The Amaranth Audio Cycle Ghost Town

[wagtunes]

I'm starting to think that maybe I'm one of a half dozen people who own this thing.

After much debate with my better judgment, which had gone on for a good 3 months, I finally got a hold of Amaranth Audio Cycle the other day.

Now let me say this before I go any further. I love the way this thing sounds and I can see the potential of it. But I am having a fairly difficult time trying to wrap my head around this thing. I've programmed a lot of synths in 35 years, including modulars, but this thing defies description. Quite literally, it's like nothing I've ever seen.

So after diving in, and of course trying out the demo for a bit, I went searching for anything that could help me figure out how to use this thing beyond making simple patches, which in themselves aren't all that simple.

So what do I find?

A total of about 6 videos on YouTube. Three of them by the maker, that only briefly touch on things and a few by one person who just plays presets and one by a guy who does a brief overview of the synth. He seems as clueless about how to program the synth as I am. Maybe more so.

In short, there is no real help out there.

There's no manual. There is a built in tutorial in the synth that I've walked through 4 or 5 times and lights are starting to come on a little bit, but it's a very slow go.

See, this "beast" has no traditional synth parts. There are no oscillators in a traditional sense. There is no filter in a traditional sense. There is a graphical envelope, kind of like Xfer Records' Serum, but it's not as intuitive as it doesn't have the standard attack, decay, sustain and release controls. You can define multiple points and modify the release section for pads and the like, but the way it's done is just not the most elegant.

But the real nightmare is the modulation. See, with a traditional synth it's as simple as just routing your mod wheel or whatever to the filter cutoff, or whatever, and you're done. With this thing, you literally have to define different sections of your waveform that will sound different from other sections and then go through a complex method of assigning morphs along a time line.

The beauty of this is that you can define each section as small or large as you like and make what seems to be virtually unlimited layers to use to morph the sound. Naturally, the power of your PC is going to limit this to some extent.

The ugly of this is that you need a physics degree to understand how to do all this. At least I need a physics degree because I am just about getting through this at a minimal amount of skill.

I have to assume that Daven (I think that's his name) has sold at least a few of these. I'm hoping that maybe some of those people are here at this very forum so we can share ideas and help each other. Maybe somebody who isn't as advanced as myself can get some help from me while I can get some help from somebody who is at least a little more advanced than I am.

Let me finish by saying this. You have to hear the presets on this thing. They are excellent. I'm amazed that anybody can design anything this complex and actually get these kind of sounds out of it. But I guess if anybody can, it's the creator. He must be a freaking genius.

So, anybody want to come to this ghost town and help me bring some life to it?

[aMUSEd]

In short, there is no real help out there.

There's no manual. There is a built in tutorial in the synth that I've walked through 4 or 5 times and lights are starting to come on a little bit, but it's a very slow go.

Not true - there is an excellent online help and tutorials on the website.

http://amaranthaudio.com/help/

[wagtunes]

In short, there is no real help out there.

There's no manual. There is a built in tutorial in the synth that I've walked through 4 or 5 times and lights are starting to come on a little bit, but it's a very slow go.

Not true - there is an excellent online help and tutorials on the website.

http://amaranthaudio.com/help/

The section on morphing (where I am having the most trouble) seems to be a little better than the "in synth" tutorial so I'll go through that and see if it makes a little more sense.

I take it you actually own the synth and that these online resources have been "good enough" to get you through programming it.

Correct?

[aMUSEd]

They have certainly been helpful - there are some very well written tutorials there. But it's still a steep learning curve. tbh the biggest problem is not just the complexity but the fact that it gets updated so frequently and updates always add new features - I can't keep up! Of course that's a good thing really but it has a downside.

[wagtunes]

They have certainly been helpful - there are some very well written tutorials there. But it's still a steep learning curve. tbh the biggest problem is not just the complexity but the fact that it gets updated so frequently and updates always add new features - I can't keep up! Of course that's a good thing really but it has a downside.

I still can't wrap my head around this. Maybe you can help me out.

This is off the help site. This is the part I am having problems with. Everything else is manageable and I'm getting there. This is on curve morphing.

How to Use

Deselect the link button for the morphing range you want to transform along (the buttons are colour matched to the morph position sliders).

Adjust the morph position so its closest to beginning of the range you would like to morph across. For example, if that range is time, put the time position slider to zero.

Adjust the vertices and the curve the way you want.
Move the morph position to the other end of the range (ex. move the time position slider to 1).

Adjust the curve how you would like it to be at the end of the transformation - for a waveshape this might be adjusting the spacing between the vertices to make the sound more mellow.

When I do this (and I make sure the adjustments make a drastic change in the sound, just so I can see that it's working, what happens is the sound I get when I play the whole patch is ONLY the sound that I "morphed" to. The original sound is gone. It's still a static patch except just with the "end point" in time.

I know I'm obviously doing something wrong (factory patches do morph) but I can't figure it out. Maybe I'm not pressing the right buttons or maybe I'm unlinking and linking in the wrong sequence, or maybe it's something else.

In theory I understand this procedure. I created tons of morph tables in Serum and other wavetable synths. You create point 1 and point X and the synth fills in everything in between. it's not hard. But for some reason I can't get this thing to work and it's very frustrating.

[Dasheesh]

hahaha...yeah man when it came out I dorked around with it for a while trying to get it under my belt and say I did it... I decided it was too difficult to program on a regular basis in the end...Like yourself I thought it sounded great tho (especially pads). The best way I could describe it is you have to think about it in terms of "domains", It's very much coming from a coder perspective. Like computer science you know? Any way...there is nothing else like it out there that I know of, so don't feel bad not getting it the first time around. I didn't either...it takes some time. Basically you draw a sound wave in one window and then set limits on "domains" like pitch and time to get what you want, but I never could get down to specifics of which window controlled which domain and how to get specific editing like which "dot" controls this function or that. You may get it eventually but it does take a lot of work and some understanding of science. It was just too much work for me to get specific with it when I already had so much on my plate. If you get it down you will be a synth GOD tho!

edit: Once you draw your wave and then set your limits it continually cycles through the parameters in real time "redrawing" the wave every cycle...thus the name if you didn't already get it.

[werp]

I have Cycle...reminds me, I must get the AU version.
It's a gorgeous looking thing, 10 out of 10 for aesthetics and it sounds great too..but I think I'd need a degree in physics to program it. A real Geek synth this one

[wagtunes]

Okay, I finally rolled up my sleeves, summoned every bit of brain power I could and went through the online "manual" one more time before I gave up for good.

Finally. The lights have all come on.

And that's when the flood doors opened up wide.

The degree of flexibility of this thing is mind boggling. I wish I had the capability on my music computer to do videos. I'd put one up on YouTube that CLEARLY shows how to work this monster. The sounds I was able to create late last night were nothing short of scary. You can go subtle or you can go radical shifts in timber. You can slice these waveforms up so many times and in so many ways that you could literally spend 3 hours on one patch.

If I get a chance, I'll post some audio files of some of the sounds I've created.

Unbelievable. I've been programming all kinds of synths for over 35 years and it took me 3 whole days to understand this thing.

[Michael L]

Great to hear, wagtunes! I too have had difficulty. What did you learn from 'rolling up your sleeves' that you did not find in the online guide? Should we all just plan on spending 3 days going through all the steps, or did you have a major 'aha' in the hours since your original post that opened the floodgates?

[werp]

Okay, I finally rolled up my sleeves, summoned every bit of brain power I could and went through the online "manual" one more time before I gave up for good.

Finally. The lights have all come on.

And that's when the flood doors opened up wide.

The degree of flexibility of this thing is mind boggling. I wish I had the capability on my music computer to do videos. I'd put one up on YouTube that CLEARLY shows how to work this monster. The sounds I was able to create late last night were nothing short of scary. You can go subtle or you can go radical shifts in timber. You can slice these waveforms up so many times and in so many ways that you could literally spend 3 hours on one patch.

If I get a chance, I'll post some audio files of some of the sounds I've created.

Unbelievable. I've been programming all kinds of synths for over 35 years and it took me 3 whole days to understand this thing.

Somebody give this man a camera!

[wagtunes]

Great to hear, wagtunes! I too have had difficulty. What did you learn from 'rolling up your sleeves' that you did not find in the online guide? Should we all just plan on spending 3 days going through all the steps, or did you have an 'aha' that opened the floodgates?

Honestly, it came down to slowing down. See, when I program a traditional synth, or even a modular one, from having done it for so many years, I just fly through the process. I can make an intricate patch on just about any synth in about 5 to 10 minutes. I know what every control does and how to use it. The only thing that might give me a little trouble is if a synth has "buried" controls, meaning there are menus within menus just to find some things. A perfect example is Synthmaster or even Omnisphere. They pack a lot of stuff into a small space so that you have to go one and sometimes two levels deep just to find the "controls." But once you've done that, using the controls themselves is easy because traditional synthesis is just that, traditional. If you know how to use one filter you know how to use them all. If you know how to use one LFO you know how to use them all. And so on. Modulation routings can get a little tricky depending on what's available and what's not available. Sometimes you try to do something with a "limited option" synth that just can't be done. My biggest pet peeve is a synth where you can't assign the mod wheel to anything but maybe the LFO. I tend to just stay away from them unless they have a particular sound that I need and can use just the way it is.

With Cycle, the problem I encountered was a completely different one. It wasn't a matter of not finding the controls. Everything is right out there in the open. It's just a matter of understanding exactly how each one worked. And because almost all of these controls are "non traditional" that meant a lot of trying to understand what makes them tick. My problem was trying to fly through them too quickly, thinking that I could "learn" the control as quickly as I could find and implement a traditional control. Not so.

So I slowed down. I read each sentence, each explanation as if I was learning a new scientific language. I took nothing for granted. And instead of just trying to read it through quickly and do it, I would read a bit at a time and do the corresponding action as I was reading, falling back on my knowledge of synths in order to try to "understand" what it was I was doing instead of just memorizing a procedure. That's when I figured out, through the slowing down process, that I was either...

1) Doing things in the wrong order

or

2) Skipping an important step.

Kind of like with a modular synth where you either forget to connect the CV or you have two modules out of order and wonder why you're not getting any sound.

I am now, therefore, at the stage where I can make a sound that changes through time either via the envelope or by moving the mod wheel.

I am not however at a point where I can imagine any acoustic instrument sound and recreate it accurately. That may take some time to get there. But that's fine as I'm mostly interested in new sounds and those I can now do with no problem as long as I take it slow and remember the order of the steps, which essentially come down to these.

1) Adjust the timeline playback slider

2) Initialize your sound, say a square wave.

3) Unlink whatever control (time, wheel, etc.) you want.

4) Move timeline playback slide to the point where you want the sound to begin changing.

5) Make whatever changes to the waves, modifiers, etc.

6) Relink and done.

Of course you can repeat steps 4 through 6 as many times as you like. The more times you do this, the more "wave points" you're creating along the time line.

For realistic morphing, you probably want to make subtle changes at each point so that your wave doesn't sound like a flute one second and a chain saw the next (something I've done with my MS 20). Of course if you want extremes, you can those too. There is virtually nothing this synth can't do with all the complex modulations that you can do on something as simple as an initial square wave.

Oh, and the wave draw? Love it. By using the pencil tool you can draw any wave you mind can conjure up.

If it weren't for the instability of this synth (it does tend to crash more than I'd like, at least on my system) this may be my favorite soft synth of all time. It is certainly the most fun to program now that I finally understand it.

[Michael L]

Thank you for sharing your experience, wagtunes. Very helpful. When so many synths today have a similar structure, it is good to know we can still experience the feeling of discovery like the synth pioneers such as Isao Tomita, who received an early Moog III with no instructions.

[Dasheesh]

"I am not however at a point where I can imagine any acoustic instrument sound and recreate it accurately. That may take some time to get there. But that's fine as I'm mostly interested in new sounds and those I can now do with no problem as long as I take it slow and remember the order of the steps, which essentially come down to these."

Haven't played with it since beta, but you used to be able to pull up any wave form you might have in mind (like an acoustic) and then draw your wave on top to give you a start. You can pull up a sample and then draw a super imposed image on top if that makes sense.

[pdxindy]

This synth seems right up my alley... and I want to love it... but after a day of playing with the demo, I still had no idea what I was doing. I gave up. Sure would be nice to have some better videos.

[Ingonator]

I had tried the Cycle demo too more than one time but like others did not really have a clue how to program it from scratch.

Reminds me a bit of the betatest for Hamburg Audio Nuklear where i had participated and somehow also same with Tone2 Rayblaster. With both in the first days of the Beta i did not really have a clue about how to use those properly and oát the beginnin of a Beta usually no proper manual exists.
While Nuklear has "traditional" filters and enveleopes the filters are not always needed to create sounds (like with some FM synths). The way how the oscillators work is quite unusual.
Based on that for both Nuklear and Raylaster (especially for the Nuklear oscillators) i had used screenshots from a signal analyzer/oscilloscope plugin while tweaking the knobs to get an idea how it works. I admit that i still have not fully undestood everything about it.


Anyway i have to admit that Cycle is much more complex than those two examples.

One starting point to get a clue about Cycle could be the signal flow description (i currently have a look at it again):
http://www.amaranthaudio.com/help/signalFlow.php

Somehow it looks like a combination of additive resyntheis and spectral synthesis where the resyntheis cretes two seperate parts for the magnitude (= amplitude like with additive?) and the phase (there is also a phase part with some additive synths like e.g. Alchemy). Then for both the magnitude/amplitude part and the phase part an enveleope seems to be inviolved (also like with some additive synths)and after that everytjing is re-combined to a result that seems to be comparable to spectral synthesis.
So opposing to usual spectral synth the difference seems to be involving the phase and the envelopes for both the magnitude/amplitude and phase.
Anyway isn't it possible in the additive part of e.g. Alchemy to use envelopes for both amplitudes and phase of the partials? Somehow this sounds similar while i admit that programming this in Alchemy does not realy seem to be more simple. I understand simple additive without envelopes for the partials quite good (that's how some waveform editors work) but with envelopes involved this seems to be very difficult.
Changing the partials over time using an enveloep is more or less similar to using a filter in a subtractive synth while the "filter response" is much more complex in the case of an additive synth or in Cycle.

It looks like while all that is described above is done for one single cycle it is possible to combine multiple single cycles (= layers) and each with their own envelopes. This is where i still fail to understand how this is done if it does not work like a "normal" layer like in other synths. This sounds like if when done in e.g. a "normal" wavetable synth it would mean that every waveform in a wavetable would have it's own filter and envelope.

quote from the Cycle website (summary of the signal flow at the default page):

6. The single-cycle is smoothly joined with previous cycles, and the signal is processed by the effects. The voice-time is advanced, and the process will be started again for the next cycle.

That's about how i understand the signal flow diagram of Cycle at the moment.

Somehow Cyle, additive synths, spectral synths and also some wavetable synths seem to be based on similar concepts while there could be big differences in how detailed the control of partials over time is or just how complex it is to program them from scratch.