BITHEADZ Phrazer

Mar 1, 2001 12:00 PM, By James Rotondi

The buzz has been building for months. Hordes of Macintosh aficionados, envying PC users' access to Sonic Foundry's superb Acid Pro program for loop-based production, have waited impatiently for a Mac product featuring the same kinds of automatic tempo-mapping and pitch-stretching algorithms. Now, BitHeadz, purveyor of the Unity DS-1 soft-sampler and other cutting-edge software, has finally released Phrazer, which promises to liberate Mac-based producers from labor-intensive loop sculpting and tempo tweaking.

Phrazer boasts an impressive architecture and an intuitive interface that makes loop-based production a breeze. Although it lacks some of Acid's more ingenious features — such as the paint-on composing tools and the fully automatable volume, pan, and effects envelopes — Phrazer provides a powerful yet simple means of creating loop-based music, thanks to its inclusive sample editor.

In addition to offering automatic tempo-mapping and pitch-stretching algorithms, Phrazer allows you to record multiple samples to a single track. Those samples can include WAV, AIFF, and Sound Designer files, as well as those imported from Acid libraries; it can also convert CD-Audio and Unity DS-1 files. You can play Phrazer in real time using trigger response from MIDI and ASCII. The software also features multiple Insert, Send, and Global effects such as EQ, Delay, Reverb, Filter, Distortion, and Compression. Though it works best with Apple Sound Manager, Phrazer supports all major audio I/Os, including ASIO, DirectConnect, ReWire, and MAS, and can work in conjunction with audio-sequencer programs like MOTU's Digital Performer, Steinberg's Cubase, Emagic's Logic, and Digidesign's Pro Tools. Phrazer offers a sampling rate of up to 96 kHz, has 32-bit internal processing, and lets you audition samples directly from your hard drive.

PHRAZE FOR DAYS

Phrazer's basic operation is extremely simple. From the File Palettes window, you audition and then choose a loop or sample from your hard drive (to start you out, Phrazer ships with more than 500 MB of samples and loops), then click and drag it into the Track Data View window. Phrazer adjusts the sample tempo to match the preselected tempo of the overall track. Each sample you add also conforms to the master tempo, without requiring any editing. You can extend, move, cut, or copy the samples using simple keyboard commands or mouse moves, and each track has Enable, Volume, Pan, Track Color, Trigger Parameter, and ASCII key controls, as well as controls for two effects sends and an amplitude meter. The master control section includes faders for Tempo, Volume, L/R Balance, Key, Beats Per Bar, and the two effects sends.

With this basic procedure, you can build up a composition quickly and easily. In addition, the Add Event function lets you apply a variety of effects to specific sample points in the track. Although this is automation in a sense, Phrazer's Event function may disappoint users who were hoping for an emulation of Acid's cool visual Volume, Pan, and Effects Parameter envelopes, which allow truly automated fades, pans, and pitch shifts without any destructive editing of the sample itself. In Phrazer, you're forced to paste in a dummy Event to stop the previous Event, which is inconvenient. For instance, although you can automate a volume change at a particular moment in a track, you can't apply a proper fade-in or fade-out unless you do it to the master sample. This means you're stuck with it elsewhere in the track even if you don't want it — which brings us to Phrazer's sample editor.

CATCHING WAVES

Including a sample editor with Phrazer was a stroke of genius. No longer will you have to shuttle back and forth between programs to edit samples or record your own editable sounds. Doubling as a track editor, the Phrazer sample editor provides complete control options over tempo, sample length, loop length, and reverse. It offers such effects as Flanging and Parametric EQ, while also allowing you to determine which and what kind of split points best enable Phrazer to match the sample's tempo with the track's. (The sample editor can also do this automatically with samples that need it.) Creating your own samples is simple: record an item into the sample editor and trim, loop, and modify it as you see fit. All good. But Phrazer's sample editing is destructive, meaning that every edit you save — and you have to save the sample to your hard drive to use it in Phrazer's Track Data View — permanently changes the sample.

If you're editing a sample for a particular song but want to leave an untouched copy of it on your hard drive, you'll have to make a copy of it — or make an alias and import that into Phrazer. The Track Event options allow you to change and sculpt the sample throughout your track during full-track playback. Just be aware that you'll have to take some extra precautions, like making a special folder for the sample aliases you'll use in a specific song, before you start editing anything. You might even want to back up all of your samples just to be on the safe side.

POWER ISSUES

Phrazer requires some pretty serious processing power. Using a two-year-old Mac G3 with an admittedly wimpy 96 MB of RAM and a paltry 266 MHz processor, I frequently experienced crashes and clipping. During my first day with Phrazer, many dialog boxes told me I'd overrun my CPU's limits. Even though my Mac satisfied the basic requirements for Phrazer listed in the manual and on BitHeadz's Web site, Phrazer demands a much faster computer with more memory to operate efficiently.

To truly get the most out of Phrazer, your Mac should have a minimum of 128 MB of RAM and at least a 300 MHz processor. BitHeadz does make a point of claiming that it has optimized Phrazer for the G4, so you're bound to run into problems with lesser equipment. Using my setup, I experienced the worst thing that could happen with Phrazer: tempo matching frequently became tempo drifting, which led to all kinds of rhythmic train wrecks. This even happened with as few as two short samples in the Track Data View window — hardly a CPU or RAM showdown.

UP TO SPEED

Don't let my experiences discourage you from using Phrazer — just know that you'll need a powerful Mac to get the most out of it. Fundamentally, it's a very well-conceived and thoughtfully designed product based on a sound idea, and the positive results I got with it were quick and rewarding. All CPU-intensive audio programs require blazing speed and lots of memory, but it would be nice if you didn't have to make a significant hardware upgrade every time an impressive new software program came out. Then again, you can't blame manufacturers for pushing the technology envelope to the edge — that's progress, isn't it?

Logically laid out, offering a wide range of effects and editing parameters, and both fun and easy to use, Phrazer is definitely the loop-based production tool that Mac users have desired all these years. It doesn't necessarily out-Acid Acid, but it does streamline the process of loop-based composition considerably and give you some pretty amazing creative capabilities.

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