What's new

Shreddage 3 is EXPANDING with 5 upgraded instruments. Now available!

FYI all, we've updated every S3 guitar today with some bug fixes and improvements!

https://impactsoundworks.com/my-account/updates/

We've adjusted some default values for envelopes and TACT, fixed bugs related to the Tone filter and Shred Offset, Spliti MIDI Channels and some other minor things. Some KVRAudio users were pointing out that it was a bit harder to get S3 instruments to sound like their S2 versions when it comes to really fast power metal chugs; this update addresses that, and also adds a snapshot called "Metal Rhythm" in the styles folder which makes it stupidly easy to get a great chugga-chugga sound!
 
We've adjusted some default values for envelopes and TACT, fixed bugs related to the Tone filter and Shred Offset, Spliti MIDI Channels and some other minor things. Some KVRAudio users were pointing out that it was a bit harder to get S3 instruments to sound like their S2 versions when it comes to really fast power metal chugs; this update addresses that, and also adds a snapshot called "Metal Rhythm" in the styles folder which makes it stupidly easy to get a great chugga-chugga sound!

I downloaded and unzipped the update to S3 jupiter and copied the contents over my existing S3 Jupiter folder. I already found a couple of bugs, which I've sent you mails about today.

I too noticed how it sounds different than S2 and was looking for your post here, because I remembered you mentioning a fix, but I can't find this "Metal Rhythm" style snapshot. I only see chords and solo leads in the "_Styles" subfolder of the snapshot menu. Am I looking in the wrong place? Did I do something wrong with the install of the update? Should I have deleted everything except the samples folder first before unpacking the updated instrument archive?
 
If you don't see the new snapshot, then you must not have unpacked the update in the right place. It should have extracted exactly 1:1 over your existing Jupiter folder, overwriting every file except the samples files.
 
If you don't see the new snapshot, then you must not have unpacked the update in the right place. It should have extracted exactly 1:1 over your existing Jupiter folder, overwriting every file except the samples files.

Thanks for the quick reply Andrew! This brings us closer to an explanation of what went wrong:
I kept all the archives that I downloaded. I originally downloaded S3 Jupiter on the 20th, on the 28th the update was announced and I downloaded it immediately. Or at least I thought I did, because when I check the MD5 checksums of the original file that I downloaded on the 20th and the supposed update from the 28th, they both have the same checksum ( 3cc6c3b4ba76021e878ca89977006b70 ), meaning they are identical. I just downloaded it again, and now it has a different MD5 checksum ( 2e3140fb43a59a0be1b5c7bc626512ec ). Maybe there was a slight delay between you uploading the new file and the storefront actually serving the correct download to people?
I'll try out the actually updated version and let you know if I still have issues. Thanks!
 
We've adjusted some default values for envelopes and TACT, fixed bugs related to the Tone filter and Shred Offset, Spliti MIDI Channels and some other minor things. Some KVRAudio users were pointing out that it was a bit harder to get S3 instruments to sound like their S2 versions when it comes to really fast power metal chugs; this update addresses that, and also adds a snapshot called "Metal Rhythm" in the styles folder which makes it stupidly easy to get a great chugga-chugga sound!

I tried the "Metal Rythm" style snapshot but it still needs a bunch of tweaking to sound close to the old Shreddage II V3_21 (dialing offset and tightness settings down from the mutes, I didn't test all the other articulations, there might be more that nead tweaking). Would you consider providing a "legacy midi compatibility mode" snapshot for the S3 series products that uses the same (key)switches and sounds the same as the S2 versions? I'd imagine that to be very helpful for people who want to migrate a bunch of projects from v2 to v3 without making tons of manual changes.

I have a question for TACT: what is expected behaviour when I disable every articulation (clicking on the blue light in front of the articulation names till they're all dark)? I would expect it to play nothing, but it plays samples that are barely audible on their own but rather loud through my high gain FX chain. What is this and where can I disable it to see if removing it from regular playback improves the sound?

As far as I can tell the bugs that I've reported in my 3 mails today all still persist after the update.

I've found one new bug, but can't reproduce it so far: I was experimenting with turning articulations off and had a situation where when I switched off one of the [rel] samples on the last page it would randomly not play notes in the riff that I had playing on loop while making changes on the TACT page. I wasn't able to reproduce the steps that got me there.

I believe I have briefly encountered another bug, where it sounded to me like higher pitched samples are played as internally up-pitched lower note samples and it sounded off, but I couldn't reproduce to A/B test and verify that it's actually the case and I'm not just going insane from bug hunting.

S2 has an "extra pick" option on the "engine page", I can't find it in the S3 UI or in the manual, is this feature gone or am I missing something?

I do like the new "shred window/offset" feature, great idea!
 
We'll look into everything you mentioned soon. At the moment, there is no plan to make a perfect 1:1 legacy mode because of how we remapped some samples; specifically palm mutes which were really messy. In the older libraries, I mapped palm mutes differently for every note, so if you played the same velocity across the entire range, you would get mutes of different lengths. We've addressed that now so it's 100% consistent.

However it shouldn't be difficult to match the instrument in every other way, so that's something we'll continue to investigate.

The "extra pick" option is still available, but renamed to "Rake", because the latter is more accurate as to what is being performed. You can edit the options under Rake Picking on the Advanced page, and edit more articulation settings in TACT (or disable it.)

I'll talk with our lead programmer about 'all articulation off' behavior. I don't think we coded anything specifically for that since there is no reason to do it... that being said, if your modwheel is above 0 (or whatever method you use for vibrato, i.e. aftertouch) you will hear some of the vibrato xfading in.
 
I finally found time tonight to thoroughly go through the new Shreddage 3 interface (and user manual) and to compare against the original edition of the Archtop Guitar, and after about two hours of that, I am definitely upgrading the rest of my collection, as this is too good of a bargain to pass up, given that it's really an entirely new product with almost ten times as many features as before.

As for getting the new version of Archtop closer to the old in terms of warm and bright timbre (necessary in many situations to avoid mud, retain articulateness, and to mix well with other instruments), that was what took me the longest, but I was finally able to abandon the old library and then to start treating Shreddage 3 as a new experience.

Although I had three basic starting points for the old version (50/50 bridge/neck blend, bridge-only, neck-only, and with or without amp as some genres work best with DI guitar even though I know many people think Nile Rodgers is the only one who gets away with that anymore), it seems the inherent levels are a bit different in this version, so for cases where I need a pickup blend, I am setting the neck pickup to -9.0 dB and the bridge pickup to -12.5 dB (overall levels are hotter now).

I didn't compare to see if different snapshots have different settings outside of the insert effect chain, but as I had little luck starting from scratch, I went through a few of them, found them all extremely muddy and boomy, but finally settled on the Archtop Bright Clean snapshot and heavily modified that to get to more of the Tal Farlow sound that is usually my basic starting point.

I'm not sure how much of this is pertinent to the other guitars, but hopefully it is helpful at least to those migrating to the new Archtop library. It looks like the feature set is probably pretty uniform between the different guitar models this time around, but I'll know more after doing the upgrades.

The main thing, for the Archtop at least, is that I find the Reverb, Chorus, and even Analog EQ, to reduce clarity. I tend to use my own plug-ins later in the mix chain anyway, so don't know if these are for convenience or are designed specifically to result in better mix-ready output that processing downstream of initial tracking. It's just my own tastes anyway, and also Archtops are quite different from solid bodies in almost all respects. I may end up finding I like the insert effects on the others.

I found that things were a bit more even and articulate in Mono, as I would expect for Archtop and even for most Solid Body work, but I'm too tired now to check other projects to see if I was ever using the original version in stereo or not. Usually I prefer guitar to be mono and center-channelled.

The tweaks I did to the Archtop Bright Clean snapshot before saving my own, were to turn on the Bridge pickup and use the balance described above, delete the Analog EQ, Chorus, and Reverb insert effects, switch the Twang to Mono Mode (and retain the Bright Mode switch), and use the Brit Combo U87 Mic in its On-Axis setting. I had previously used the Tweed Amp, now shown as S2 Tweed B. It's nice that at least the old amp models were retained as S2 (for "Shreddage 2") settings, if desired.

Having done this work, I feel very confident now that I know my way around Shreddage 3 and can quickly replace Shreddage 2 in unfinished projects with better results than before, even before I start making new works that take full advantage of the new features and use the new sound palette that is only available with the MUCH wider and deeper range of possibilities now on offer.

This incredible update/upgrade from Impact Soundworks puts their guitars (and probably basses as well), on top of the pile once again. The competition is fierce between the Big Three (Ample Sounds and Orange Tree Samples; others have good samples and some other features but are nowhere near as advanced overall, in my opinion), but I personally feel ISW is now the undisputed king.
 
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I believe I have briefly encountered another bug, where it sounded to me like higher pitched samples are played as internally up-pitched lower note samples and it sounded off, but I couldn't reproduce to A/B test and verify that it's actually the case and I'm not just going insane from bug hunting.

There are some zones being stretched in both directions across almost all articulations in all guitars, to greater or lesser extent.
 
@zircon_st
If I have shreddage 2, am I qualified to upgrade shreddage 3 stratus?
Ask this because I own shreddage 2 full bundle and send support mail but haven't received stratus upgrade coupon yet. Other 3 are delivered.
----Added----
@zircon_st
Never mind my post.
I didn't knew that jupitor is next version of shreddage 2. Sorry!
 
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Isn’t Stratus the new kid on the block? Yet all other Shreddage 3 libraries are listed in Native Access by their full name, but the Stratus one is simply called “Shreddage 3”.
 
Isn’t Stratus the new kid on the block? Yet all other Shreddage 3 libraries are listed in Native Access by their full name, but the Stratus one is simply called “Shreddage 3”.

That was the initial release of Stratus, then we reencoded it under a new name, it should say Shreddage 3 Stratus in NA if you have upgraded to this version (contact ISW support).
 
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