Audio Damage Continua

[antic604]

Meh, just like their granular synth from last year. Form over function, IMO.

[zerocrossing]

Yeah... without wavetables or something more interesting than basic analog style waveforms, I don’t see all that much point in this one. Sounds like a synthesizer, but nothing I’ve not really heard before 100 times or more.

There are enough wavetables out there, the waveform mangling is much easier to control and better suited for expressive MPE playing. In the way they implemented it, it is even new...
I always found mangling the waveform is creating way more natural sounding timbres than filters.
This is a welcome addition to our choices...

Sorry, I just listened to all the demos and I didn’t hear a single compelling thing, and I’m always on the hunt for an MPE capable synth. I’ll stick to Strobe and the other MPE compatible synths that I already own.

[JoaquinAce]

While I liked the morphing ability and the easy assignable modulation function, overall it didn't blow me out of the water. I could probably get similar sounds from Byome so I would've expected something more unique from AD for the standard $99 price point. With regards to MPE, I have Cypher2 and maybe if I didn't, I would consider Continua. I still feel it's great that there are more MPE options coming, but this attempt doesn't have the same level of "uniqueness" as their other releases. This is all just my personal opinion. We are spoiled with some many choices, but at the same time, the companies will need to come up with something pretty special to establish a strong foothold in the current overpopulated market.

[Sinisterbr]

If people are looking for a great and inexpensive MPE VA synth, I'd recomend TAL-Mod then. I can't say enough about it.

[JoeCat]

Just tossing assumption: I think they are designing mobile first, so that would account for certain choices. The ability to morph the waves gives you some oscillator flexibility without the footprint of a wavetable; maybe that was part of the design choice.

SugarBytes seems to be going the same route but they're (as always) out in left field; Aparillo's a great example of something innovative that works cross-platform. I think AD has been courting a different market, although their Basic synth seems to have disappeared completely (maybe it morphed into this?).

(The iOS market is weird. There are some amazing instruments on it that have no VST/AU equivalent - the Patterning drum machine is so good it's stupid - and I've been having fun on that platform for years. But I've never produced anything of value - I always come back to it feeling like it's almost there, then get frustrated. It's just too confining of a space, graphically, and the workflow involving multiple standards and apps is frustrating as hell. There's always one product that supports A but not B, some bug - like clock sync works but not start/stop - a ton of setup involving routing audio/midi - even with the products that have tried to help bridge the gaps. It's why Korg Gadget did so well even though you were limited in a closed environment.)

[JoeCat]

OT but since there are Audio Damage fans here - anyone upgrade from the old to new Axiom? I love generative kit and liked the updated interface but for some reason have a really hard time getting on with the way connections are made and modules are selected. Seemed liked the old one maybe had better workflow.

[Tj Shredder]

Monophonic patches react strange when played with my Linnstrument. It seems it sends all pitch bend information of multiple touches to the one playing instance, as if MPE is entirely ignored... (It should only pass the PB with the same Midi channel)

[thecontrolcentre]

OT but since there are Audio Damage fans here - anyone upgrade from the old to new Axiom? I love generative kit and liked the updated interface but for some reason have a really hard time getting on with the way connections are made and modules are selected. Seemed liked the old one maybe had better workflow.

Axiom is by Blue Cat. Do you mean Axon?

[wakax]

obs:

I would say
it's designed for pads and ambient music mostly
and long evolving dirty soundscapes.
That's where it really shines!
And it does.

[JoeCat]

OT but since there are Audio Damage fans here - anyone upgrade from the old to new Axiom? I love generative kit and liked the updated interface but for some reason have a really hard time getting on with the way connections are made and modules are selected. Seemed liked the old one maybe had better workflow.

Axiom is by Blue Cat. Do you mean Axon?

Yeah TY - too late to correct in op though.

I think we're running out of nouns for instruments. Should get the peeps who do pharma names to help out. "Horusia", "Xelphenica" "Prinosec"

"Ask your producer what Zenophalet (polyphonic wavetable MPE-compatible 8-voice synthesizer) can do for you!"

[Echoes in the Attic]

Monophonic patches react strange when played with my Linnstrument. It seems it sends all pitch bend information of multiple touches to the one playing instance, as if MPE is entirely ignored... (It should only pass the PB with the same Midi channel)

Do you mean for example if you glide the pitch of a note to another note and then cut that note off with a new note, that the pitch is applied to the second note as well?

If so, this is an issue with many mpe synths at the moment. There doesn't seem to be any guidance or consensus about how to deal with monophonic behavior in MPE mode. Some synths handle it perfectly, where every notes expressions are kept to their own channel even when only one note is heard. This has the obvious benefit that you can quickly switch between notes that are changing their expressions independently and the expressions don't get confused between them. An example would be to gradually raise the pitch of one note while another note was playing on and off quickly, triggering monophonic bouncing between the notes but the expressions continue (even if the controller is set to relative which is more useful). Roli has always understood this, as the maker of both hardware and software mpe instruments, and they have designed many polyphonic and monophonic patches for mpe use. So their instruments (Equator, Strobe, Cypher) have always behaved ideally. I've also noticed that Pigments, Phonec and Surge are able to deal with monophonic mpe sounds as well. Some devs/industry people have been a little hostile to the idea of even referring to any monophonic sounds as mpe (Roger Linn, U-he), because they think mpe should refer only to polyphonic sounds, however tracking the expressions of multiple notes at a time is also useful for mono sounds, as described above. Monophonic sounds are often the ones you want to be more expressive, so I think it's silly to not count those as mpe, thus leaving lots of software devs to implement completely different behaviors to an instrument when it's in mono and receiving multi-channel note and expression data.

[Tj Shredder]

Monophonic patches react strange when played with my Linnstrument. It seems it sends all pitch bend information of multiple touches to the one playing instance, as if MPE is entirely ignored... (It should only pass the PB with the same Midi channel)

Do you mean for example if you glide the pitch of a note to another note and then cut that note off with a new note, that the pitch is applied to the second note as well?

yes, its jumping between multiple very different PB values...

If so, this is an issue with many mpe synths at the moment. There doesn't seem to be any guidance or consensus about how to deal with monophonic behavior in MPE mode.

I tried almost all of them, none of the others, except for Sektor (which even doesn't get this for poly patches) has this problem, which is easy to resolve anyway (just keep your channels routed to the voices and only listen to commands with the same channel...)
I don't see any technical problem. You have to deal with maximum voice numbers also in polyphonic mode. If you play 8 keys, but the max voice number is 6, you have to steal notes somehow. This is a common problem solved (in different ways) since Oberheim created the first polyphonic SEM versions...

[Atlatnesiti]

obs:

I would say
it's designed for pads and ambient music mostly
and long evolving dirty soundscapes.
That's where it really shines!
And it does.

Desktop and iPad app is identical. Bought the iPad version to try it out to full potential including rather excellent sound bank from https://sonalsystem.com/collections/pre ... ducts/noir
For $7.99 iOS version it’s ok, but that’s about that...
Not buying desktop version I’m afraid...

[simmo75]

I bought the $7.99 iOS version too, a bargain at 10% of the cost...

[Echoes in the Attic]

If so, this is an issue with many mpe synths at the moment. There doesn't seem to be any guidance or consensus about how to deal with monophonic behavior in MPE mode.

I tried almost all of them, none of the others, except for Sektor (which even doesn't get this for poly patches) has this problem, which is easy to resolve anyway (just keep your channels routed to the voices and only listen to commands with the same channel...)
I don't see any technical problem. You have to deal with maximum voice numbers also in polyphonic mode. If you play 8 keys, but the max voice number is 6, you have to steal notes somehow. This is a common problem solved (in different ways) since Oberheim created the first polyphonic SEM versions...

None the less, different software is handling it differently and you may not have come across issues, but most are not handling monophonic quite right.
Here is an example of 2 different synths in mpe mode (right vs wrong) playing the exact same thing in mono mode:
Incorrect:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5rkyzgue5pew5 ... 1.m4v?dl=0
Correct:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ftx52rfwguou6 ... 1.m4v?dl=0

You see how in the first example of the first video, playing legato did not allow a bend on the second note, and then on the second passage of the first video playing legato after a bend applied the bend to the second note, which was obvious after releasing and playing the note again. The second video did not have these problems. This is just one type of error that occurs commonly. There other types of glitches as well, like what you are experiencing probably.