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SculpturA Pack
Direct-X VST plug-ins
License : 10
 - Spectro SculpturA.
 - Tone-Four.
- Tone-Param.
- Tone-Param Fs2.
- Tone-Shelf.
- Tone-Shelf Fs2.
Quick Start
STEP -1- : Open the main Board.
STEP -2- : Adjust input gain.
STEP -3- : Equalize your sound using the first row of buttons.
STEP -4- : Play with delay lines.
STEP -5- : Adjust the resulting levels using the faders.
SculpurA ?
The idea of sculpting brings the notion of giving shape through adding or removing pieces of material.
SculpturA, with its predictive limiter on the output, allows you to literally sculpt sound without any
need to worry about levels. The gain knobs' wide operating range together with the output limiter bring
unprecedented freedom of use and some EQing power that will - in this category - go well far beyond
standard boundaries.
Stereo Mixing.
SculpturA's main function remains the extraction and re-mixing of 9 frequency bands, in stereo.
The goal is to redistribute a band to the left or to the right in order to reconstruct or modify a stereo
image and, this way, get control over the left/right phase corellation. Indeed, one will often happen
to be trying to rectify the sound, narrow the low-end's phase and, perhaps, widen the stereo image on
the spectrum's high-end. Whereas C10 offers a stereo pan setting, SculpturA allows you to balance the
left and right channels independently. It'll give you the possibility, for instance, to keep one channel
only and put it back to the centre, if needed.
Sound Strengthening.
Like C10, SculpturA features a delay line on each band, thus allowing you to generate various
spacialization effects, by left/right time-shifting or by decorellating a band in relation to the others.
Typical example : band 1 (bass, around 50 Hz) is delayed by 50 ms. Delaying a band comes down to
temporally dissociating a band from the other ones in order to highlight it. But, above all, SculpturA
allows you to generate a reflection effect on each band. This is not exactly a multiband reverberation
but corresponds to the beginnings of a concept rarely used for mastering : strengthening sound by adding
a reflection effect. Moreover, this reflection can be crossed and/or decorellated. Doubling vocals or a
bass track by using a mere delay line also allows you to thicken or highlight a part of the sound.
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Concept
SculpturA is a stereo mixing console featuring two series of 9 strips :
9 for the left channel and 9 for the right channel. These 9 strips result from the extraction of 9
subsequent frequency bands. Once these 9 bands are put back together as a whole - that's to say once
they have been mixed -, they cover the entire bandwidth.
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Mixer-strip features :
Each extracted band is looked upon as if it were a single strip of a virtual mixer. Opposite, you can see
one of these strips' detailed description, displaying all the processings that you may apply on each of the
2x9=18 strips that SculpturA features (in stereo).
The processing chain starts with a simple input gain with a wide operating-range. This will allow you to
taylor the sound to your liking. Then, a simple Mute/Solo is available in the shape of two push-buttons
(ON/OFF, Solo).
Then, a delay line is inserted right after a contour circuit (deactivated by default). This delay line allows
you to put a track back or - with the contour circuit activated with the ADD-D button (Add direct sound) -
generate some kind of reflection effect.
At last, after a mere "pan-pot", the output fader will be used to adjust the resulting level, as you would
do with a mixing console.
The processings available on each strip are cut down to the minimum absolute essentials. SculpturA was
created in 1999 so that it could work on a Pentium 200 without any CPU-overload problem. Even though,
two years later, C10 brought far more possibilities, SculpturA remains the only plugin that can
readjust the balance of each channel band per band.
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3 x 4 presets in memory !
SculpturA features 12 preset memory locations allowing you to quickly save and recall a whole set of
parameter settings. Using these presets is very easy, thanks to two rows of 12 buttons. The bottom row
allows you to store the current settings and the upper row allows you to recall presets. This way,
you may compare several parameter settings in one mouse click only.
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B-Limiter on Master Output
SculpturA features a predictive limiter on its master output : B-Limiter, which is also
available as an independent plugin with the C-Limiter Pack.
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SculpturA is the first plugin to ever introduce the concept of re-mixing a master tape.
As it is not possible - of course - to simply extract the different instruments of a musical tune,
we'll extract a certain number of frequency bands (here, 9), perfectly complementary. They will
represent different parts of the original sound that we'll be able to process independently, like
any standard signal, before mixing them back together onto the output bus. Thanks to a particular
F.I.R-type filter designed by Vincent Burel at the end of the 90's, this feat was made possible
on realtime audio streams. It is this filter that made possible the creation of the
SculpturA Pack , as well as C10-Limiter plug-in.
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