Make Noise - New Spectraphon Module

[foosnark]

Has anyone put a supersaw through this thing yet?

OK, these all start dry, crossfade to wet (Spectraphon, odd and even outputs panned L and R) and back.

https://starthief.net/stuff/spectraphon%20saws.mp3

First: a single regular saw from Just Friends.

Second: 6x saws from Just Friends, messing a bit with Focus and Slide.

Third: Shapeshifter unison saw, messing with Slide and Focus. Back to dry for a moment, then there's some FM too. Don't ask why I started an octave higher, I don't know

Fourth: Bitwig Swarm oscillator, Slide and Focus wiggling, some FM in there.

Fifth: Odessa in 5-voice mode with some Tension to detune its own partials a bit. Where it gets quieter, I've turned Focus way up. This one is a completely different pitch because I lost track of where I had things tuned while messing with Tension.

Sixth: Oberhausen.

I imagine mixing in Spectraphon's sine or sub outs might beef it up a bit. This is also just purely SAM mode, no recording an array which would give SAO the opportunity to detune the even harmonics. And also using both sides would allow more detuning options.

As you might guess, modulating Slide with an LFO gives flanger-like effects.

[pekbro]

Moving is crazy tough!

Yup, I sold it off. I was always on the fence with it. It definitely has some great features but nothing that I took advantage of.

Yeah, the moving thing was kind of a pain. Interesting about the Mindphaser, you probably mentioned that and I forgot. Heh, sucks getting old. Anyway, hope the spectraphone works
out better for you.

[elxsound]

Moving is crazy tough!

Yup, I sold it off. I was always on the fence with it. It definitely has some great features but nothing that I took advantage of.

Yeah, the moving thing was kind of a pain. Interesting about the Mindphaser, you probably mentioned that and I forgot. Heh, sucks getting old. Anyway, hope the spectraphone works
out better for you.

I think I’m good with Spectraphon and this is more aligned with what I like, especially as it can be used as a processor. XPO and STO took over the voices I lost on Mindphaser. I have wavefolding in XPO and I’m considering adding Warps with Parasites firmware installed for more mangling. The phase modulation and fm capabilities won’t be missed as cool as they are. I have other tools for getting near there in sound, but obviously not the same.

Losing LFOs is never easy. They did that nicely with an octave switcher to quickly change the rate of modulation into audible domain for lots of nice results.

Next plan is also a Stages clone once I’m ready to move on from Hector. Well, move on from having Hector in the main rack. I sold off Beebo when I got Hector, but I think a nice setup with the pods includes Hector and Euphoria for easy guitar processing that can also pair with the main rack.

Either way, I’m having fun and I’m liking how it’s shaping up.

[Stefken]

Agreed, a lot of the reason why this thing excites me is it's new territory, and new techniques to abuse

Yep.

Someone over on MW was asking why you'd ever bother to resynthesize an oscillator... the reason is partly because it resynthesizes it "wrong" and creates something totally new, and partly because even if it were perfect, it gives you new ways to modulate and mangle it.

And yep

[Stefken]

Has anyone put a supersaw through this thing yet?

OK, these all start dry, crossfade to wet (Spectraphon, odd and even outputs panned L and R) and back.

https://starthief.net/stuff/spectraphon%20saws.mp3

First: a single regular saw from Just Friends.

Second: 6x saws from Just Friends, messing a bit with Focus and Slide.

Third: Shapeshifter unison saw, messing with Slide and Focus. Back to dry for a moment, then there's some FM too. Don't ask why I started an octave higher, I don't know

Fourth: Bitwig Swarm oscillator, Slide and Focus wiggling, some FM in there.

Fifth: Odessa in 5-voice mode with some Tension to detune its own partials a bit. Where it gets quieter, I've turned Focus way up. This one is a completely different pitch because I lost track of where I had things tuned while messing with Tension.

Sixth: Oberhausen.

Thx . Some nice textures in here. I really liked the Just friends and odessa.

Has anyone put a supersaw through this thing yet?

I imagine mixing in Spectraphon's sine or sub outs might beef it up a bit. This is also just purely SAM mode, no recording an array which would give SAO the opportunity to detune the even harmonics. And also using both sides would allow more detuning options.

Well, get cracking already. LOL.
No, it would be nice to see how you can capture this flavour in an array and then using the extra detune options. I m guessing you ll have to use a clocked capture to make sure you get the modulation captured in the 1024 spectra. I understand that transitions between spectra are morphed by Spectraphon to smooth things out.

While this isn t a wavetable or sampler, I think one of the obvious use cases is putting in some flavour of other modules but with the intrinsic manipulation possibilities that the Spectraphon offers. And if you don t own the modules yourself, processing some samples of it to get some of that flavour is also a nice thing.

A bit of a letdown to me is that they only use 1024 frames. I get that the array files are really small and for a digital device in 2023 I don t see why they would limit us to such small numbers really.

[Shabdahbriah]

A bit of a letdown to me is that they only use 1024 frames. I get that the array files are really small and for a digital device in 2023 I don t see why they would limit us to such small numbers really.

Why would you feel 'let down' by a seeming "limitation" to something which AFAIK has nothing directly competing with it, let alone offers more frames? What do you believe you could/would do with more frames {if they were available}, that you are missing out on?

... asking for a friend.

[addendum] This has been around for at least 12-13 years when I bought it upon release. Perhaps it would be more rewarding.

[vurt]

found an echophon (around the corner from me weirdly, well in world terms, it's in lpool) for 345, which given they usually go for 500 plus, isn't bad...

what to do??? given im about to (any day hopefully) be paying for spectraphon...

[Stefken]

A bit of a letdown to me is that they only use 1024 frames. I get that the array files are really small and for a digital device in 2023 I don t see why they would limit us to such small numbers really.

Why would you feel 'let down' by a seeming "limitation" to something which AFAIK has nothing directly competing with it, let alone offers more frames? What do you believe you could/would do with more frames {if they were available}, that you are missing out on?

Well, modular does not live in isolation and there are spectral vsts around that can capture much longer timespans, can cut out frequencies in a graphic way and vastly manipulate a spectrogram.

Spectraphon isn t a sampler but it is an evident use case imo to also capture evolving sounds, say an oriental flute for example. With only 1 second of 'sample data' in non-clocked mode , it kinda reminds me of old samplers with a poor amount of memory. A limitation that imo should not be there anno 2023; the files are very small and this IS a digital device. Maybe the clocked mode can alleviate some of that limit. The frames are interpolated so you might do with less frames per timeinterval.

So i d like to explore to what extent we can also use spectraphon in the way these vst s allow. I can t program an editor myself but i will look into manipulating the array files.

[SLiC]

Has anyone put a supersaw through this thing yet?

OK, these all start dry, crossfade to wet (Spectraphon, odd and even outputs panned L and R) and back.

https://starthief.net/stuff/spectraphon%20saws.mp3

First: a single regular saw from Just Friends.

Second: 6x saws from Just Friends, messing a bit with Focus and Slide.

Third: Shapeshifter unison saw, messing with Slide and Focus. Back to dry for a moment, then there's some FM too. Don't ask why I started an octave higher, I don't know

Fourth: Bitwig Swarm oscillator, Slide and Focus wiggling, some FM in there.

Fifth: Odessa in 5-voice mode with some Tension to detune its own partials a bit. Where it gets quieter, I've turned Focus way up. This one is a completely different pitch because I lost track of where I had things tuned while messing with Tension.

Sixth: Oberhausen.

I imagine mixing in Spectraphon's sine or sub outs might beef it up a bit. This is also just purely SAM mode, no recording an array which would give SAO the opportunity to detune the even harmonics. And also using both sides would allow more detuning options.

As you might guess, modulating Slide with an LFO gives flanger-like effects.

That just made me really want an Odessa That said I preferred the sound of all of the oscillators before Spectraphon so I guess its just not for me!

[whyterabbyt]

found an echophon (around the corner from me weirdly, well in world terms, it's in lpool) for 345, which given they usually go for 500 plus, isn't bad...

what to do???

buy it, send it to me. perfect lose/lose situation.

[vurt]

interesting proposal... hmmm

[foosnark]

Spectraphon isn t a sampler but it is an evident use case imo to also capture evolving sounds, say an oriental flute for example. With only 1 second of 'sample data' in non-clocked mode , it kinda reminds me of old samplers with a poor amount of memory.

Maybe there was still a technical limitation. This is embedded hardware and maybe the data had to fit in a smaller cache for faster write times, or something like that.

I fully expect that creating arrays is going to be a matter of experience and finesse and I don't have those things yet, but I don't think it should be thought of as "1 second of memory." The clock rate when capturing is a lot more flexible than the sample rate when sampling -- lower rates don't necessarily mean lower quality, depending on what you're trying to capture -- and the playback position is completely arbitrary. (I bet Slide is a good candidate for an MSEG or something like Zadar.)

I was just thinking last night, I want to experiment with arrays that have literally just two points in them and let the interpolation handle everything. That might prove to be a really useful, easy to implement technique.

[foosnark]

That just made me really want an Odessa That said I preferred the sound of all of the oscillators before Spectraphon so I guess its just not for me!

I figure a supersaw is one of the worst case scenarios to try to do spectral analysis on anyway, and it's not what I'm going to be using it for And also I'm not sure panning odd/even to left/right was helpful in this case, sometimes it actually sounds better in mono.

But yeah, Odessa is badass.

[elxsound]

found an echophon (around the corner from me weirdly, well in world terms, it's in lpool) for 345, which given they usually go for 500 plus, isn't bad...

what to do??? given im about to (any day hopefully) be paying for spectraphon...

If you can get both, I think you should get both. I have only been able to push button and turn knobs with both Spectraphon and Ecophon but damn… Ecophon sounds like vurt when patching the feedback loop. I was just messing with Morphagene into Spectraphon, into Echophon and there’s lots of fun to be had here.

[vurt]

ill have to have a look at finances
should really be saving it, my son is 30 in september and will probably want some sort of gift