Applied Accoustic Systems has a modular now I guess

[zerocrossing]

If you use modular primarily, chances are you don't even really think about polyphony. That's what non-modular supplemental synths are for.

The thing about modular is that CV is not a stream of commands, it's just a voltage. Audio is a voltage, pitch is a voltage, gates are just a voltage. The voltage can come from anywhere and be interpreted by anything. All of those voltages are completely independent.

With polyphony, you have a stream of Note On / Note Off commands with note numbers. This means that modules are not fully independent of each other, and often, it forces the use of MIDI.

This has some pretty serious consequences for composition. Monophony is a kind of sacrifice, but polyphony is a kind of sacrifice as well.

There are a few polyphonic modules in Eurorack -- MIDI-controlled, with their own built-in VCAs, so they're really only quasi-modular -- basically a desktop synth stuck into 3HP rails running off of +/-12V power. There are also some quasi-polyphonic modules, which more often than not, invite new methods of control and composition. And of course, some people get quad oscillators, quad envelopes and quad VCAs and patch their own polyphony the hard way. Mostly though, we use monophonic voices.

I haven't used MIDI to control my modular since 2018, and I barely use it for software synths (I have a Bitwig chain preset which forces a permanently held Note On message, or sometimes I will use the arpeggiator in my Microfreak to control a software synth). The main purpose of MIDI for me is sending CC messages from faders.

I think that you are making a mistake in thinking that voltage has anything to do with a plugin like it does a hardware modular. It’s all data. The issues that make polyphony difficult in hardware are non existent in software. The issues really come down to being able to process audio rate data on anything and do it polyphonically. Things like ACE can do it, but with a very limited environment.

[aMUSEd]

I noted a couple of points from the manual.

In the classic-vco section it says -
"The maximum oscillator frequency is limited to 13000Hz, which is slightly above the frequency of the highest MIDI note. At a sampling rate of 44.1kHz or 48kHz, some aliasing can be heard in the upper range, especially when using the hard sync or FM features."

In the delay module section it says -
"In a software synthesizer, modules are processed sequentially and work on very short chunks of audio signals. Multiphonics modules process chunks of half a millisecond at a time."

I don't pretend to know all that much about this stuff but it seems like that might be problematic when using audio-rate modulation?

Could this be part of the reason why Multiphonics has relatively low cpu demands?

The CPU demand is low enough for me to run it comfortably at 96Hz

Wish it had a poly mode though - other than that, and the lack of a few module types and an effect version, it’s the closest modular I know to the Nord G2 Modular.

[tommyzai]

I appreciate the creation of this thread, but the title is sad. ;-(

"Applied Accoustic Systems has a modular now I guess"

There's no guessing. AAS DOES have a new modular!!!

[ghettosynth]

The CPU demand is low enough for me to run it comfortably at 96Hz

Does that help to bring out the bass?

[pdxindy]

I've got Modeling collection, but not Objeq delay, and my upgrade price is listed as $139.
I also was an early buyer of Tassman.

Is that delay really something special?

It's basically the resonator part of Chromaphone, so if you've got the modeling collection that should give you a pretty good point of comparison. It could certainly be useful if you ever feel restricted by Chromaphone's fixed signal path.

Isn't the more crucial difference that one is an instrument, and the other an effect?

Monophonically speaking... no

I assume you can send a short transient to ping the effect and gets lots of modeled sounds. (I haven't tried the demo)

[pdxindy]

Is there any way to make it Polyphonic?

Use multiple instances in Bitwig with an Instrument Selector device

[pdxindy]

There are a few polyphonic modules in Eurorack -- MIDI-controlled, with their own built-in VCAs, so they're really only quasi-modular -- basically a desktop synth stuck into 3HP rails running off of +/-12V power. There are also some quasi-polyphonic modules, which more often than not, invite new methods of control and composition. And of course, some people get quad oscillators, quad envelopes and quad VCAs and patch their own polyphony the hard way. Mostly though, we use monophonic voices.

I'm not interested in polyphony with my new euro-modular setup. I have enough polyphonic synths for that.

I do appreciate that modules like Surface and Rings have the option to let voices ring out instead of being cutoff. So they fall in the quasi-polyphonic category you mention. Very different sonic result and no increase in modules or patching complexity to do it.

[pdxindy]

I think that you are making a mistake in thinking that voltage has anything to do with a plugin like it does a hardware modular. It’s all data. The issues that make polyphony difficult in hardware are non existent in software. The issues really come down to being able to process audio rate data on anything and do it polyphonically. Things like ACE can do it, but with a very limited environment.

The issue in software is if all the modulators including envelopes and lfo's run at audio rate, the cpu use can get very high. And even then, the best software modulars still do not have the same sound fidelity as euro-modular.

[cthonophonic]

CV-1 is pretty efficient, so in theory it could get away with polyphony much more painlessly than more CPU-intensive modulars could.

There shouldn't be any reason AAS couldn't just do polyphony the same way they did with Tassman - allow the user to set the number of notes of polyphony they want and then just clone the signal chain internally and allocate the notes accordingly.

I'd like to have polyphony, but more important to me is some way to process external audio. A sampler module would be nice too.

[Peraqsha]

Apart from "The maximum oscillator frequency is limited to 13000Hz, which is slightly above the frequency of the highest MIDI note. At a sampling rate of 44.1kHz or 48kHz, some aliasing can be heard in the upper range, especially when using the hard sync or FM features."

This doesn't sound too bad. Probably good for some nice bass, lead and pad sounds but for crazy modulation I'm thinking this might not be the best option available.

Going to give it a try because I thought Tassman was cool.

[foosnark]

I think that you are making a mistake in thinking that voltage has anything to do with a plugin like it does a hardware modular. It’s all data.

I know it's not literally voltage in a software modular

But "polyphonic modular" in software means you're going to use MIDI, there's no escaping it. A copy of the entire patch is instantiated for every Note On message, and is released when the last envelope triggered by a Note Off message decays to zero.

That has consequences, which have to be worked around in silly ways in some cases. For instance, a basic Karplus-Strong patch where you trigger a very short noise burst which excites a delay with high feedback and short time. If you make that automatically polyphonic, each note is only the length of the noise burst... unless you add an envelope which does nothing, and has a long enough decay time to let the delay decay naturally.

What does polyphony mean if I'm driving an envelope with a trigger sequencer, and a pitch sequencer with a completely different trigger stream? Let's say I want four notes to ring out simultaneously. And let's say the pitch sequence has 9 steps.

In regular modular, this means a clock distributor, sequential switch, 4 VCOs, 4 EGs, 4 VCAs and a mixer. (Or it means a "complete voice" module that encapsulates the polyphony with its own internal envelopes and VCAs, like Rings, or Just Friends over i2c.)

In software with automatic polyphony -- assuming that it was even able to instantiate 4-voice polyphony without MIDI input -- it means making 4 copies of the entire patch, synchronizing the sequencers... but wait, it also has to modify JUST the envelope trigger sequencer, but not the pitch trigger sequencer, to play only 1/4 of the time. And as far as I know, there isn't a software modular out there yet that does that.

[aMUSEd]

I have no idea how but the Nord G2 Modular just goes smoothly from monophonic/legato to poly by changing the voice count - no need for different types of modules (as in Voltage Modular) or complex workarounds (as in Reaktor Blocks). Softube modular also has some polyphonic patches, without needing to use different types of modules to achieve this. So does Bitwig's Grid.

[MitchK1989]

Bitwig’s grid actually illustrates the “how” behind its polyphony quite well I think - certain modules (envelopes for example) have a check box in the inspector panel for whether it affects voice lifetime.

[zerocrossing]

I think that you are making a mistake in thinking that voltage has anything to do with a plugin like it does a hardware modular. It’s all data.

I know it's not literally voltage in a software modular

But "polyphonic modular" in software means you're going to use MIDI, there's no escaping it. A copy of the entire patch is instantiated for every Note On message, and is released when the last envelope triggered by a Note Off message decays to zero.

That has consequences, which have to be worked around in silly ways in some cases. For instance, a basic Karplus-Strong patch where you trigger a very short noise burst which excites a delay with high feedback and short time. If you make that automatically polyphonic, each note is only the length of the noise burst... unless you add an envelope which does nothing, and has a long enough decay time to let the delay decay naturally.

What does polyphony mean if I'm driving an envelope with a trigger sequencer, and a pitch sequencer with a completely different trigger stream? Let's say I want four notes to ring out simultaneously. And let's say the pitch sequence has 9 steps.

In regular modular, this means a clock distributor, sequential switch, 4 VCOs, 4 EGs, 4 VCAs and a mixer. (Or it means a "complete voice" module that encapsulates the polyphony with its own internal envelopes and VCAs, like Rings, or Just Friends over i2c.)

In software with automatic polyphony -- assuming that it was even able to instantiate 4-voice polyphony without MIDI input -- it means making 4 copies of the entire patch, synchronizing the sequencers... but wait, it also has to modify JUST the envelope trigger sequencer, but not the pitch trigger sequencer, to play only 1/4 of the time. And as far as I know, there isn't a software modular out there yet that does that.

Sure there are. KarmaFX Modular, VAZ Modular (RIP), Alpha Forever (which I only just now discovered. Free but looks interesting) and Modular V. That’s not even including things like ACE or Bazille, which I think of as more semi modulars, because of their normalized connections.

[zerocrossing]

Bitwig’s grid actually illustrates the “how” behind its polyphony quite well I think - certain modules (envelopes for example) have a check box in the inspector panel for whether it affects voice lifetime.

Ah, I forgot about that one, even though it was right under my nose.