So I bought ACE...

[lectrixboogaloo]

You could also use the "ramp" generator. Just turn everything to zero except the 'up'.

I guess the ACE ramp module is sort of like the EMS trapezoid generator. It may be a bit grainy compared to some other signal sources in ACE. But, it's an easy way to make various shapes.

[dumbledog]

Whoa, I didn't realize that the ramp gets you into audio range. Cool that it's so steppy, like if the NES had a ramp osc. Still I don't see a way to control its frequency via keyfollow unless I'm missing something here.

Day 5: My copy of Welsh's Synthesizer Cookbook came in. Its patches in the back are, uh, interesting.

https://soundcloud.com/dumbledog/switched-on-welsch

Cheesy as all hell. I love it. I'll tweak them later but for now, lol.

The book's patches have cutoffs in Hertz and envelopes in seconds/miliseconds like most descriptions do. However, u-he of course doesn't follow that convention and has its own scale for those sort of things, so if I want to do decent patch ports I'll need to get down and do some analysis.

So far I've worked out the cutoff problem and made a quick spreadsheet to translate frequencies into ACE settings. For Excel users, the formula is

Code: Select all

=(12/LOG(2))*LOG(frequency/55)+46

This works for both Zebra and ACE. Add 1 for Diva or Tyrell N6.

Envelope timings are more of a PITA and will take a couple hours doing some audio analysis until I can do some curve fitting. Unless someone has this handy?

[lectrixboogaloo]

Whoa, I didn't realize that the ramp gets you into audio range. Cool that it's so steppy, like if the NES had a ramp osc. Still I don't see a way to control its frequency via keyfollow unless I'm missing something here.

I don't think you're missing anything. It does sound neat in audio, and I suppose if you just happened to need a digital drone osc it would be handy... but, I guess I sort of assumed you were looking for a ramp shaped cv. Sorry about that.

For a regular ramp oscillator, inverting an oscillator or audio rate lfo with a multiple is probably the way to go. But, if you feel like you blew an lfo you needed to make another oscillator, you still have the ramp generator that can probably step in and fill the gap.

[dumbledog]

Hey is there something up with the keyfollow pivot in ACE? The manual says the pivot point is E3, which I take to mean if you turn off all input, max the resonance, set the filter to say 70 and hold down E3, you'll hear a steady tone of 440Hz as you move the keyfollow up and down, while every other key will yield a change in pitch as you turn it up. This works in Diva, and other keys serve as pivot points in different synths (it's something like C2 on the Polysix for example). In practice however it's still affected by keyfollow at E3, and as far as I can tell every other key. Is this a bug or is there something I'm missing?

Edit: Looking further, it looks like this configuration:



Twiddling the keyfollow while holding down E2 has no effect, as advertised. So what's with the normal keyfollow knob? It sounds like maybe its pivot point is actually far lower, lower than my keyboard can go.

[lectrixboogaloo]

Off the top of my head, I seem to remember the dedicated keyfollow knob being positive going only, but maybe it does just pivot very low. Worked something like: set cutoff to zero (uhm, or was it 1?) and keyfollow to 100% it would track perfectly. So, yeah, they work differently, but I think this is just an ease of use thing. I suppose it was easy enough to tune I may have not looked at that one hard enough. Let us know what your research turns up

[dumbledog]

Oh wow, that's just weird.

So I built up a little laboratory to test it...



When the cutoff and keyfollow are the same the two filters cancel each other out (mostly), so I can experiment by setting the keyfollow in one filter and seeing how I need to adjust the cutoff to compensate.

With cutoff/keyfollow at 60/1.00, the cancelling cutoff is... 60.84. Yup, that's weird. Time for more experiments...

[dumbledog]

... aaaand yeah, that keyfollow knob is just weird. I spent a good bit of time taking measurements and have a good bit of data but I still haven't been able to figure out precisely how it interacts with the cutoff setting. Best that I can tell is that keyfollow basically combines with the note value and adds to the cutoff frequency, but I can't wrap my head around the details. I imagine it'll come into play when using the filters as FM operators which I'll get to one day.

Leaving that for now, let's look at the envelopes.


That's nice and consistent -- better than I was able to do when I tried this with Diva at any rate. Having the precise parameters for the envelope functions means I can translate envelope times from other synths/patch descriptions precisely, as well as create envelopes which are synced to the beat:


If anyone's interested I can try to clean this up and send out the Excel file with all this. My eventual dream goal is to create a sort of port-a-synth tool where I can translate, say, Mini V patches to ACE or whatever and then double them up for bizarre chorusing effects... or whatever the hell that'll do, I actually don't know. Fun times.

[angelonyc]

The Arp 2600 was written by Jim Michmerheizen of Boston many years ago.. Yes, it is a great manual, kind of a first of it's kind to incorporate the necessary 'back knowledge needed' as long as introduce the ARP2600.. I bought a ARP2600 and got to work with Jim on/off for several years.. He founded the Boston School of Electronic Music in the 70's in Boston which was doing great things, until a fire destroyed the school and a lot of electronic analog modular stuff, some prototype, or one of a kind hardware..

A great loss..

[dumbledog]

Oof, that's a shame. Not exactly something insurance can really cover.

Looking through the 2600 manual is a real treat. Reminds me of the old Trash-80 manual which more or less taught me how to read.

I've spent the week porting patches from other synths to ACE. I can do most of the Prophet 5 and Polysix factory patches decently, and some others as well. That's one nice thing about ACE, the modularity means you can emulate the structure of many other analog synths pretty well. Don't have audio examples right now as I've been at a computer all day and my back is killing me.

In the process, I'm getting much more scientific about how I'm modeling each synth's envelopes, which is going a long way toward my port-a-patch goal. ACE's envelopes by the way seem to be proportional to the cube of the slider, something I didn't exactly expect.

[dumbledog]

Day 17 or so: The port-a-patch project has gotten... ridiculous.



Most synth envelope attack/decay/release knobs basically vary the time via the equation t = a*x^b, where a and b are constant parameters that depend on the envelope. Some follow this better than others -- ACE and Arturia's SEM are almost exact, while Mini V isn't even close (when the tooltip says 1sec release it's more like 4). Diva's envelopes are also weird in that they follow a different curve where most of the variation is centered in the 20-80 range or so and the edges don't do much. Still it works well enough, and at this point I can work out the parameters in about 20 minutes of bouncing samples out of Logic and processing them in Audacity.

Where's this taking me? Well I'm getting pretty decent at more or less matching patches from one synth to another, and putting them together gets you some neat chorusing. Here's a quick sample using Polysix (a modified patch from VintageSynthPad's Cold Fusion pack) and one I did in ACE (albeit too heavy on the phasing, whoops):

http://soundcloud.com/dumbledog/ace-vs-polysix

It's also teaching me a good bit about how other synths work as well. I really don't understand the Jupe 8 as well as I thought I did, for instance. Fun times.

By the way, how do I embed a soundcloud link?

[3ee]

I bought ACE last night and having loads of fun ever-since....
I can't believed I caught up this late, I always played around with the demo for years and it never got to me... but now, it did and I'm pretty happy about that!

Even though I have Zebra, Diva and Bazille... ACE is so... different and cool and you'll have much fun with it!

Not to mention I got it lower than $20 (included 20% VAT) with the 50 bucks off Bitwig coupon, hooray Happy B-Day!

[VitaminD]

Talk about dusting off an old thread!

Yes, ACE is quite.. ace. Though the name 'Any Cable Everywhere' is a little odd.. you cannot put any cable everywhere..

[3ee]

Talk about dusting off an old thread!

Yes, ACE is quite.. ace. Though the name 'Any Cable Everywhere' is a little odd.. you cannot put any cable everywhere..

seeing that the thread isn't that large and there is some relatively useful info to bump.... + I'm not too fond in creating a new topic just to announce that I bought ACE and I really enjoy it... I don't find it too odd to be fair enough.

you can connect any cable (almost) anywhere ... as long as you try to connect input to output, no?

anyway... really having fun with it!

[Constructed Identity]

Congrats on the fun you will now have with ACE, my first U-HE love.
I have pretty much based tracks around ACE I love it so much.