Using effects with synths for modular type functionality?

horsetrainer

One of my favorite things about iOS music is loading multiple synths into AUM, and mixing their outputs together to make complex sounds.

I'm still learning how to program the various filters in subtractive synths, and I'm learning that not all filters are the same, nor are all oscillators the same.

AUv3 allows you to load an Effect App after a synth in AUM, and essentially modify the sound further than the synth can do on its own.

Now I'm wondering if it might be possible for someone to create an effect that is essentially a filter section of a subtractive synth, minus the oscillator sections?

The idea is to use the oscillator sections of one or more various synths loaded into AUM to develop very unique waveforms. Then send the result into a standalone AUv3 subtractive synth filter Effect to "finish" the signal processing.

My hope would be that the developer of a standalone subtractive synth filter might be able to pack a greater range of filter options and features into a single app because they are not building the entire synth, just the filter parts.

Would it work?

Note, I discovered that I could input the oscillators from other synths into the filter of the KORG model 15 iOS App, but the results were not all that spectacular and I'm wondering why I had that unexpected result?

wim

Boy are you in luck. There are many, many options for standalone filters. Some are simple, some are insanely wild. A few that come to mind (sorry, I’m too rushed right now to include App Store links):

• AUM has built-in filter FX
• F16 filter by Blamsoft
• Filterstation2 by Audio Damage
• Ape Filter by ApeSoft
• AUFX: Push by Kymatica
• Bark Filter by Virsyn
• Dedalus by Amazing Noises
• Dub Filter by Amazing Noises
• Filtatron by Moog
• ... the list goes on and on.

The one thing missing from most of them, that you see inside every synth, is “Envelope” control. That’s the missing piece IMO. There are ways around that, but this involves additional apps and setup. If someone comes up with a filter that includes an envelop (or envelopes) triggered by midi notes, I think they’d have a winner.

There are also multi-FX apps such as AudioEffX by Virsyn. That have more going on than just filters, including distortion, chorus, reverb, delay ...

horsetrainer

@wim said:
Boy are you in luck. There are many, many options for standalone filters. Some are simple, some are insanely wild. A few that come to mind (sorry, I’m too rushed right now to include App Store links):

• AUM has built-in filter FX
• F16 filter by Blamsoft
• Filterstation2 by Audio Damage
• Ape Filter by ApeSoft
• AUFX: Push by Kymatica
• Bark Filter by Virsyn
• Dedalus by Amazing Noises
• Dub Filter by Amazing Noises
• Filtatron by Moog
• ... the list goes on and on.

The one thing missing from most of them, that you see inside every synth, is “Envelope” control. That’s the missing piece IMO. There are ways around that, but this involves additional apps and setup. If someone comes up with a filter that includes an envelop (or envelopes) triggered by midi notes, I think they’d have a winner.

There are also multi-FX apps such as AudioEffX by Virsyn. That have more going on than just filters, including distortion, chorus, reverb, delay ...

Cool! Thanks for that.

I'm off to go check out your suggestions.

I see what you mean by the envelope control needing to be a part of it too. In order to make it a true "Synth Engine that uses External Oscillators".

I think hypothetically, such a "Synth Engine" could be made as a stand alone AUv3 host. So imagine a "traditional" subtractive synth layout, but instead of having an oscillator section, it has an "add button" where you can open audio unit synths, and use one or more of them as your oscillator sources.

Multicellular

Forgive me if i am wrong as ive not used it, but I use envelope followers a lot on desktop, but wouldnt FAC Evolver be usable to create envelope cc?

I googled 'envelope follower cc ios' and found this
"
• Two circuits: Env Follower and Trigger Gate (Audio/MIDI fx)
• Each circuit provides MIDI out (CC/Note) and optional audio transformation
• Env Follower provides a Noise Gate with threshold, hysteresis and curve smoother
• Trigger Gate provides a Trance Gate Style fx with optional resolution and patterns"

http://ipadloops.com/tag/envelope-follower/

Will

One thing to note here is that a stand-alone filter app will always be monophonic. If you're working with monophonic sounds, all good (other than the envelope part wim mentioned). If you're working with a polyphonic source, just know that the filter will react to the overall sound—not per note the way a polyphonic synth's filter works. Indeed, as you explore this stuff, in hardware this sort of setup is generally referred to as 'paraphonic'—the OSC is capable of playing multiple independent notes but there is only one filter (and/or one LFO and/or one AMP envelope). The Volca Keys or the new Arturia MicroFreak are examples of this.

Can still be very fun/inspiring... just sharing since you said you're just learning all of this whackiness.

Will

Also, I think both Model 15 and iVCS3 expose their filters as stand alone AUv3s.

Also also, there is http://www.apesoft.it/apefilter/ and http://www.apesoft.it/dubfilter/ which are stand alone filters on steroids.

Telefunky

Apefilter can be tuned to almost any type of character and has a lot of (unusual) modulation capabilities (can be automated, too), one if the IOS must-haves, imho.

wim

Audulus is a great playground for exploring modular setups ... if you are up for a challenging learning curve. Think of it as a big box full of oscillators, filters & stuff that you can combine any way you like.

horsetrainer

@syrupcore said:
One thing to note here is that a stand-alone filter app will always be monophonic. If you're working with monophonic sounds, all good (other than the envelope part wim mentioned). If you're working with a polyphonic source, just know that the filter will react to the overall sound—not per note the way a polyphonic synth's filter works. Indeed, as you explore this stuff, in hardware this sort of setup is generally referred to as 'paraphonic'—the OSC is capable of playing multiple independent notes but there is only one filter (and/or one LFO and/or one AMP envelope). The Volca Keys or the new Arturia MicroFreak are examples of this.

Can still be very fun/inspiring... just sharing since you said you're just learning all of this whackiness.

Thanks for explaining the monophonic details, that's something I didn't realize until you mentioned it. Makes perfect sense now that you pointed it out.

Because I'm still just learning, and like to think about this stuff.... What if we (general we) kept the same general idea of making a synth that hosts other synths as oscillator sources. But as a way to make it work polyphonically, after you load up your audio unit synths into the oscillator section and get a sound that you want to work with, let's say there's a button you can push that will sample the sound (or waveform), then you can put the synth into play mode, and you can work with the sampled waveform polyphonically using all the synths controls?

Or maybe that's what samplers do anyway? And you could just make a sample of the sound, load it into a sampler, and get the same result?

I like the simplicity of the idea of importing the sampled synth sounds quickly with a simple push of one button. I think the easier and faster something can be done, the faster you can "zone in" on a sound that you really like.

Sorry if I'm in any way reinventing the wheel here.

horsetrainer

Thanks everyone for all your suggestions of apps to check out.
I appreciate you all taking the time to help me learn.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

cian

You get an envelope with some of Sugarbyte's stuff, and also Brambos' percolator. Percolator also has a low pass gate, which can make some really nice sounds.

[Deleted User]

@cian said:
You get an envelope with some of Sugarbyte's stuff, and also Brambos' percolator. Percolator also has a low pass gate, which can make some really nice sounds.

I think you meant Perforator by Bram Bos.

ToMess

@cian said:
You get an envelope with some of Sugarbyte's stuff, and also Brambos' percolator. Percolator also has a low pass gate, which can make some really nice sounds.

Or ivcs3 which has a dedicated au envelope module plugin, among with other modules

Telefunky

iVCS3 also has a virtual tape that allows audio snippets to be processed by the synth engine.
If you found a nice sequence you can quickly record the result and put it in an arrangement later.

jonmoore

Along the same lines as iVCS3, VirSyn Tap Delay has a really excellent tape simulation and has a preset called Music Cassette that shows you how to set things up without the utilising the delay. More accurately, it uses a single delay which can be as short as 1 ms and with a fully wet mix it simply adds tape saturation to incoming audio, and you can tune tape hiss, bias and wow/flutter to taste.

I use it a lot with Dubstation or RE-1 as it adds to the authenticity of both. Although you want to be careful of doubling up on Wow, Flutter and His in RE-1. Having said that, when each used with suitably subtle settings, you can get great interplay that adds a little more chaos to the end results.

It even works well within the feedback path of Enso (it's a warmer saturation flavour than relying on Enso alone).

Super efficient DSP-wise as well.

[Deleted User]

@horsetrainer said:

@syrupcore said:
One thing to note here is that a stand-alone filter app will always be monophonic. If you're working with monophonic sounds, all good (other than the envelope part wim mentioned). If you're working with a polyphonic source, just know that the filter will react to the overall sound—not per note the way a polyphonic synth's filter works. Indeed, as you explore this stuff, in hardware this sort of setup is generally referred to as 'paraphonic'—the OSC is capable of playing multiple independent notes but there is only one filter (and/or one LFO and/or one AMP envelope). The Volca Keys or the new Arturia MicroFreak are examples of this.

Can still be very fun/inspiring... just sharing since you said you're just learning all of this whackiness.

Thanks for explaining the monophonic details, that's something I didn't realize until you mentioned it. Makes perfect sense now that you pointed it out.

Because I'm still just learning, and like to think about this stuff.... What if we (general we) kept the same general idea of making a synth that hosts other synths as oscillator sources. But as a way to make it work polyphonically, after you load up your audio unit synths into the oscillator section and get a sound that you want to work with, let's say there's a button you can push that will sample the sound (or waveform), then you can put the synth into play mode, and you can work with the sampled waveform polyphonically using all the synths controls?

Or maybe that's what samplers do anyway? And you could just make a sample of the sound, load it into a sampler, and get the same result?

I like the simplicity of the idea of importing the sampled synth sounds quickly with a simple push of one button. I think the easier and faster something can be done, the faster you can "zone in" on a sound that you really like.

Sorry if I'm in any way reinventing the wheel here.

The SFZ format may be an option to do this on iOS using samples.

1. You’d need to understand how the SFZ opcodes work.
2. Learn how those parameters will effect your samples to set them correctly.
3. Find a DAW (e.g. Auria Pro, Audio Evolution Mobile, or Stagelight) that supports SFZ or an SFZ player app that can load in a host DAW (I don’t know of any).
4. Make sure the app loading your SFZ supports the opcodes you want to use.
5. Create your samples and determine loop points for sustain.
6. Create your SFZ file with a text editor.
7. Load into your SFZ app player along with the samples it references to make sure it works as desired.
8. If your sample set is large and your SFZ file player app doesn’t do disk streaming, it may effect the resources available to it and other apps in your setup.

This isn’t such a straightforward process so depending upon what apps you want to use and how much time you want to spend creating samples and an SFZ file to control them, other options may be more desirable.

I hope AudioLayer is updated to support SFZ as it already does disk streaming and is an AUv3.

Will

@horsetrainer said:

@syrupcore said:
One thing to note here is that a stand-alone filter app will always be monophonic. If you're working with monophonic sounds, all good (other than the envelope part wim mentioned). If you're working with a polyphonic source, just know that the filter will react to the overall sound—not per note the way a polyphonic synth's filter works. Indeed, as you explore this stuff, in hardware this sort of setup is generally referred to as 'paraphonic'—the OSC is capable of playing multiple independent notes but there is only one filter (and/or one LFO and/or one AMP envelope). The Volca Keys or the new Arturia MicroFreak are examples of this.

Can still be very fun/inspiring... just sharing since you said you're just learning all of this whackiness.

Thanks for explaining the monophonic details, that's something I didn't realize until you mentioned it. Makes perfect sense now that you pointed it out.

Because I'm still just learning, and like to think about this stuff.... What if we (general we) kept the same general idea of making a synth that hosts other synths as oscillator sources. But as a way to make it work polyphonically, after you load up your audio unit synths into the oscillator section and get a sound that you want to work with, let's say there's a button you can push that will sample the sound (or waveform), then you can put the synth into play mode, and you can work with the sampled waveform polyphonically using all the synths controls?

Or maybe that's what samplers do anyway? And you could just make a sample of the sound, load it into a sampler, and get the same result?

I like the simplicity of the idea of importing the sampled synth sounds quickly with a simple push of one button. I think the easier and faster something can be done, the faster you can "zone in" on a sound that you really like.

Sorry if I'm in any way reinventing the wheel here.

Yeah, that's what samplers already do. I think your best bet for easy AU sampling and then using the sample as an OSC within a larger synth environment might be SynthJacker+Nanostudio2. If you're new around here then you're maybe not aware for my years of unabashed NanoStudio fanboyism so, there you go.

For keeping it 'modular', you could use any AU sampler app and record into it with AUM or AB3 and then build it out from there. You're still stuck with the envelope and monophonic (or paraphonic) issues discussed above but it can still be a boatload of fun.

You might also want to check out stuff like Samplr and Kymatica's Sector as different sorts of sample based inputs for fun and profits.

Telefunky

SamplR is completely beyond the features originally requested, but for someone 'still learning' worth anyway.
Imho it's the app that filled the touch paradigm with life and creativity like no other one.
You may discover a lot of surprises and joy in a non-midi world.
It's still (after 8 years) my most productive app (regarding results), while AUM/Audioshare are the workhorse duo for the dirty part of the job.