Minuit Solstice - new spectral synth - free 30 day trial

[minuit-am]

It's a novel spectral synthesiser, great for Ambient, Experimental or textural sounds. It uses a method of phase vocoding to blend and move between spectral frames on a map.






Here's the summary from the docs:

Solstice turns audio samples into explorable sound maps where each cell holds a spectral frame of your source material. Similar timbres cluster together naturally, forming a unique terrain for every sample. With completely smoothed frame transitions (no granular artifacts), you can freeze any moment or flow between different sonic regions. Click and drag or modulate movement to explore the sonic landscape directly, or play it like any instrument with your MIDI keyboard.

Free trial for 30 days available now!
https://minuit.am/

Give it a go - any questions or feedback let me know!

Thanks

[Korg Supporter]

So is it more of an additive resynthesizer?

[IvyBirds]

Give it a go - any questions or feedback let me know!

Thanks

Looks awesome, will give it a go later tonight. Thanks for making everything mappable to MIDI. That makes a plugin like this extra awesome

[aMUSEd]

Looks amazing

[minuit-am]

So is it more of an additive resynthesizer?

Similar yeah! To get a bit technical I’d say, (and I may be wrong here) the important difference is that additive synthesis discards phase information usually decomposing the sound into sines of a certain frequency, whereas this uses the same algorithm as high quality time stretching / pitch shifting technique (phase vocoder with onset preservation).

Then it’s possibly more similar to spectral morphing tools like Kyma/Zynaptiq morph, but with a focus on morphing and magnifying in on regions within a single sample, rather than trying to morph two samples together.

We put a tonne of work into trying to make the interaction special and creative, so there are various tools built on top of this engine which hopefully make it special and a bit explorative. Give it a crack and see what you think - we have really extensive docs hosted on the website!

[Korg Supporter]

So is it more of an additive resynthesizer?

Similar yeah! To get a bit technical I’d say, (and I may be wrong here) the important difference is that additive synthesis discards phase information usually decomposing the sound into sines of a certain frequency, whereas this uses the same algorithm as high quality time stretching / pitch shifting technique (phase vocoder with onset preservation).

Then it’s possibly more similar to spectral morphing tools like Kyma/Zynaptiq morph, but with a focus on morphing and magnifying in on regions within a single sample, rather than trying to morph two samples together.

We put a tonne of work into trying to make the interaction special and creative, so there are various tools built on top of this engine which hopefully make it special and a bit explorative. Give it a crack and see what you think - we have really extensive docs hosted on the website!

I'm trying it now. While the sound character isn't tickling my ears (I'll try my own synth sounds), I am surprised by how CPU-friendly it is. FRMS uses up to 10x that amount. I wonder if any inharmonic smearing is possible.

[pekbro]

Pretty cool

Not cheap though, not saying it's not worth it, but I doubt I'll pick it up anytime soon.
YMMV...

[Funky40]

i hear alots of distortion in that YT demo on their page. I wonder where this is coming from ? Is that due to a sub-par recording job ? And at the first half of that demo i hear quite a bit of computing related sound artefacts also. hmm, listening to the sound-only demos, some have a quite high amount of crackles. That looks to me more like in beta stage.
From there would i say is the asking price -for now- too high.



looking at the sounds itself, i´d say the sound charakter is heavily dependend on how one would move thru the samples. I see no infos about modulators and how they work or other forms of creating movement. I´d like to see more infos on that w.o. a need to install the demo.

the concept looks interesting, though.

[pekbro]

I did notice some distortion that I could not really filter out.

[Ah_Dziz]

Looks like it's worth a try. Hopefully it brings something to the table over cylklop or alchemy.

[minuit-am]

i hear alots of distortion in that YT demo on their page. I wonder where this is coming from ? Is that due to a sub-par recording job ? And at the first half of that demo i hear quite a bit of computing related sound artefacts also. hmm, listening to the sound-only demos, some have a quite high amount of crackles. That looks to me more like in beta stage.
From there would i say is the asking price -for now- too high.


looking at the sounds itself, i´d say the sound charakter is heavily dependend on how one would move thru the samples. I see no infos about modulators and how they work or other forms of creating movement. I´d like to see more infos on that w.o. a need to install the demo.

the concept looks interesting, though.

Thanks for the feedback!

If you want a bit more info on the playheads you can have a look at our docs here:
https://minuit.am/docs
Go to playhead modes section, you can checkout Path / Drift modes.

More video material will come soon on the modes etc, we're small (myself + 2 others who have full time jobs) so can't churn it out

Yeah the demo is something that needed some work - but your feedback means we'll prioritise that, was quickly made (we're tiny) and obviously not showcasing the best sample /track for it!

About the sound character being dependent on the sample yeah you're exactly right - it's like a granulator so its heavily dependent on whatever you put in!
We use FFT synthesis which has it's own character, it may be blurry smeary or have strange distortions so it's not everyone's cup of tea. It's not the crisp/ clean lines you'd get from a wave synthesiser, which ofc have their own place, but I wanted to do something a bit different.

I'm coming from an experimental background so I actually quite like the character - thinking of people like Trevor Wishart exploring early spectral transformations, or Aphex Twin using MetaSynth to draw spectra. I wanted to bring that kind of stuff into something with a beautiful UI that's fun to explore and interact with.

I'd be interested in which samples on the website you thought were crackly? Maybe the glitch / noise ones? I hear some intentional crackles on those but its nothing that wasn't intended or accidental if you're worried about that.

[EvilDragon]

Yup the video demo is clipping pretty badly. Please rerecord that one.

I hear a lot of interesting potential here. I don't think the price is too high.


Best of luck!

[minuit-am]

Yup the video demo is clipping pretty badly. Please rerecord that one.

I hear a lot of interesting potential here. I don't think the price is too high.


Best of luck!

Ah thanks so much! Yep you’re right It’s clipping badly - rather embarrassing but we rushed a lot of stuff out, must have gotten screwed up during editing. Easy fix - sorting that out now so really appreciate the feedback

[M1st]

You had me at spectral synth.

[zerocrossing]

Free demo… as opposed to paid demo?