2CAudio - PBJ | Spatial Mixing Environment

Spatial Mixing Environment.

The PBJ Pack is a Spatial Mixing Environment that combines sublime psychoacoustic positioning and industry-leading algorithmic reverb into a unified and intelligently adaptive workflow. It introduces a unique system of multi-instance editing and inter-plugin communication that allows potentially hundreds of linked plug-in instances to function as a unified acoustic space, where each instrument can occupy its own unique position within this cohesive virtual acoustic environment. Welcome to the next step on our journey in pursuit of spatial perfection!

The PBJ Pack is comprised of Precedence 1.5 and Breeze 2.5 with all Breeze Expansions.

Precedence 1.5

Take Precedence.

Precedence 1.5 is a psychoacoustic stereo positioning tool. It creates an organically modulating stereo-image that produces an instantaneous sense of width, depth, and presence similar to stereo microphone techniques used in acoustic spaces. It then positions this image within a virtual stage, giving mix engineers ultra precise control over left-to-right and front-to-back placement. The end result is an incredible sense of hyper-realistic 3D space and specific localization of each instrument within this space.

Breeze 2.5

Simple. Light. Pristine. Intelligently Adaptive.

Breeze 2.5 is an industry-leading algorithmic reverb that is ultra-efficient, simple to use, and most importantly sounds absolutely sublime. In its most recent version, it has also grown to become one of the most powerful spatial tools on the market! Breeze 2.5 introduces the Precedence Link inter-plugin communication system, Multi-Instance Editing, Edit Groups, Global Broadcast and many other extremely innovate features. These features allow Breeze 2.5 and Precedence 1.5 to function as a unified Spatial Mixing Environment, achieving both an incredibly synergistic workflow as well as a truly next-level sonic result.

The PBJ System

Sticky Sweet Spatial Jam

Precedence and Breeze were initially developed independantly and continue to function on their own perfectly well. True magic happens however when they are combined. They go together like, well, PB&J! Some things are just meant for each other!

The PBJ system is a new paradigm in spatial mixing. It pairs direct sound spatialization and positioning with an adaptive multi-instance reverb environment that automatically tunes itself to augment the positional imaging established by Precedence. Achieving a cohesive spatial mix with individual track seperation, defintion, and perfect depth placement has never been this easy!

The features and benefits of the PBJ sytem are decribed in detail on the Link and Multi-Edit tabs. In summary:

• Precedence Link Inter-Plugin Communication
• Precedence and Breeze listen to each other, sensing parameter changes and keeping perfect sync

• Distance Link Adaptive DSP in Breeze
• A completely novel DSP mode in Breeze produces the algorithmic equivilant of a Multiple Impluse Response system
• Changes to position in Precedence result in infinitely different variations of the Breeze preset
• Each varation has correct psychoacoustic positional cues complementing distance set in Precedence • Both the direct sound and the reflections are correctly positioned within the spatial environment

• Multi-Instance Editing
• Many Instances of Precedence are viewable simultaneously within the Position Display giving an overview of the mix
• Instance Selection is possible and all parameters of the selected instance are editable from a single GUI window
• Breeze Instance Selection can be set to automatically follow Precedence which becomes the Command Center

• Edit Groups
• Instances of Precedence and Breeze may be put into Edit Groups to manage complex sessions

• Global Broadcast
• Parameter changes can be applied from any instance within an Edit Group to any other instance
• Changes can be appled en masse to ALL members of an Edit Group, changing many instances instantly
• Preset Changes are possible en masse, allowing macro-enviromnetal changes while maintaining relative positions
• Macro adjustments such as increasing the left-right or front-back constrast of an established mix is possible

Breeze Preset Expansions

Simplicity Simplified.

The Breeze Expansions are a response to customer requests for more Breeze presets. We must admit, at first we thought this was a heretical request - after all, who needs a ton of more presets for a plug-in that only has a few more than ten controls? Upon realizing many of these requests were coming from some of our highest profile and most knowledgable clients we remembered what we should not have forgotten: time is money, the world has enough complexity in it already, and musical creativity is often about staying in the flow and avoiding anything that might potentially disrupt it - even simple tasks. Futhermore Breeze 2 now has such a vast preset potential that we were able add three new additional Preset Expansions created by industry veterans and developed specifically using the new Breeze 2 features.

Download

Purchase the full version
PBJ Demo OSX
PBJ Demo WIN
Precedence Manual
Breeze Manual

Compatiblity

The PBJ Pack available for AU, VST, and AAX hosts under Mac OSX.10 or higher including Mojave. The PBJ Pack is 64-bit only on OSX. We are working currently on Catalina support.

The PBJ Pack is available for VST, and AAX hosts under indows 8 and Windows 10. The PBJ Pack is 64-bit only on Windows. Windows 10 64-bit is recomended.

The minimum CPU instruction set requirement is SSE4. Even better performance is found on recent CPUs with AVX instructions. The first CPUs with AVX instructions were the Intel Sandy-Bridge generation orriginally released in 2011. Precedence and Breeze are optimized for AVX, AVX2, and AVX512 instruction sets.

Breeze 2 was the first pro-audio software product of any kind to offer AVX-512 optimization. We beleive Precedence is the second. These two remain the only audio software on the market to support AVX-512 so far that we are aware of. Performance on machines that support it, such as Apple's iMac Pro, 2019 Mac Pro and systems built around Intel's Skylake-X, Xeon-W, or Xeon-SP CPUs is simply incredible.

Precedence and Breeze's proceedureal GUI system requires Open-GL support.

Press

“New release. Reveiws coming shortly... ”

- Publisher, 10/2018

Link

The Link concept in the PBJ workflow involves two separate but related concepts: Distance Link DSP Mode in Breeze, and Precedence Link Inter-Plugin Communication between Precedence and Breeze. We will explain Breeze's Distance Link DSP Mode first, then Precedence Link.

Breeze 2.5 has two different operation modes. The Link Button switches between these two modes:

• Standard Mode (Link Disabled): instances are managed independently and often used on FX busses via Sends and parameters remain independent from one another
• Link Mode (Link Enabled): a novel distance-based mode that has been designed primarily with the idea of using many instances in parallel directly on track inserts as part of a unified virtual acoustic environment. The Mix control is replaced with a Distance control, and the entire Breeze algorithm updates appropriately depending on the Distance value, which may also be synched to a linked instance of 2CAudio’s Precedence product.

When the Link Mode is enabled, two separate but related behaviors are changed in Breeze:

• Distance Link DSP Mode is activated
• Precedence Link Mode is enabled (but not automatically active)

Distance Link DSP Mode

The Distance Link DSP mode is a special operation mode where the entire Breeze 2 algorithm is retuned, making it optimized for and responsive to changes to the Distance parameter. The traditional Mix parameter is replaced with a Distance parameter and changes to it not only effect wet/dry balance, but also effectively cause the entire algorithm to update appropriately to augment the sense of distance and depth created by the algorithm. In a real physical acoustic space if impulse responses are taken at different locations within the space, or the microphone position is kept static but the sound source changes position, the resulting impulse responses are never the same. Each position has its own unique impulse responses and embedded within these impulse responses are psychoacoustic cues that help establish distance, depth and positional cues. In the traditional music mixing method of using a shared reverb instance on a FX Bus, the impulse response is effectively identical for all instruments in the mix and the only variable is wet/dry mix as controlled by the gain values on each send that is feeding the shared reverb instance on the FX bus. This is rather crude approximation. It is improved quite significantly by using a tool such as Precedence on all track inserts, but even then, ideally many aspects of the reverb’s internal “secret sauce” should change and update in response to position information.

This is what the Distance Link DSP mode achieves. The simple act of changing the Distance parameter will produce an infinite variety of impulse responses from Breeze; all with the proper “secret sauce” DSP changes that help establish depth in the mix depending on the Distance value. Moreover, we use “impulse response” here loosely; the entire process is actually algorithmic and variable with time due to modulation as would occur in the real world. Thus we have an infinite set of positions within the same general space, where each of them is already itself an infinitely variable time-varying process!

Tip: Distance Link DSP Mode effectively creates an infinitely time-varying Algorithmic Multiple Impulse Response system. It is designed to be used when inserting Breeze directly on track inserts, not on shared busses.

Precedence Link

The Precedence Link feature establishes inter-plugin communication between Precedence and 2CAudio reverb engines such as Breeze 2. This allows parameter updates in Precedence to be communicated to the reverb engine, which automatically updates its own parameter values and complex set of internal DSP settings to reflect changes made to the position established in Precedence. Parameters that are specifically related to position such as Angle and Distance, as well as the Precedence Algorithm Mode, and a few others are communicated to and from the reverb engine in a bi-directional manner. These parameters are shown on the reverb engine GUI as well and can be edited either in Precedence or in the reverb for maximum convenience. They will remain synched regardless of where they are edited.

Breeze 2 is responsible for establishing a global virtual acoustic environment. Precedence is responsible for positioning objects within this virtual acoustic environment. Precedence supplies the vast majority of the lateral azimuth positioning via its Angle parameter. The duty of Distance and depth placement is shared between Precedence and the reverb engine. As mentioned in the Loss Parameter section of the manual, Precedence produces loss to gain and high frequency energy and introduces other sophisticated distance cues. In an open environment with no reflecting surfaces such as being suspended in the middle of the sky, or in the middle of a very large anechoic chamber, these would be the only cues available to perceive distance. When experiencing sound in an enclosed environment however, such as a concert hall, room, chamber, church, or other enclosed location where music heard 99.9% of the time, additional cues help establish distance, and these cues are generally more relevant to music production. In an enclosed environment such as a concert hall, other very important distance cues occur:

• Direct vs. Reflected energy balance, i.e. Wet-Dry Mix in traditional audio engineering reverb terminology
• Initial Time Gap, i.e. Pre-Delay in traditional audio engineering reverb terminology
• Additional sophisticated distance-based changes can occur as well, such as changes to the envelope contour, the relative balance between discrete early reflections versus diffuse late reflections energy, and more

In the music production context these cues are often more useful than extreme gain and high frequency loss. Mix engineers have long used reverb mix levels to intuitively establish front-to-back depth and distance placement in the mix.

TIP: Sounds that are close to the listener generally have more direct energy and less reflected energy, while distant sounds have less direct energy and more reflected energy, i.e. they have a higher Wet-Dry Mix setting.

Using pre-delay properly to help establish distance and depth, however remains a mostly misunderstood black-art, even though the general rule is simple:

TIP: Sounds that are close to the listener generally have more pre-delay, and distant sounds have less pre-delay.

The more sophisticated changes are even more esoteric and generally known only by algorithmic reverb designers and psychoacoustic research scientists. They are certainly not the type of details musicians enjoy thinking about while working on music production, yet when properly established they do an excellent job of augmenting the sense of distance and depth.

All of these cues are very important to the perception of distance and depth within the type of enclosed environments where music is normally experienced. They are the domain of the reverb engine, and should be consistent with other characteristics of the global environment such as its current size and geometry. In a truly authentic virtual acoustic model, changes to Distance would ideally result both in changes to the local psychoacoustic cues created by Precedence, as well as those heavily influenced by the enclosed environment as created by the reverb engine. Ideally this would all be automatic so that musicians are free to think about more important things such as making music. Welcome to Precedence Link! This is exactly what it offers.

TIP: When using Precedence Link, Breeze 2 tracks changes to position within Precedence and its internal DSP settings are readjusted completely to intelligently compliment settings in Precedence. Distance cues are supplied both by Precedence and by the reverb engine in synergistic manner consistent with acoustic reality. The process is completely automatic and transparent to users allowing them to focus on the music.

TIP: Precedence Link becomes even more powerful when combined with Multi-Instance Editing and Global Broadcast.

Multi-Instance Editing Overview

Multi-Instance Editing allows a single GUI editor to effectively be shared by many instances of the plug-in, showing data from many instances and allowing parameter changes to be made to any or all instances within the current Edit Group. When using Multi-Instance Edit Groups, parameters on the GUI apply to the Selected Instance, which may or may not be the instance that was opened from the host (i.e. the Host Instance).

Multi-Instance Editing is most convenient when using Breeze together with Precedence, where the Position Display in Precedence will show the current position of all instances within the Edit Group, and simply clicking on any instance shown within the Position Display can change the instance selection. Instance selection in Breeze can be made to follow selections in Precedence using Selection Sync, as explained below. Instance List Panels are also available in Breeze and Precedence and instance selection change be changed in this way was well, even without using Precedence.

For sake of illustration, let’s consider a simple example: you have two tracks, Guitar and Bass, and they are part of the same Edit Group. If you open the Guitar instance from the host mixer, you will see not only the Guitar instance in the Instance List, but also the Bass instance. As a matter of convention, when you open any GUI editor, the Selected Instance will always be initialized to the instance that was opened from the host (i.e. the Host Instance). If you open the Guitar track instance, the Guitar instance will be selected and all parameters on the GUI will belong to the Guitar instance. If you make any edits to any parameter they will apply to the Guitar instance because that is what is currently selected. So far, this is the standard way of working with plug-ins.

If you change the selection from the Guitar Instance to the Bass instance however, the GUI will now display the parameters from the Bass instance even though the Guitar instance is what was opened from the DAW. If you change parameters while the Bass instance is selected, you are editing the Bass instance parameter data, NOT the Guitar instance, even though the Guitar Instance GUI Editor is what was opened from the Host.

The primary workflow of Multi-Instance editing involves using Precedence with its Position Display as a “control center” to manage many instances. This workflow is described in more detail in the Precedence manual.

In absence of Precedence, Multi-Instance editing can also be a simple matter of ergonomics and convenience, since it is generally much faster to change instance selection within a Breeze Edit Group than it is to close the current instance GUI, navigate to the host DAW’s mixer, open another GUI editor for the desired instance, and potentially reposition the GUI window every time you want to make a quick parameter change.

Global-Broadcast also depends on Multi-Instance Edit Groups, and has tremendous value in reverb applications.

To facilitate the learning process of becoming familiar with the concept of Multi-Instance Editing, the Host Instance name (ie the instance the you opened from your DAW host’s mixer) is also displayed on the Info page of the GUI in case you somehow become confused.

Tip: All parameters on the GUI follow the current instance selection. All parameters for any and all members of the Group can change from within a single GUI window simply by changing the Selected Instance. Any instance within the Edit Group can be opened from the DAW mixer, and it can be used to edit ANY or ALL group members.

Tip: An Edit Group may have tens or even hundreds of instances within it. Parameter data for all instances in the group is exceptionally fast to access and extremely simple to edit!

Edit Groups

To use Multi-Instance Editing, instances must be part of an Edit Group. Breeze offers 8 edit groups, as well as the ability to disable Multi-Instance Edit Groups and use Breeze in the traditional single independent instance workflow. These modes can be used at the same time: i.e. some instances can be part of an Edit Group while others can continue to be used independently. For simple to medium complexity projects a single Multi-Instance Edit Group may be sufficient for the entire mix. For complex projects multiple Edit Groups are offered to allow users to create different sub-mixes within large projects, where it may be desirable to group similar elements into Edit Groups instead of showing the contents of the full mix within a single Multi-Instance Editor. A few examples include, but are certainly not limited to, the following:

• Modern Scoring and Film, TV, or Game Mixing
• Orchestra Group
• Synth Group
• Ambience and FX Group
• Dialog Group

• Modern Orchestra
• Strings Group
• Brass Group
• Woodwinds Group
• Percussion Group
• Choir Group
• Non-Traditional Element Group

• Electronic Music
• Synths Group
• Drums Group
• Real Instruments & Vocals Group
• FX Group

• Grouping by Linked Reverb o Breeze 2.5 Group
• B2 Group
• Aether Group
• 3rd Party Verb on Send Group

There are many other ways to use Groups. We recommend to start with using only one group to become familiar with the Multi-Instance Editing and Precedence Link workflow first, and then as your needs expand perhaps consider using multiple Edit Groups if and when needed.

Selection Sync

When using Precedence Link to establish inter-plugin communication between Precedence and a linked Precedence Aware reverb engine such as Breeze 2.5, it is possible to keep the Multi-Instance Edit Selection synced between Precedence and the reverb. When using this feature, the Precedence GUI may be kept open alongside the reverb GUI, and instance selection for both can be made from the Precedence Position Display. The selection will be automatically changed in the reverb engine when a new selection is made in Precedence. This allows an ultra fast editing workflow that is dramatically more convenient than having to open many instances from the Host. Selection is synched in both directions, so selection changes are possible from the reverb GUI as well, but we find it more convenient to use Precedence as the “command center” for Multi-Instance selection do the instance visualization found in its Position Display. See the Precedence manual for additional details.

Global Broadcast

Dealing with many instances of a plugin can be tedious historically. Multi-Instance Editing makes it much easier already, but often it would be convenient to be able to change a parameter or two, or an entire preset en-masse for an entire Edit Group. This is what Global Broadcast accomplishes.

Tip: When Global Broadcast is on, any changes made to individual parameters, or even changes to all parameters via preset change are applied not just to the Selected Instance, but also to the entire Edit Group!

Global Broadcast within Breeze is extremely valuable. Breeze establishes a virtual acoustic space, and Precedence positions elements within this space. In this paradigm many instances of the same general Breeze preset are loaded across all tracks. Each instance has built-in variations, but the entire set of many instances remains part of a unified whole. Users establish a relative spatial mix with the space created by Breeze via position information from Precedence, and use Precedence Link to communicate this information to the reverb instances, creating additional per-instance variations in the Breeze instances.

This level of realism is simply not possible with a single shared instance on a Send Buss. It is comparable to the difference between having one impulse response of one exact point in a concert hall versus hundreds taken at many different locations! The first method applies this single impulse response to every instrument in the mix, inevitably conveying that each instrument has originated from the same point with the environment. The second method allows each instrument to occupy its own unique space within the environment. In the case of Precedence and its linked reverb engine, we are not dealing with hundreds of impulse responses however; the variation is infinite, and time varying in an organic manner as well!

Once a relative spatial mix has been established however, it could also be desirable to make global changes to the environment. Perhaps we would like to hear how the mix sounds transported from Boston Hall to an LA Scoring Stage. Global Broadcast allows users to browse reverb presets to find the perfect environment for our mix. The relative spatial positions will remain intact, but the mix will be transported into a new virtual acoustic space! We can change our Hall to a Chamber or anything else imaginable. The environment changes just as easily as if it were a single instance on a send buss, but it is NOT just a single instance we are dealing with. We may have tens or hundreds, each with its own variable position, and its own innate random variations.

Tip: Global Broadcast makes managing many instances just as fast and convenient as managing one instance on a bus!

Tip: Global Broadcast allows you to change the positioning rules and macro aspects of the virtual acoustic environment, while retaining relative positions and automatically introducing variations in each and every instance even if they happen to have the same position.

The Global Broadcast method does not enforce sync to be maintained between Edit Group members. You are free to turn on Global Broadcast, make a preset change, cascading the changes to all instances in the Edit Group, then disable Global Broadcast, and finally make any per-instance adjustments you might like! You will end up with an Edit Group that is mostly similar, but may have some important per-instance variations to further optimize specific tracks with special needs. In the Breeze this could mean slightly adjusting the reverb gain level for specific tracks, or changing the EQ filter for specific tracks, or any other possibility.

Tip: Breeze Alg-Randomize can even be used with Global Broadcast to introduce a new random behavior for all instances in the Edit Group! Even without doing this, there are already innate differences between instances, but these features allow even larger mutations within the Edit Group.

Press & Industry

“ ...new release, reviews coming shortly... ”

- XXX, YY, 10/2018

Users