CAMEL AUDIO CamelPhat 3.15
   and CamelSpace 1.15

Aug 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By rachMiel

A Pair of Great-Sounding Multi-Effects

CamelPhat 3.15 and CamelSpace 1.15 are multi-effects plug-ins from U.K.-based Camel Audio. CamelPhat is designed to add warmth, edge, growl, and in-your-face presence to bass, guitar, drums, grooves, and vocals. CamelSpace works less with timbre, more with rhythm. It specializes in superimposing rhythm patterns over pads and ambient sounds.

I installed CamelPhat and CamelSpace as VST plug-ins on my 2.3 GHz Pentium 4 computer running Windows XP. VST and AU versions are provided for the Mac. I had no trouble using the plug-ins in Sony Media Software's Sound Forge 8 and Acid 6 and Cakewalk's Sonar 5.

CamelPhat is quite CPU efficient; CamelSpace is more demanding. Being multi-effects, their CPU drain varies with the number of individual effects that are active. For example, with all nine effects turned on, six instances of CamelSpace in Sonar required 70 percent of the CPU, which works out to just over 1 percent per active effect. With all eight effects turned on, six instances of CamelPhat required 20 percent of the CPU, for less than 0.5 percent per effect. That's quite efficient in both cases.

CamelPhat

CamelPhat is a work of streamlined beauty and a joy to program (see Web Clip 1). Its six effects modules — BP Filter, Distortion, MM Filter, Flanger, Magic EQ, and Compressor — are graphically arranged to reflect the signal flow (see Fig. 1). The control panel also houses a pair of LFOs, a Value Readout display, an x-y controller pad, and a master output module.

BP Filter is a powerful bandpass filter. Low and High faders set the frequency boundaries of the pass band, and each has its own resonance control. You can use the BR Mix control to mix some of the rejected portion of the signal back into the output. Modest BP Filter settings soften the low and high ends of your signal, whereas extreme settings permit only the narrowest sliver of a band to pass through. Turning the Low Res control up can induce oscillation. Increasing the High Resonance can sharpen the output to a razor's edge.

The Distortion module offers four different distortion types: Tube (analog-style overdrive), Mech (a grittier version of the same and my favorite), Bit Crusher (bit-depth reduction), and Xcita (a high-frequency exciter). You can mix in varying amounts of each to create a rich and complexly distorted output ranging from a purr to a complete breakdown.

More Filters

MM Filter is a multimode resonant filter offering nine filter types — lowpass, bandpass, highpass, lowpass fat (an edgier version of lowpass), bandpass fat, highpass fat, notch, peak (inverted notch), and comb — along with a ring modulator. Attack, release, and envelope-amount controls fine-tune the envelope generated by a built-in envelope follower, which is used to modulate the filter cutoff and ring-modulator frequencies.

Flanger, a bare-bones flanging effect, has just two controls: Amount for the wet/dry mix, and Rate for the speed of the LFO that modulates the delay time. Its purpose is to impart a flange-inflected undercurrent to the mix when used in conjunction with other effects.

Magic EQ is an equalizer for boosting the low end. It works especially well with kicks, low toms, and bass lines. I fed it a groove, turned up the amount, and found that sweeping the frequency from minimum to maximum brought out elements of the low end I'd never heard before. Pressing the P (phat) button thickens the signal, but the effect can be too much when used with signals that are already rich in low frequencies.

The powerful Compressor module is modeled after classic analog studio compressors. As with many CamelPhat and CamelSpace effects, its few controls — compression amount, release time, and fattening — belie its power.

Camels in Motion

Each of the LFO module's two independent LFOs can be routed to modulate any CamelPhat parameter using one of seven waveforms: sine, triangle, ramp up, ramp down, square, random square, and random triangle. Turning Rate Sync on syncs the LFO rate to tempo, and both triplets and dotted notes are supported.

Clicking on the Randomize button assigns random settings to every control in every active module. Randomization is intelligent, meaning that it generally results in musically interesting settings. It is great for creating new, unexpected sounds.