Ambiotica

[Uncle E]

Charles Vestal, the creator of the Schwung shadow OS for Ableton Move, has released the Ambiotica re-generative ambient processor. I'm still figuring it out but so far it reminds me of Brian Eno's Bloom app:

https://charles.pizza/apps/ambiotica/

[Naenyn]

Thanks for this tip. Looks nice! And, what a URL, charles.pizza.

[charlesv]

Hey that's me! Thanks for checking it out. It's a combination of looping delays, granular generation and a tuned resonant reverb with chord selection. It's all a little ambiguously spacey, but happy to answer any questions!

And for what it's worth, it's available for iOS as an AUv3 as well as Mac (AU/VST3), Windows (VST) and Linux (VST).

[Caine123]

are there no videos yet? kinda interested.

[Uncle E]

Hey that's me! Thanks for checking it out. It's a combination of looping delays, granular generation and a tuned resonant reverb with chord selection. It's all a little ambiguously spacey, but happy to answer any questions!

And for what it's worth, it's available for iOS as an AUv3 as well as Mac (AU/VST3), Windows (VST) and Linux (VST).

Could you give a technical breakdown of what the Orbit, Flux, and Event Horizon controls do? The descriptions on the product page are hard for me to interpret.

[Sandra F]

are there no videos yet? kinda interested.

Yes, check YouTube…

[charlesv]

Hey that's me! Thanks for checking it out. It's a combination of looping delays, granular generation and a tuned resonant reverb with chord selection. It's all a little ambiguously spacey, but happy to answer any questions!

And for what it's worth, it's available for iOS as an AUv3 as well as Mac (AU/VST3), Windows (VST) and Linux (VST).

Could you give a technical breakdown of what the Orbit, Flux, and Event Horizon controls do? The descriptions on the product page are hard for me to interpret.

There are two independent tempo-synced loopers/delays (long feedback, finite tails, except Satellite, which freezes at the top):

- Orbit, from 1/2 bar to 8 bars
- Satellite, from 1/8 bar to 2 bars

Both knobs set the loop length, and only Satellite’s also sets the level, but on Satellite the two are tied to one knob in opposite directions: turning up shortens the loop (2 bars → 1/8 bar) while raising its level and pushing it toward freeze, so the longest loop sits at the quiet bottom and the top is a short, frozen, sustained stutter. Orbit’s level is constant regardless of length.

Constellate is a granular control setting grain size and pitched spread together. The grains are long (a granular pad, ~310 ms–1.3 s), and firing rate just follows grain size (~3× overlap, not an independent control). The pitch spread is quantized to consonant intervals only — unison, ±octave, ±fifth — with scatter raising the probability of leaving unison plus the buffer-position spread.

Flux adds modulation to the reverb tail (plus a stereo drift detune) and feeds tails back into Orbit, which feeds into Constellate, etc., for a regenerative granular drone.

Tail is reverb decay (and lengthens the Spectra ring with it).

Spectra controls the level of a series of tuned resonators set to the chosen chord.

Event Horizon is effectively a drain macro, bringing down feedback, decay times, chord ring and the regen feedback (and at the bottom it empties the loop/micro buffers entirely).

Gravity is the opposite, bringing everyone up — more feedback, longer decays, granular sparkle (bigger grains + more scatter), freeze and modulation. It pushes Orbit’s feedback and Constellate’s texture up too; only the literal loop-length divisions stay fixed.

Dilate controls the direction of the loop and grain buffers, turning them into reversed loops and grains.

It’s intentionally ambiguous and non-specific as it’s all macros and intended to be played through rather than have each piece individually dialed. Hope that makes sense!

[charlesv]

are there no videos yet? kinda interested.

Yes, check YouTube…

There’s a demo video on the site but also a few demos:

[tonycore]

is there a way to clear the buffer?

[Uncle E]

That's a good point. I change presets to do it but I can see how you might not want to lose your current settings.

[Touch The Universe]

Looks nice and sounds nice

[tonycore]

Figured out the buffer emptying move: bring Event Horizon down.