2015-08-16
You can see different synth cubes in action: red/orange cubes are wavetable oscillators, purple one is a step sequencer, green ones are LFOs (frequency and amplitude modulation) and the cyan one is a toggle noise cube (white noise with variable frequency). The wavetable oscillator cubes are set to do frequency modulation, the step sequencer does frequency modulation, as well as the noise cube. There is also a waveshaper and state-variable filter (SVF) which are not demo'ed in this video but will be in upcoming videos.
The Synthor synth runs inside MIDIBridge so there is no additional software needed beyond our MIDIBridge software. There is an audio settings control panel now in MIDIBridge which lets you select the sound card driver to use (CoreAudio, ASIO, etc) as well as the sample rate and buffer size to use. The processing in Synthor is all done at audio sample rate, so you have really fast and smooth modulation possibilities and low-latency.
In Synthor, you first assign a synthesizer module to a cube (oscillator, LFO, noise gererator, etc) and decide what other cubes it can modulate. As soon as you’ve done that, you can start putting cubes together to create a modular synth patch.
As soon as cubes are placed next to each other, a connection is made between the synthesizer modules linked to the cubes. So for example, if you configured two cubes to be oscillators, one oscillator will start to modulate the frequency of the other oscillator (you can also set it to modulate amplitude if you prefer). It works the same way when you place multiple cubes together: even if you are only placing one cube next to a group of cubes, you will be creating multiple connections! All without needing real hardware patch cords. Try doing that in a traditional hardware modular synthesizer with only two hands.
Synthor also automatically scales parameters as you move cubes closer together: If you have two oscillator cubes next to each other, the modulation depth will change depending on the distance between the cubes. This is done completely automatic without you having to configure anything. Parameters can also be set using sliders in the Synthor user interface if you need to set them to specific values.
Last but not least, the **signal output of each of the synthesizer modules is automatically connected to the brightness of the colours of the cubes. **This way you can see how fast your LFOs are running for example, or you can see the steps of the step sequencer as they play back.
I’ve also built a default patch into Synthor / MIDIBridge, such that when you start the software and connect your cubes, they are all set into Synthor mode and a synthesizer processor has been linked to each cube (oscillator, noise, etc). This way you **can immediately start making sound with the cubes without having to configure anything **(don’t forget to set up your sound card - you only need to do this once). If you customize the default setup of Synthor you can save your settings and load them using the LOAD/SAVE buttons in MIDIBridge.
**Bonus tip: if you go play live with Synthor, you can load different settings files for different songs, and each of those settings files can assign the cubes to different synthesizer modules! **This is like having 10 different modular synth setups with you which you can instantly switch to within a few seconds. Impossible to do with a traditional hardware modular synth.