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iZotope Holiday Pricing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzUxOojmoiY
I just took advantage of Izotope’s 30% discount on plug-ins and libraries through the end of the year and picked up the Wood, Food, Glass, and Toy libraries for Iris.  Iris is definitely my favorite virtual instrument at the moment.  I picked up Iris a few weeks ago and instantly fell in love with it’s ability to resynthesize samples from my extensive sample library.  The interface, which is quite similar to Izotope’s RX product, is very elegant and simple to use.  You can layer up to three samples per patch, plus an additional sub waveform (sine, square, etc.) which is great for implying tonality over otherwise atonal material. It’s definitely an amazing tool for adding some musique concrete-style elements to tracks.  Be sure to check out the free trial.

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Sanken CSS-5

CSS-51

Foothill Music Tech just got the Sanken CSS-5 I’ve been wanting for years.  I used one for an SCEA title a few years back and loved the sound and the ease of use.  Coupled with our Sound Devices 702 it makes for the ultimate stereo field recording rig.  It’s definitely at the high end price-wise of stereo field recording solutions, but not that much more than the Sennheiser MKH418S (which requires separate MS decoding) or the two-mic M/S configurations (like the MKH416/30 setup) that are fairly common.

One neat thing about the CSS-5 is that you can adjust the stereo width between mono, normal stereo (120-degrees) and wide stereo (~140-degrees).  However, a number of top field recordists claim that they find the wide mode noticeably noisier than the normal stereo mode.  I guess I’ll finally get a chance to have a listen and see if that’s the case.