autoBED
sideFIRE
baddASS
monoLOW
sideGATE
comPANION
SoundSquares
TEV
now updated to v1.3 >> smaller files for faster loading allowing more plugin instances in a project
issue 165 - out now
also found in :
issue 91 : October 2010
As luck would have it, the following spring his old chum Victor Schwanke dropped by the workshop to visit a friend and announce his engagement. In the years following their last adventures, Victor had taken a posting within a part of the military he would only describe as "a bit hush-hush wot-eh?", and on hearing of Pierfax's project demanded a demonstration "without recourse to delay".
Duly, the senior ranks were ushered in to experience the bolsteriser for themselves. All in all, the demonstration went well, and despite nearly deafening most of those present, Pierfax was comissioned to produce four devices each of a similar design to be tested prior to possible deployment in what was mentioned in hushed voices as "experimental military communications".
Shortly after the military took possession of the first four devices, Pierfax's workshop was engulfed in an inferno, destroying the entire contents - including the original bolsteriser. To this day, history is unsure of the source of this incident, as it was never satisfactorily resolved - some say Emily deliberately set fire to her husband's workshop in pursuit of revenge for his "other (dubious) activities", some say the military itself was to blame, and others point the finger at Tiswold with his habit of flicking switches when his master was not present.
Fast-forward nearly ninety years and the bolsterisers are reborn in digital form. Unbeknownst to Pierfax, his devices survived well into the twenty-first century, and when recently discovered in Saint Pulcher's museum of Combat Curiosities just had to be examined. After various component-level tests, it was decided to power-up the devices and take some measurements with a view to recreating these fantasy beasts in software - and here they are in their equally naive digital implementations.
In their day, there was no working language of audio compression, so some of the terminology associated with the bolsterisers is a little out of keeping with the modern production lexicon. Today, the devices would be characterised roughly as follows :
some audio examples - thanks to Nigel Khan ...
*
In the weeks leading up to the release of the virtual incarnations of the bolsterisers, we were approached by a GCHQ operative claiming to have unearthed a fifth fantasy machine - the bolsteriser rev(E):
There is no record of this particular machine having ever being made, so under armed guard, we visited a a top-secret facility and by dead of night : ran some tests. It was found to be equivalent to a side-channel hybrid of rev(A) and rev(B). This has duly been released as an addition to the original package.
We had a couple of crank-calls from people saying they were ex special-forces, claiming to have used the bolsterisers in combat. Several of these leads were fruitlessly followed, until a 3rd person coming forward could actually shed some light on the reality of the situation. This guy was for real and with the aid of pencil and paper, managed to show us (from memory) how to hack the hardware into allowing more control of the signal manipulation performed by the bolsterisers. These "new" controls have subsequently been included in the bolsterisers in the form of a version 1.2 upgrade. In use, they split 16 controls into to groups of 8 for the slow and fast modes, effectively making and A/B comparison switch out of the slow/fast control :
to buy a bolsteriser, please visit the
whiteLABEL online shop
there's a bundle deal to save a bit of cash too ...
download free mono versions :
rev A
rev B
rev C
rev D
fullsize screenshots :
here
note on compatibility :
here
thanks to the whiteLABEL beta-testers :
you know who you are ...
