sonic charge synplant is out!

glitchrock-buddha · Post by **glitchrock-buddha** » Thu Nov 13, 2008 2:19 pm

I'm a bit torn about it. I have to admit, it can be quite fun, it just doesn't amke a lot of sense. I went through the tutorial and I still don't understand the circle thing that extends over the whole area. And I can't see a way to assign the seeds to midi. That would be much better.

It sounds like this is heavily reliant on FM synthesis to me, you can hear it as the seed position changes. Definitely not the best sound quality out there for all purposes, however some very cool sounds can come out of it, and it uses no cpu at all! 3% seems to be the average patch cpu drain here. And like others said, a good building block to through effects on after.

Hmm.. I'll have to play some more later.

Ruud · Post by **Ruud** » Thu Nov 13, 2008 2:30 pm

I have it and I love it.
It's original and a fresh way off creating sounds.
Also a perfect price

Geezus · Post by **Geezus** » Thu Nov 13, 2008 5:05 pm

glitchrock-buddha wrote:I'm a bit torn about it. I have to admit, it can be quite fun, it just doesn't amke a lot of sense. I went through the tutorial and I still don't understand the circle thing that extends over the whole area. And I can't see a way to assign the seeds to midi. That would be much better.

It sounds like this is heavily reliant on FM synthesis to me, you can hear it as the seed position changes. Definitely not the best sound quality out there for all purposes, however some very cool sounds can come out of it, and it uses no cpu at all! 3% seems to be the average patch cpu drain here. And like others said, a good building block to through effects on after.

Hmm.. I'll have to play some more later.

it will make sense once you toy with it more or maybe read the manual. its really pretty easy to work with.

The circle thing that starts in the middle and extends to the whole area basically extends all the branches at once. This is also what the mod wheel on your keyboard will control. dragging the circle out with your mouse will lock it wherever it is as the "base" position and your mod wheel will mod it starting from that point

If you are talking about the little circle thing sitting in the outer corner like Pluto, however, what that does is swings the branches around the circle so that different branches will correspond to different keys. Useful if you want to really toss up the sounds played by each key (even more than each one having its own individual branch), or if you want to maintain different sounds by different branches but want a particular branch to correspond to several keys without having to clone it and eliminate all the other branches.

and what do you mean assign the seeds to midi? if you mean you want to plant the current seed via midi, it is assigned to midi cc # 82. This can be changed in "Reassign MIDI controllers" option in the menu

glitchrock-buddha · Post by **glitchrock-buddha** » Thu Nov 13, 2008 5:48 pm

No not plant the seed, but extent the position of the seed. Like what the modwheel does but for individual notes, rather than using the mouse.

sparklepuff · Post by **sparklepuff** » Thu Nov 13, 2008 5:52 pm

I love it for the exact reason a lot of people have been raving about it -- piling on great effects. It was exactly what I started doing when I was playing with the demo, just thought "whoa, great sounds to just start bastardizing." Glad to see it's what other people think as well. And $89, bargain bin synth. Great tool, instant creative gratification.

Geezus · Post by **Geezus** » Thu Nov 13, 2008 5:56 pm

glitchrock-buddha wrote:No not plant the seed, but extent the position of the seed. Like what the modwheel does but for individual notes, rather than using the mouse.

why cant you use the mod wheel for that? you can just move it to a different position when you play a different note...and if you want each key to respond differently to the mod wheel you can drag out certain branches at different lengths to set different base positions for modulation

glitchrock-buddha · Post by **glitchrock-buddha** » Thu Nov 13, 2008 6:01 pm

Geezus wrote:
glitchrock-buddha wrote:No not plant the seed, but extent the position of the seed. Like what the modwheel does but for individual notes, rather than using the mouse.
why cant you use the mod wheel for that? you can just move it to a different position when you play a different note...and if you want each key to respond differently to the mod wheel you can drag out certain branches at different lengths to set different base positions for modulation

Right, I guess what I'm saying is I'd like to be able to drag the branch position by midi. Can you do that, or only with the mouse?

Also, I'd love to check out the manual, but I can't find it for download.
edit: Or is it in the executable? I'm at work so I can't check my mac at home.

andrewbrewer · Post by **andrewbrewer** » Thu Nov 13, 2008 6:02 pm

glitchrock-buddha wrote:No not plant the seed, but extent the position of the seed. Like what the modwheel does but for individual notes, rather than using the mouse.

i think you can do this using ableton's midi-map -- map to the VST-parameters in ableton's vst "device" -- just unfold the device in ableton's device-lane, and I think you will see sliders for each branch ... map a controller to each branch.

Geezus · Post by **Geezus** » Thu Nov 13, 2008 6:23 pm

glitchrock-buddha wrote:
Right, I guess what I'm saying is I'd like to be able to drag the branch position by midi. Can you do that, or only with the mouse?

Also, I'd love to check out the manual, but I can't find it for download.
edit: Or is it in the executable? I'm at work so I can't check my mac at home.

it gets installed when you run the .exe

andrewbrewer wrote:i think you can do this using ableton's midi-map -- map to the VST-parameters in ableton's vst "device" -- just unfold the device in ableton's device-lane, and I think you will see sliders for each branch ... map a controller to each branch.

yeah you're right, i just noticed that. Pretty cool! unfortunately, it appears that I wont be able to automate any actual synth properties from the DNA page! WTF? I'm emailing magnus about this. that doesnt seem right to me

andrewbrewer · Post by **andrewbrewer** » Fri Nov 14, 2008 12:30 am

Geezus wrote:
... unfortunately, it appears that I wont be able to automate any actual synth properties from the DNA page! WTF? I'm emailing magnus about this. that doesnt seem right to me

i have a feeling that this synth is about getting away from that type of editing ... though there does seem to be some power under the hood.

love the digital trash this can spit out ... really funny/odd aliasing sounds

kaffein · Post by **kaffein** » Fri Nov 14, 2008 1:15 am

Anyone been having issues with the loop or decay going forever after you stop the music? Even after making sure looping is at 0, and release is 0?

glitchrock-buddha · Post by **glitchrock-buddha** » Fri Nov 14, 2008 3:44 am

Been playing with this all night. Lots of fun. Especially good as a sort of synth drum machine too synth each of twelve notes can be a different sound.

There are a couple of things I think it BADLY needs though. A mono mode and tempo sync. It's got all these rhythmic sounds and I can't see a way to sync to tempo. Or am I missing it? Without that, the rhythmic patches are pretty useless.

kaffein · Post by **kaffein** » Fri Nov 14, 2008 3:56 am

glitchrock-buddha wrote:Been playing with this all night. Lots of fun. Especially good as a sort of synth drum machine too synth each of twelve notes can be a different sound.

There are a couple of things I think it BADLY needs though. A mono mode and tempo sync. It's got all these rhythmic sounds and I can't see a way to sync to tempo. Or am I missing it? Without that, the rhythmic patches are pretty useless.

Yeah I think the make or break for me is that it doesn't have a mono/single voice option, and you can't control all the parameters.

If it had that it could quite well be a nice do it all synth.

o0o · Post by **o0o** » Fri Nov 14, 2008 4:27 am

looks like uberschall made it

Geezus · Post by **Geezus** » Fri Nov 14, 2008 4:51 am

glitchrock-buddha wrote:Been playing with this all night. Lots of fun. Especially good as a sort of synth drum machine too synth each of twelve notes can be a different sound.

There are a couple of things I think it BADLY needs though. A mono mode and tempo sync. It's got all these rhythmic sounds and I can't see a way to sync to tempo. Or am I missing it? Without that, the rhythmic patches are pretty useless.

i emailed him about adding mono in a future update, we'll see what he says. i need that too.

As for the drum sounds, what I've been doing is resampling and setting warp markers or slicing to drum racks.

EDIT: Cheater's method: add fx that have gating or are rhythmically synced to give the illusion that it going in time with the tune.