With the recent Zoom H1 review here at ANR, we've started covering a range of audio-visual products that we think could be a useful addition for our readers.

The Digital Harinezumi 2 is a small and light digital camera that can take colour and black&white pictures and videos (with sound).
Nothing new? Well, actually the Digital Harinezumi is quite unique:forget high resolution and perfection, this digital camera brings back some of the imperfect fascination of old pictures and films.

(CC Photo via Flickr)

Why the Digital Harinezumi 2?
In the creator's words: "We did not want the Digital Harinezumi to take sharp, crisp images - we prefer its slightly blurred focus and inaccurate colours, thrilling our lives with a dream-like view, interpreting and re-inventing what is around us."

If you're older than 30 you should remember what this is all about. If you're younger (and still not a fan of toy cameras and such devices), well, just think of your parents' pictures.

(CC Photo via Flickr)

Is it just nostalgia? Maybe, but then we should say the same for music-related topics.
Why do many of us still feel attracted to the crackle of vinyl, to the smoothness of a tape machine, to the music and production techniques of the '60s and '70s, so "imperfect" by today's standards? I think there's more - something elusive. Whatever it is, the makers of the Digital Harinezumi have been able to capture some of this magic and put it in a little chip. But that's just part of the story.

Pocket-size inspiration
A creative tool fulfills its function when it's fun to use. And the Digital Harinezumi is definitely an inspiring and fun tool that just begs to be used. In these weeks, during the test, it almost never left my pocket. Does this mean it's going to replace your full-featured camera(s)? Definitely not, but, as often happens with creative tools, limitations are an important part of the design's success.

I don't care much about the specs (you'll find them on the official site, see link at the bottom). I've found the Digital Harinezumi to be a cool and helpful tool: the pics are as you can expect from the description; Imperfect, sometimes saturated and vivid (much better with daylight). Both close-up and mid-distance shots can give great results. It can be used with a tripod, no problem.
Musicians and audio-visual artists should take note of the video features. If you love the qualities of 8mm videos, you should give the Digital Harinezumi 2 a try. It's like a jump back in time. And while I was not expecting much from the audio input (it can be switched off ), I have to say that it's actually more than usable, one-click low-fi recording. Just get inspired and experiment with these features, maybe your next show's visuals or your next clip could be shot with this little camera. I'm sure artists into music such as abstract electronica or ambient could instantly fall in love with it.

The package
The Digital Harinezumi is on sale in different packages. I got the Kit version, with 2GB card, battery and card adapter, to save time and hassle. If you already have these extras, just go for the basic version.
I also got an extra set of rechargeable batteries and a charger (from a Hong Kong retailer), which I didn't test yet, and their use is not officiallysupported, so do it at your risk.

While I'm very satisfied with the Digital Harinezumi 2, there are some details that could be improved: CR2 batteries are not my favourite, the video resolution (640x480) could be bigger, and the buttons feel a bit cheap (and noisy, especially when you want to be discreet).

We hope to get an interview soon with Powershovel's people, who are not only makers of the Harinezumi, but also the owners of a small music label, art book publisher and more. Stay tuned!

P.s: for those living in Paris (or if you're visiting the city), don't miss Harinezumi no Mori (The Forest of Harinezumi). It's an exhibition (open until December, 23) with "videos collected from all over the world, cut into pieces, then shuffled and connected. Jubilant videos, melancholic videos, nostalgic videos, and wild laughter - looping the videos of everything, happening around the world, they became 100 different videos, playing on more than 100 small and big screens. As the music and the images were synched at certain times then let lose at other times, we have tempted to create a forest out of videos".


More info on the event here.

Conclusion
The Digital Harinezumi 2 is a great achievement. This cool toy camera
doesn't have a toy-like price, but I'd definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a (retro)new, inspiring visual tool.

Price
Starting from approx. 150$/€

...Just get inspired and experiment...

Product page

PROS

• an inspiring tool
• instant retro-fascination
  
• beatiful, small and light
  
• the audio-video features are a great bonus
  

LOVE IT OR HATE IT

• Some of your friends could try to steal it from you!

CONS

• Not cheap
• Video resolution could be higher
• Buttons quality
• CR2 battery is probably not the best choice

Here's a perfect little christmas present for your mum. It's the first commercially available plugin from ValhallaDSP.

It's called 'Shimmer', and it's a very fun algorithmic reverb plugin with the ability to pitch shift the feedback signal (in several ways). The creator, Sean Costello (already mentioned twice here on ANR, for AudioDamage Eos and his FreqEcho), describes it as a plugin that uses “diffuse delay lines.” Sort of like a bunch of delay lines that you can control how they feedback and reflect with one another. By adjusting a few elements, you can vary the sound from a short delay, to long washed out evolving pad-like sounds, hence the title. There's several references in the online bumpf to the sounds of Daniel Lanois, and Brian Eno, and I can see why. That ambient evolving pad-type sound that litters their wonderful creative output is fairly easy to approximate with this plugin.

There's a simple, clean interface, and 9 simple rotary knob controls, Controlling the wet/dry mix ratio, pitch, feedback, diffusion, size, low and high cut, and Mod rate and Depth. Below these 9 knobs are 3 modes - Reverb, pitch, and Color. The Reverb changes the algorithm used to create the delay lines; the pitch mode gives you the option to pitchshift the feedback loop, creating very orchestral-like sounds. And the color mode can switch between bright and dark, with the dark having a sharp cutoff around the 11khz range.

Not fully understanding the maths of this plugin, it's useful just to dive in and experiment. Helpfully, there's Sean himself that posts frequently with useful tips and tricks. The November post walks you through all the controls, and gives tips on creating various different sounds. There are other hints and tips around the blog, so explore!

Here's a couple of tracks - this one is a piano loop with the wet/dry mix moved gradually up from dry to wet, to change the piano sound to a shimmering evolving pad sound.

Pianoshimmer by Dollers

Here's a track with the shimmer plugin used in various ways throughout.

Shimmerfile by Dollers

Conclusion
This is a really fun plugin to play with. If you're into ambient music (and you haven't got already an Eventide rack, the Soundtoys suite or U-he Uhbik), I would head towards saying this is an essential addition to your plugin bank. And you can always try the free demo to see if I'm right.

Price
$50

...If you're into ambient music, I would head towards saying this is an essential addition to your plugin bank...

Product page

PROS

• Sounds great
• Easy to use

LOVE IT OR HATE IT

• If you're looking for something fun to change a sound up, create some nice paddy sounds, this is perfect. Not if you're looking for quality reverb

CONS

• None really, unless you think 50$ is too much for one (quality) fx

by Andy Dollerson

Drumspillage is an electronic percussion synthesizer plugin from Audiospillage. Rather than going the sample route of many of the percussion plugins out there, Audiospillage has chosen to use complex algorithms to model percussive sounds. This has the immediate advantage of using a lot less CPU and memory than the sample versions, while hopefully still being capable of creating harmonically rich and interesting percussive sounds.
The plugin is AudioUnit only at the moment (promised future updates include support for VST).

View
Upon loading, the view is a clean and familiar MPC-style set up with a grid of sixteen pads that each trigger a different percussive sound. To get you started, there are eight complete kit presets of varying tone and timbre.
There are two basic views accessible at the top left of the plugin - the Pad editor, and the Drum modeller (Both views I found fairly intuitive, but Audiospillage have provided two useful and comprehensive manuals anyway, to help you out).
The Pad editor view is the MPC-style view. It's more of a general utility area for adjusting the volume, loading new sounds, panning, muting etc. There are four small buttons to the side of each pad, and clicking them will give you a few various editing options, from adding effects to each individual sound, to assigning the midi settings. One button leads to an XY pad assignable to a large list of the internal effect elements (more on the effects in a bit).

Going deep
The drum modelling editor goes deeper into the architecture of the plugin. This is where you create and mould the sounds that you're going to work with. The sonic basis of the plugin is 11 specific algorithms that model different forms of percussion, from handclaps, claves and membranes to various kick drums, snares and cymbals - the theory being that several model algorithms present more opportunity for fresh sounds rather than a single general algorithm. (There are more algorithms promised in future updates) I did find that it was fairly easy to carve out the sound I was looking for from an algorithm that was already in that general sound-world. Each algorithm has various elements that can be adjusted - for example, the bass drum algorithm has 2 oscillators of which you can change the waveshape, the pitch, add a small click impulse to the attack, warp the pitch slightly, and adjust the amount of frequency modulation (if any) you want to the sound. This gives huge scope with which to start tailoring a kick sound to your needs. (Each algorithm has slightly different elements that can be adjusted, to best suit the needs of that sound).

After the adjusting of the algorithm itself, there are several effects that can be added. With all these effect building blocks, a huge variety of electronic drum sounds is possible, with almost only your imagination being the limit. These effects include 2 ADSR envelopes, 2 LFO's assignable to many different sources, 6 different kinds of distortion, and a multi-mode filter, that can itself be modulated by the envelope and LFOs.

DrumSpillage Audio Demos by audiospillage

After spending a fair while creating my own sounds from the bottom up, and also tweaking the preset sounds that are provided, I created a small library of really interesting and useful sounds. I got close to the big, deep clean 808/909 sounds, and also came up with more off the wall glitchy clicks and ever-modulating sounds using the LFOs and filters.
I found that it is definitely a plugin that requires some effort straight away - you'll need to spend some time with it to come up with any results. If you're wanting a quick-stop massive bank of presets to go through to find the sounds you want, you'll need to look elsewhere.

However, with Drumspillage, once you get the hang of the process, it's really easy to create the sounds you're looking for, down to the smallest detail. I particularly liked the envelope in this plugin - it's very fast, and moving the attack around just slightly can really change the feel of the sounds. There were a couple of other little things that I've not seen before that I really liked too. One was an Accent editor - where you could choose the midi threshold to change the velocity level of separate sounds - making it really easy to create accents on specific sounds. Doesn't sound like much, but it also adjusts some parameters on the envelope as the velocity rises, so as you hit harder, the timbre changes slightly too. And the opposite happens as you play quieter. Very nice!

Conclusion
Overall, I was loving the sounds that I could come up with from this plugin. It really feels like you're designing the sounds from the bottom up. If you have the time, and you have a specific electronic drum sound that you're looking for, chances are you'll be able to get exactly what you need here. For their first full plugin creation, Audiospillage have done a stellar job creating a drum synth that's easy to navigate, yet capable of creating sounds that leading electronica artists such as John Tejada, Plaid and Coldcut consider some of the deepest and best out there at the moment.

Price
89€/$119

...Once you get the hang of the process, it's really easy to create the sounds you're looking for...

Product page

PROS

• Very light on the CPU/Memory
• Great clean, deep sounds
  
• Very tweakable to get the percussive sound you want
  

LOVE IT OR HATE IT

• If you want a percussion synth that enables you to create the sound from the bottom up - this is a great place to look. If you're wanting a large variety of quick access drum sounds and samples, this is not for you.
  

CONS

• Small amount of basic preset kits (although there are more individual sounds)
  
• A few buttons not very clearly laid out
  

By Andy Dollerson