Clicky

Gestural Sound Design with Synthor and AudioCubes

2015-09-08

We’ve been working hard on Synthor, the digital modular synth for AudioCubes. Synthor is the new synthesizer I’m building into MIDIBridge, the main AudioCubes application.

As you’ve probably read in previous newsletters, MIDIBridge and AudioCubes now work as a digital modular synth and output audio via your sound card, in addition to being a very advanced audiovisual MIDI controller.

In this newsletter, I’d like to show you a demo video we’ve recorded using Synthor and two Wireless AudioCubes PRO, the new generation of our AudioCubes which are fully wireless and come with a high end housing design.

Toggle Noise Demo in Synthor

In the video above, you’ll see a Macbook laptop running my latest Synthor build (email me if you’d like to try the latest version). The laptop is connected to an AudioCube PRO via USB, which is the base station for the AudioCubes PRO network (you can use up to 16 cubes wirelessly). The AudioCube we hold in our hands is fully wireless and communicates with the base station cube. It’s all plug-and-play, no drivers necessary, and you can also hot plug the cube network, and swap cubes around if you like (any cube can become the base station cube, all without restarting software or stopping or starting audio).

In the video the wireless cube is linked to a Noise processor in Synthor, inside MIDIBridge. The Noise processor generates white noise, but with variable frequency and amplitude. The sound is passed through a reverb section which is now also built into Synthor. The frequency and amplitude of the Noise processor can be controlled using two of the four AudioCube sensors. The other two are unused in this demo, but I have some exciting plans to map those two other parameters of the processor :-)

What’s cool about this demo is that you can see how gestural you can get with this simple setup and the variety of results you can get. You can also see the green bar graphs on the laptop in the back which show the distance sensing in real time for the 4 sensors of the AudioCube. All you need to replicate this setup is a Mac or PC laptop, two Wireless AudioCubes PRO and our free MIDIBridge software (includes Synthor). You don’t need any other software or hardware.