Owner manual

Phoenix is Crane Song’s suite of TDM only plug-ins designed to emulate the unique prop-
erties of a magnetic tape machine. Designer Dave Hill has crafted this software with the
same attention to detail he used to create the electronics for ATR Service’s much heralded
“Aria” discrete tape recorders. His intimate knowledge of analog electronics, as well as
decades of experience as a recording engineer has spawned a very useful, musical suite of
plug-ins. The Phoenix process not only incorporates the nonlinear saturation characteris-
tics created by magnetic tape itself, but also includes the interrelation of an analog tape
recorder’s record/reproduce electronics and equalization curves. The Phoenix suite is not
merely a downscaled version of the Crane Song HEDD processor, but a ground-up applica-
tion derived from HEDD technology, and specifically engineered and optimized for
Digidesign’s TDM architecture.
Five different TDM plug-ins emulate different tape characteristics, each one incorporating a
color change button allowing three choices to modify the process. The Gold button is the
position where the color is approximately flat in frequency response, with Sapphire being a
brighter, and Opal being a warmer tonality. A level control determines the amount of the
Phoenix process integrated into the audio signal, and an input trim determines “how hard
you hit the tape.” Because the DSP process is level dependent, reducing the input level will
also cause a change in sound.
The input trim can also be used to prevent clipping in the rare cases where clipping may be
a problem. This can be useful on material that is hitting close to or at digital zero. When
the input trim is at 0dB, (no change in gain) and no tape process is being added to the
sound, the plug-in is bit accurate, meaning the output exactly matches the input.
The Phoenix suite contains five separate plug-ins:
• Luminescent is the most neutral sounding process of the five.
• Iridescent has a similar magnetic character, but with a fatter bottom and midrange.
This plug-in is the most similar to the tape knob on HEDD-192.
• Radiant is characterized by a more aggressive compression curve
• Dark Essence is even more aggressive. (The effect is a color with a wider frequency
range—when used on a vocal Dark Essence can reduce sibilance problems by
increasing the apparent loudness of the rest of the signal.)
• Luster starts more gently than the other four processes, but becomes as aggressive
as Dark Essence when the process is at full scale.