dynamic and Auto sections.

Performance Effects

As with other McDSP plug-ins, Chrome Tone is very efficient. DSP performance and usage is an important consideration whether you are running on the host or a dedicated DSP chip.

Performance also refers to how these plug-ins respond dynamically to a musical performance. Chrome Tone effects can take their cues from a number of sources - the original audio, side chain, an external controller or any MIDI track in the session. These signals can adjust the depth, speed and shape of the LFO, as well as modulate the original audio.

Modulation Effects

Chorus, Tremolo and Wah all have a Dynamic section that controls a modulation envelope with selectable triggering (input, sidechain, MIDI data). An Auto section includes a syncable LFO with selectable/mixable waveforms. The LFO shape, rate, and depth can be further modulated from the Dynamics section's envelope output.

The wah includes 3 different band pass filter configurations, which can create stronger Q and tighter response and 3 different high pass and low pass filter configurations offered in series. Additional Wah modes includes 3 different phasors, and phasor/filter combinations.

Modes offered within the Chorus are flange, two different chorus modes and a tape delay.

The Stack

Another way Chrome Tone offers flexibility is in the configurations of the effects themselves. There is an all-in-one mode called the "stack" (shown on the left as the Wah page) which contains all the elements of the Amp, Tremolo, Wah, and Chorus effects, plus a tape delay mode in the Chorus section. Chrome Tone also comes with individual plug-ins of Amp, Chorus, Tremolo, and Wah with Phasor. All of these configurations are made available in mono, mono to stereo and true stereo.

Stock#: 29256
Publisher: McDSP
Code:
Platform: CROSS
Type: DSP
Weight (lbs): 0.39
Dim: 5½ (W) x 7½ (H) x 0.60 (D) inchs
Year: © 2004
List: 495.00
Sale:$CALL

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MIDI Classics®, Box 311, Weatogue, CT 06089-0311 USA
Order: 800-787-6434 Fax: 860-651-4373 Overseas/Tech Support: 860-651-1349
E-mail:mcsales@midi-classics.com