Anarchy Software, the people behind Anarchy Effects, are working on a Windows VSTi called SwarmSynth, we have some preliminary information below to whet your appetite! SwarmSynth should be ready for release on 31st January 2003 and will cost £59.99 UK, a fully functional 28 day evaluation version will be provided for download.
- Makes sound by mixing output from a user-sizeable bank of oscillators.
- Oscillators are controlled by five parameters - volume, pitch, pan, resonance and noise.
- Values of each oscillator's parameters continually change, equating to movement through five-dimensional hyperspace.
- Movement through hyperspace is constrained to a bounding box specified by a home position and permissive range for each parameter.
- Graphical envelopes modify the bounding box through the duration of each note.
- Within the bounding box, each oscillator follows a rule-based flocking algorithm - a 5D equivalent of AI simulations of 2D and 3D animal flocking behaviour.
- 3D visualisation of the oscillator's movement through hyperspace, using hue & luminance to represent the other 2 dimensions.
- Mouse-clicking the hyperspace visualisation affects the sound by causing oscillators to veer towards or away from the mouse.
- Hotkey powered sticky-mouse for moving the cursor in 5 dimensions.
- Controllable reseeding to make the algorithm deterministic or non-deterministic.
- 100 automatable parameters, controllable through VST automation or fully remappable MIDI control messages.
- Collection of preset sounds.
- Anarchy button to randomise current settings.
- Context-sensitive help system.
