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ouroborosorder · 1 year ago

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okay fuck it i posted about hypothetical arknights fighting game and immediately got massive brainworms about it so without further ado:

My Pitch For An Arknights Fighting Game Roster

Amiya - Obligatory standard Shoto with her sword and Arts. She has relatively mediocre projectiles, but her metered projectiles are extremely strong to reflect that her Arts take a lot out of her to use. Honest, but with a lot of mastery required to truly excel.

Ch’en - Rushdown Shoto with some close-range projectiles with Chi Xiao - Unsheathe and maybe the inkbrush Arts she uses in her skin because let’s face it, they’ll never give her the water cannon. The Sol to Amiya's Ky, the Ken to her Ryu.

Kal’tsit - Puppet character with Mon3tr. Her close range buttons are competent, but flawed, but they’re just enough to give her absurd combo synergy with Mon3tr. Can trade her own meter to heal Mon3tr’s Obligatory Pet Balance Meter.

Talulah - Midrange projectile-focused character who uses powerful multihit projectiles to confirm into brutal melee combos. Can enter an Install state where she does self-damage as she catches on fire, but hits like a goddamned truck. She stays back, destroying you from afar, then closing in to make you regret being born when she has to.

Frostnova - Full on zoner, keep the opponent away, dominate the stage, and freeze them in place before they can ever think of approaching you. Has a kit made of long-ranged, disjointed full-screen normals like Hilda (UNIST), but in exchange, they’re all highly situational with massive blindspots, forcing you to play smart, predict your opponent, or they’ll close in and overpower you.

Patriot - Bigbody Grappler. Hits like a truck, but advances slowly. Changes the entire pace of the match simply by existing, and feels like an unstoppable force who you are never safe from until you’re sure he’s dead.

Skadi - Midrange melee-focused character. Simple and honest, she doesn’t need a lot of frills to absolutely kick your ass. Has very little mechanics, but is nonetheless intimidating partially because of that. Has an Install providing herself with a buff that looks like the Corrupting Heart buffs. Honestly only here because she consistently tops popularity charts by a huge margin.

Texas the Omertosa - Extremely fast rushdown, Chipp Zanuff-style. Is able to extend combos that would otherwise drop with her Sword Rain that works similar to Seth (UNIST)’s Orbs. Either she ends the fight before you have a chance to even start it, or she dies quickly as a result.

Nearl the Radiant Knight - Mixup heavy aggressive character, pushes against the opponent with unrelenting force until they break, feeling like an unstoppable force that rushes in, full speed ahead. Has tools to punish basically any sort of behavior, but all her options are extremely reactable. But when you’re up against someone who is capable of so much, it may not matter that much. I-No (Strive) and what little I remember of Roa (MBTL) is a bit of a touchstone here.

Ling - Trap-heavy setplay character with powerful full-screen combo potential. Extremely powerful, but has to get her summons set up first, and if she is able to get the opponent playing her game, she is almost unstoppable with her summons’ projectiles and powerful combo-extending sword swings.

The Endspeaker - A technical, setplay and stage-control heavy midrange zoner. Can spread Nethersea Brand by summoning Sea Terror minion that, when killed, drops a patch of Brand. You can then fire projectiles that leave Shells on the Brand. You can dive into the Brand to pop out of the ground with a bite, consuming the shell to grow stronger. After consuming two shells, you cap out, and your teleport changes to a low that teleports you to your opponent, acting as a starter to do brutal melee combos on counterhit. Focuses on feeling like they control the very environment, like an unstoppable force of nature that only grows stronger as you desperately try to stop it. Yes, this is only here because I had a strong-ass pitch for it.

Emperor feat. Penguin Logistics - Joke character, kinda. Emperor’s kit involves summoning the other PL members for his specials, which are all really solid to cover for the fact that his normals are shit on account of his stubby little penguin body. Exusiai focuses on ranged attacks, allowing some sort of zoning in specific directions. Croissant gives approach tools by shielding him as he walks or by golfing him with a hammer. Texas gives combo extenders with Sword rain or with long flurries of blows that keep the opponent locked there for a short time. Sora is entirely in your taunts because she's not much of a fighter like the others.

But what would a fighting game be without DLC that's planned from launch?

DLC Lineup 1

Gavial the Invincible - A relatively mobile grappler, focusing on long combos and hitgrabs similar to Bullet (Blazblue), Beowulf (Skullgirls) or Grappler (DNF Duel). Has the ability to heal herself with a special that requires her to stand still, encouraging an opponent to approach her when they otherwise would play defensive, because Gavial is the kind of person who you have to face head-on, she wouldn’t have it any other way.

Specter the Unchained - Stance change, switching between Laurentina and Specter. Laurentina is a shield pressure monster, a mixup-heavy character with strong multihit overheads and lows like Bedman? (Strive) or Anji (Strive) (but good). Meanwhile Specter is a defensive neutral-heavy character with strong space control with her Arts, with high meter gain on her moves that Laurentina can easily capitalize on. Plays with the opponent like she is dancing, forcing them to keep up with her rhythm, confusing them with steps they can never understand, then asserting her own tempo if they try to take it back.

Mlynar - A highly defensive character who completely relies on counterhits for combo starters. But those combos, hoooly shit. Has parries and counters to play defensive, read the opponent’s options, and then strike when he is sure he can land a blow. He only draws his sword when he’s sure it will land.

Chongyue - A technical, rekka and cancel-focused close-range fighter similar to Jam (Xrd) and Enkidu (UNIST). Has a hard time getting in, but has massive reward when he does. Has the ability to use mid-range sandstorm-based strikes and Orbs like Aoko (MBTL), but has to focus to gain charges on his sandstorm specials like Jam (Xrd). Takes mastery, but when you learn his complicated kit, he’s an unstoppable force. Takes off his jacket in round 5, and yes, this is important.

Redblade - Install-focused character. Gains new Contracts as the match progresses similar to Susanoo (Blazblue), growing stronger with each Contract, until he gains 8 stacks, where he becomes the strongest character in the game. Maybe he straight up hijacks the music to play Operation Basepoint when he gets max Contract.

#i also have pitches for the stages but i think this post is long enough at this point #i need help i spent literally 3 hours making this #i regret so fucking little #arknights #if enough people ask yes i WILL write up super / IK pitches for all of them don't even fucking doubt me i am stronger than you can ever kno

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bananaofswifts · 3 years ago

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By Paul Tingen

From sketches to final mixes, engineer Jonathan Low spent 2020 overseeing Taylor Swift’s hit lockdown albums folklore and evermore.

“I think the theme of a lot of my work nowadays, and especially with these two records, is that everything is getting mixed all the time. I always try to get the songs to sound as finalised as they can be. Obviously that’s hard when you’re not sure yet what all the elements will be. Tracks morph all the time, and yet everything is always moving forwards towards completion in some way. Everything should sound fun and inspiring to listen to all the time.”

Speaking is Jonathan Low, and the two records he refers to are, of course, Taylor Swift’s 2020 albums folklore and evermore, both of which reached number one in the UK and the US. Swift’s main producer and co‑writer on the two albums was the National’s Aaron Dessner, also interviewed in this issue. Low is the engineer, mixer and general right‑hand man at Long Pond Studios in upstate New York, where he and Dessner spent most of 2020 working on folklore and evermore, with Swift in Los Angeles for much of the time.

“In the beginning it did not feel real,” recalls Low. “There was this brand‑new collaboration, and it was amazing how quickly Aaron made these instrumental sketches and Taylor wrote lyrics and melodies to them, which she initially sent to us as iPhone voice memos. During our nightly family dinners in lockdown, Aaron would regularly pull up his phone and say, ‘Listen to this!’ and there would be another voice memo from Taylor with this beautiful song that she had written over a sketch of Aaron’s in a matter of hours. The rate at which it was happening was mind‑blowing. There was constant elevation, inspiration and just wanting to continue the momentum.

“We put her voice memos straight into Pro Tools. They had tons of character, because of the weird phone compression and cutting midrange quality you just would not get when you put someone in front of a pristine recording chain. Plus there was all this bleed. It’s interesting how that dictates the attitude of the vocal and of the song. Even though none of the original voice memos ended up on the albums, they often gave us unexpected hints. These voice memos were such on‑a‑whim things, they were really telling. Taylor had certain phrasings and inflections that we often returned to later on. They became our reference points.”

Sketching Sessions

“The instrumental sketches Aaron makes come into being in different ways,” elaborates Low. “Sometimes they are more fleshed‑out ideas, sometimes they are less formed. But normally Aaron will set himself up in the studio, surrounded by instruments and synths, and he’ll construct a track. Once he feels it makes some kind of sense I’ll come in and take a listen and then we together develop what’s there.

“I don’t call his sketches demos, because while many instruments are added and replaced later on, most of the original parts end up in the final version of the song. We try to get the sketches to a place where they are already very engaging as instrumental tracks. Aaron and I are always obsessively listening, because we constantly want to hear things that feel inspiring and musical, not just a bed of music in the background. It takes longer to create, but in this case also gave Taylor more to latch onto, both emotionally and in terms of musical inspiration. Hearing melodies woven in the music triggered new melodies.”

Not long after Dessner and Low sent each sketch to Swift, they would receive her voice memos in return, and they’d load them into the Pro Tools session of the sketch in question. Dessner and Low then continued to develop the songs, in close collaboration with Swift. “Taylor’s voice memos often came with suggestions for how to edit the sketches: maybe throw in a bridge somewhere, shorten a section, change the chords or arrangement somewhere, and so on. Aaron would have similar ideas, and he then developed the arrangements, often with his brother Bryce, adding or replacing instruments. This happened fast, and became very interactive between us and Taylor, even though we were working remotely. When we added instruments, we were reacting to the way my rough mixes felt at the very beginning. Of course, it was also dictated by how Taylor wrote and sang to the tracks.”

Dessner supplied sketches for nine and produced 10 of folklore’s 16 songs, playing many different types of guitars, keyboards and synths as well as percusion and programmed drums. Instruments that were added later include live strings, drums, trombone, accordion, clarinet, harpsichord and more, with his brother Bryce doing many of the orchestrations. Most overdubs by other musicians were done remotely as well. Throughout, Low was keeping an overview of everything that was going on and mixing the material, so it was as presentable and inspiring as possible.

Mixing folklore

Although Dessner has called folklore an “anti‑pop album”, the world’s number‑one pop mixer Serban Ghenea was drafted in to mix seven tracks, while Low did the remainder.

“It was exciting to have Serban involved,” explains Low, “because he did things I’d never do or be able to do. The way the vocal sits always at the forefront, along with the clarity he gets in his mixes, is remarkable. A great example of this is on the song ��epiphany’. There is so much beautiful space and the vocal feels effortlessly placed. It was really interesting to hear where he took things, because we were so close to the entire process in every way. Hearing a totally new perspective was eye‑opening and refreshing.

“Throughout the entire process we were trying to maintain the original feel. Sometimes this was hard, because that initial rawness would get lost in large arrangements and additional layering. With revisions of folklore in particular we sometimes were losing the emotional weight from earlier more casual mixes. Because I was always mixing, there was also always the danger of over‑mixing.

“We were trying to get the best of each mix version, and sometimes that meant stepping backwards, and grabbing a piano chain from an earlier mix, or going three versions back to before we added orchestration. There were definitely moments of thinking, ‘Is this going to compete sonically? Is this loud enough?’ We knew we loved the way the songs sounded as we were building them, so we stuck with what we knew. There were times where I tried to keep pushing a mix forward but it didn’t improve the song — ‘cardigan’ is an example of a song where we ended up choosing a very early mix.”

Onward & Upward

folklore was finished and released in July 2020. In a normal world everyone might have gone on to do other things, but without the option of touring, they simply continued writing songs, with Low holding the fort. In September, many of the musicians who played on the album gathered at Long Pond for the shooting of a making‑of documentary, folklore: the long pond studio sessions, which is streamed on Disney+.

The temporary presence of Swift at Long Pond changed the working methods somewhat, as she could work with Dessner in the room, and Low was able record her vocals. After Swift left again, sessions continued until December, when evermore was released, with Dessner producing or co‑producing all tracks, apart from ‘gold rush’ which was co‑written and co‑produced by Swift and Antonoff. Low recorded many of Swift’s vocals for evermore, and mixed the entire album. The lead single ‘willow’ became the biggest hit from the album, reaching number one in the US and number three in the UK.

“Before Taylor came to Long Pond,” remembers Low, “she had always recorded her vocals for folklore remotely in Los Angeles or Nashville. When I recorded, I used a modern Telefunken U47, which is our go‑to vocal mic — we record all the National stuff with that — going straight into the Siemens desk, and then into a Lisson Grove AR‑1 tube compressor, and via a Burl A‑D converter into Pro Tools. Taylor creates and lays down her vocal arrangements very quickly, and it sounds like a finished record in very few takes.”

Devils In The Detail

In his mixes, Low wanted listeners to share his own initial response to these vocal performances. “The element that draws me in is always Taylor’s vocals. The first time I received files with her properly recorded but premixed vocals I was just floored. They sounded great, even with minimal EQ and compression. They were not the way I’m used to hearing her voice in her pop songs, with the vocal soaring and sitting at the very front edge of the soundscape. In these raw performances, I heard so much more intimacy and interaction with the music. It was wonderful to hear her voice with tons of detail and nuances in place: her phrasing, her tonality, her pitch, all very deliberate. We wanted to maintain that. It’s more emotional, and it sounds so much more personal to me. Then there was the music...”

The arrangements on evermore are even more ‘chamber pop’ than on folklore, with instruments like glockenspiel, crotales, flute, French horn, celeste and harmonium in evidence. “As listeners of the National may know, Aaron’s and Bryce’s arrangements can be quite dense. They love lush orchestration, all sorts of percusion, synths and other electronic sounds. The challenge was trying to get them to speak, without getting in the way of the vocals. I want a casual listener to be drawn in by the vocal, but sense that something special is happening in the music as well. At the same time, someone who really is digging in can fully immerse themselves and take in all the beauty deeper in the details of the sound and arrangement. Finding the balance between presenting all the musical elements that were happening in the arrangement and this really beautiful, upfront, real‑sounding vocal was the ticket.

“A particular challenge is that a lot of the detail that Aaron gravitates towards happens in the low mids, which is a very warm part of our hearing spectrum that can quickly become too muddy or too woolly. A lot of the tonal and musical information lives in the low mids, and then the vocal sits more in the midrange and high mids. There’s not too much in the higher frequency range, except the top of the guitars, and some elements like a shaker and the higher buzzy parts of the synths. Maintaining clarity and separation in those often complex arrangements was a major challenge.”

#taylor swift #folklore

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holydragon2808 · 3 years ago

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Mass Effect 3 Ending Reframing from an Aspiring Video Game Story Writer

Hello everyone! It’s been awhile (Waves to followers). I don't post here much anymore but I'm a veteran ME fan and like many were burned by the original endings of ME3. Until I played the LE recently, I hadn't kept up much with ME anything at all since ME3's original release.

Before I continue, let me just say that I'm not trying to beat the dead horse debate on whether or not the endings even after the EC patch sucked. That's been done enough.

Rather, as an inspiring game storywriter working on some of my own original gaming ideas with some friends, over the years I've made more of a habit of analyzing existing RPG stories (in this case ME) to help myself with structuring and flow, and keeping what I think worked and what didn't and I wanted to share what I've come up with for ME3 LE version.

Needless to say, there will be massive spoilers in this post so if you haven’t completed the trilogy, then don’t read any further! I posted this on Reddit as well but figured I’d say something here too.

And for the record, I actually did like a lot of the things the EC added to the endings as well as the Leviathan (or the idea of it anyway), mainly the slide show closure for the characters, the voice over narrations (Hackett's in particular is my personal favorite), and Liara's time capsule thing playing a part. Those were all great ideas, but since IMO, Bioware didn't address the core problems (mainly the Starchild and his ridiculous choices), those great ideas currently are still mired by poor execution IMO.

My attempted rewrite here strips away what I personally thought didn't work in the canon portrayal of the endings (mainly, the starchild, Synthesis ending option, and Control ending option) and attempts to focus more on player choice and TMS, whether in victory or defeat.

All of this is largely modeled after ME2 suicide mission structure, and just like ME2 suicide mission (even if Shepard and her friends survive, the Reapers are still coming) even the "best" ending has lingering problems and issues.

With all of that said, this is how I would have framed the final moments depending on choices (I made slight adjustments to the TMS (Total Military Strength) requirements for the LE version only):

MAX TMS Destroy Ending Reframing: (8000 or higher score)

Shepard is at the console (only moderately injured in this scenario, pretty bad but not life threatening due to cybernetic implants), opens up the arms of the Citadel and primes the Crucible to fire. Anderson (who is still critically injured no matter what) says Shepard did good and he is proud of her (My shep was female). Anderson dies as Shepard thanks him for saying that (basically, I'd keep this moment intact because it was great). The scene fades to black as the "I'm Proud of You" theme playing in the background comes to a close.

Then cue victory cut where the Crucible fires, destroys JUST the Reapers across the galaxy. Hackett voice over plays where we see the slide show of our choices while reflecting on the immense cost of victory and how long it will take for everything to get back on track and how this future will be one that many never get to see as we see a brief flashes of all key characters who have died since this started on Eden Prime from the person left on Virmire, Wrex (if applicable), Navigator Pressly (as a reminder of the SR-1 Normandy Crew), Mordin (if Genophage cured), Whomever died to save the Salarian Councilor (Thane/Kirrahe), Legion, and Anderson.

Mass Relays sustain moderate damage but are still intact if still temporarily inoperable. The Hackett voice over reminds us that the Leviathan, the entity that created the Reapers in the first place, is still a threat and on the horizon but feels that the galaxy may can still come together and face them if necessary.

Shepard is aboard the Normandy in front of the memorial wall with her friends standing next to her love interest. She puts Anderson's name on the wall and hugs love interest. Cut to credits.

MIDRANGE TMS Destroy Ending Reframing (4500-7999):

The part with Anderson is largely the same, but in this scenario Shepard is critically injured and dies next to him right after Anderson tells her he's proud (She says "Thank you sir" and succumbs to her injuries right next to him) as the scene fades to black.

The next scene shows the Crucible firing, but it isn't built/calibrated right due to lack of people and resources (it also took some damage since there wasn't a strong enough military force guarding it). The Crucible destroys all synthetic life along with the Reapers, Mass relays heavily damaged but still intact, though organics will be in the dark ages for quite some time until the relay network is repaired.

Hackett voice over and similar slides show idea mentioned above (but also adds EDI and any other crew members that might not have survived to this point to it) including looming potential threat of Leviathan and is not quite sure the galaxy will be able to oppose them anytime soon, but for now the United galaxy has won the day. Love interest puts Shepard name on memorial wall, cut to credits.

LOW TMS Destroy Ending Reframing (Anything 4499 or below Hey, these ARE Reapers we're dealing with lol):

No "I'm proud of you" speech from Anderson as he and Shepard die immediately from their injuries after the final confrontation with TIM. In the next scene, the Crucible fails to fire at all, we see a desperate struggle ON SCREEN of all our allied forces dying to the Reaper threat in a desperate final stand. Reapers win. Liara's capsule thing plays warning the next cycle about both the Reapers and Leviathan. The next cycle is much better prepared since Liara made sure to include "every linguistics program she could find" to assure that the next cycle could possibly better UNDERSTAND the warning (something the Protheans failed to do thanks to their arrogant supremacy regarding "primitive" ways of communication) and they're able to modify the crucible to destroy both the Reapers and Leviathan and ensure they're gone for good.

No Starchild bullshit, no forced choices that don't line up with the story we just experienced, just endings where player choice takes effect and ties everything together whether in victory or defeat while still leaving room to tell any potential new stories in the Milky Way and giving everyone the chance to have the sort of ending that best reflects their Shepard.

None of these outcomes are "perfect" or "happy" (and with ME, that's exactly how they should be), but I'd still like to think there's something here that a lot of people could at least get behind. The idea here wasn't to railroad anyone into a "Shepard lives" or "Shepard dies" ending either.

The bottom line is that regardless of one's personal preferences on that matter, having more variety in the ending options increases replay value and THAT was my primary aim. I don't understand the "Shepard should have....." anything really because every Shepard is played by a different person and what works for one person and their interpretation of Shepard may not work for someone else's Shepard and ME has always been about shaping one's own destiny with their choices so I wanted to focus on preserving that idea.

Anyway, what do you guys/gals think? And thanks for reading this if you did!

EDIT:

And before I'm bombarded with comments saying that I just want Shepard to live let me just say that no not quite. Mass Effect 2 did the best job in the trilogy considering player choice in the matter. I've played that game multiple times and achieved all three possible outcomes (everyone surviving, some surviving, or all dying) and found each outcome equally compelling and well executed for different reasons.

My personal preference is to have endings for ME3 rooted more in player choice regardless of whether or not they're hopeful or bleak and just felt that destroy was the easiest one to reframe with those goals in mind. Just to clarify.

#mass effect 3 #mass effect 2 #Mass Effect #me3 #me3edit #me3le #mass effect legendary collection

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beyondconfessor · 4 years ago

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Principle Decisions [16/24]

Rating: Explicit

Pairing: Zelda Spellman/Lilith

Summary: They were in the middle of an interrogation suddenly, and propriety dictated that Lilith should be the one to decline to comment, but Zelda could see that she was, for the first time since she’d known her, uncertain in how to do that.

N.B.: Also posted on AO3. This is pure fantasy, please suspend your disbelief.

Zelda shuffled the newspaper, looking around it to peak at Sabrina. Her niece was sitting at the table, eating at the pancakes Hilda had made.

She knew she should say something. Advise Sabrina that she was friends with her principal, and yet all Zelda had managed to say was that she was having a few people over for dinner. The family was welcome to be there, but it was for a small gathering of friends as she hadn’t hosted anything in some time.

It had involved her scrambling to invite Constance over, and then she had found herself inviting Shirley as well, because, well, she was technically Constance’s friend as well and Constance had asked and Zelda didn’t want to refuse her despite how much of a cow the woman was. And technically, Shirley had been nothing but polite to her since returning from her mother’s funeral.

Which meant that she had three guests and four family members, and would be sitting seven people––except Ambrose asked if he could bring Luke, which meant eight, and then Sabrina asked if she could bring Harvey, nine, and then Hilda, not wanting to feel left out, requested to bring Doctor Cee. Ten.

Ten people were to be sitting at an impromptu dinner and Zelda had to buy groceries, and wine and decide on what to cook––and then try to get her sister and Sabrina to help her, because god forbid she do all the cooking herself.

Ten people. It was certainly to be a dinner party at the very least, and all because she wanted people to see that her and Lilith were friends. Though she supposed she should refer to her as Mary during the party, to prevent anyone from getting confused.

Zelda had the family cleaning the house from top to bottom, ensuring cobwebs were removed, the floors were mopped, and rugs had had the dust and dirt beaten from them, giving them new life.

She also made sure that the upstairs was just as clean, though it was unlikely anyone would be heading upstairs. She didn’t have to worry about Sabrina, who, like herself, tended to keep a tidy space. But Hilda and Ambrose both ended up having a lecture from her for the state of their rooms, both bowing their heads and grumbling under their breaths as they spent their Thursday and Friday evenings cleaning them.

Heaven only knew why it took them so long, but so be it.

Saturday morning, she began prepping the food with Hilda. During that time, she received two text messages from Lilith (one of which was just a photo that Zelda quickly responded to), five from Constance fretting over what to bring, and one from Shirley (who was only asking for confirmation of the address).

By four, the house carried the scent of a cooked roast, with entrees already set, leaving her enough time to shower and dress, preparing herself to look good.

She fiddled between jewellery, a nervousness filling her before she finally managed to decide on a complimentary emerald set to the dress she wore. And then by the time she was downstairs, ensuring the white wine was in the fridge and the red wine was set out, to decant, the first guest had arrived.

Sabrina answered the door, tugging Harvey inside who looked wide-eyed at the adults. “I…” he said, holding out a bouquet. “Um, didn’t know what to bring.”

Zelda softened at the flowers, noting that they were not an inexpensive set. “Thank you, Harvey,” she said, taking the flowers in hand and making her way into the kitchen. It was an odd choice of gift to bring, but given that the boy couldn’t bring a bottle of wine, and likely felt embarrassed at the idea of bringing dessert (something Zelda would have taken offence to, anyway) she settled that the flowers were a polite choice.

In the kitchen, she unwrapped them, setting them in a vase with water, before taking them to the dining room table as the centrepiece. This way, the boy would likely feel welcomed into the home, and Sabrina would feel that she was making some effort to be respectful towards their relationship.

As she was fixing one of the flowers, the doorbell rang again. Zelda turned around, moving to greet the new guest only to hear Sabrina’s blanched voice, “Ms. Wardwell?”

“Sabrina,” Lilith greeted, smiling tightly as she entered, holding a bottle of wine. “Hilda, lovely to see you.”

“Oh, Mary, Zelds didn’t tell us that you were her mystery friend.”

Lilith’s eyes turned to Zelda’s, a strange look filling them. “Didn’t she?”

Zelda flushed. “Well you’re here now, and there’s no need for introductions.”

“When did you and Ms Wardwell become friends?”

Zelda drew in a breath. She’d prepared an answer and yet, faced with her niece, it felt flimsy at best.

“Your Aunt and I happened to keep running into each other, quite accidentally. I believe she thought I was a parent at the school until that nasty fight occurred.”

Zelda’s shoulders relaxed with those woods. There was truth enough in them that she didn’t need to worry about Sabrina poking holes into it.

“Oh,” was all Sabrina said. There was a furrow to her brow, as if she wasn’t entirely pleased with the situation, but in fairness, Zelda couldn’t blame her. It was one thing for your Aunt to prolifically know quite a fair amount of people in the town due to having taught them, it was another thing entirely for her to be good enough friends with your Principal that she invited her over for dinner.

“I brought a bottle of wine,” Lilith said, holding up the bottle in grip before she handed it over. Zelda took it, glancing to the label and noted that was it was a midrange bottle. Not so expensive to draw eyes, but not cheap by any means.

“Thank you, this will go lovely with dinner.”

Lilith’s lips twisted into a smirk, and then before she could even think of saying something, the door was ringing again.

Within forty-five minutes, everyone had arrived, with Constance been the last person––profusely apologising, advising that Faustus had been home late and the au pair was off sick, so she’d been unable to leave any sooner.

“It’s not an issue,” Zelda assured, leading her to sit down. “It’s good to see you.”

“Honestly, these days, he’s home later and later, and I––“ Constance seemed to catch herself, realising the setting. “I’m tired of looking after the twins,” she finished. “One child is a full-time job, but two!”

Zelda nodded, “A glass of wine, perhaps.”

“Please.”

The table was set, and Zelda noted that Lilith took her left-hand side, across from Constance, who sat next to Shirley. The table filled with people sitting side-by-side with their respected guests, leaving Sabrina to sit at the other end of the table, Ambrose to one side and Harvey to the other.

Which meant that Hilda and Doctor Cee were sitting across from one another in the middle, but so be it.

Food was served, the wine passed down the table, with Sabrina and Harvey permitted to have a single glass with dinner (though Harvey politely refused).

Ever the hostess, Zelda led the conversation with Constance and Shirley, discussing their end of terms, before their plans for the winter break.

“Oh, Faustus and I were planning to travel, but I think with the twins it’d just be too difficult, so we might stay for the winter.”

“I had plans with my mother,” Shirley said. “But, that’s all gone now, so I suppose I’ll just spend Christmas alone.”

Zelda felt a flare of annoyance rise in her at Shirley’s unsubtle attempt to shaft her mother’s death into the conversation, but relaxed when she felt Lilith’s hand slide covertly under the table and settle on her thigh. The fingers squeezed over her knee and with it, Zelda felt her emotions soften.

She turned, looking out the corner of her eye and noticed her inquisitive expression towards Shirley. “Do you have any siblings?” Lilith asked

“No, only child.”

Lilith nodded. “It must be hard.”

Shirley gave a wave of her hands and a tight smile. “You do the best you can,” she said. “It’s just my first Christmas without my mum, and pfft, Dad left long ago.”

“You’ll have the memories of all your Christmases before with your mother. It won’t make it easier, but it definitely…easies the ache to know that you had that time together.”

“Did you lose your mother, too?” Constance asked.

“Oh,” Lilith pulled away, and Zelda felt her hand drop away as she gave an awkward laugh. “I suppose so, but I…never knew my parents,” she said, finishing tightly with a soft shrug of her shoulders. “But in the end, you make your own family.”

A silence pulled then, and Zelda turned and looked at Lilith, asking her softly. “What about your foster parents, or adopted–?“

“I never had a steady home,” Lilith said, and then her eyes pulled away. “I was on my own at the age of sixteen, but that’s neither here nor there.”

“I didn’t mean to pry,” Constance said, “It’s just that you spoke of loss.”

“Have you lost someone recently?” Shirley asked. “A sister, perhaps or…brother?”

Lilith looked awkward then, and Zelda realised there was a deep, pained expression. Lilith didn’t want to discuss whatever pain-point that was, and yet no one else on the table seemed to notice. All of their attention was focused on her, eager to see what story would unfold.

Zelda felt nauseous by it. They were in the middle of an interrogation suddenly, and propriety dictated that Lilith should be the one to decline to comment, but Zelda could see that she was, for the first time since she’d known her, uncertain in how to do that.

“I think it can be said that we’ve all lost someone close to us,” Zelda spoke. “I know that losing Edward and Diana still brings a painful reminder when the holiday comes around. Mary’s right, the time we spent, and the memories we carry of them remind us of how precious the time we have together is. And the pain of knowing what we lost reminds us that we’re still capable of carrying on that love of them in our hearts.”

It was a sappy speech, but effective nonetheless as Hilda gave a misty-eyed look to her, tilting her glass in agreement, as soft murmurs broke over the table.

And then, the conversation drifted––Hilda began speaking of Edward and Diana fondly to the keen attention of Doctor Cee and Sabrina, as Constance and Shirley began discussing the dullness of wills and funeral affairs.

To her side she noticed Lilith stiffen, her expression far away on something else.

Leaning towards her, she asked loud enough that others would hear, “could you help me get dessert ready? I need to let it sit.”

And then they were pulling away, glasses in hand as they went into the kitchen as the conversation began to return to lighter topics behind them.

Lilith held her glass of wine, and before she could say anything, Zelda filled the glass and then her own.

In the kitchen, the dinner party seemed far away and Zelda was able to sip at her wine as she watched Lilith take a mouthful before setting it down on the counter. There was still a distant stare in the woman, and Zelda ached as she looked at her.

She knew better than to ask. If and when Lilith was ready, she would reach out on her own terms.

The Lilith took a breath, standing up straight as she masked her expression to say, “I apologise. I didn’t mean–-“

“There’s no reason for you to apologise, you did nothing wrong. Everyone else forgot social decorum and decided to dive straight into your history like you were some bleeding heart poet.” Not that Zelda was surprised. Lilith was a new a face, with a mysterious background, of course, everyone would be curiously picking at whatever they could find.

Turning away, she went into the fridge and pulled out the dinner, setting it down on the table. There wasn’t anything she needed to do with it, but if she was being honest, she didn’t want to drift back to the party and listen to Shirley whine about being motherless.

Zelda barely cried when her mother passed, and she certainly didn’t drag it into every conversation possible to tug at the heartstrings. She simply moved on, as was expected, and continued her research.

Hilda had been a bit more sentimental and had cried in her room for days. But by then, they’d already lost their father, and the only reason their mother remained alive had been out of sheer spite, it seemed.

Lilith stood awkwardly in the kitchen, as if she didn’t know quite what to do with herself, and Zelda could sympathise. “I did warn you,” Zelda said, trying to lighten the mood. “My family are gossips.”

“Well, I suppose it’s to be expected.”

Zelda peaked out of the room, looking at the dining table before returning to smile at Lilith. “You know, it will probably take them a few moments to know we’re missing. If you wanted a distraction. I could show you around my home.”

“Show me around?”

“Mm. I’ve seen your office, it’s only fair that I show you mine.”

Lilith’s eyes lit-up, a half-smile tugging at her lips. It was an interest, and a chance of topic, at the very least. “And just what does the great Zelda Spellman’s office look like?”

Zelda smiled before nodding her head to exit out of the kitchen, towards the hallway. There, she led her to the large oak door. She turned back to glance at Lilith before twisting the handle, opening the door up to her office like it was a secret place, reserved only for the elite.

In a sense it was. She didn’t permit guests into her office and her family certainly knew better than to step foot in it when she wasn’t present.

Lilith entered the room behind her, her eyes drawing over its contents as she circled the office space. Her eyes wandered across the shelves, to the desk, touching over the variety of knick-knacks as Zelda closed and locked the door behind them.

At the sound of the lock, Lilith turned. “Presumptuous.”

“I didn’t want any interruptions,” she said. “But if you are after something, we’ll need to be quick, before they notice our absence.”

Lilith smirked. “I’m sure there’ll be time yet. You’re giving me a tour of your house, after all.”

“Am I?”

Lilith picked up a framed picture of the family before setting it down, and then her eyes were flicking over the shelves, glancing over their titles. Without looking away, she said. “Take off your underwear.”

“Is that how we’re going to play it?”

“I won’t ask twice.” Lilith glance at her then, and despite the severity of her expression, warning her to obey, Zelda could see the sparkle in her eyes, before the woman returned to perusing the shelves.

They both needed a distraction, so be it.

Zelda smirked, and then slid her hands up her dress, sliding the lace down before she stepped out of them and picked them up in her hand. She intended to set them aside, except, as she walked to her desk, Lilith turned around and snatched them from her grip, smirking.

“You’ll need to be quiet,” she said. “Can you be quiet for me?”

Zelda grinned. “I can be quiet.”

“I thought I’d ask because you were rather vocal in my office, and I doubt a mouse problem would be so easily believed,” Lilith said as she stepped forward until she was in Zelda’s space.

Zelda’s face tilted towards her. “I can be quiet,” she assured.

“Let’s see, otherwise I might have just the use for these,” she said, holding up the lace, and then leant forward and kissed her.

It was a needy kiss, demanding with biting and sucking and Zelda revelled in it, sliding her hands over Lilith’s shoulders and through her hair before she felt the woman’s hands settle on her hips, as she pressed Zelda backwards until her back hit the wall.

Zelda gasped as Lilith pulled back, her face inches away before she tugged Zelda’s dress up, high on her hips and began purposefully sliding her fingers over her sex.

At the very first stroke, Zelda’s head rolled back, eyes squeezing shut.

“Uh-uh, eyes on me,” Lilith said, and tugged Zelda’s face towards her. “Look at me, Zelda.”

Zelda nodded, watching Lilith’s face shifted with pleasure as she continued to stroke, drawing it out in a slow tease. “There we go. Aren’t you just delicious,” she said.

Zelda whimpered as she felt the woman slide inside of her and then Lilith was pressing against her, one hand stroking inside of her as the other splayed across her sternum, holding her firmly against the wall

“Be quiet. We wouldn’t want anyone to hear.”

“I am––“ and then Zelda stopped, feeling a hand wrap around her throat, pinning her there. Her eyes fluttered shut at the feeling.

“Open up,” Lilith said.

Zelda obeyed, opening her mouth only to watch as Lilith grinned and lifted the black lace in grip, before pressing them into her mouth. Zelda’s mouth closed over the underwear, tasting her arousal as she watched as the pleased expression wash over Lilith’s face as she continued to fuck her.

The hand on her throat was firm, but not restrictive, in that when she swallowed her saliva, she could feel the muscles press against Lilith’s palm.

But as she whimpered, the hand grew tighter in warning, reminding her.

It was painfully erotic, to the point Zelda could feel her response pulsating between her legs.

Zelda had engaged in light choking in the past and hadn’t mind how it felt with her other lovers, but when Lilith was fucking her like that, holding her throat like that, Zelda struggled to recall that there was a world outside of this room, outside of sex, outside of Lilith.

She wanted to go home with her, or take her upstairs and revel in a night of fucking. But she couldn’t. There were other people to think of, consequences for actions.

But Lilith was holding her firm and Zelda felt like she might break if she let go.

Her heart ached and she watched the woman’s face staring at hers as she bit back her whimpers and hushed moans, feeling the woman draw her close and closer to climax, until she was finally squeezing around the fingers, feeling her pulse thump against the woman’s hand.

And when the climax ceased and Zelda was drawing away, feeling it wash away from her as Lilith drew out the make-shift gag from her mouth, she watched a strange expression pass on Lilith’s face—not unlike it had all those weeks ago when she’d made her climax against the knot on the rope.

“Lilith,” she said, watching as the woman stepped back, her hands falling away. “Lilith, whatever it is you, you can speak to me.”

The woman’s eyes looked up at her. “I like you a lot, Zelda,” she admitted. “It’s…been a while since I’ve had such a vested interest in another person.”

Zelda nodded, swallowing. “It’s been a while for me too.”

Lilith smiled at her, but there was a sadness to it, and for a horrible, sinking moment Zelda thought the woman might cry. But then Lilith was blinking and the emotion sunk away from her face, leaving only an echo of what had been there. “I’m sorry for––“

“You have nothing to apologise for,” Zelda assured. She reached out then with her empty hand and took Lilith’s hand in her own, squeezing her fingers. “We don’t have to go back out there.”

“It’s your dinner party,” Lilith reminded. “Whatever would people think if the hostess disappeared?”

“I don’t care what any of them think, I didn’t do this for them.” She felt her words die away, knowing she’d revealed too much of herself in those words. Letting go of Lilith’s hand, she looked away. “What I meant to say was that the whole point of this damned party was for us to show that we were friends.”

“And yet you hid that revelation from your family,” Lilith pointed out.

Zelda looked away. “I––didn’t know how to tell Sabrina. But I’d hardly say that I hid the fact, merely…delayed it.”

Lilith blinked, leaving silence to press between them before she asked, “Are you so worried about if she approves?”

Zelda squirmed uncomfortably at the words and looked away. She didn’t know how to put it into words, but the answer was yes, she did care. She cared about Sabrina’s thoughts. Deep in her heart, she knew why, but to admit it to herself, let alone Lilith, was too vulnerable of a position to put herself in.

“You’re not…ashamed of––“

“No,” Zelda assured. “I’m not ashamed. I…wanted more time of it just being about you and me.”

“It still is,” Lilith assured. “Why do you think that’s going to disappear if people know?”

Because things were good, she wanted to say. And if her family got involved, they would ruin it unintentionally. They wouldn’t mean to, but they would. They always did. “Is it so wrong to want you all to myself?”

Lilith’s head tilted and a strange expression crossed her face, as if she was tasting the words, poking at the deeper meaning of them.

Zelda flushed and looked away. “I just mean––“

“I know what you mean,” Lilith said, as she stepped back. Her hands crossed underneath her chest as she seemed to pull away, looking as upset as she had been before, at the dinner table, which was the opposite of what Zelda wanted.

“No, I don’t think you do––Lilith, I’m a private person. All my life, my family think of me as some emotionally repressed, ambitious…hussy,” she added as an afterthought, remembering Hilda’s words from the other week. “I want one thing untainted from them, because inevitable they’ll show you how…broken I am, and you won’t want anything to do with me.”

“Do you think you’re broken?”

“Certainly not,” she said. “But…” she didn’t know how to explain it to her. “They have a way of bringing out the worst in me.” She paused then, looking away. “When I was younger, I had a very active sex life, and that reputation has followed me my entire life. Even when I began at the University rumours followed me. Students still whisper about me sleeping with graduates to pass the time and that, on top of how difficult my family can be. How nosy they are and how selfish I am as a person…” she trailed off and drew in a breath, trying to centre herself and remember what she was trying to say. “This is good. Whatever this is, it works and I don’t feel ashamed of it. But I don’t want other people’s perceptions to take away from this.”

“You’re worried people will find out and think you’re some kind of deviant?” Maybe, Zelda realised, exhaling. She didn’t feel shame, just a need to keep that side of herself separate. “I’m not going to air your dirty panties, Zelda,” Lilith teased. “But I do want to be your friend.”

“We are friends.”

“Are we?”

Zelda frowned. “What makes you think we’re not?”

Lilith shook her head and smiled. “You’re right. Of course we are.” She smiled and then drifted her eyes around the room. “I should make my way home soon,” she advised. “Before it gets too late.”

Zelda opened her mouth to argue that she could stay the night, if she so wished, but the words didn’t come out. “Stay for dessert at least?” she asked.

“For dessert,” Lilith agreed.

And then Zelda found herself walking towards the door, unlocking it before she pointed out to where the downstairs water closet was.

Lilith drifted down towards that bathroom and Zelda made her way into the kitchen, where she washed her hands and caught her reflection in the mirror. Thankfully, there was no lipstick marks on her neck, just an ache over her body. A need to request Lilith to stay so she could take her to bed––and honestly, a part of her just wanted to get naked and fall asleep in the woman’s arm.

When they both returned to the dining room, Lilith’s expression had shifted easily to a masked expression, her smile bright, but Zelda could see where it didn’t quite meet her eyes as she spoke with table about art and philosophy, diving into the conversation easily.

It left Zelda pondering the incident. Lilith had lost someone, and it was evident by the way she’d withdrawn that it was still recent, or deeply painful and somehow, whatever Zelda had said was wrong.

A strange, hollow feeling settled in her chest and Zelda set it aside, not wanting to deal with it. It wasn’t a feeling she wanted to dwell on, and the selfishness of it made her tear her eyes away from the dinner party, feeling an ache settle in her chest.

She was better than that.

The rest of dinner passed without issue. Dessert was served. Shirley remained a bitch, and slowly Lilith’s expression turned with genuine interest.

And then Zelda was serving coffee as Harvey and Sabrina disappeared with Luke and Ambrose. And the remainder of the party moved to the parlour. There, she found herself sitting between Constance and Lilith, aware of Lilith’s body heat as her thigh pressed against her own. And then, very casually, she felt Lilith lean forward to the coffee table, her fingers drifting briefly against her thigh as the woman’s eyes caught hers.

The other guests were caught in a rapturous discussion over books, but for the life of her, Zelda couldn’t follow what they were saying when she felt the brush of fingers against hers.

But as Zelda went to subtly enquire as to what the woman was implying, Lilith was thanking her for food and company and advised that she needed to leave to get through some administration.

Oh.

At that, Shirley and Constance agreed that they, too, needed to leave. Which prompted Doctor Cee to make a vague excuse and resulted in Zelda walking everyone out of the house, her eyes lingering on Lilith as she fought the urge to kiss her goodbye.

And then, they were gone and the house was empty.

There was still the children upstairs, but if Zelda was being honest, she didn’t care. They’d sort themselves out.

“So you and Mary?” Hilda inclined.

“Pardon?”

“You and Mary are friends?”

“Oh,” Zelda nodded. “New friends.”

Hilda gave a strange look, before shrugging to herself. “Well, she’s all alone here. I’m sure she needs a friend just as much as you.”

Zelda hummed to herself and drew away from her sister. Exhaustion filled her and there was still a twisting feeling in her stomach as she thought of Lilith’s expression as the woman had pulled away. Zelda was familiar enough with that deep, aching pain to know that if Lilith wanted to speak of it, she would. As it were, they weren’t dating each other and Lilith had no requirements to share what she was feeling.

It still didn’t stop her thoughts running wild.

She showered, thinking of it, changed into her pyjamas and then climbed into bed, still thinking of Lilith. She was just closing her eyes to sleep when she noticed her phone flash in the dark.

Reaching to the bedside table, she pulled it off its charge and looked it over.

Thank you for tonight. I enjoyed the evening.

And then before Zelda could think of an adequate reply, another message was sent through.

That Shirley woman’s a bitch though. How did you two end up as friends?

Zelda felt a wave of indignant annoyance at the mention of being friends with Shirley Jackson. She wrote back a furious response, ensuring Lilith was aware that she was absolutely not friends with the woman, and only invited her because Constance had half-invited her to begin with.

There was a back and forth banter for a few minutes and then the phone was ringing and Zelda answered, feeling an anxiety pull at her as she sat up, pressing against the pillows on the bed head. “Lilith?”

“I owe you an explanation about my behaviour tonight.”

Zelda’s chest tightened at the words. The last thing she wanted was for the woman to feel guilted into revealing her past. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“I do,” Lilith said. “Not that long ago, before Greendale, there was someone. We were planning for the rest of our lives when, very suddenly, he was in a car accident. Adam––“ she paused and Zelda heard the heaviness in her breath Lilith tried to find the words. “He was good. For a long while, I’d forgotten to ask myself what I wanted and he reminded me. And then he was gone, and I moved to Greendale to get away from the life we were building together. And it seemed like such a long, hard thing to do, so I went back to what used to bring me joy and began my Dominatrix service again…and then I saw you.”

Zelda wanted to say something, but she wasn’t sure what an appropriate response was.

“I lied to you about a few things when we were starting. I have a few regular clients that I’ve always had, but there’s no one like you, Zelda. There’s no other client that I see that comes close to what I…permitted with you. Before Adam, I had a much more extensive business across the city, but not here.”

Zelda’s brow pressed, and then an old question rose. “Did you slip the business card into the book?”

“I did. You don’t recall but I was in the bookshop as well, and I noticed you pursuing the erotica and the self-help section before you set the books aside. When your sister had pointed to the book, I slid the card in, hoping you’d take an interest.”

“How did you know I would call?”

“I didn’t. I had no idea if you would or wouldn’t. I knew nothing about you except what book took your curiosity. But, I will admit, you were quite beautiful and I hoped. And then you rang.”

Zelda tried to recall the day in the bookshop, but she remembered nothing of any other occupants, her anger solely focused on Hilda.

“I understand if you feel misled.”

“I don’t,” Zelda advised. “You didn’t force my hand in calling you. I did it myself, almost eagerly so.”

“And then you came back for a second session,” Lilith said with a laugh and then she heard the sound of what sounded like metal on glass, tinkering in the background.

“I hadn’t cried since my brother’s passing,” Zelda admitted. “For a while, I thought I’d forgotten how. I certainly felt vexed and frustrated to the point that only alcohol or cigarettes seemed to ease it, but I hadn’t…really allowed myself to feel anything for some time until that first session.”

“Well, if you ever want to be spanked until you’re a sobbing mess, I can always provide that.”

“I…will take you up on that offer,” Zelda admitted. It wasn’t the same as the ache she felt before, but there was a weight off her chest, as if something had shifted between them in the quiet of the room.

“You should come over,” Lilith asked.

“I’m not driving thirty minutes in the dead of the night,” Zelda scoffed. “I’m already dressed for bed.”

“And what does Zelda Spellman wear to bed?”

“Pyjamas,” she responded dryly. “What else would I wear?”

“Nothing,” Lilith replied. “In fact, I think you should take off your ‘pyjamas’ right now.” The tone had shifted again and Zelda felt herself sit up straighter as a result. She thought to disagree with her and advise that she was going to go to sleep, but all at once, she was wide-awake.

“Fine,” she sighed, before pulling the dressing gown over her head and setting it at the end of the bed before sitting back, bringing the phone to her ear. “I’ve taken it off.”

“And your underwear?”

“Who said I was wearing any?”

Lilith laughed, and then it slowly faded and there was a pause between them as Zelda waited for the next instruction. “Tell me what you would want me to do to you if I was there.”

That was a change, and Zelda felt it hum down her. She swallowed, settling back on the bed. “We would have to be quiet,” she said, before biting her lip, that probably wasn’t a very sexy thing to say. “You would sneak into my bedroom, and get into bed with me.”

“Mmhmm?” She heard an exhaled breath and then Zelda realised what Lilith was doing.

Invigorated by it, Zelda sat up straight and then parted her own legs, following in the same stead. “Lilith all I want is to fuck you. I want to undress you and feel how wet you are. I want to slide inside of you and feel your hips rock and listen as you gasp and moan. I want to taste you and slide my tongue inside of you.”

“Is that all?” Lilith purred, and there was decorum before Zelda heard a gasp through the phone. “And if you had me, is that all you would do?”

“I would fuck you,” Zelda assured. “I want to see your face when I make you climax, and feel it around my fingers, and then, when you think I’m done, I’m going to turn you over and fuck you again, harder until your hands are clutching at my sheets and you’re left gasping.”

“Zelda.”

“I’m going to fuck you, even if I have to tie you down myself and find that cock you love so much and bury it deep inside of you.”

She could hear Lilith panting now, there was no disguise to what she was doing. Zelda stroked between her legs, naked on her bed as slid inside of her self, her other hand stroking at her clit as her shoulder pressed the phone to her ear.

“If you come for me, you will say my name,” Zelda commanded it, and she heard a gasp from Lilith, unmistakable as the woman edged closer and closer. “I hope you know that I’m fucking myself just think about it. Of binding you up with your hands behind your back and bending you over my bed until I’m satisfied.”

“Yes,” Lilith panted, and there was a hushed moan.

Zelda bit her lip, holding back her pleasure. She could feel how close she was too. It was building inside of her as she dug her heels into the bed and then it was all she could focus on as she listened to Lilith keen closer and closer.

Zelda’s breath hitched as she felt the orgasm tug low, pulling at her. “Lilith,” she said. “I want to hear you."

And then, obediently, Lilith cried out and it was Zelda’s name on her lips. An earnest noise, void of performance. It was enough to topple Zelda as she found herself squeezing around her fingers before the orgasm pulled through her.

Her back arched, head pressing against the pillows as her heels dug into the mattress, and then it was over and she was sliding her fingers out, dropping them wetly against herself as she listened to Lilith catch her breath through the receiver.

Lilith gave a short laugh. “If you ever want to switch it up, I would be most pleased,” she said. “But I won’t be anywhere near as obedient as you unless you beg me sweetly.”

“I can handle a brat,” Zelda said, and Lilith laughed.

“I’m sure you can.”

There was a silence that pulled between them as they settled and Zelda felt her eyes close, a tiredness washing over her. “I’m glad you came.”

“Oh, as am I,” Lilith teased.

Zelda scoffed, but the sound barely had an impact on how tired she felt. “I’m glad you came to dinner,” she corrected. “It would have been intolerable without you.”

“Zelda Spellman, are you getting sentimental on me?”

She hummed a response, pulling the blankets up over her body. It was getting cold, and as her body cooled down, she was all the more aware of how empty her bed was. “I enjoy your company, outside of sex.”

“As do I.”

“We should…” and then she wasn’t sure what she was going to say, because the world drifted away as she slipped into a dream.

_________________

#zelda spellman #lilith #madam spellman #zelith #caos fanfic

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defensefilms · 3 years ago

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Do We Owe Mike Budenholzer An Apology?

Much of the storylines coming out of the NBA finals are about Giannis Antetokounmpo and what this win means for him, and rightly so, but the wider storyline by fans and analyst should also feature a healthy dose of mea culpa’s from all involved regarding Mike Budenholzer.

I am no exception in this regard. I remember specifically saying that Monty Williams was the better head coach and that he was the great equalizer for the Suns. Monty Williams could only manage 2 wins in the finals and they both came in the opening games. From there Coach Bud was the one making the better adjustments.

If we’re being fair, Coach Bud was one of the most maligned coached throughout the 2020/21 season, with many claiming Bud would be fired should the Bucks collapse in the post season again.

Two things lead to the pressure Budenholzer may or may not have been feeling going into these recent playoffs.

The first was the Eastern Conference finals in 2019. The Bucks would win the first 2 games against the Nick Nurse led Toronto Raptors and wound up losing the series 4-2. Many sighting Budenholzer not adjusting his 4-out1-in strategy to utilize other Bucks players. The second was the 2nd round of the 2020 bubble playoffs in which the 1 seed Bucks were beaten 4-1 by the Heat, who were the 5th seed in the East.

Those 2 events shifted the perceptions of Coach Bud negatively. Even as recently as game 3 of the 2nd round of the 2021 playoffs where Bucks fans were calling for Budenholzer to be fired during game 3 against the Brooklyn Nets.

My issue with Coach Bud and you can read it all here, was whether he had enough layers in his playbook to utilize players other than Giannis.

Net rating is a statistical metric which measures a player’s performance by tracking their offensive rating minus their defensive rating. It’s a way of tracking how much better or worse a team is with or without a player.

Long story short, the Bucks net rating in 2019 without Giannis was at 10.6 and 3.1 without him on the court. That paints a picture of a very Giannis-dependant team. However that was in 2019. In 2020/21 the Bucks has a net rating of 5.6 with Giannis and 6.7 without Giannis.

Stats show that Coach Bud was steadily getting over any Giannis dependency and to be fair to Coach Bud he may have dispelled fears about this in the Eastern Conference finals against the Atlanta Hawks, when the Bucks closed out the series without Giannis.

Even in other regards, Coach Bud has had the right influence on Khris Middleton.

Under Jason Kidd in 2017/18, Middleton averaged 20.1 points, 4.0 assists, 5.2 rebounds on 46.6% in field goal percentage and 35.9% three-point field goal percentage. On average he would attempt 15.5 shots per game.

In this championship run, Middleton averaged 23.6 points, 5.6 assists and 7.6 rebounds. He was now attempting 19.7 shots per game and 43.8% from the field and 34.3% from 3.

Middleton’s development and stepping in to his role and the midrange shot-creator and designated closer, is something Budenholzer has been mostly responsible for developing him in to.

To add to that Budenholzer didn’t always have PJ Tucker and Jrue Holiday on his roster and Tucker’s floor spacing along with defensive versatility were key to the Bucks playoff run. Jrue Holiday’s contributions were absolutely critical and he is no doubt at the core of that improved net rating, to be fair the Bucks have never had a third option as good as Holiday and people forget that Jrue averaged 23.7 points per game in 2017/18.

You have to also consider that when you measure Budenholzer up against his peers who were able to win championships with a homegrown star player drafted by the franchise, he actually measures up very favorably.

It took Phil Jackson a full two season to win with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen and Bud was in his 3rd season as a Buck before winning as well. Greg Popovich took over as Spurs head coach in the 1996/97 season and in the 1999 post season guided Tim Duncan, David Robinson and the Spurs to their first championship.

If you compare him to even elites and historical greats in his field then Budenholzer might just be right on schedule.

So to be fair, Budenholzer has earned some apologies but it won’t be enough to keep him in the seat log term. Giannis is only 26 and winning another championship in his prime will definitely be a priority for the Bucks.

If Budenholzer wants to truly exterminate and do away with any doubts he has to keep the Bucks in championship contention but furthermore, he has to smooth out some of the details of the Bucks half court offense. He’s made better use of Khris Middleton but to be fair the Bucks have 4 players in Jrue Holiday, Khris Middleton, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Brook Lopez that easily become mismatches when defenses try to switch.

The difficulty in scheming for the Bucks is that not every team can line-up the same way against them. Defending them is so personnel specific that I don’t think any team can truly adopt another’s strategy to stop the Bucks even if they do similar things like defend Giannis with a center. Most shooting guards are not 6 foot 8 inches tall like Middleton, most point guards are not 6 foot 6 inches like Jrue Holiday and matching up with Giannis is a whole different kettle of fish.

In short, we need to see the Bucks getting and making easier shots on a routine basis for Coach Bud to truly silence his doubters.

#nba #nba champions #milwaukee bucks #mike budenholzer #giannis antetokounmpo #khris middleton #jrue holiday #brook lopez

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inspirationdivine · 4 years ago

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A Bad Hand || Lydia and Beatrice

Timing: Current Parties: @inspirationdivine @beatrice-blaze, and Kevin the stack of leprechauns Summary: Lydia and Beatrice play poker with cards and secrets. Alternatively, a graphical summary

Going back to the Stacked Deck had been strange for Bea the first time. The regulars had plenty of questions for her, ones she had no energy to answer. She shared a nod with Chuck as she slipped in, heading to a table in the corner after getting her drink. She tended to avoid this one, wary of the suspicious player that seemed to frequent it, not wanting to deal with any more leprechauns after her run-in with Kaden. Still, it helped her avoid the more curious people in the hall. Settling into a seat, she crossed her legs as she glanced around the table. The woman next to her was elegant, something Bea could appreciate in a Bend bar. Cutting a glance to the chair hosting the stack of leprechauns, she asked, amused, “Already on a roll, or am I in luck today?”

“Dealer’s just about to deal, we can make space for you yet,” Lydia replied with a smile, looking up at the woman. She’d seen her before, looking full of life and warmth before, but Lydia usually preferred to play with a more exclusive crowd. Downstairs, occasionally with kittens. That said, there was nothing quite like playing with poorly disguised leprechauns, her skin prickling from the close contact with them. This woman though? Apart from a turtleneck in summer, not much else to comment on her about. “Are you joining?”

Nervous ticks that Bea had kicked years ago were reemerging, fingers tapping against the glass base of her drink. She knew she was safe here, Chuck would never let something happen in the Deck. She had her knife on her, it’s holster pinching into her thigh as a reminder of the easy access she had to it. She was safe here. She curled her fingers into a fist, annoyed that she hadn’t caught the tick before it began. “I think I will. I’ve spent far too long away from the table.” Gambling with money was safe, at least, safer than the gambles she recently made. Arranging her chips, she smiled to the other woman, “I hope nothing too interesting happened when I was gone. Being out of the loop is no fun.”

A nervous player. Lydia didn’t much mind that at all, careful not to show that she’d seen the anxious finger tapping against the table. Then that same hand curled into a fist, an awareness of her nervous habit that held information in its own right. Someone was off their game. All that meant was better odds for Lydia. “Oh, how long? Well, allow me to do quick introductions. I’m Lydia, this is Killian, Jerome, Sarah, and… Robert, I believe?” Lydia said to the patently obvious three leprechauns in a trenchcoat, but that everyone else acknowledged as an individual. A chair was procured for the woman, and the dealer began setting out the cards.

“Oh, at least five weeks. I used to be in here almost every night.” Bea’s disappearance hadn’t been something that others had missed. When she first came back, Chuck had even asked where she had been. And so she had to tell the tale of being in Turkey with her mother and father. A fact that most people could see through if they looked hard enough. She smiled as she sat down in the newly arrived chair,”Lovely to meet everyone. I’m Beatrice, but Bea is fine.” She eyed ‘Robert’ for a moment, before looking back to Lydia. “I can swear I have seen you here before. I’m shocked we haven’t played at the same table before.” She took a sip of her drink before looking at her cards. A bad hand out of the gate. She tried not to think that that was a sign of how the evening was going to go.

”So we need to watch you then,” Lydia replied, with a wink. “Bea, it’s a pleasure. Although I reserve my right to change my mind on that depending on how the evening goes.” Lydia took her middling hand, let the corner of her mouth quirk in the slightest bit of disappointment, and looked back up to Bea. “ I think you’re right. I’m usually only here once a week. The others aren’t as chatty, but I like to throw them off their game by - raise - talking as we play. So, Bea, what did take you out of town for five weeks? Were you travelling for work?”

A soft chuckle left Bea,“For better or worse, yes, I suppose you do.” Before she had died, she had great control of her ticks, she knew how to read other people, and she was confident in her decisions. Now, she felt new to the table, rediscovering the way she had to play. Her smile only grew as Lydia continued to speak, she liked the way this woman held herself already. It was amusing. “A woman after my own heart. Silent tables are far too boring for me.” Temptation to tell the truth surged in her, but she stifled it. Telling loved ones was one thing. Strangers were a more dangerous game. She settled on a half-truth. “I did something for my sister and then ended up having to deal with the fallout.” She eyed the flop as it came out and weighed the risks of staying in. “Call.”

Lydia watched the turn being played, and watched two of the others around the table fold. There was a pair in her hand, but the cards on the table weren’t anything of use yet. “Call,” She responded. “Oh, I agree about silent tables. The evening’s as much for socialising as it is anything else. Isn’t that right, Keith?” Lydia turned her eyes to the leprechauns, the top of which grimaced and said something unintelligible, but the chips the second leprechaun on the table pushed forward was a raise by two hundred. Hm, now this would be a game. “I know what that’s like, siblings can be our greatest gifts and our greatest downfalls. I hope it is all resolved now.”

“If I wanted to sit in silence, I stay home or go to a library,” Bea chuckled. “It’s always fun here, rarely a dull night.” She had loved that before, it had always matched her energy after a show. Now she took comfort in the familiarity. Her eyes narrowed as the stack of fae raised. There was no need for her to stay in for that. She let out a soft laugh at greatest downfalls. “Only a few loose ends to tie up and then everything will be in great shape again. Hopefully, things stay quiet for a bit.” She folded, muttering to herself,“God knows that Luce and Nell need some peace.”

“Only disappointing ones,” Lydia chuckled, as the river were revealed and the last round of bets went in. Lydia had two midrange pairs, which was far from terrible, but she wanted to keep it safe for this first round, getting a feel for the other players before the stakes grew too much. Kevin the leprechaun took the round, and Lydia took the next round of cards as they were dealt. A much worse hand. This would be an early fold. “Well, I hope so for your sa-” Lydia caught Bea’s mumble, and her eyes widened. It was her turn to bet. “...Raise. Would that be Lucinda Vural, by any chance?” It couldn’t be. It wasn’t. Lydia was entirely wrong, she had to be.

Bea took a long drink before looking at her hand. Her lips curled for a quick second as she took in the good hand she had been given. She called after Lydia, looking over at the other woman with a raised eyebrow. So she knew Luce and from the reaction, it didn’t seem that they had a good time together. “Yes, it would be. She’s my younger sister. I’m guessing that you’ve met?” Without realizing it, Bea’s shoulders tensed, uncomfortable with the potential of someone who had issue with her sister next to her.

Lydia barely heard was the other two players said, and didn’t look down at the flop being played until the lowest leprechaun that was Kevin cleared its throat. Or possibly squawked. Nell Vural had been posting on social media. Luce had been talking to Lydia. A dead sister. Well, if two had been alive then.. “Oh, I think I fold for this round. The cards are not in my favour.” Foolish, she should have never raised to begin with. There was nothing good here for her. Especially when she played against a woman who for all intents and purposes should be dead. Had been dead for an extremely long time. Weeks, from what Lydia had understood from Luce. Vampires and Zombies both rose soon after their deaths, Lydia was so sure of it. “We have. Luce saved my life, not too long ago. I think it will be, oh, three months ago in August?”

Knowing who Bea’s sister was had obviously shaken Lydia. The witch just didn’t know why. It was interesting to say the least that Luce’s name had garnered such a reaction. She had known people that were intimidated by the middle sister, but she had never experienced something like this. Lydia had seemed like a woman who could keep her poker face on in most circumstances. Bea’s fingers tapped against the base of her drink as she considered Lydia. “It’s lucky that she was there to help you. August?” She turned toward Lydia then, voice lowered,“So you know then?”

“Well, I thought so. It appears your sister isn’t as truthful as I believed. My mistake,” Lydia said, slowly regaining something of a power face as they continued. The sight of Beatrice had short circuited her brain, but if Bea was alive then… She crunched her jaw together. Not only had she been used to torture someone, but the lying snake of a spellcaster had manipulated Lydia’s emotions to make her eager. It made Lydia’s stomach turn. Obviously, Luce had read online somewhere about Lydia’s own sister, and had made up a story to justify her actions to Lydia. Maybe she thought that by lying, Lydia would treat August worse than she might otherwise. Luce had been right, too. “Bea, I believe it’s your turn to bet.”

A soft chuckle left Bea,“She’s the most truthful out of all of us.” Nell and Bea had both lied to each other for years about what magic they had done. “I don’t know how you were involved, but thank you.” Luce wouldn’t have told just anyone about what happened, she knew her sister would never bring someone random in. She looked over to the table again,“Raise.” Throwing her chips in the pot, she turned once again to look at Lydia. Taking a finger, she pulled down the fabric of her turtleneck to show a bit of her scar. “Went through all of that and only got this scar to show for it.”

Folding early should have been a prime opportunity for Lydia to take advantage of being able to read the whole table and get a feeling for where everyone else was as, without worrying about anyone watching you too closely. To run the maths in her head over and over, and see how other people calculated their odds in return. Instead, she was only looking at Beatrice, like she was struggling to latch her thoughts onto one another. She’d helped with something, certainly, August had suffered as much mentally as physically in the 24 hours he’d been with her, but Lydia hadn’t asked and Luce hadn’t said. She was so flummoxed she missed the opportunity to promise bind Bea, which in turn had Kevin staring at her. The turn, and then the river was played. “I’m amazed you survived such an injury.”

As good as the hand was turning out for Bea, she struggled to focus on it. As they spoke longer, the witch found herself more confused than before. Her sisters had failed to mention everyone who was involved, but she had, at least, expected Lydia to know more than she seemed to. Her head tilted,“Is that what she told you? That I survived?” Logically, Bea knew that it was a bad idea to tell people about what happened, but the caution she once felt was slipping away. Lydia knew enough already, this wouldn’t be groundbreaking.

“No,” Lydia replied, as the round finished. “Quite the opposite. Must have been playing on some personal weaknesses. At least I know better now.” She pressed her lips into a thin smile as she watched the end of the betting round, itching to move past this now and play a real game. Luce must have googled her, found out about Lydia’s own sister, and turned it against her. That was the only explanation Lydia needed, and now she could focus entirely on the game.

A small smile broke over Bea’s face,“You’re wrong, then, to call my sister a liar.” Perhaps the younger Vurals had failed to tell Lydia that Bea would come crawling back from death. It would explain the confusion. It would be very jarring to be sat next to a woman who was meant to be rotting. “I didn’t survive.” Her voice was low, knowing that the others at the table shouldn’t be aware of the information she was giving Lydia. “Amazing what a good sacrifice can bring back.”

Lydia swallowed. Then she swallowed again. Her fight or flight reflex kicked in, filling her mouth with toxic saliva without her consent as her heart beat loud in her ears. She looked down at her cards, blinked hard, to push them into memory, but the king and queen of spades suddenly had a deathly pallor, red slits in their throats. Necromancy. One of the worst abominations humans had created. “I see. So it appears. How… fortunate for you.”

Finally, Bea turned away from Lydia, facing back to the rest of the table. She took a sip of her drink, frowning at the now empty martini glass. She’d need to order another. She glanced at her cards, another mediocre set. “My sisters are very loyal, I’m lucky to have people who would go to such lengths to learn my craft and help me return. It wasn’t easy for them.”

“Raise,” Lydia said, before watching the flop being laid. She had a good hand, it was just about playing it, as her stomach churned under Bea’s reveal after reveal. “It certainly was a fitting sacrifice,” she replied curtly. Had Lydia made August pliant to Luce so that she could drag his soul inside out? When Lydia had made him throw himself down the stairs over and over, she’d broken his psyche and his body, but she hadn’t fragmented his soul. Her father had told her about necromancy as a child, when he had gently teased the tangles from his hair. Magics that only came to humans, that demanded balance and suffering. To bring a soul back from heaven or hell, another must be destroyed, never to go anywhere ever again. To bring such suffering on anyone, even a murderous human like August, Lydia could hardly stomach it. One good game, and she was out of here, away from the walking and talking destruction of nature itself. It was wrong in a way nothing else could be. People warned of fae trickster magic, but Lydia could not promise bind without an inkling of consent. Her glamorous only affected herself. It did not pervert nature. “Raise to one thousand dollars.”

Bea hadn’t failed to notice how all the warmth that had once been in their conversation quickly drained away. It made sense that most people wouldn’t enjoy a conversation about necromancy. Still it was a shame, she had thought Lydia was fun company when she had first sat at the table. “I’m glad that you agree. After everything he did, it felt perfect to me.” It tied the loose ends of her death nicely. All that was left was Bea finding that hunter and taking his life too. She wanted to savor that alive and well. Her eyebrows raised as Lydia raised, quietly folding her own hand, not yet willing to follow a raise so steep. Even if it did seem like an odd move. “Confident?” She asked the other woman, though her tone laced the implication of doubt through the word.

Lydia didn’t reply to that. There was something to be said for people that just loved to keep talking about taboo subjects. Clearly, her cool comments hadn’t deterred Bea, so perhaps her silence would. Lydia certainly hoped so, she was intending to keep her dinner. “That’s for you to know, isn’t it?” Lydia asked with a wink, then looking to Kevin. All three leprechauns knew she couldn’t lie easily, but all fae were masters of bluffs and truth twisting. The third one gave her a rotten look from the bottom of the trenchcoat. “So Bea, apart from playing poker, what else have you been doing with your newfound freedom?” She asked, the question carrying an edge that had been absent early. Lydia tapped her index distractedly against the table.

Confidence was easy to find when Bea was focused on necromancy, it was something she knew intimately now. She knew it, in ways, better than she knew the woman she had become when she came back. Now that the conversation had slipped from that, it wasn’t as easy to find a way to answer Lydia. She hadn’t ever struggled to find warm words and hold a conversation before. “I’ve been finding a new main act for my theater. My absence was felt dearly there and I’ve been working double time to right it all.” John, her right hand man, had done wonderfully in holding Illusions up, but without her fire, they no longer had a headliner. “There’s new talent that needs a guiding hand. Otherwise, I’ve been happy to be with my loved ones again.”

Lydia heard the pause before the reply, as the comfort and confidence leached out of Bea. She tilted her head, watching the others fold out of the game. Just her and Kevin left, for the final bidding round. “Your theatre? That is charming. Call.” There it was again, throwing her off her game. Not like she could read Kevin’s facial expressions at all, either way, but she just wanted one decent round without necromancy talk ruining it. Or the walking abomination ruining her ignoring the necromancy. “I’m sure they appreciate your company completely. Was that a challenge, Kevin? Wonderful. Let’s see your cards.” The second Leprechaun revealed two tens, with a two pair hand total. Lydia had a full house, that she showed smugly. “Oh, thank goodness for one thing going well, then.” The next set of cards were laid out. “What kind of shows do you do at your theatre, Beatrice?”

Bea was going to make sure to question her sister about this woman. The witch didn’t necessarily feel unsafe, but there was no ease left now. Lydia had been a part of the process to come back, even if she hadn’t known it. Perhaps it hadn’t been a good idea to talk to Lydia about it, better to leave her in the dark. But then again, Bea had no room to regret what had already passed. “Good hand,” She commented lightly as she watched over the table. She hadn’t been positive that Lydia actually had such good cards. “We have fire dancers, escape artists, magicians. Those who have special talents and a knack for performance tend to find a home in my theater.”

“Ah, so like a circus,” Lydia replied with a smile, catching Bea’s meaning without a blink. “I would have to come see it some time. I do love watching the spectacular.” Feeling better with so many chips in her corner, she picked up her hand and tucked the ace of spades and three of hearts away into the back of her mind before watching the game begin anew. “So, Beatrice-” Lydia stopped, staring at Bea. Remembering what Felix had said about a lady friend. Except, of course, that it couldn’t be, right? The Bea in front of her wasn’t nearing a century in age, she wasn’t fae nor shifter, nor even a palatable form of undead. Felix wouldn’t- Felix wouldn’t have possibly gone for her. He had taste. He was as much fae as she was, as proud and clever and- Lydia swallowed. Beatrice wasn’t a common name, but it wasn’t impossible that there were a couple walking around White Crest. He wouldn’t have gone for a woman like this. Surely. “Felix. Doyle. Do you know him?”

As much as Bea wanted to tell her it was not a circus, she couldn’t. She had performers that called them a circus, even if we preferred the term theater. Usually, Bea would have offered a good seat to someone who wanted to come and view the show, but she found her quiet. She tilted her head at Lydia, what an odd and out of the blue question. “Felix Doyle happens to be my boyfriend. I take it that you know him. Are you friendly?” Felix knew so many people in this town, but still, it surprised her every time someone knew him and she didn’t know them as well.

“We’re good friends,” Lydia replied with a smile that made her feel almost as sick as actually speaking the lie. She looked back to the table, swallowing down the rising bile. This was so much worse than Deirdre. Lydia had only just found a dead lampade, made dead by a spellcaster. Somehow that bloody corpse turned her stomach less than the though of Felix with a human. Worse, with this human. Not undead like Morgan, but a monstrosity, not meant to exist at all. “I care about him deeply. More than I entirely know how to put in words.” Which made the thought of him sinking to such lows even worse. Beatrice was wrong, human hubris incarnate, how could he even consider it? He was a beautiful being, charismatic as hell, he could have had anyone he wanted, and instead he stooped to this. How could he ever denigrate himself like this and look in the mirror and call himself fae? It felt like a betrayal of her affections to the extreme, to even consider this. Lydia put her hands down on the table sharply, looking around at everyone with a practiced ease that made her skin burn. “My apologies, everyone, but I’m folding and I think I’m done for the evening. I’m not at my best, and that is not fair on any of you.” She stood up, picking up her neat stack of chips, and left without even trading them in.

More than I entirely know how to put in words. Those words would have warmed Bea if they came from anyone else. To know the man she loved was loved back by the people around him made Bea happy in most circumstances. He deserved all the love he could get. Still, this felt more than a little awkward. Had she just met one of Felix’s exes? Or someone who just didn’t want to see him with other people? She stared after Lydia for a moment, trying to understand what the hell had happened since she sat at this table. Shrugging, Bea decided to let her questions rest for now, she could ask them to the people who knew Lydia later. “Well, that’s unfortunate, she seems like she’s fun. Anyhow, I’ll raise.”

#wickedswriting #para #chatzy #beatrice

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taww · 5 years ago

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Long-term Review: Cardas Clear Light Speaker Cable

This ain’t your grandpa’s Cardas.

The year is... I can’t even remember, maybe 2012? I was writing for Bound for Sound magazine (BFS) and running my trusty Merlin TSM speakers with a variety of solid state amplifiers and cables, and while there was much to love about this setup, body and warmth were lacking. Merlin's brilliant and dearly-departed designer Bobby Palkovic never stopped reminding me his speakers were best with tube amps and Cardas cables (which he used internally and for jumpers) and he kept urging me to give them a try. I demurred, telling him I hadn’t been a fan of the “Cardas sound” in the past... but an encounter with a friend’s Quadlink 5C’s had me reconsidering. So I put in a call to Cardas to see what they recommended, and they were gracious enough to provide a pair of their recently-introduced Clear Light speaker cables.

The following years are a blur... BFS stopped publishing a short time later, and the Cardas review was put on hold. But I still kept using those cables, and after years of building guilt I finally sat down to do a write-up about them. Cardas, if you’re still listening - thank you for letting me hang onto them, and mea culpa. Better late than never, right...? 🙂

The Clear Light was introduced as a, well, lighter version of their high-end Clear cable. At the time, I believe it retailed around $900 a 1.5m pair - a bit less than half as much as its big brother. This put it in what I would call the “entry luxury” segment of cables, sorta like a BMW 3 series or Audi A4. The newest version of the cable is called the Clear Cygnus; from their website:

In 2017, Cygnus took the place of Clear Light, being the result of a redesign that turned out to be fitting of a new product launch. Cygnus, unlike its predecessor, can be internally bi-wired.

So this review is more than a bit late to the party, but my long-term experience with the Clear Light has been noteworthy and speaks to a fascinating evolution in the Cardas sound over the years.

Then...

Why hadn’t I been a fan of Cardas in the past? I had tried a few of their entry to mid-level cables - Twinlink, Quadlink, Hexlink, Golden Presence, probably others. Cardas had always been known for their smooth, relaxed character and synergy with tube equipment, neither of which are quite my cup of tea. Many of their older models also had quite high capacitance which IMO tended to kill the life of the sound with many components. So yeah, I had a bit of bias against the brand.

For reference, other cables I had tried with the Merlin speakers included the original AntiCables, the original Analysis Plus oval, Signal Cable, an older Synergistic reference cable, JPS Labs Ultraconductor and the BFS “Lowe’s Special” DIY cables which had handily bested many of the former. But it was always tricky with the Merlins and solid state amps - you wanted something that retained their speed, transparency and immediacy, but with sufficient midrange body and warmth. In terms of tonal balance, the Synergistic faired the best, and was what I was using when the Cardas arrived.

Dropping the Clear Lights into the system, at the time with an April Music Stello Ai500 integrated, quickly dispelled my biases. Cardas was not kidding with the model name - these were easily the most transparent and detailed cables I had yet heard in my system, with a judicious touch of the trademark Cardas warmth and body in the midrange that my system was craving. Most striking was the newfound sense of pulse and rhythm. Maybe this is what the Brits call PRAT, but it wasn’t about bass clarity or tautness per se; it was more about allowing the subtle undulations of an accompaniment to pulsate and flow in perfect balance with a tune.

youtube

A classic scene from the movie Amadeus.

A perfect example: the Adagio from Mozart "Gran Partita" wind serenade, made famous in the movie Amadeus. I still vividly recall putting on a favorite recording by the Berlin Philharmonic wind ensemble (Tidal) and being floated away by the lullaby-like quality of the accompaniment - the “rusty squeezebox” as Salieri calls it. The oboe solo was also more striking, breaths and phrases feeling more tactile and tone having a little more sheen. Bobby was right - his speakers really do click with Cardas wire, and I had never heard the TSM's sing so freely in my system.

Other material showed no lack of slam or extension either. Though the Merlins were light in the bass, their sealed-box design meant there's some meaningful output down to 40Hz, and the Clear Lights made the best of it with an articulate and balanced bottom end. Large orchestral works had nice scale and weight, and the soundstage was expansive and well-delineated - close-mic'ed material sounded up front and present while mid-hall orchestral recordings had plenty of ambience. And most importantly to me, there was none of the undue warmth and dullness that bothered me with past Cardas cables - leading edges were sharp and dynamics popped without overshooting. All in all, the Clear Lights were clearly (ha) the best speaker cables in my system to that date.

... and now.

Fast forward several years. The Merlins have been replaced by Audiovector SR 1 Avantgarde Arreté and Silverline SR17 Supreme, with a rotation of amps from Ayre, Bryston and Valvet. The front end has also been substantially upgraded with the PS Audio DirectStream DAC and Pass XP10 preamp, and competition at vastly different price points has arrived in the form of Audience Au24 SX ($3,290, 2.5m pair) and DH Labs Silver Sonic Q-10 Signature ($450, 8ft pair).

The Audience Au24 SX has a level of refinement that neither of the other cables can match, hardly surprising at 3x to 7x the price. It's oh-so-silky smooth, stripping away layers of noise and grain within and between the notes and leaving behind the purest, most natural instrumental timbres I've heard in my system. By comparison, the Cardas has a bit of a grittier texture, particularly in the upper midrange, and a more up-front presentation. With some speaker/amp combos this was beneficial - e.g. with the Silverline Minuet Grand ($1,999) and Ayre AX7e integrated, the Cardas struck just the right balance of body and presence, making the Audience sound a little too laid back by comparison. I also found the heavier 9.5AWG conductors of the Cardas allowed the Bryston 4B Cubed amp to get a better grip on the Audiovector SR 1 Avantgarde Arreté speakers ($5200) than the comparatively light-gauge Audience. Overall the Cardas put up a very respectable showing against the superb Audience cables, in line with my expectations given the price difference.

The DH Labs Q-10 was a fascinating and far closer comparison. The Q-10 is just as clean as the Cardas - perhaps even more so - with a slightly more direct character that is on the up-front side of neutral. Its silver-plated copper conductors give it extra sheen vs. the pure-copper Cardas and Audience, which could go in either direction depending on your system. With a mellow amp and a smooth speaker it could be just the thing to inject some life; but pairing with a hot tweeter and bright solid state amp could be downright painful. The Cardas feels like it would be more amenable to a wider range of systems, and it has a bit more midrange dimensionality and soundstage depth. The DH Labs counters with terrific bass punch and super-crisp transients that always sound controlled. Overall I had a slight preference for the Cardas in most setups, but the DH Labs hung in there pretty well and is a superb value.

Usage Notes

The Cardas is just thick enough to impress your audiophile friends and confuse your gardener without being unwieldy, and its rubber-finish jacket is flexible and easily handled. Over the course of years of heavy usage (lots of connect/disconnect cycles and being thrown around) it's held up well, the only obvious sign of wear being the conductors on one end starting to pull out of the collet - not particularly dangerous since all Cardas conductors are insulated litz (magnet) wire, but something you'll want to take care with. (I hear Cardas has excellent factory service, so likely they'd repair it at reasonable cost.)

Little bit of wear and tear showing...

My pair was terminated with Cardas's machined rhodium-plated spades. I have never been a fan of big audio jewelry connectors, preferring unassuming low-mass ones that ironically enough have become all the rage the last 10-15 years. That said, these spades are fantastic. They are the perfect shape and size to fit most any binding post I've come across, including those pesky EU-compliant ones, and for whatever reason - perhaps the rhodium plate and precise machining - they slide effortless in and out of binding posts and tighten more readily and securely than any other spade I've used. I always know I'm getting a secure fit, and I never have to fidget with or retighten them later as I do with most every other spade I've used. Bravo, Cardas.

Conclusion

I've had an extremely positive ownership experience with the Cardas Clear Light speaker cables over the years, and it remains a staple in my bin o' cables. They opened my ears to the virtues of the Cardas sound, delivering much of the brand's famed dimensionality, body and musical flow balanced with a high level of clarity, transparency and directness. While they had exceptional synergy with my Merlin speakers, they worked with a wide variety of gear and were a delight to handle. I would stick to using them with a system that's already fairly neutral and balanced - true to their name, they aren't going to obscure or romanticize anything. I haven't heard its successor, the Clear Cygnus, but I imagine it should deliver a similar if not greater level of listening satisfaction. Recommended!

#audiophile #audio #hifi #cardas #speaker cable #review

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vapormaison · 5 years ago

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Best of 2019 Future Funk Release 1/4: Toyama’s Love Island by Skule Toyama

A common argument I get into on audiophile and vinyl forums — that by virtue of interest and venue tend to skew boomer (who isn’t on discord now? Answer: Your grandpa.) — often revolves around the raison d’être of pressing future funk. In an earlier piece, I gave my opinion on the subject — but I didn’t really evidence the critique by many opposing audiophiles. As far as they’re concerned, I might as well be collecting Funko Pops — that is to say that these presses aren’t worthy of serious hi-fi consideration and are merely collector’s items. To their credit, when posting about my experiences with the genre, most of these aged audiophiles scratch their head not at the anime art on the box nor at the picture disks (usually reviled by the old-heads)— but at the oft-digital source itself. These guys are the ostensibly cool uncles with the dope music collection, after all.

While they often are a wealth of information on the analog format, and voracious consumers of early City Pop — a genre beloved by audiophiles, — forums like this tend to create feedback loops of retrograde understanding. Their enjoyment of all things analog turns them into intense luddites, often to the point where I question why they are interfacing with a computer in the first place, that dreaded source for the perceived decline of their hi-fi culture.

I’ve more or less given up on the prospect of turning them around on the subject of future funk. However, this summer, on a thread where we review recent vinyl purchases and upload lossless rips, I made a rather pedestrian post about how much I enjoyed Skule Toyama’s latest release — Toyama’s Love Island. And to my complete and utter surprise, my vinyl-to-digital rip of “Sunset Hasn’t Come Yet” brought all the boys to the yard. While I got my usual peanut gallery of “lol future funk, lol vaporwave, buy jazz” posts, its turns out more than a few Joe Boomers with vintage, $10k-valued Sansui stereo sets could vibe with this too. You know, the purely purists of the pure.

This caused me to consider for a time precisely why Toyama Love Island whispered to these boomers I share a particular corner of internet space with. What about it warmed the heart of these old men so cold to cold media? It obviously had to be something more than the mastering or the press itself. Most of these guys had been engaged in serious listening to absolute titans in their craft for forty plus years now. Many had studio experience themselves. Even now, I don’t have a really good answer. The best one I can supply is this: the warmth that emanates from Toyama Love Island can melt even the iciest heart. Cliche? No doubt. Apropos? Of course.

PART 1: THE MUSIC

Intro warms us up with a minute-long evergreen bit. By whom and what from— I genuinely don’t know (perhaps that’s the appeal for me personally, the mystery but also the universality)— but the punch line certainly feels nostalgic, and the horns do too.

Have a Good Time fronts the funk after a minute-long intro track. It’s an absolutely fantastic true open because of its principal horn loop that absolutely claws into your cerebral cortex and takes root there. Between listens, I found myself humming it while brewing a pot of coffee. While it’s not my favorite of the tracks on the album, its pure energy and catchiness is a master class on how future funk albums should inject you with an uncut hit of unapologetic brass funk within the first couple minutes.

Electricity takes the initial energy of Have a Good Time and subtly ratchets up the vibe with clever layering and a sweet progression. While my initial take on my first listen was that the bass was too muted (a slight boost from the hi-fi set of your choice can obviously erase that distinction quickly!) — I warmed to the mix after hearing how well it meshed with the following track.

Love Island serves as a sort of kinetic climax to the first quarter of the album and a great midpoint for the A-side, but the treble feels just slightly compressed and off-balance on the wax here. After fiddling with EQ and my pre-amp settings on the second listen, the track came through vastly better. My suggestion is to subtract here and there if you have a Japanese-built set that tends to run bright. After doing so on the 2nd listen, Love Island began to shine — and the distorted loops that seemed discordant on my initial listen were brought back into a more complimentary role with the rest of the piece.

Midnight Mall is my absolute favorite of the album because it just unabashedly brings the boogie with a pure, slap-worthy bass, crisp midrange from the intermittent horn flares, and absolutely atmospheric vocal compliments. Although Love Island is a strong title track, so to speak — I really do think Midnight Mall is the true baby-maker banger of 2019. For peak enjoyment, boost the bass a little on your stereo, add mood lighting and engage in the wholesome romantic activity (impassioned stares, hand-holding) of your choice.

Sunset Hasn’t Come Yet is the boomer whisperer. My guess regarding what makes this track appeal so authentically to the boomer crowd is the strength of its arrangement. You get a comfy arrangement throughout, a bass twang that sounds like its straight outta Miami Vice coupled with very moody Japanese vocals. For a future funk record, this feels like the track most in sync with its roots, creating a very authentic, fun sound.

Marsala’s effortless sonic transition from Sunset Hasn’t Come Yet’s stage is definitely a highlight of this album’s pretty flawless composition and arrangement. It feels very much like a palette cleanser for the album’s first half, and is perfect for an LP format — as you feel this transition writ large by the very nature of the format. The blaring synths feel like they would meld into place effortlessly with a Michael Mann-directed denouement to a period action-psych drama.

Flying Star is a soft reset to the album from a vibe standpoint, and is competent at what it does in the overall scope of the album. My only significant criticism of Skule Toyama’s output — which is somewhat present here — is that they don’t really let the vocals carry enough water. While exquisitely layered in relation to the rest of the piece, I want to hear the vocals take up a sort of primary mantle in the soundstage in a track like this. We get it in Flying Star’s middle third, but it does feel like a sort of pointless delay in gratification. A track like this has a chance to capture the listener and bring them into the sonic space. It comes just short of doing that.

Sailor Moon Rock manages to decimate that previous criticism by running at me and grabbing the tempo by the collar with an absolutely fire set of loops and immediately accelerate. I love it for that, and is definitely the B-side’s strongest composition. We get some no-doubt nasty guitar riffs and some iconic SFX that really bring this track together and make a B-side banger exemplar, reason enough to flip the wax.

Keep On Going brings us closest to a synth-wave composition that we get in the entire album on the track’s first third, but finds its funk at the ideal moment. It definitely succeeds in fleshing out of the B-side, and creates its niche on the project subtly but at the same time, at the risk of seeming hyperbolic — brilliantly.

Do Me definitely feels the most “Nu-Disco” of both the side and the overall album. It’s definitely one of those tracks that you can both happily wait for in the queue and then just revel in — knowing that while the record nears its conclusion, you get a track that just would not at all be out of place in a Shibuya nightclub circa 1979 or weave its way into a Haruki Murakami novel.

Outro is a perfect closing for the album, but I question the utility of making it the penultimate track instead with the inclusion of the bonus track. That said, it’s impossible not to vibe with the arrangement and layering of this piece. My hope is that when I die and arrive at the pearly gates (admission pending), St. Peter (recently taking up a hobby in DJing to pass eternity) will have a special edition pressing of that will have this as the final track on the wax.

Live Now! is definitely the track I feel coolest about. A good piece on the whole, just feels a bit out of step with the rest of the project. But I’m never going to look the gift horse in the mouth when it comes to the prospect of additional music, so a welcome addition nonetheless.

PART 2: VINYL EXPERIENCE

I really like the Toyama Love Island purple wax. This seemingly benign statement is no doubt going to incur a chorus of audiophiles in that forum criticizing me for this. Vinyl is not designed — as much as some will tell you, to be a perfectly neutral hi-res medium. There is natural warmth, scratchiness, minor distortion — et cetera. It also features natural imperfections that develop over time — like any piece of physical media. What’s more, some perceived hiccups on the overall master might actually be caused by a slight offset or error in the press, a common and natural occurrence when dealing with physical media like this. That’s why graphic equalizers were so prominent in vinyl hi-fi set in its late 1970s/early 1980s heyday. This is just an aspect of the vinyl experience.

Toyama’s Love Island features, in my view, a few of these imperfections. But these imperfections are nothing major — a quick re-equalization (oxymoronic, but I’m sure you know what I’m getting at here) a little fiddling around with the pre-amp here and there — these are natural to any experience and remind me why I became fascinated with the hobby in the first place — to maximize an audio experience. If every indie press gave that to me out of the box, well, what’s the point of the system that I own? It exists to provide a platform for a rich, diverse, and vibrant sonic experience. But the platter is just decorative without real warmth coming from the music, and Toyama’s Love Island brings that in droves.

My Pet Flamingo has a long (in vaporwave measurements, obviously) history of putting out quality physicals. Toyama’s Love Island builds upon this with a big’ol brick and a heaping slab of mortar. I’m also a big fan of MFP’s visuals. I’m not sure who they use to make the sleeves, but I think they’re generally constructed well, and the cover images that grace them never feel compressed or feature much in the way of artifacts. When you become deeply intimate with a vinyl sleeve, you start to notice these things — and I’ve never had this inkling when fingering a Flamingo release, so kudos to the label’s curation.

The mix feels exceptionally bright on my current system, and that has been a consistent point of curiosity with My Pet Flamingo releases. My guess is whatever they test their masters on is engineered by a British/American company not named “KEF” — think Cambridge, Wharfedale, McIntosh, etc — or a damper sounding Japanese unit like Technics or Yamaha. Again — I don’t see this as a problem, just a note to those running more traditional Japanese (80s Harman, Sansui, TEAC) or Nordic systems (B&O, Blaupunkt) that tend towards that end of the spectrum.

With obvious digital and analog appeal, Toyama’s Love Island is the closest thing to a “holistic” future funk release that I can think of — which makes me wonder why Skule Toyama’s hasn’t blown up yet. Only a matter of time, I’d guess — especially after earning a nod from this little outfit, I’d hope.

#future funk #bestof2019

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dailytechnologynews · 5 years ago

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What can we expect out of AMD's Navi 20 GPUs?

I wanted to make a post containing some speculation about the next gen Navi cards. My goal here was to try to get a good approximation of what these GPUs will look like without relying on overly speculative assumptions. Of course, it's still largely speculation and so should be taken with a grain of salt. Hopefully we get some good discussion out of it.

Release Window

We got news recently that RDNA2 is still in design, so we can be pretty confident that AMD can't release their new architecture early next year. I assume that Navi 20 GPUs will release in the summer of next year, following the usual release cycle.

Dies and CU count

We know both Sony and Microsoft will want a cut-down GPU die with around 40 CUs because that's what fits the new consoles' cost and power consumption. It's also logical to expect a full 64 CU Navi die, since 7nm is maturing and AMD is heavily incentivized to release a successful high-end (high margin) GPU. Past that, manufacturing more dies is expensive and AMD can sell cut-down dies to fill their product stack, so there's not a lot of incentive to go for more. In the past few years, AMD has not launched many new dies and only a handful were bigger than the size you would expect of a 64CU Navi die (~400mm2). In my opinion, big die and a medium die is really the most obvious guess, but AMD could surprise us.

Ray tracing

The next generation Navi cards will support hardware ray tracing acceleration. Unfortunately, there's not much point in trying to predict the performance of AMD's implementation as we don't know anything about it outside of one patent.

Architectural Improvements

We can expect the RDNA2 architecture to improve raster performance but it's difficult to say by how much. Historically, AMD has been content with rebadging and re-releasing GPUs, sometimes upgrading the process. However, I personally don't believe that they will be satisfied with adding raytracing to RDNA and calling it a day, as they are already significantly behind on Nvidia in efficiency and raytracing will further stretch AMD's limited power budget.

TSMC N7P

TSMC has started rolling out a more optimized version of their 7nm DUV process called N7P. It's fully compatible with the first generation and provides 10% power reduction or 7% performance. Expect AMD to make use of it come 2020.

VRAM type and size

AMD has put HBM in their last two high-end products (Fury and Vega), so it makes sense that they would continue the trend. Samsung and SK both announced improved versions of their HBM2 products for 2020 that provide up to 16GB of memory and speeds of over 400GB/s per stack. I would expect AMD to use two stacks of HBM2E for a bandwidth of around 900GB/s. In fact, I would even speculate that they will put a single stack of HBM2E in medium Navi 20, as the numbers fit a midrange card very well. Considering that the most expensive part of this type of memory is the interposer, it's much easier to justify using single-stack HBM for midrange products. What's more, console makers would greatly benefit from the reduced energy footprint, as it will translate to higher frequencies for the rest of the APU. Whether AMD uses HBM2E or GDDR6, the performance characteristics will be very similar for PC users, with GDDR6 being less energy efficient. Finally, concerning the amount of VRAM, I assume that medium Navi 20 will get a bump in memory, since consoles will need the extra space for higher quality assets and we've been at 8 gigabytes on GPUs for a while now. Consequently, we should expect big Navi 20 to have more VRAM than its smaller equivalent.

Speculated characteristics

GPU RX 580 Vega 64 RX 5700XT Medium Navi 20 Big Navi 20~~~~ CUs 36 64 40 ~40 ~64 Process GloFo 14nm GloFo 14nm TSMC 7nm TSMC 7nm+ TSMC 7nm+ Die Size (mm2) 232 486 251 ~250 ~400 VRAM Type GDDR5 HBM2 GDDR6 HBM2E HBM2E VRAM (GB) 8 8 8 12-16 24-32 Bus Width (bits) 256 2048 256 1024 2048 Memory Clock (GB/s) 8 1.89 14 3.2 (Sam.) 3.6 (SK) 3.2 (Sam.) 3.6 (SK) Memory Bandwidth (GB/s) 256 483 448 410 (Sam.) 460 (SK) 820 (Sam.) 920 (SK) TDP (W) 185 295 225 ~200 ~300 Release Date April 18, 2017 August 14, 2017 July 7, 2019 Summer 2020 Summer 2020

Conclusion

What do we get out of all this speculation? Medium Navi 20 will be very close to a 5700XT with better efficiency, more memory, raytracing and perhaps better raster performance due to architecture. Because the 5700XT already runs on the tail end of the power/efficiency curve, I don't expect much higher frequencies and memory bandwidth should be quite similar. Looking over at Big Navi 20, it looks like a good competitor. If we extrapolate from the 5700XT, big Navi 20 has 50% more cores and twice the bandwidth and so it should beat the 2080 Super (~+20% perf vs 5700XT) by a significant margin. Of course, Nvidia will release their own 7nm GPUs which compare better, but the improvement is significant enough that I believe AMD will be in a comfortable position come 2020.

Thanks if you took the time to read this, I hope it was insightful.

#hardware #Computer #Technology #Tech #News

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blizzweirdo · 6 years ago

Text

No Omen, No Country’s Cause Ch. 9

You’ll LOVE this POV, guys. LOL.

AH HA HA HAH HA HA HA!

And you’ll have to wait for... stuff (no spoilers).

DON’T PUNCH ME.

Also, sorry this is late.

Troy Reeves walked purposefully across the deck of the hangar bay, carefully composing himself. The crew must not see any shred of weakness or a lack of decorum. He straightened his jacket and set his cap. Talking with Stukov disturbed him. He was the last person he had expected to see here, or again, and one of the people he would want to least want to see ever. It had made him perversely happy to see his old rival disfigured and tainted by the race he had closely studied, but disturbing to learn that he now wielded their power. Stopping in the hallway, he pressed the button to call for a lift. Groups of soldiers, captains, and crew walked past him, their loud talking amplified by alcohol. Reeves tipped his hat to them and gave them a grit-teethed smiled. As he got in, a young ensign followed blithely behind him. Once he realized who he had boarded the elevator with, he clearly had tried to turn heel to walk out, but stopped, realizing it was too late. Reeves smiled at him. At least he registers my authority.

“I won’t bite, ensign. What floor do you need?”

“S-seven, sir.”

“Seven? Crew quarters?”

“Yes, sir. Not one for parties, sir.”

“Good boy. Neither am I.”

The ensign stepped off the elevator and Reeves continued to the bridge. When he got there, it was empty; they had celebrated briefly earlier, and he had given them the night off. He walked into his office. All was silent.

Silence. He enjoyed it. Too much of his job was either loud with the sounds of war or with the sounds of mass humanity. Reeves took his meals in his office or in his quarters. With the end of their first battle and after dealing with Stukov, he needed the solitude—and he also needed to compose a message to Henri, his husband. He didn’t want to seem upset, especially when he had good news. He was alive, one, and they had taken Tarsonis. Of course, if Henri registered he was upset, he couldn’t tell him about Stukov—he couldn’t tell anyone. If Stukov’s true fate was widely known, he couldn’t imagine the fear that it would engender that someone as distinguished (it wasn’t the word he wanted to use, but he couldn’t think of another) as Stukov had been overtaken by the zerg. It would demonstrate just how dangerous the zerg were.

He had to stop thinking about it. Reeves sat at his desk and turned on his console, positioning himself in front of the screen so that he was in range of the video feed. But then he saw he already had a message from Henri. There was no way for them to speak in real time. They would be passing each other endlessly for the entirety of the conflict. It would be an ongoing call and response conversation. Henri had gotten the first word in. Reeves opened the message. In the study of their home in Charleston, Henri sat, his arms draped over his cello on a leather chaise lounge. He was wearing the silk shirt Reeves had gifted him for his birthday last year.

“Troy, honey, hello! I hope this gets to you before you get into Tarsonis. If not, well, you know me… Always fashionably late. Sometimes even missing the party!”

Reeves snorted with laughter. He had missed the “party.”

“I don’t know what to say. I miss you? I’m definitely afraid for you, and I pray for you, even though I know it won’t do any good. Since I’m at a loss for words and I’m pretty sure we’re being monitored by whatever censors are on this channel, I thought I’d play you something… Here goes…”

Henri began to play, his long arms languidly crossing his cello. Reeves had always been captivated by the sensuous way he moved. As the tune began, he recognized it. It was one that he had played before but not often. It was faster than much of the music that he played and darker. He searched for the name of it, but only came up with the composter—Stravinsky. A Russian. Reeves anger suddenly returned.

Reeves’s XO, Commander Gorman, appeared at his door. Reeves turned off the recording. Gorman took a step back, reading the anger on his commander’s face. Reeves demurred.

“Come in, what is it?”

“There’s been an… incident… in the brig. We’ve had to restrain one of the prisoners.”

“Which one?”

“A ghost? Did you know about this?”

Reeves stood up so quickly his chair fell over backwards. Gorman jumped at the sound.

“Was he harmed?”

“No, but he took out all the electronic equipment on the cell block and even some above and below. Some sort of telekinesis.”

“Was it an escape attempt?”

“If it was, it wasn’t a good one. He could’ve walked out, but he’s still down there. We put an external psi dampener on him but…” Gorman handed Reeves a datapad. “There are some irregularities in his file… I thought you might want to take a look. Why was he being held? I didn’t see…” Reeves interrupted him.

“Gorman, don’t stick your nose into this. From this point forward, I alone deal with this ghost. Any inquiries go straight to me. I want no one to speak of him. There’s no ghost in our brig, and there never was. Is that clear?”

Gorman went white. Reeves knew he understood. He generally allowed him more freedom than others of his staff—he had known him the longest of any of the crew—but because of this Gorman also knew how quickly Reeves could turn on someone. And when he turned, the relationship was soured forever.

“O-of course, Admiral.”

“Dismissed.”

Gorman left quickly. Reeves read through Gregory Stukov’s file at his desk. He was young—22 biologically but 27 chronologically—and had entered the UED’s ghost program late either because he had been shielded by someone or because he was a late bloomer. His psi index was midrange and he had no reason to have been brain panned—no covert missions or erratic behavior. This appeared to be his first major mission.

On brain-panning, Reeves aligned more with the Terran Dominion’s view of the practice than with his own government. Degenerates with psionic powers, he felt, needed to be tightly controlled. Brain-panning, he believed, made them docile. They knew no better than to follow orders and could do nothing for themselves if the practice was used judiciously. It had been standard operating procedure until around the time when Reeves had just begun maturing into his military career. Reeves’s first choice of posting had been a ghost “academy” in Montreal. He had already begun living there, and it was where he had met Henri. But the door to that opportunity had suddenly slammed shut. The same year a paper had been put before the UPL Council written by a group of anonymous military officers. It was titled “The Treatment of ‘Degenerate’ Psionic Assets in Training and Combat: An Analysis of Statistics and Subsequent Recommendations.” In it was a scathing deconstruction of many of the academy’s training methods and processes, the most notable of which their usage of “brain-panning” or memory erasure. Common wisdom was that eliminating an agent’s past made them more loyal. This paper, with statistics, case studies, and even some experiments, seemed to prove that it didn’t. One rhetorical question always stuck out to him, and it was the one that was his career’s undoing: “How can soldiers be loyal to a country they don’t remember?” Of all the arguments—that soldiers who were brain-panned could not relate to their commanders, that not being able to remember their families made them unable to form familial bonds among their comrades, and that making them unable to care for themselves in any practical sense put them at a disadvantage in survival situations—the question was the one that shut down the academies temporarily until they could be reformed. Reeves had sided against the paper and the revisions it would make. But the paper’s ideas had just enough patriotic spin on them. The regime changed and was out. And he was out with it.

Years later, a few months before the Expeditionary Fleet was about to leave, a memo was forwarded to him by a friend who had survived the change in leadership. It was from Vice Admiral Stukov. His friend had written a note with it saying, “Notice anything?” In his memo, Stukov had sent along Admiral DuGalle’s call for the number of ghosts that they needed to accompany them to the Koprulu sector. With it, he had sent his own qualifiers since they would be directly under his command. He “under no circumstances” wanted any ghost that had been brain-panned for any reason—and he explained why. In his explanation, there were several sentences that were worded in almost exactly the same way as the paper that had made its way to the UPL Council years ago. Either Stukov kept a copy around or he had written at least part of it. Reeves looked up the paper and read it again. Sure enough, in the passages where the language was the most heated and blunt, there he recognized Stukov’s voice. He had sidetracked Reeves’s career from afar—and it hadn’t been the first time.

But now, as he read Gregory’s file, he wondered how Stukov had been so prescient. How had he known his son—who wouldn’t have shown signs before Stukov left—would be a degenerate? Unless his father was. Wouldn’t that be the icing on the cake, Reeves thought. The bad egg. The spoiled apple. DuGalle’s pet a psionic. Gorman had been right about there being something fishy about the file. His psi index was rated at 5.5—too low for telekinesis and for the damage done to the brig. There were ghosts that were exceptions, but not many. His other scores were above average but not exceptional—as if he had been purposefully lowballing his tests or someone had changed his scores keep attention away from him. He would make some discrete inquiries to see who might be the culprit, but some of the information he was hoping the boy himself would divulge. A high psi index, holding back his powers, being too connected, or behaving erratically—all of these circumstances could potentially warrant brain-panning if presented the right way.

A brain-panned son would be just what Stukov deserved. Gregory needed it, he thought, all ghosts needed it. But if Gregory had any loyalty to his father—and if he had been trying to escape—it would be necessary regardless of how he felt about Stukov. He couldn’t lose him, and the look on Stukov’s face when he realized his son no longer knew who he was would balance the ledger that Reeves had been tallying of his misdeeds.

Reeves looked up the name of the chief ghost wrangler and trainer on board. He had seen several messages about a “missing ghost” from him but he had been ignoring them. He found his name—Special Ops Chief Shin. Shin picked up immediately when Reeves called. A weathered man appeared on the screen with close-cropped silver hair and one eye that was all white. In another place, he would have a prosthetic, but in the UED, such things weren’t allowed.

“Shin!” He said curtly as a greeting. Reeves didn’t like that.

“Chief Shin, this is Admiral Reeves…” He said, waiting for his authority over him to sink in. It never did.

“Yes? What do you need?”

“I have a recalcitrant ghost that needs to be re-educated.”

“You mean brain-panned? A drastic measure. I would need to evaluate them.”

“That will not be necessary.”

“Yes, it will. Is this about my missing ghost?”

“That is not your concern.”

“Like hell it isn’t. Where is he?”

“If you don’t have that machine ready in an hour, you’ll be in the same hole I put him in.”

“What? This is out—”

Reeves cut him off. He knew what he had to do, but he wanted to speak with the boy first.

The lights had been restored in the brig by the time Reeves entered. A tech was still working on the guard’s surveillance terminal, her head in an access port under the desk. The guard looked on, standing nearby, bored and helpless. An ensign was still sweeping up the glass in the hallway of the cell block. The guard quickly stood at attention when Reeves entered. The tech hit her head on the desk, but also stood at attention. Reeves barely acknowledged them.

“I want both of you to still be here when I come back out. Talk to no one, let no one leave, and send anyone who comes in away. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir!”

Reeves skulked into the cell block, gripping the datapad Gorman had given him in his hand. He stopped at Gregory’s cell and looked in at him. When Gregory saw him, he quickly stood, his large green eyes meeting his fleetingly and then darting away. There was a thick, white metal collar around his neck—the external dampener they had fitted him with. Most ghosts had a failsafe surgically implanted in their brains, but they were calibrated to the psi index in their files. If he had one, it would be incorrectly fitted if his file was wrong. As he looked at him, Reeves saw little of his father in him. Maybe the eye shape and the body type, but the rest was his mother, whom Reeves had met infrequently but vividly remembered. That made it easier to talk to him. If he’d looked like Stukov, he thought, it would have been a lot harder not to kill him there in the hangar. But it would be harder to brain-pan him, and, if it came to it, kill him later, When his father inevitably pisses me off.

He briefly thought about how hilarious it would be if it turned out Gregory wasn’t actually his son, and his wife had already been halfway out the door that long before their divorce. But he knew that wasn’t possible. The mandatory DNA screening most children went through to predict psionic ability would also have established paternity. Gregory had avoided testing—officer’s family privilege—until he most likely began to show signs of what the UED saw as an affliction. That was the first of many oddities of his file, which he would discuss with him.

Reeves held up the datapad for Gregory to see. “I have your dossier right here, Gregory…” Gregory’s eyes followed it nervously. “There are a few items I think you’d better explain.”

“Okay…” Gregory murmured.

“First, your file says not a thing about you being a teek. That’s a little odd, don’t you think?” He said, his voice raising with the question.”

“I… guess?”

“You guess? Any idea why that pertinent information was kept out of your file?”

Gregory was silent for a moment.

“Clerical error?” He finally said. Reeves’s eyes narrowed. He saw more of his father in him now. That was exactly the kind of flippant remark his father would make.

“Are you trying to be funny, son?”

“No, sir,” he said quickly. Reeves watched his face. He was obviously afraid of him. The remark had been guileless if a bit stupid.

“It also says your psi index is five and a half—and we both know that can’t possibly be right.”

“Why not?”

“Don’t play coy with me. We both know a human must have at least a PI of at least eight to be telekinetic. Tell me what your real number is.”

Gregory was silent again, looking away.

“Boy, if you don’t tell me, I’ll have it beaten out of you.”

“Eight point two,” he said wearily, “What does it matter?”

“Because one of my most powerful ghosts is exhibiting ‘erratic behavior,’ and may need some more permanent restraint than that psi dampener.” Gregory took a step back, the back of his leg hitting the bench behind him, causing him to lose his footing and fall against the wall.

“No, that’s not necessary…”

“You tried to escape.”

“I didn’t!”

“That’s enough!” A voice said from down the hallway. Dressed in a greying, threadbare ghost’s uniform covered by a long, black duster, Shin marched towards Reeves. Gregory stood up when he saw him. Shin ignored Reeves.

“Finally, I found you. I thought you’d gone AWOL. But that wasn’t right.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve been in here since we got here…”

“Don’t apologize. What have I told you about that?”

“I’m sor… I mean…”

“How did you get in here?” Reeves said, blustering.

“I’m a ghost? How else? You’re not hard to find. All I did was ask the computer where you were. You really should have your whereabouts clearance-locked.” Reeves fumed. “They didn’t hurt you, did they?” he said, turning back to Gregory.

“No, but he put a gun to my head.”

Shin turned quickly to Reeves, “You what?”

From down the hallway, another prisoner had woken, hearing the three of them talking. He began banging on the wall.

“Hello? Who’s there? I am a Terran Republic citizen, damn it. I demand due process and a lawyer.” It was Marcos Marinakis. Reeves had almost forgotten about him, but he needed him later.

“Shut up!” he yelled at him. Reeves’s rage was about to get the best of him. He turned back to Gregory.

“I sense your anger, Reeves,” Shin said calmly, “But this boy is not his father.” Reeves became irater at the imposition of Shin on his thoughts. He had accessed what amounted to classified data. Shin had not been privy to any briefings on Stukov and his appearance in the Koprulu sector.

“That thing is not my father!”

“What?” Reeves said, taken aback.

“It is a zerg-infested zombie and an abomination.” Reeves never considered that Gregory would not see Stukov as his father anymore. It hadn’t even occurred to him that Stukov may not be Stukov but instead a reanimated version of him. But the way Stukov had spoken to him, the stunt he had pulled��he had been more vicious than usual, but it wasn’t out of character. He had been his same, sardonic self. It had to have been the real Stukov; he felt it. His body may have been tainted by the zerg, but his mind was still there. Gregory had not been able to speak to him. He had only seen what he had done and had to believe that he had not betrayed and abandoned them all those years ago. Reeves realized that brain-panning would be a kindness to Gregory and to his father. He would not use it on him—not yet anyway. Down the hallway, Marinakis began making noise again.

“You can’t do this! I am a presidential candidate!

“You’re right, Shin. He’s not his father. His father is dead. We should be more respectful of that. Of course that thing we’re allied with is an abomination… But we must play along, right?”

Gregory nodded slowly, suspicious.

“There’s no reason to punish him, Reeves,” Shin said quietly.

“No, there isn’t. But he’ll have to stay here for his own safety…”

“Fine. As long as we don’t have need for the operation room…” Shin began. Marinakis bellowed in the background.

“Hold that thought, Shin. I think I still have use for your machine…”

#alexei stukov #stukov #starcraft #starcraft2 #starcraft 2 #fanfiction #fanfic #no omen no country's cause

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pinkbrown565 · 3 years ago

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Free Funk Bass Vst

Any recommendations on vst's (ideally free or cheap but I'll take anything) that can come close to what's going on in Daft Punk's get lucky or some of the funky leads in give life back to music? I think those are real bass lines but if anyone know good vst. VST 4 FREE - Free Audio Plug-ins and Archives. Free VST downloads: FabBass (Hofner violin bass by Samsara Cycle Audio) - Digital Nylon (Nylon guitar by TED) - Classic. Bass Synth with an attitude! The free TAL-BassLine VST plugin by Togu Audio Line features 1 pulse oscillator, 1 saw oscillator, 1 sub oscillator (square/ pulse), and 1 noise oscillator. The TAL-BassLine synth has a 18dB/oct filter, 1 envelope, 1 LFO, portamento, velocity control, an arpeggiator, and unison. A very cool bass synthesizer!

Synth Bass Vst Free

Best Free Bass Vst Plugin

Recording directly is as popular as ever nowadays. Loading up an amp sim is great for conveniently jamming, practicing, and recording bass without having to assemble a ton of gear.

With this ongoing trend, there is a vast virtual sea of amp simulators on the market to choose from (free and paid!)

Unfortunately, the majority of amp sims today are heavily tailored towards the six-string guitarists, while the bass players only get a fraction of bass amps and presets to choose from.

About This Post

From my experience learning bass and my love of amps sims. I have taken the time to construct this roundup post of the best amps simulators that are more tailored towards the bass players in 2019.

Jargon Busting

Plugin: (A programme application that can open within a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) to enhance audio-related functionality.)

Standalone version: (A software that can open independently within the desktop without requiring to open inside a DAW to make use of its features)

#1 – Amplitube 4

Price: €149 (base version)

Bass amps: 1

Standalone version: Yes

Demo version: Yes

Plugin: Yes

Win/Mac

64-bit only

Created by IK Multimedia, Amplitube 4 is one of the top dogs when it comes to amp simulators. Amplitube 4 includes the most detail and depth when it comes to tone sculpting and the most realistic sounding selection of bass amplifiers on the market.

In my opinion, this software is one of the best-paid amp simulators, offering players iconic and infinite amounts of tone creation with an impressive level of detail and sonic realism.

The interface also looks visually appealing and very easy to navigate for creating an arsenal of bass presets at will.

The level of customization in Amplitube 4 is insane, everything from…

Iconic modeled amps (guitar and bass)

Effects (stompboxes, distortion, reverb, modulation, delay etc)

Room ambiance simulation

Microphone selection and placement

Cabinet customization

Rack effects

Power tube customization

Built-in recording suite

Impressive visuals and interface

Tuner

I could go on for days about how detailed this programme is when it comes to tone sculpting. There is so much in this programme that will satisfy most tone freaks including the bass players.

The interface is easy to set up your ideal rig which can run in both standalone for practicing and jamming or a plug-in to record within your selected DAW.

The Base Version

Synth Bass Vst Free

When it comes to usability for bass players presets, the Base version only offers a single solid-state bass amp.

With that said, the level of customization with all aspects of your rig will be enough to keep you going and offer a lot of tone-sculpting options.

However, when you want to expand in tones with the likes of more bass amps, effects and presets here’s where the problem begins.

The negative with this sim is not the features and tones because they are spot on, the problem with Amplitube 4 is its pricing structure! Let me explain…

Pricing Structure

The negative with Amplitube 4 is as detailed, real, and accurate the presets sound. To get the full experience with a satisfactory amount of bass amps, cabinets, effects, and bass presets. You have to be willing to shell out a small fortune.

Either in the form of buying the ‘deluxe version’ which is not cheap at €299. Or buying the base version and paying for the official ‘Ampeg expansion packs’ or paying for individual amps and effects via the ‘IK Custom Shop.’

(The ‘IK Custom Shop’ is an online store to purchase and download extra packs or separate amps to your rig.)

Most Affordable Option

The Deluxe version includes a ton of regular guitar amps but when it comes to the bass players, the deluxe version only includes a grand total of 3 bass amps (they do sound great though.)

The cheaper option would be to buy the ‘Base version’ at €149 and purchase the separate bass amps/packs and or any patches or effects you want from the IK Custom Shop.

The IK Custom Shop good for hand picking the amps, effects or whatever you want in your custom rig.

In this article, we've listed eight of the best free VST plugins for vocal mixing. These include reverbs for vocal space creation, compressors for mixing glue, vocal doublers, and autotune – ensuring all those sweet notes hit the spot. 9 Best Vocal Compressor Plugin VST Software – Mixing the Perfect Vocals Let’s get your vocals under control with the best vocal compressor plugin software. As each compressor plugin software is different, and there are myriads out there to choose from, we’ll keep it simple, and take a look at 5 of best best choices out there. Best free vocal compressor vst. The free VST vocal effects plugin gives you the ability to control reverb parameters (pre-delay, space, time, and width), damping (low and high), EQ (lows, mids, and highs).

The problem is however, this can rack up a big bill fast as separate patches do not come cheap when purchased independently which quickly turns this amp sim into an endless money pit.

Why Amplitube 4?

Amplitube 4 is the option for bass players who want to invest a fair bit of money into a solid, usable, and fantastic sounding amp sim with tons of tone customization.

It is true that you pay for what you get in life and this is definitely the case with this software.

This option It is a little pricey but you will be rewarded with the investment of a solid amp sim to use for years to come with a crazy amount of tone customization and great sounding bass tones.

Which Version?

The version you go for depends on how far you want to invest for all of the bass presets.

Having the full programme would be ideal if you play guitar on the side or an avid recording bassist who wants the full palate of tones at their disposal.

In this case, Amplitube 4 is one of the most popular and overall best amp sim to give you an infinite amount of tones for your bass recording and jamming requirements.

Pros

Amazing sounding guitar and bass presets

Endless tone customization

Tons of features

Easy to create presets and your ideal rig

Use as standalone version or plugin

Ultimate all in one amp sim

Cons

Expensive investment

Have to invest money to get additional bass amps

Only supports 64-bit systems

Cheaper alternatives

2# – Bias Amp 2

Price: $299 (Elite version)

Bass amps: 4

Demo version: Yes

Standalone version: Yes

Plugin: Yes

32 & 64-bit systems

Win/Mac

Bias Amp 2 is somewhat different from most amp simulators. Most sims give you a selection of amps to twiddle and tweak the EQ parameters or even a few boost options.

However, Bias Amp 2 essentially allows players to build and design your own ‘custom bass amp’… literally from the ground up.

Players have the option to tweak the smallest details that go into amp design such as transformers, power tubes, preamp tubes, biasing, power supply and shelf frequencies.

And all these small details will affect the overall tone of the amp. For example, the way you tweak the transformers will affect the sound of the upper midrange.

This is a single example of how amazingly detailed this amp sim can be for sculpturing and creating your perfect core bass tone which will please all the tube amp players out there.

Features

The programme includes 4 bass amps presets which as mentioned, can be heavily tweaked and customized to your personal preferences when it comes to amp design.

This is before dialing the amps EQ or playing around with the selection of microphones, microphone placement, and cabinet speaker selection.

This programme gives the heavy tweakers and tube amp purists a field day when it comes to shaping your perfect bass tone.

This amp simulator focuses heavily on the level of customization that goes into the core amps design and elements which is good for tube amp purists.

Other features include the ‘Tonecloud’ which is an online community allowing users to upload and download amps presets created by members of the community.

Allowing users to audition and download some of the best presets rated and uploaded to the cloud adding users to share their best tones.

A noise gate is included and a selection of reverbs types to choose from with customizable parameters to dial in an ambient reverb to go with your perfect bass amp.

Sound

When it comes to sound and authenticity of a real tube amp, Bias Amp 2 has redesigned the previous engine used in the original Bias Amp.

Improving the responsiveness and realism when it comes to the dynamics, frequencies, and nuances of the sound of their line of tube amplifiers and cabs.

This new engine software, the tones are authentic and sound great when DI through any recording software adding a level of realism to any dry bass signal.

The Negatives

The only let down about this sim is there are no usual stompbox effects such as distortion, overdrive, flanger, phaser, or special effects etc like in other sims.

Another negative is that you have to pay the full price for the elite level to get the full experience which is not cheap at $299.

Saying that however, with the level of customization from this sim there is a lot of features and some great professional tube amp tones available from Bias Amp 2.

Pros

Detailed and in-depth amp sim designer for bass and guitar

Authentic and responsive sound

High level of tone customization

Standalone version

Tonecloud community

Amp matching feature

#3 – Helix Native

Price: $399

Bass amps: 13

Standalone: No

Demo Version: Yes

Win/Mac

Plugin: Yes

Helix Native by Line 6 is one of the most expensive amp sims on this list but offers a huge array of presets. Including 60 amps, (13 bass amps), 30 cabs and 100+ effects accommodating nicely for bass players.

Helix Native features the most bass amps on this list all modeled form popular and iconic bass amps from ‘Hiwatt,’ ‘Ampeg’ and ‘Mesa Boogie’ for example.

Features

The interface follows a simple design of dragging, dropping presets into the signal chain with each aspect of the rig can be shaped with the designated sliders to change the dynamics of the sound.

This sim caters in the effect department with everything you could want for shaping your ideal tone and experimenting with sounds.

Distortion

Dynamics

Modulation

Delay/Reverb

Pitch Shift

Filters etc

Wah

Synth

This amp sim may not be the most visually appealing. But with lots of things going on inside a DAW, users can be thankful for the simple function of creating authentic bass tones without a cluttered interface. Excessive menus and other bells and whistles can distract from the usabailityin my opinion.

The Negative

The elephant in the room with this amp sim is the price! It is one of the most expensive options n this list and seems a lot of money for an amp sim just for using for bass.

On the plus side, you will have professional bass and guitar recording producers covered with a large number of amps, effects, and features.

This option would be a suitable option if you are a bass player that plays guitar on the side. Or if you happen to record other guitarists as a producer in a home studio situation.

Pros

Simple interface

Versatile selection of bass amps and cabs

Realistic tones

Large selection of effects

High level of tone customization

#4 – Softube Bass Amp Room

Price $149

Presets: 1 amp, 3 cabinets

Standalone Version: No

Free Demo: Yes

Plugin: Yes

Win/Mac

Bass Amp Room by Softube stands out from most sims. Most programmes aim to please the masses with a ton of presets, effects and other bells and whistles. ‘Bass Amp Room’ from Softube however, do things differently…

Bass Amp Room only includes the one charming bass amp and a selection of 3 cabinets to choose from. So why am I recommending this considering the lack of bass amps?

The reason is that Softube have focused all their time and energy achieving the most ‘accurate’ and ‘realistic’ core sound from both head and 3 cabinets using their advanced modeling technology.

Although the interface looks simple, don’t underestimate the quality of tones from this sim. They are one of the most authentic that I have heard from any bass amp software.

What’s Included

The one available bass head replicates the iconic ‘Hiwatt DR103’ head while the bass cabinet is based off a classic ‘Ampeg’ 8×12 cab.

Bass Amp Room does an incredible job of simulating the tonal and sonic qualities of a bass tone down to the tee. Although added features are scarce, I will admit, the bass amp sims are one of the most authentic tonally.

The tone shaping abilities offer a good level of customization allowing you to modify the core building blocks of a tone. Everything from…

Amp Head EQ

Click and drag microphone placement

Microphone tilt (off axis)

DI EQ controls

Pickup input gain

Tone blending features

Unfortunately, Bass Amp Room doesn’t include any stompbox effects or features such as tuner, additional bass amps or a standalone version but does include a free 20-day demo version to test it out.

A good way to utilize this programme is to use it in your DAW to create an authentic raw sounding bass tone.

Then enable desired plug-ins to build on the tone in the form of effects adding ‘icing on the cake’ sounds and effects that are unavailable in the software.

Pros

Authentic sounding bass tones

Versatile tones for most genres (rock, metal, funk, jazz, etc)

Enough tone shaping customization

Solid sounding bass tones for recording in a DAW

Dial a tone in quick without overcomplicating anything

Cons

A tad on the pricey side for one bass head

No standalone version

No stompboxes or effects

No additional amps or cabs to expand in sounds

#5 – GTR-3

Price: $49

Bass amps: 7

Standalone: Yes

Plug-in: Yes

64-bit only

PC/Mac

Free Demo: No

GTR-3 by Waves for the price, includes a great number of bass amps and stompboxes rolled into a simple and compact interface for easy tone customization. This software is well equipped for bass players with the inclusion of 7 bass amps.

The GTR-3 replicates bass tones with impressive accuracy adding a level of realism to any bass signal with any DAW and audio interface.

The pedalboard allows 6 designated spaces for stomp boxes with a selection of 26 effects which can be modified to add a surprising level of tone sculpting. It also runs a standalone version for running on the desktop without having to load it up as a plugin in a DAW.

I must admit, GTR-3 is not as heavily loaded with features as the other amp sims, excluding some features such as microphone customization, room ambiance, built in recording etc.

However, for the price, you do get a lot of great sounding amps and effects which in the grand scheme is great value for money.

Best for

This programme may not be for the tone twiddling freaks out there like other amp sims. However, this programme does not make too much of a deal and is designed and marketed to be simple and straight to the point.

GTR-3 is a good option for any bass players who are maybe new to the amp sim world. Possibly looking for an easy to use guitar modeling software who are not looking to spend a fortune first time around.

Pros

Simple easy to use

Affordable

Authentic sounding amps and effects

Standalone version

#6 – GK Amplification 2 Pro

Price: $79

Bass Amps: 3

Free Demo: Yes

Standalone: Yes

Win/Mac

Plugin: Yes

GK stands for Gaillain and Kruker. For all of you who are unaware, GK is a high-end bass amp and cabinet manufacturer based in the US.

GK Amplification 2 Pro is an affordable and versatile bass amp sim offering 3 popular emulated versions from their line of bass heads for adding to your mixes or jamming on the side. The heads available are the popular CK bass head models.

GK MB150

GK 800RB

GK 2001 RB

This sim also offers a large selection of cabinets to match with your ideal bass head. A good feature is combining 2 speaker cabs for a mash and blend of cabinet sounds allowing a good level of tonal customization.

The main tonal options you can customize with this amp sim are…

Bass Head EQ

Boost option

Voicing filters

Microphone positioning

Microphone type selection

Microphone angle

Cabinet tone blending

GK Amplification Pro 2 programme includes a metronome and track recorder which is useful for recording moments of inspiration and creative ideas in the standalone version. This programme is available for use as a plug-in within a DAW.

Overall this programme is an affordable, easy to use and great sounding amp sim for dialing in solid bass tones for recording or jamming. There are no effects in the form of stompboxes which can leave users feeling a little empty handed for experimenting with sounds.

I would say this software is more geared towards recording in a DAW for adding addition plug-ins for effects, therefore, adding more tone shaping capabilities.

Pros

Gallain-Kruker bass tones

Simple interface

Recording track

Metronome

Affordable

Good amount of tonal shaping

Standalone version

#7 – Ignite Amps SB-1

Price: Free

Presets: 1 Amp

Standalone version: No

Win/Mac

Cabinet plugin Required: Yes

Plugin: Yes

The SHB-1 is a virtual simulation of the actual real-life SHB-1 amp head created by Ignite amps for the bassist Frederico Fulceri of metal band ‘Subhuman.’

Every component in the real amp including the circuitry and tube technology was considered to create the most accurate and well represented simulated version of the SHB-1 bass head as functional plugin.

It’s no surprise then the SHB-1 plugin is a modeled aggressive sounding bass tube head, transforming a dry bass signal to a distorted, aggressive and mid focused metal sound without changing the core dynamics of the bass tone.

For me, this is where the plugin sounded at it’s best as it is voiced to sound aggressive and metal. What I liked about this plugin was the simple interface with a good amount of EQ and tone shaping controls for a free plugin.

I must say the amp head is surprisingly versatile, I have used this preset (before going to paid simulators) on many projects and was able to shape a number of bass tones across a range of genres.

I must admit, the SHB-1 plugin sounded at its best for sculpting an aggressive and distorted tube amp tone for my metal tracks.

When it comes to function, this plugin serves as a recording tool inside your DAW than a ‘standalone programme’ for real-time practicing and jamming. This programme also requires a matched cabinet simulator when you load up the plugin inside your DAW.

Overall, the SHB-1 serves as a great free simulator for creating a versatile palate of bass sounds for recording and achieving a range of worthy studio bass tones within your recording software.

Pros

Free

Simple interface

Great sounding bass tube head plugin

Supports 32 and 64-bit systems

Great amp sim for recording

Top Tip

When recording bass inside your DAW, activate up to 3 separate tracks, each track with a different amp sim enabled. This will blend a range of sounds to achieve a unique tone allowing the bass frequencies to stand out ever so more in a full instrument mix.

UNMIX::DRUMS is the world’s first audio plugin that allows attenuating or boosting drums in mixed music, in real-time. Using advanced source signal separation (a.k.a. De-mixing, unmixing, sound extraction, sound isolation) technology under the hood, UNMIX::DRUMS provides frequency dependent drum level control that ranges from up to +18dB of boost to virtually complete removal. – while. Unmix frums vst free reddit. Zynaptiq - Audio software based on artificial intelligence technology. To download the latest version of UNMIX DRUMS, which will run as a fully functional, 30-day free trial if. Who has unmix drums? Hmu if you wanna trade something. This thread is archived. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. 1 point 3 years ago. Help Reddit App Reddit coins Reddit premium Reddit gifts.

You could also assign each individual amp sim to focus on the frequencies ranges of the tone. For example, one on the high, one on the mids and one focusing on the lows.

It’s always a good idea to utilize a few amps sims instead of relying on one to provide 100% of the tonality and do all the work.

Best Free Bass Vst Plugin

Final Word

Before buying a paid amp sim, I always recommend first downloading the free demo version of the programme. So you can trial which one sounds best to your ears and meets your requirements in a bass amp sim.

This post has brought you a selection of the best bass amp simulators for all of your recording and tone tweaking needs, thanks for reading!

Before you go, there are other ways to amplify a bass guitar for practicing without amp simulators…

I recommended you read my post “Plugging a Bass into a Guitar Amp.” This will explain how to get a workable bass tone for practicing without needing to invest in a bedroom bass amp.

Introduce yourself and your program

No Spam, no Junk! Your information will *never* be shared or sold to a 3rd party.

Frontline Producer presents Full Funk Bass 2, a studio fresh collection of seriously funky bass lines, licks and riffs. Following on from the immensely popular Full Funk Bass, this sequel is another steadily grooving collection of bass samples that will underpin your tunes with low-end excellence.

Full Funk Bass 2 has a huge helping of excellent bass content in a host of formats. Loops within come in a whole host of keys and tempos, ensuring you’ll have the grooves you’ll need to nail your rhythm section. A mixture of major and minor keys is included, with inspiration coming from Bootsy Colllins, Victor Wooten, Flea and many more!

High quality electric funk bass sounds seep from this collection, with a mixture of one-shots included that you can write your own lines with. You’ll find 10 unique bass one-shots as well as a funk bass multi sample and a slap bass multi sample, perfect for providing your structures with a little variation.

Loops included play between 100-130bpm, making this one perfect for funk, disco, house and any other genres with a penchant for funky basslines.

In detail, Full Funk Bass 2 contains 268 MB of content. With all audio at 24Bit 44.1KHZ. There are 136 Electric Bass Loops and 136 Rex2 Files. One-shots included are 1 Funk Bass Multi, 1 Slap Bass Multi and 10 Bass Sounds. Also included are 3 Soft Sampler Patches for Halion, Kontakt, EXS24, SFZ and NNXT.

0 notes

perfectirishgifts · 4 years ago

Text

Campfire Audio’s New Dorado Earphones Come Close To Perfection

New Post has been published on https://perfectirishgifts.com/campfire-audios-new-dorado-earphones-come-close-to-perfection/

Campfire Audio’s New Dorado Earphones Come Close To Perfection

The Campfire Audio Dorado 2020 are a beautiful-sounding pair of hybrid earphones that set the … [] benchmark for high-end hybrid designs.

Back in May of this year, I had the opportunity to review the Solaris IEMs (In-Ear Monitors) from Portland-based Campfire Audio. Frankly, they were the best earphones I think I’ve ever heard and showcased Campfire Audio’s skill at tuning earphone drivers, making the company one of the best producers of high-end earphones.

This month I’ve been fortunate enough to get my hands on a review pair of Campfire Audio’s Dorado 2020 earphones. The original Dorado earphones were launched back in 2015 and now the design has been reconfigured. The Dorado cost slightly less than the Solaris IEMs that I reviewed, but they promise a similar level of performance, albeit with a slightly simpler driver arrangement.

The Dorado uses a hybrid design using a very high quality 10mm dynamic driver for reproducing the bass and midrange frequencies, plus a single balanced armature driver takes care of the treble and upper frequencies. There’s no complicated crossover, just physical tuning and placement of each driver to create the ultimate audio sweet spot.

The shells of the Dorado 2020 earphones are made from sintered ceramic and then polished for three … [] days to create a shiny and scratchproof finish. Memory foam tips are provided.

A lot of people will question whether it’s worth paying $1,000 for a pair of earphones. If you’re someone who loves their music and it’s a passion in your life, then it’s not unreasonable to want the best, especially if you’re pairing the earphones with a source such as one of Astell&Kern’s top-range of digital audio players. I wouldn’t advocate spending that much money on a pair of earphones for use with the average smartphone, but if you have a great audio source you will be short-changing your musical experience if you don’t pair it with earphones that can do it justice.

Like all Campfire Audio products, the Campfire Dorado are exquisitely handmade, with the shells of the earpieces constructed from ceramic. The benefit of using ceramic is that it is a dense material and works very well with dynamic drivers thanks to its resistance to vibrations. It’s also hard-wearing and scratch-resistant, keeping the earphones looking beautiful for longer.

To make the Dorado earphones both durable and tough, the shells are sintered by being cooked at a temperature of 600˚C for two days. This is followed by three days spent in an oven at a whopping 1,200˚C which bakes the ceramic hard and reduces the physical volume of the shells, thus making them even denser. Finally, the shells spend up to three days being tumbled with alumina stones and water until they develop a highly polished gloss surface. All this attention to detail is partly why the Dorado cost more than many other earphones.

Each earpiece of the Dorado is fitted with a beryllium MMCX mini coaxial connector enabling the … [] cable to be upgraded or replaced.

The new Dorado 2020 are fitted with a machined brass spout finished in a gunmetal grey P.V.D. finish. The conical shape of the spout, coupled with its small diameter, affects the tuning of the shells and makes them more comfortable to wear. The tiny balanced armature sits in the middle of the brass spout and brings the treble a little more forward from the other frequencies so that the upper registers are enhanced by just the right amount.

Although the Dorado 2020 are supplied with a high-grade smoky Litz wire cable that’s terminated with MMCX connectors made from custom beryllium. The cable can be detached for upgrading or should it become damaged. The cable terminates with an L-shaped 3.5mm stereo jack plug. Campfire Audio supplies the Dorado with a range of silicone ear-tips in various sizes as well as memory foam tips that create a secure acoustic seal as they expand to fit the wearer’s ear canal. The whole package is stored in a zippered case which is made in Portugal from recycled plastic material.

Campfire Audio has supplied a zippered storage case with the Dorado 2020 earphones which is made … [] from recycled plastics.

The earphones fit by trailing the cable from the back of the listener’s ear, over the top of the ear and then dropping down to fit in the ear canal. This keeps the earpieces in place and reduces microphonics, the annoying vibrations created when earphone cables rub against each other or an item of clothing. And thanks to the small size of the earpieces, the Dorado feel very comfortable even when worn for longer listening sessions.

I paired up the Dorado earphones with an Astell&Kern Kann digital audio player. That’s the quality of sound source these earphones deserve but they still worked fine with my iPhone SE, which has a jack for wired headphones. How I miss the ability to use wired headphones on newer iPhones.

The sound produced by the Dorado is different from the Solaris, but I’d say it is, in some ways, better. The lusciousness of the bass and the solidity of the midrange is awesome. Add in the resolution of the single balanced armature that’s handling the treble frequencies and you have a sound that comes close to perfect in terms of tonal balance.

Also included with the Campfire Audio Dorado 2020 is a selection of ear tips, a cleaning brush and a … [] storage pouch.

I tested the Dorado earphones by listening to Australian singer Emily Barker’s new album A Dark Murmuration of Words. With shades of Mary Hopkin and Joni Mitchell in her voice, Barker’s vocals have the timbre of an angel. They sound beautifully clean and ethereal, while details like guitar and banjo are perfectly articulated by the Dorado. Meanwhile, the kick drum and bass anchoring the track “Machine” are perfectly reproduced. In the past, I’ve listened to earphones where the treble is wonderfully delicate and perfectly clear, yet the bass is often lightweight and flabby.

Conversely, some earphones produce a wonderfully warm bass, but the treble is woolly, loose and muffled. The Dorado manage to separate the bass, mid and treble frequencies with perfect balance. It’s particularly noticeable with cymbals and finger clicks on the “Machine” track while the bass lines rumble underneath but without ever sounding overbearing or bleeding over the midrange. It’s a clever sonic balancing trick and I think the people who tuned the Dorado have managed to hit the sweet spot perfectly.

The Dorado 2020 earphones fit by hooking over the back of the listener’s ears.

Years of reviewing earphones, headphones and speakers have taught me one thing: the more you pay the better the balance. Sometimes you come across cheaper earphones that manage to get a good balance across the tonal range, but it’s rare to have it approaching perfection. And that’s what you get with the Campfire Audio Dorado; you get perfection, at least for my tonal preferences.

Verdict: I realize that not everyone is in the market for a pair of earphones that cost the best part of $1,100. However, for people who love their music as much as life itself, it’s not a huge price to pay to get the most from music. The Campfire Audio Dorado 2020 are a worthy upgrade to their predecessor and are an incredible investment for anyone who owns a high-quality audio player. I love the fact that Campfire Audio has managed to get a perfect tone by using a hybrid arrangement of one dynamic driver and a single balanced armature. This arrangement makes the Dorado more robust than IEMs that feature multiple balanced armature drivers and complicated crossovers. The sound is more natural, especially when reproducing vocals and strings. There’s a definite analog feel to the Dorado that can tame the harshest of digital recordings without losing any detail. The soundstage created is and beautiful and wide, but not so wide that it sounds unnatural or artificial. If you’ve been looking for a great pair of earphones to pair with a great digital audio player or smartphone, then I’d highly recommend the Campfire Audio Dorado 2020. These are the real deal.

Pricing: $1,099 / £1,099 / €1,199

More info: www.campfireaudio.com

Tech Specs:

Frequency response: 5 Hz – 22 kHz

Sound Pressure Level: 94 dB SPL @ 1kHz: 18.52 mVrs

Impedance: 10 Ohm @ 1kHz

Material: Black Ceramic Shell

Balanced armature: Single Custom unit for treble

Dynamic Driver: 10mm A.D.L.C. Diaphragm for midrange and bass

Magnet: Oversized Neodymium Rare Earth

Connections: Custom Beryllium / Copper MMCX Connections

From Consumer Tech in Perfectirishgifts

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chipotle · 7 years ago

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The "A" word

In the wake of Apple’s HomePod release, I’ve seen talk about whether it is or isn’t an “audiophile” speaker. A Reddit post went through an inordinate number of tests to argue that yes, in fact, it is; Chris Connaker of The Computer Audiophile goes into great golden ear detail to call bullshit.1

First off, let’s address the snake oil in the room. There’s a decades-long debate in audio circles between “objective” (if you can’t measure a difference, you can’t hear a difference) and “subjective” (measurements don’t capture everything you can hear in terms of sound quality). While I lean toward the objectivist side, the subjectivists aren’t intrinsically bananas; it’s not hard to find audio components—particularly speakers—with similar measurements that still produce different sound.

The problem that we run into is when subjectivists step beyond “there are things you can hear that aren’t reflected in measurements” and stand firmly on “there are things you can hear which can’t be subject to testing, period, only listening.” This, in a nutshell, is how audiophile came to be synonymous in the popular imagination with rich white guy who buys $550 USB cables. Sure, the fact that nobody can consistently distinguish the sound of that cable from a $5 one might be due to an inherent flaw with the very concept of double-blind testing, but there are other possibilities one could plausibly entertain.

My own definition of audiophile is fairly prosaic: someone who wants a system capable of reproducing the source recording as closely as possible. I found fairly early on that spending a few hundred bucks more here and there in my system made what were, to my ears, profound differences in quality. (I also learned that calibrating and positioning speakers properly makes just as big a difference.)

When reviews talk about the HomePod being “audiophile,” though, they’re not using my definition, and they’re certainly not using the Computer Audiophile’s. What they mean is: “does this sound good?” Does it outperform other audio-systems-in-a-can? Does it have low lows and high highs and, uh, middle mids? Does it fill the room? Does it seem expensive at $350, or is it punching above its weight class? From most reports, it’s damn impressive for a system that’s only $350.

Did I say “Only?” Yes. It’s a lot cheaper than my system, let me tell you. And my system is (ahem) just a wee bit cheaper than Connaker’s: the speakers he used in his reference system were around $45,000 for the pair. He defended this by arguing that he needed a reference system for, well, reference. I’m not saying that’s wrong, but I’m questioning how much we truly learn about a Mazda 3 by taking it out on the Nürburgring with our reference Audi R8.

I’ve only heard the HomePod for a few minutes in an Apple Store. It sounded…fine, other than bass so pumped up it verged on the comical. I’d like to hear it in, ah, a less challenging environment sometime. But I knew going in—as did Connaker, surely—that it not only performs automatic room correction and equalization, it “separates the music into direct and ambient sound,” in Apple’s words. There’s a truckload of processing going on here, which is antithetical to what audio purists look for. It isn’t meant for, as audiophiles would put it, “critical listening”; it’s meant to be something you can stick in a corner, shout Hey, Siri, play The Wandering Hearts at, and have not just that corner but the whole room filled with pretty good-sounding music. It’s a “sound first” smart speaker, not a High-End Reference System in a Tube. It’s Apple saying, “Hey, you can have something like Alexa, but have it sound way better,” and it does.2

The perennial lament of the audiophile is that the Unenlightened Masses accept low quality sound as “good enough,” and that if only they’d spend a little more they’d understand. And, you know, I did spend a little more, and there’s definite truth here. But while cheap junk is generally still cheap junk, the “midrange” of the audio world like Marantz, Denon, B&W and KEF has gotten great over the last couple of decades. I won’t get into arguments over bit rates and audio formats; if you can consistently hear the difference between CD quality and “high resolution” audio in a blind test, good on you, but most people can’t. (If instead you want to argue that proves blind tests are garbage, well, bless your heart.) Personally, I’m not convinced I can reliably tell the difference between lossless and well-mastered, high-bitrate lossy; I do know that when I stream that (gasp) 256K AAC Apple Music through my stereo, it sounds pretty good.

Ironically, that’s why I have no plans to buy a HomePod. It would surely be more convenient than my setup, but the HomePod is aimed squarely at households that don’t have or want a living room AV system, or want a secondary music-only system in another room.3 Neither of those describe my living situation presently. But I know people for whom it would be better than good enough.

It’s worth noting that since the Reddit post was published and widely shared, the author has walked back some of these claims, as per the edit at the post’s top. ↩

Of course, it’s not Alexa, it’s Siri. But you’ve never heard it say “I’m sorry, I can’t find the track ‘Egg Freckles'” in audio quality this high before! ↩

The HomePod is very clearly not designed to be a TV speaker, even in a stereo pair, although I’m sure some enterprising nerd will find a way to do it and be dreadfully disappointed. ↩

#audio #homepod #Tech

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taww · 6 years ago

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Review: Silverline SR17 Supreme loudspeaker

Silverline SR17 Supreme loudspeaker

The Audiophile Weekend Warrior (TAWW)

TAWW Rating: 5 / 5

Combining the body and scale of a larger speaker with traditional mini-monitor virtues, the SR17 Supreme is an exceptional conveyor of musical color and expression.

PROS: Organic midrange tone; top-to-bottom coherence; ample scale and dynamics; superb imaging; unfussy setup.

CONS: Smidge of lower midrange coloration; favors acoustic over electronic music; awkward recessed terminals.

This review has been a long time coming. Back in 2010, @mgd-taww gave the Silverline SR17 Supreme (USD $7,500) a rave review in Bound for Sound magazine, and heartily recommended them to me as an upgrade to my Merlin TSM speakers. It took me 8 years and a move to the West Coast to finally reach out to Silverline for a review pair; then another 15 months of listening to get around to this review. In the meantime, lots of speakers have come and gone in the market, particularly in the 2-way monitor category saturated with offerings at every conceivable price point. And yet, to my ears, the SR17 Supreme endures as one of the most satisfying speakers of its kind. Read on for my take on how it’s withstood the test of time.

History & Design

Silverline is a small speaker manufacturer based out of Walnut Creek, California, a short drive northeast of San Francisco. The SR17 is one of their first models dating back to a couple years after their incorporation in 1996:

1998: The SR17 debuted at the 1998 Stereophile Show in LA, sporting a Dynaudio D28/2 tweeter and Esotec 17WLQ midwoofer.

1999: Updated with an Esotec D260 tweeter and revised crossover.

2004: The SR17.5 was introduced, with increased internal volume via a deeper cabinet for better bass response.

2009: The SR17 Supreme is introduced with an Esotar T330D tweeter and further refinements.

Proprietor/designer/craftsman Alan Yun has continued tweaking the Supreme over the last decade, and though the Dynaudio drivers he prefers are out of production he’s stockpiled enough units for years of production and repairs. The enclosure, recognizable by its trapezoidal shape and depth, is manufactured in China by a shop that does cabinet work for a number of high-end marques, with final assembly performed by Alan’s own hand. He shared a bit more about their production:

California has strict environmental regulations. The paints on cabinets are governed by strict rules, and is why there are fewer and fewer cabinet makers in California. Many manufacturers now find their production overseas.

Actually our cabinets were rawly made in China, painted, and the final detailing is done by me, also putting sonic materials inside the cabinets. This job is pretty tricky for tweaking the sound. The crossovers were handmade by me, matching components, soldering, etc. The drivers were fitted carefully and precisely by my hands with European-made T-15A screws. Final testing and listening are all done by me in my workshop. 😅 Therefore, the SR 17 is rather unique. I am also the original designer of this shape/type of speaker cabinet since 1996. I did research and to the best of my knowledge there were no similar designs then.

Large, but not ungainly, atop Dynaudio Stand 6′s

The depth of the cabinet - 15 inches, to be exact - gives it a rather top-heavy look on a typical stand, but it’s mitigated by the elegant tapered profile. My pair was impeccably finished on all sides in rosewood veneer. Rapping down the sides revealed it to be very solid, but not as fanatically braced and damped as my old Merlin TSM monitors or the Audiovector SR 1. Each speaker weighs around 26 lbs. The bi-wire terminals are recessed, which made them a bit of a pain, particularly as they have larger rectangular posts that will take 1/4" spades only in certain directions - I recommend banana terminations.

The crossover sports just 4 components, with 1st order high-pass (tweeter) and 2nd order low-pass (woofer) filters. Parts quality - Solen metallized polypropylene capacitors, a generic-looking wirewound resistor and an air-core inductor - is solid but hardly fancy, a deliberate decision by Alan who isn’t much of a believer in expensive boutique parts. Based on the results he’s achieved here, it’s hard to argue.

Cardas jumpers sounded better than the stock bridges to my ears. Stick with bananas for the cable termination - spades are awkward.

Setup

The SR17 is fairly efficient (nominally 90.5 dB/watt @ 8 ohms), but more importantly it's easy to drive - my Ayre AX7e, known for being rather limited in the power delivery department, sounded open and effortless. Alan Yun said the Dynaudio drivers love current and will benefit from powerful amplifiers, yet will sing with low-powered tube amps. I can confirm it loved the grunt of the 300wpc Bryston 4B Cubed, yet I never felt lower-power amps like the Ayre or Bryston B60 integrateds were lacking for dynamics. And my favorite pairing by far was with the 55-watt Valvet A4 Mk.II class A monoblocks sporting a single pair of bipolar output devices. (Incidentally, Alan’s favorite amp paring with the SR17 is the 30-watt Pass Labs XA30.5, which @mgd-taww can attest to being a magical combo.)

Similarly, I found the SR17 easy-going when it came to cables. My preferred cable had more to do with the amp used, but I got good results from a single run of Audience Au24 SX [review], Cardas Clear Light and DH Labs Q10 Signature cables. With the Audience, I felt the speaker was the sweetest and most dimensional; the DH Labs brought out more bass power and treble brilliance; while the Cardas brought out more upper midrange presence. With the Bryston 4B3 amp, I settled on the Cardas; with the Ayre and Valvet, the Audience was the clear winner. Unlike with the Audiovector SR 1 Avantgarde Arreté (review forthcoming), I didn't find bi-wiring to lend a noticeable improvement, but I did prefer replacing the stock metal jumpers with nicer Cardas ones from my Merlin TSM's for a little more refinement.

As with any high-quality monitor, stands are important. Something around 24-25” height seems right, though I wouldn’t be afraid to sit them an inch or two lower as the speakers are capable of projecting good image height. A trend these days is to decouple speakers from the stands/floor, but the SR17’s are “old school” in that they prefer tight coupling, meaning heavy suckers with spikes and a judicious amount of BluTack on the top plate. My old Osiris stands, heavy dual-column steel beauties loaded with sand, were a perfect match, but sadly I sold them with my Merlin TSM’s; they were replaced by higher-WAF but inferior-sounding Dynaudio Stand 6’s, which in stock form are quite light and choked the sound of the Silverlines. Fortunately I was able to get them to a better place with some tweaks; not as good as the Osiris, but close. A better choice sonically might be something like the Target Audio MR stand with the four pillars mass-loaded.

Pulling them out further improves imaging, but they still work well relatively close to the back wall.

Placement was pretty standard for a monitor speaker - keep it at least a couple feet from the back wall, with a 2:3 width-to-listener distance ratio and toed in about halfway. In my room, which has a number of living constraints, I had the back of the speaker about 21” from the wall, tweeters 76” apart and the plane of the speaker 8 ft. from my ears. While many small-box monitors rely (often excessively) on rear ports for low-end boost, the bass tuning on the SR17 is far more subtle and sophisticated - putting my ear to the port, I heard a fairly modest amount of output. I remarked this to Alan, and he described the port as more a method of pressure equalization than bass volume. This means in a pinch I could push the speakers as close as 12" from the wall without fear of low notes booming out of control. All in all, for being such a high-performing design, the SR17 is remarkably easy to live with.

The Sound

The first thing my wife, a professional oboist, noticed about music through the SR17 is how dynamically alive it was. I had just wrapped up my review of the Silverline Minuet Grand, a superb $2k speaker that is no dynamic slouch itself. And even though the SR17 was fresh out of the box and Alan warned me it would take some time to run in, the very first notes from the SR17 sung with expressiveness and vibrance. I think it took all of 15 minutes of listening to Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra streaming radio for her to remark, “I like this speaker.” She’s normally nonchalant about hi-fi, and yet has ears that can pick apart sonic deficiencies in about 90 seconds, so that amounts to a rave! And what made it so immediately engaging wasn't some artificial emphasis or hype; it was a feeling of unimpeded dynamic flow that makes most other speakers sound a bit drab. The SR17 lets music breath freely, carrying you with the ebb and flow of a tune and conveying every turn of a phrase with a sense of ease and conviction.

The next thing we noticed is how natural and palpable everything sounds through the SR17. Tonally, the SR17 is on the very slightly warm side of neutral; it combines reassuring solidity and density from the mid-bass through the midrange with an open, extended top end and fine harmonic resolution. Its ability to paint with a wide palette of tonal colors brings out the distinctive character of instruments and voices, making orchestral music a delight - just put on a Living Stereo recording such as Debussy’s Iberia [Tidal, Qobuz, Spotify] and the front of your room will explode with the virtuosity of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s playing. Scale it down to smaller stuff like a Beethoven string quartet, and you’ll savor the finer gradations of timbre between the cello, viola and violin.

What you won’t notice is any discontinuity between the woofer and tweeter. These Dynaudio drivers were made to work together, and the minimal crossover mating them is superbly executed. The upper midrange around the crossover point is seamless, and I can’t remember a single moment over the course of hundreds of hours of listening when I noticed the tweeter sticking out on the face of the speaker, something that ails even the finest, most expensive dynamic speakers from time to time. In this respect the SR17 is up there with the very best and is utterly free of listening fatiguing.

As a violinist, I feel obliged to point out the Silverline’s superb reproduction of the violin G string. If you ever want to test out a speaker’s tonal truthfulness in the lower midrange (right around middle C, 262Hz), put on the 2nd movement of the Glazunov violin concerto performed by Jascha Heifetz [Tidal, Qobuz, Spotify], or the 2nd movement of the Sibelius concerto performed by Lisa Batiashvili [Tidal, Spotify]. This is oh-so-tricky to get right; as the lowest string on the instrument, it’s the richest and deepest; and yet the violin is not a viola or cello - it’s a more subtle and delicate richness. Speakers that lack body will sound thin and washed out and minimize the difference in timbre vs. the D string above; woolly or bloated speakers will thicken it or blow the instrument out of proportion. The SR17 performs this balancing act better than anything I’ve heard in my living room, or in most any system for that matter. It rides the line between warmth and clarity in that register, lending tangible realism to piano, male vocals and low brass instruments as well.

Going down the frequency range, the SR17’s extra cabinet volume vs. a typical mini monitor gives it power and scale more akin to a floorstander. My room is a 17 x 19 x 8.5 ft. open layout living/kitchen area with floor-to-ceiling windows and an offset listening point along the long wall, so while not huge, it presents a bit of an acoustic challenge that smaller speakers have struggled to fill. The SR17 had no trouble projecting a big, bold sonic image, and can cleanly play as loud as you’d reasonably want in such a space. It has sufficient body and power down to 60Hz or so to give music real foundation, with meaningful output down to 40Hz. I think Silverline’s quoted 32Hz bottom limit is a bit optimistic (or perhaps you just need the right room), and I preferred the speaker with my REL T-9 subwoofer providing a little extra oomph. But for a great many listeners in moderately-sized spaces, this will be all the speaker you ever need. Listening to “The Elephant” from Saint-Saëns Carnival of the Animals [Tidal, Qobuz, Spotify], a track I’ve heard on some very full-range speakers (e.g. Focal Grande Utopia EM Evo), the double bass is big and present, lacking a bit of rumble that was easily provided by flipping on the REL sub. Piano left hand similarly has nice weight, never sounding diminished in scale as typically happens on small monitors. Debussy’s Ariettes oubliées song cycle from the album Paysages by soprano Susanna Phillips and pianist Myra Huang [Tidal, Spotify] is a lovely test of colors, with ethereal vocals floating above dark undertones from the piano’s lower register. The Silverline possesses suficient extension and body to bring out these contrasts with depth and balance.

At the opposite end, the old-school Esotar tweeter is still one of the most musical high frequency transducers around. It balances detail with smoothness, extends low enough to mate perfectly with the woofer, and never sounds strained - a substantial upgrade in resolution and realism over the typical metal or silk domes in lesser speakers. In top-end extension and speed it might be bettered by some of the newfangled devices like Focal’s beryllium or B&W’s diamond domes, Scanspeak’s latest Revelator or the fantastic AMT in the Audiovector SR 1, but it’s a relatively small sin of omission and a worthwhile trade off to avoid any hint of unnatural edge or ringing. And it still has plenty of sharpness and sparkle, lending nice bite to trumpets and sheen to triangles and cymbals.

Last but not least, there’s that soundstage - present and tactile, but never in-your-face. Particularly when coupled with gear with sufficient resolution to relay subtle ambient information, e.g. the Pass XP10 preamp, there’s a real sense of the layout and layers of a symphony orchestra. The hi-res LSO Live recording of Mendelssohn’s "Reformation" Symphony with the London Symphony/Gardiner [Tidal, Qobuz, Spotify] paints a vivid picture of the stage of the Barbican, with brass fanfares anchored closer to the back wall of the fan-shaped stage, and the smaller string section sounding up front and intimate. An interesting twist in this performance is Sir Gardiner had the violinists standing to emphasize the virtuosity of Mendelssohn’s writing, and while I can’t say I would have been able to tell this from listening alone, the Silverline does convey a subtle sense of freedom and space to the violin section that I’ve missed when listening to the recording on other systems. And it has no trouble imaging well outside the bounds of the speaker, with percussion and harp on the extreme left of the stage floating eerily behind and beyond the left speaker.

I think my wife put it best when I asked her one day how the system sounded with the Silverlines: “this is what I imagine it sounded like in the concert hall.” While I’ve broken down a bunch of its strengths in audiophile terms above, it’s the way it puts everything together into a musically vivid whole that makes it special. There’s an evenness of tone, a naturalness of perspective, an ease of dynamic expression, a consistency of refinement from top to bottom that gives music a sense of rightness that allows one to forget the hi-fi aspects and focus on the musical performance. In this respect, Alan Yun has crafted something truly masterful in the SR17 Supreme.

Caveats & Comparisons

I’ll nitpick a few things that were relatively minor deficiencies to my ears, but may weigh more heavily for people with different tastes. These were highlighted in my own home by direct comparison with another very fine monitor speaker, the Audiovector SR 1 Avantgarde Arreté ($6,200 in premium finish). I also have my long-term reference, the Merlin TSM-MXe (around $6k several years ago) as a baseline.

First off, I suspect the Silverline’s hint of lower midrange warmth, while sounding natural and consonant with much of my favored acoustic music, may come from a bit of otherwise well-controlled cabinet resonance. It gently highlights the woody quality of acoustic instruments, but with electronic music it comes across as a slight coloration - a bit like wearing orange-tinted sunglasses that make everything look a little less cool. It’s very subtle, and not enough to sound overtly “boxy” or throw voices off, but it’s not transcendentally-clean like the Audiovector or, say, a Magico. My sense is Alan wisely tuned the SR17 cabinet for this response, as additional bracing would just make the resonance peakier and higher in frequency where the ear is more sensitive; as it is, it’s a gentle and diffuse coloration. Part of this may also be the sonic signature of the Esotec woofer’s magnesium silicate polymer cone, which I’ve heard in a number of speakers and to my ears trades better damping for a hair less crispness vs. some of the fancier treated paper or composite cones out there. On the plus side, it never sounds dry as some of those drivers can, but with Erlend Øye’s Unrest [Tidal, Qobuz, Spotify] or Carley Rae Jepsen’s Emotion [Tidal, Qobuz, Spotify] I found the Audiovector conveyed more of hard-wired immediacy and edge suitable for those albums.

Taking turns with the Audiovector SR 1 Avantgarde Arreté

Another area where the Audiovector came out slightly ahead of the Silverlines was in resolution during loud dynamic peaks. The Audiovector is truly special in this regard, being designed for minimal signal compression and sounding incredibly collected the louder you play them. The Silverline also plays loudly with ease, but vs. the über-clean Audiovector it’s very slightly thicker and more congested. Case in point are the fortissimo climaxes and interruptions in Rossini’s L’italiana in Algeri overture [Tidal, Spotify] - when the orchestra comes crashing in after the pianissimo pizzicato opening, both speakers are clean and explosive, but the Audiovector sorts out the different instruments playing in unison for that brief moment a hair better, while the Silverline has more low-end oomph.

As mentioned prior, the Silverline’s superb Esotar tweeter isn’t the state-of-the-art in extension. It has plenty of resolution, but if you favor extremely extended and airy highs, e.g. the 52kHz-rated AMT tweeter in the Audiovector will give you more of that. I don’t think that ultimately matters so much for musical enjoyment (and many people can’t hear very well above 10kHz anyway), but it does make a subtle difference in realism. It also makes the Silverline’s treble a bit more forgiving of poor recordings and upstream components (silver cables could work) - it’ll never, ever burn your ears off.

The $7,500 price tag of the Silverline puts it squarely above the very crowded $5k-and-under monitor crowd, but short of the $10k+ “super monitor” category. Comparisons with other speakers are more conjecture on my part as I haven’t heard them in my own room... but I’ll mention a few things I’ve gotten a good listen to at shows, dealers, and other people’s systems.

Paradigm’s Persona series seems to be mentioned quite frequently in audio forums these days, and I heard the Persona B monitor ($7,000) briefly at RMAF. I’ve also listened to the floorstanding Persona 3F a bit, and there’s definitely a common house sound - fast, crisp, detailed and dynamic. I’ve never warmed up to either of them - they’ve struck me as rather strident, with instrumental interplays like oboes and clarinets playing in harmony tending to sound compressed. The Silverline by comparison may sound a bit thicker, but it has far more natural instrumental timbre to my ears, is less bright and thus easier to match to more systems, throws a more dimensional and properly-placed soundstage, and is very nearly as “fast” without sounding edgy. I’m honestly at a loss as to why the Personas are garnering so much praise, so maybe it’s just me? A similar argument could be made for the B&W 805 S3 ($6,000) - while I haven’t auditioned them specifically, I’m pretty familiar with the 800-series sound and again, it’s not my cup of tea. The Silverline’s balance and openness just strike me as much more natural than anything I’ve heard from B&W. So if the likes of B&W and Paradigm leave you a bit cold, the SR17 Supreme might be a step in the right direction.

An obvious comparison is to Dynaudio’s own bookshelves, specifically the Contour 20 ($5,000) and Special Forty ($2,995). You can read about them in my quick review from a dealer audition, and while I haven’t heard them head-to-head, I posit that the Silverline a worthwhile step up in coherence and musicality. If you can’t stretch the budget for the Silverline I think the Special Forty would be a good alternative, but it does not have the near-reference level neutrality of the Silverline. In the past Dynaudio had a bit of a reputation for not being as good at implementing their own drivers in complete loudspeakers as other companies were, and while I think their latest efforts are much improved, Alan Yun still seems to be squeezing more out of the old Esotar/Esotec drivers in the SR17... methinks this is a reflection of Alan’s sharp ear and painstaking hand-tuning.

A few more offhandish observations based on extremely limited auditions, so take with a block of salt: I heard the Wilson Audio TuneTot ($9,800) at a dealer shortly after its release. With the caveats that it’s designed for a totally different use case, it was in an unfamiliar setup and this pair wasn’t fully run in, I didn’t find it nearly as compelling or expressive. I got a good listen to the TAD Micro Evolution One ($12,495) with a couple different amps and found its midrange rather dry, upper midrange a bit peaky and its bass lacking fullness and extension vs. the Silverline. The Artist Cloner Rebel Reference ($16k w/stands) wowed me at RMAF - it seemed to have more speed and resolution than the Silverline, though the upper midrange was a hair pronounced. It would be an interesting comparison, even at twice the price. Another interesting monitor at RMAF was the Stenheim Alumine Two ($13k) which was super clean and detailed, but perhaps not as liquid. A more logical competitor/upgrade could be the Sonus faber Electa Amator III ($10k) that I also heard at RMAF. That speaker absolutely blew me away with its expressiveness, natural richness, insane dynamics and huge presentation in the show setup. It’s the speaker that I’m most dying to compare to the Silverline.

And to wrap up the comparison to my Merlins and the Audiovectors - I sold my beloved Merlins shortly after receiving the Silverlines, and wound up purchasing both the Silverlines and the Audiovectors as I just couldn’t decide between the two. That should give you an idea of just how much I like them both; I’ll have more to say about the Audiovector in a forthcoming review.

Verdict

It's been said speakers mirror the personality of their designers, and if you've met the talented and affable Alan Yun no doubt you’ll feel his influence. Much like the man behind it, the SR17 Supreme is sharp, earnest and engaging, yet easy-going, with an unforced warmth and great attention to detail. There’s something grounded and unfussy about the way it allows music to flow forth, feeling like it's taken an expressive limiter off of a recording without hyping it in any way. It checks off many of the audiophile boxes too - imaging, tonal balance, bass power and extension, etc. etc. - but focusing on those mechanical aspects, as excellent as they are, would be selling Alan’s accomplishment short. The SR17 Supreme is first and foremost a faithful and thoroughly enjoyable reproducer of music, one capable of strongly evoking the beauty of the original musical event. There are countless 2-way monitors superficially like this one, but few that I know that are so meticulously and lovingly tuned to such great effect.

I've spent a lot of words espousing this speaker, but I think it's deserving of it, not just because of the obvious quality of the product, but because Silverline is a small manufacturer flying under the radar without a big dealer network or advertising budget. While Alan continues to develop his entry-level Minuet and Prelude lines at a more rapid pace to keep up with market demands, he doesn’t pen up new versions of his reference models every couple years to generate hype. He’s instead chosen his design fundamentals wisely and focused on perfecting their execution through years of painstaking refinement, much as the late Bobby Palkovic @ Merlin Music did. Like Bobby, he has a great ear for music, does a lot of the production work himself, and gains most of his sales through word of mouth. This does make it trickier to find than the big brands at a typical shop, but I strongly encourage seeking out an opportunity to hear it. The SR17 Supreme is a special speaker, and it won't be leaving my living room any time soon.

Silverline Audio P.O. Box 30574 Walnut Creek, CA 94598 USA

#audiophile #audio #hifi #loudspeaker #speaker #review

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