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All Reviews by _oswald


By _oswald
On 16th August 2005
Version: 2.0

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Insert Piz Here Mr. Alias

Mr. Alias is a one-oscillator synth featuring one filter with 2 filter types, an envelope filter, ring modulation and various signal routing options so you can really ruffle some feathers.

The oscillator in Mr. Alias operates in a very unique fashion. First you have the selectable oscillator, with sawtooth, reverse sawtooth, sine and square waveforms to choose from. Further mangling of the oscillator is achieved by three vertical sliders on the left of the GUI. 'Osc. Scale', 'Pulse Width' and 'Osc. Pitch' all serve to mangle that pure waveform into the sound of 10,000 screaming 14.4 baud modems.

Beneath the three vertical sliders there is a horizontal slider for 'Sine Mix' and to the right of that, a box for changing the frequency of the sine wave.

The resulting signal is then passed into the envelope filter and spit into the filter. Mr. Piz features one filter with three options - flat (disabled), low-pass or high-pass. The latter of the two featuring cutoff, resonance and ring-modulation.

After the signal leaves the filter it runs into a master volume amplifier followed by a distortion unit ('Clipper') and spit out into the host of your choice.

However, the real fun with Mr. Piz is it's unique playing and signal routing options. You can play Mr. Piz in monophonic, retriggered monophonic, 'fake' polyphonic or 'real' polyphonic modes. The signal path can also go through a myriad of paths, with 'Thru', '/1', '/2', '/3', '1M', '2M' and '3M' as options. Below the signal routing entry slider you can tweak the values for '1M', '2M' and '3M' to spice up the results to your liking.

However, I really don't have a clue what any of the options mean due to the lack of documentation (Mr. Alias does have pop-up help tooltips on all functions), but they all produce very interesting sounds, screeches and wails.

If you're looking to create soothing pads, best look elsewhere. However, if you want to wake the kids up screaming, Mr. Alias could be your best friend.

ps - you can make Mr. Alias alias like the dickens by clicking on the second 'a' in his name. Enjoy!
 
Last edited : 16th August 2005     
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