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ChowCentaur by Jatin Chowdhury

https://apps.apple.com/app/id1547671733

Description:

ChowCentaur is an audio plugin emulation of the renowned Klon Centaur guitar pedal. The emulation features the three knob parameters from the original pedal, along with a bypass switch, and a menu to choose between two different emulation modes. The "Traditional" emulation mode uses traditional circuit modelling techniques, while the "Neural" mode uses a recurrent neural network.

ChowCentaur began as a research project, intending to compare the benefits and drawbacks of different circuit modelling techniques. As such, there are several supporting materials that may be interesting to users with a more technical background:

ChowCentaur installs as an AUv3 plugin that can be used in host applications like Garageband or AUM.


Details:
Universal: Yes
Minimum OS version: 11.4
Rated: 0 based on 0 votes

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Comments

  • edited March 2021

    Nice one.

    The Neural mode sounds awesome.

    This is too good to be free.

    (Had to restart my device so that AUM could see it)

  • McDMcD
    edited March 2021

    FYI: This is a FREE guitar overdrive/distortion pedal with GAIN TONE LEVEL knobs.

    It was developed by a Stanford University Engineering Student as research
    into circuit modeling techniques and it has a pop-up to select one of 2 modeling techniques.

  • Can't wait to try this.

    Thanks for the heads up!

  • Is he running his voice through a pedal?

  • Pretty cool for a AUv3 free app

  • That was a great talk. Nice that he created a few plugin based on it.

  • The neural sounds good, and I wonder if there is a bug in the non-neural version. It sounds To me like the dry signal is being mixed with the processed signal when in the analog mode rather than the wet signal only being passed through.

  • @Jocphone said:
    Is he running his voice through a pedal?

    😂
    Roger Roger

  • if anyone wants to pick up a klon centaur and compare that would be sweet. theyre currently fetching between 5000 and 8000 dollars.. or a klon clone is about 35.00..

  • Here is the Centaur in action with Cali Reverb set to a very clean amp and Magic Death Eye adding some upstream compression. Note that there is a bug in the original app store version. The fixed version (demoed in the video) should be out in the next day or two:

  • @JoyceRoadStudios said:
    Sick!!!

    When the update is live in the store, I will be curious to hear how you think it compares to your favorite TH-U pedals.

  • @espiegel123 said:

    @JoyceRoadStudios said:
    Sick!!!

    When the update is live in the store, I will be curious to hear how you think it compares to your favorite TH-U pedals.

    I can’t wait for the update! I think that my favorite overdrive pedal on iOS is the th-u Brunetti Vanilla. It’s in the “distortion” category but it’s actually a soft overdrive pedal, and it’s an authorized Brunetti. There are a few others that I like but just don’t have time to use. The th-u “Muff” is good too, but their 3 “fuzz” pedals are not good. Yesterday I played around with Nembrini Fuzz and remembered how amazing it is. Also, I really like the Fulltone OCD emulation in Amplitube, but it was my single $5 purchase there and I just don’t use the app. In terms of a tube screamer, I like both the Nembrini and th-u one. I look forward to comparing all of these to the ChowCentaur.

  • Update is out

  • Btw, I just let the dev know that state-saving isn't working -- but it sounds great to me.

  • I know what I’m doing tonight... grillin’ some Centaur! 😎

  • This Overdrive App is FREE. It's NOT just for guitars.

    It's delivers great tone enhancement along the lines of ReAmp or Magic Death Eye.

    It works well as a clean GAIN boost too.

    It makes pianos sound fuller for example.

  • @McD said:
    This Overdrive App is FREE. It's NOT just for guitars.

    It's delivers great tone enhancement along the lines of ReAmp or Magic Death Eye.

    It works well as a clean GAIN boost too.

    It makes pianos sound fuller for example.

    Cheers only tried on guitar so far but I can definitely see it on several instruments.

  • EXCELLENT pedal! Instantly one of the best distortions on iOS. Very articulate across the whole param range, and very high quality sound design. The initial default setting of Neural with all three knobs at noon is good, and it gets really sharp and bright when cranked. The Traditional default setting with all knobs at noon is definitely darker and mellower, but with both Gain and Tone maxed it’s one of the best distortions I’ve heard. Warm overdrive hard rock kind of gain, but extremely articulate polyphonically. Very responsive to picking dynamics with a wide range. Just fantastic. Compared to to some of my faves and the quality is just as good if not better, so it’s just a matter of flavors. Brunetti Vanilla still compared well to it. But the ChowCentaur can do both the saturated creaminess of the Vanilla (Traditional) and the punchy sharpness of the Taxi Drive (Neural). For the ChowCentaur I definitely prefer the Traditional setting. Tomorrow I’ll explore its low gain possibilities. It resizes perfectly in AUM and I love how it still shows a wavelength of your signal even when bypassed. Aside from the aforementioned state saving bug, the only thing I noticed is that the Gain knob in Neural mode is super choppy, while all the other knobs are smooth.

    Here’s a quick video of the ChowCentaur, paired with a Nembrini amp and an OwnHammer IR in Thafknar. I know video captures don’t do the sound justice, but it’s something. I’ll make something better next time. What I heard in my ears was totally magical. Traditional setting with Gain and Tone cranked, hell yes! Can I just pay for this app anyway and reward all the research that went into it?

  • McDMcD
    edited March 2021

    For anyone that hasn't watched the video explaining the "Traditional" vs "Neural", here's some info.

    The developer, Jatin Chowdhury, is a college student taking a Stanford University engineering class on Digital Signal Processing methods.

    His software models were constructed using a variety of circuit modeling techniques, including nodal analysis, wave digital filters, and recurrent neural networks.

    I don't think Neural Nets should be better but that's why people do research... to see if there's a more efficient computational method in another approach. It's interesting see how similar the different approaches are in the final results.

    He didn't have access to the physical hardware unit. He built a SPICE model
    of the circuit diagrams:

    His training data consists of ~4 minutes of Direct In (DI) recordings of electric guitar, chopped into 0.5 second segments. The data is then processed through a SPICE model to create a "ground truth" version of the effect to train against.

    Software is eating up the world of physical devices... slowly. We are funding that mission here.

  • @JoyceRoadStudios said:
    EXCELLENT pedal! Instantly one of the best distortions on iOS. Very articulate across the whole param range, and very high quality sound design. The initial default setting of Neural with all three knobs at noon is good, and it gets really sharp and bright when cranked. The Traditional default setting with all knobs at noon is definitely darker and mellower, but with both Gain and Tone maxed it’s one of the best distortions I’ve heard. Warm overdrive hard rock kind of gain, but extremely articulate polyphonically. Very responsive to picking dynamics with a wide range. Just fantastic. Compared to to some of my faves and the quality is just as good if not better, so it’s just a matter of flavors. Brunetti Vanilla still compared well to it. But the ChowCentaur can do both the saturated creaminess of the Vanilla (Traditional) and the punchy sharpness of the Taxi Drive (Neural). For the ChowCentaur I definitely prefer the Traditional setting. Tomorrow I’ll explore its low gain possibilities. It resizes perfectly in AUM and I love how it still shows a wavelength of your signal even when bypassed. Aside from the aforementioned state saving bug, the only thing I noticed is that the Gain knob in Neural mode is super choppy, while all the other knobs are smooth.

    Here’s a quick video of the ChowCentaur, paired with a Nembrini amp and an OwnHammer IR in Thafknar. I know video captures don’t do the sound justice, but it’s something. I’ll make something better next time. What I heard in my ears was totally magical. Traditional setting with Gain and Tone cranked, hell yes! Can I just pay for this app anyway and reward all the research that went into it?

    Great example. Shows off the nasty part of its range nicely.

  • Two more things really stand out about ChowCentaur. It has something that is the tell tale sign of a great overdrive distortion pedal, a certain aura to the tone that is both saturnine and mercurial, without all the bullshit. @McD described it as doing something similar in flavor and color as an overdrive that Magic Death Eye does as a compressor, and I think that’s spot on.

    Another thing is the low harmonic distortion is really articulate and maintains polyphonic qualities. Usually a distortion app will devolve into this monophonic hiss underneath the actual tone. But with ChowCentaur you can bend a single note and actually hear the lower formant at the same time moving down chromatically. Very impressive.

  • @JoyceRoadStudios said:
    Two more things really stand out about ChowCentaur. It has something that is the tell tale sign of a great overdrive distortion pedal, a certain aura to the tone that is both saturnine and mercurial, without all the bullshit. @McD described it as doing something similar in flavor and color as an overdrive that Magic Death Eye does as a compressor, and I think that’s spot on.

    Another thing is the low harmonic distortion is really articulate and maintains polyphonic qualities. Usually a distortion app will devolve into this monophonic hiss underneath the actual tone. But with ChowCentaur you can bend a single note and actually hear the lower formant at the same time moving down chromatically. Very impressive.

    I will try this tomorrow.
    Thanks for the review @JoyceRoadStudios .

  • I played with this a bit the other day (pre-update) and it did sound quite good. I want to put it through it's paces a bit more now that I've updated it, but it's very promising.

  • This app has a bug on the traditional mode.
    Keep the settings at noon and play a chord or one single note with a light attack,and let it ring.....
    Listen carefully.....

  • I’ve tried the app with different sample rates..same thing happens.
    Here is a video showing this.

  • Here is another one in which I compare with other od/distortion apps.

  • edited March 2021

    @flo26 I re-created your chain with the same Rig profile (BHS Sold 155, amazing clean profile btw) and the Chow “traditional” with all three knobs at noon, and I heard the exact same thing as you. It’s a faint harmonic note that persists when you just hold a note down without even playing it. It’s obscured when you actually play. It’s the “Tone” knob causing this, because turning it up makes it more obvious. In the Neural setting this harmonic is not there. I also tested 5 other pedals and the Chow was the only one that behaved this way. I did notice however that the other pedals have more background noise, and it’s possible the chow is replacing its background noise with this harmonic. I do like that it has a good response to picking dynamics, and when the pedal is cranked this quirk could be adding something unique to the low harmonic distortion. But you are right, if this is a bug it needs to be fixed ASAP. I didn’t really test the pedal at default setting or lower settings, I went straight for the hot sauce.😅

    @espiegel123 curious if you’ll be able to recreate this harmonic with your set up, when you get to it.

  • @JoyceRoadStudios said:
    @flo26 I re-created your chain with the same Rig profile (BHS Sold 155, amazing clean profile btw) and the Chow “traditional” with all three knobs at noon, and I heard the exact same thing as you. It’s a faint harmonic note that persists when you just hold a note down without even playing it. It’s obscured when you actually play. It’s the “Tone” knob causing this, because turning it up makes it more obvious. In the Neural setting this harmonic is not there. I also tested 5 other pedals and the Chow was the only one that behaved this way. I did notice however that the other pedals have more background noise, and it’s possible the chow is replacing its background noise with this harmonic. I do like that it has a good response to picking dynamics, and when the pedal is cranked this quirk could be adding something unique to the low harmonic distortion. But you are right, if this is a bug it needs to be fixed ASAP. I didn’t really test the pedal at default setting or lower settings, I went straight for the hot sauce.😅

    @flo26, @JoyceRoadStudios Is this issue detectable if the incoming signal is louder than say -45 dB? I did a quick attempt to recreate it and only hear it if the input signal level is extremely low and the output on the channel output is amplifying the signal quite a bit.

    I'd like to to report it to the developer but need to understand what is being discussed better before contacting him since at playing levels (even quiet normal playing), I am not hearing it. What I can hear is that if I strike a note whose signal is on the order of -45db that there is harmonic distortion that is disproportionately loud compared to the fundamental and does not die out at the same rate as the fundamental.

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