Audio Damage Axon 3 (released)

Slush

@klownshed said:

@catbox said:

@kirmesteggno said:

@catbox said:
I am really loving the app! Only one small thing: Have anyone figured out how to audition the individual drum synths? I can only trig them by the sequencer, which is a little awkward when tweaking the sounds.

I think you can using the level knob in the mixer section (turning down the levels of the other nodes), also make sure you don't use an FX send to another node. Solo somehow isn't enough (finding it out right now).

Thanks! :-) However what I meant (I probably was a bit unclear) was I was looking for some kind of button to press to trig a voice manually, which I haven’t found. (But yes, the other way can work as workaround.)

There’s a little speaker icon above the first kit selection pads/button at the bottom of the screen. Turn that on and the pads will trigger the sounds.

Good tip, thanks for that!

suboptimal

Axon 2 has been on my iPad for many years, but each time I open it to try again I find it impenetrable. Does this version solve the obscure UI issue so someone who doesn't plan to devote hours of study can use it? I'm intrigued by the generative possibilities for sample fodder.

skiphunt

@suboptimal said:
Axon 2 has been on my iPad for many years, but each time I open it to try again I find it impenetrable. Does this version solve the obscure UI issue so someone who doesn't plan to devote hours of study can use it? I'm intrigued by the generative possibilities for sample fodder.

In my experience and opinion... Axon 3 is easier to work with than Axon 2. It's still not extremely intuitive, but once you play with it for just a few sessions, it starts to make sense.

With regard to it's learning curve vs Axon 2, I'd call it significantly improved and much easier to figure out. I'd agree with those who call the interface a little finicky and smallish. It's all quite workable though.

kirmesteggno

@klownshed said:

@catbox said:

@kirmesteggno said:

@catbox said:
I am really loving the app! Only one small thing: Have anyone figured out how to audition the individual drum synths? I can only trig them by the sequencer, which is a little awkward when tweaking the sounds.

I think you can using the level knob in the mixer section (turning down the levels of the other nodes), also make sure you don't use an FX send to another node. Solo somehow isn't enough (finding it out right now).

Thanks! :-) However what I meant (I probably was a bit unclear) was I was looking for some kind of button to press to trig a voice manually, which I haven’t found. (But yes, the other way can work as workaround.)

There’s a little speaker icon above the first kit selection pads/button at the bottom of the screen. Turn that on and the pads will trigger the sounds.

Thanks for the tip!

wim

@suboptimal said:
Axon 2 has been on my iPad for many years, but each time I open it to try again I find it impenetrable. Does this version solve the obscure UI issue so someone who doesn't plan to devote hours of study can use it? I'm intrigued by the generative possibilities for sample fodder.

IMO, no. It's easier but not "solved". If you found Axon 2 impenetrable then you will find Axon 3 impenetrable as well. I would not get Axon 3 unless you're able to make at least some sense of Axon 2. If you can power through and get the general idea of it, then Axon 3 is worth it for all the improvements.

bleep

@wim said:

@suboptimal said:
Axon 2 has been on my iPad for many years, but each time I open it to try again I find it impenetrable. Does this version solve the obscure UI issue so someone who doesn't plan to devote hours of study can use it? I'm intrigued by the generative possibilities for sample fodder.

IMO, no. It's easier but not "solved". If you found Axon 2 impenetrable then you will find Axon 3 impenetrable as well. I would not get Axon 3 unless you're able to make at least some sense of Axon 2. If you can power through and get the general idea of it, then Axon 3 is worth it for all the improvements.

I don´t know about v2, but in v3 you get a nice set of Randomizer buttons. You can for instance select a node in the network, then tap "Randomize current voice" multiple times, should give you an idea of how many parameters work. Same with Randomize network and its interplay with Threshold, although it is less obvious. Anyway, these randomizers can give you many controlled variations without you having to understand the app to a greater degree.

catbox

@klownshed said:

@catbox said:

@kirmesteggno said:

@catbox said:
I am really loving the app! Only one small thing: Have anyone figured out how to audition the individual drum synths? I can only trig them by the sequencer, which is a little awkward when tweaking the sounds.

I think you can using the level knob in the mixer section (turning down the levels of the other nodes), also make sure you don't use an FX send to another node. Solo somehow isn't enough (finding it out right now).

Thanks! :-) However what I meant (I probably was a bit unclear) was I was looking for some kind of button to press to trig a voice manually, which I haven’t found. (But yes, the other way can work as workaround.)

There’s a little speaker icon above the first kit selection pads/button at the bottom of the screen. Turn that on and the pads will trigger the sounds.

Thanks a lot! :-) I missed that!

michael_m

@suboptimal said:
Axon 2 has been on my iPad for many years, but each time I open it to try again I find it impenetrable. Does this version solve the obscure UI issue so someone who doesn't plan to devote hours of study can use it? I'm intrigued by the generative possibilities for sample fodder.

It’s actually not as hard as you think, just not intuitive. Check YouTube for Soundtestroom videos on it and all will become clear.

skiphunt

@yellow_eyez said:
This is a quality drum machine. Very unique but useful sequencer, great odd meters, great synth drum kit and sound design, great randomizers, great hardware sequencer, midi output to drum machines does indeed work very well, perfect for all the non traditional kits on the field. It’s got a lot to it. For any drum synth or drum machine enthusiasts this is indeed instabuy for rollout. This might end up being used as much as the other stuff once I understand it more than just a couple of hours. This dev deserves support for rollout.

Yup 👍

It’s a quality app for sure that I have no qualms about buying again. It’s a steal at $4 intro.

I like the way their interfaces look and work, but I think sometimes they favor visual style aesthetics of the interface over ease of operation.

At the end of the day, it’s a great app that’s fun 🤩, interesting in an off the beaten path kind of way, and VERY capable IMO

Spud

Cool app, but man the interface is so tiny. Might be a dealbreaker sadly. Pretty frustrating trying to hit those tiny buttons.

Fingolfinzz

Using a mouse helps me a lot with smaller interfaces

Spud

@Fingolfinzz said:
Using a mouse helps me a lot with smaller interfaces

Sure, it's an option, but I'd argue the better option would be to create a UI that works well on a touch device.

Getting some unresponsiveness too now on some option settings, so it might be a refund for me sadly.

wim

Here are a few of the key concepts that were what I needed to get the basics of the sequencer:

1. The middle node (node 1) is the core beat clock. By default it sends pulses every 16th note.
2. All the other nodes fire after they receive a certain number of pulses from other nodes.
3. The Route button at the top of the node circle (called the "Neuron Circle) is important.
   • Disengage it to select nodes.
   • Engage it to connect nodes.
   • (It sometimes works best to get in the habit of selecting nodes from the synthesizer section of the interface to avoid making accidental connections.)
4. To get other nodes to fire, they must be connected as the target (called listener) of a firing node. It pays to always keep in mind the connection order.
   • The selected node is the source (called transmitter).
   • When Route is enabled, any unconnected node you tap will be connected to the source as a listener. If already connected the connection will be removed.
5. The threshold of a node determines when it will fire. The node counts up received pulses until the threshold is exceeded, then fires and resets the counter.
   • This may be confusing! If you want a node to fire every four beats, you set the threshold to three, because the counter has to exceed the threshold to fire and to reset.
6. The core of the unusual rhythms Axon is capable of lies in the ability to have multiple transmitting nodes feeding each listening node. The count of received pulses is cumulative from all the nodes feeding it.
7. Always remember: Select the source first, then tap the node(s) you want it to feed. I find this hard to remember. I always want to do it in reverse.
8. The UI doesn't give any indication of the overall flow of pulses. This can be frustrating. The only way to expose nodes listening to a transmitter is to first select the node, then engage the Route button. The nodes it is transmitting to will turn Red. Remember to disengage the route button before tapping on other nodes or all you'll do is remove the connector.

The drum synth is more straightforward than the sequencer IMO. I find that if I think through the knobs in the synth, I can make sense of most of them. But until I got the above fixed in my mind, the sequencer was really difficult to get a handle on.

craftycurate

@wim said:
Here are a few of the key concepts that were what I needed to get the basics of the sequencer:

1. The middle node (node 1) is the core beat clock. By default it sends pulses every 16th note.
2. All the other nodes fire after they receive a certain number of pulses from other nodes.
3. The Route button at the top of the node circle (called the "Neuron Circle) is important.
   ...

Thanks, that's helpful, and I've been slowly discovering this as well with a lot of fiddling around. A couple of things to add.

1. It's possible to set up a source/listener link across the middle of the grid e.g. the node at the top can trigger the one at the bottom, but the resulting node graph is indistinguishable from a network where the central node triggers both top and bottom nodes i.e. the two following graphs look identical but they are two different networks:

2. Not every node needs to make a sound - a node can exist only to stimulate other nodes. This can be done either by setting its Likelihood to 0, or muting it. Some interesting results can be had by creating complex networks with a smaller number of audible nodes, and the rest are just there to cause chaos.

wim

@wim said:
@bygjohn & @NoncompliantBryant - here's the response from Chris regarding the needed settings to sync. I'll have to noodle over why the offset needs to be this way, but I suppose it'll make sense to me at some point. It does seem to work.

Chris Randall — Today at 8:21 PM
Make the offset one larger (four in this case) and make sure you have Seq Reset set to anything besides "Never" and this should result in what you're looking for.
Look at Preset 01 for an example. You will see that Node 2 hits on the quarter note.

So, there's a passage in the manual that finally helped me to get my head around this:

Suppose we want a kick drum on every quarter note, a snare or clap sound on every other quarter note, and a sixteenth-note hi hat. Since the smallest note value we need is a sixteenth, we’ll set the CLOCK RATE control to 1/16. If we set neuron 1’s Threshold and Offset controls to zero, neuron 1 will trigger on every sixteenth note. Assuming that neuron 1’s synthesizer voice is generating a hi hat sound, we’re done with our hi hat part.

We’ll use neuron 2 for the kick. We connect neuron 1 to neuron 2 so that neuron 2 receives pulses from neuron 1. We want the kick on quarter notes, which means once for every four sixteenth-note pulses that 2 receives from 1. Setting neuron 2’s Threshold to three does the trick; it will receive three pulses without doing anything and then trigger its synthesizer on the fourth. This means, though, that it will first trigger partway into each measure, and that’s probably not what the kids like to dance to. Hence the Offset control: setting the Offset to 3 initializes the neuron’s counter with three rather than zero. When the neuron receives the first pulse when the transport starts, its counter will advance to four, which exceeds its Threshold setting of three, and the neuron will fire its synth voice right on the beat as we desire.

It still hurts my brain, but I get it now.

I feel like the way forward with this thing is to forget entirely starting with simple beats and just embrace the oddness.

Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr

I noticed Doug managed to get some swing out of it, but I didn’t see how.

rs2000

@yellow_eyez said:

@kirmesteggno said:

@catbox said:
I am really loving the app! Only one small thing: Have anyone figured out how to audition the individual drum synths? I can only trig them by the sequencer, which is a little awkward when tweaking the sounds.

I think you can using the level knob in the mixer section (turning down the levels of the other nodes), also make sure you don't use an FX send to another node. Solo somehow isn't enough (finding it out right now).

Yes you guys are lucky with consumer protection. We don’t have that here at all. Still the Wild West of capitalism in the good ol Us of A

Idc either way AD deserve to be supported for rolling out this app at $4…that’s a rollout! And for something so expansive…their on my list of dev to keep on eye on

How are you liking it so far (and all you guys)?

I quite like it!
Apart from the unusual, maybe slightly complicated but fun sequencing engine, I do like the drum synth part.
Not too many parameters but Chris has managed to hit quite a few sweet spots.
Been tweaking a few factory presets and came up with some nice drum/electronic percussion sounds.

Out of curiosity, I've loaded Axon3 in my recent sound effect track from
https://patchstorage.com/space-radio-voice-transformer/
and it feels like the perfect match!
I haven't played with Axon's individual outputs yet, has anyone tried?

kirmesteggno

@wim said:

@wim said:
@bygjohn & @NoncompliantBryant - here's the response from Chris regarding the needed settings to sync. I'll have to noodle over why the offset needs to be this way, but I suppose it'll make sense to me at some point. It does seem to work.

Chris Randall — Today at 8:21 PM
Make the offset one larger (four in this case) and make sure you have Seq Reset set to anything besides "Never" and this should result in what you're looking for.
Look at Preset 01 for an example. You will see that Node 2 hits on the quarter note.

So, there's a passage in the manual that finally helped me to get my head around this:

Suppose we want a kick drum on every quarter note, a snare or clap sound on every other quarter note, and a sixteenth-note hi hat. Since the smallest note value we need is a sixteenth, we’ll set the CLOCK RATE control to 1/16. If we set neuron 1’s Threshold and Offset controls to zero, neuron 1 will trigger on every sixteenth note. Assuming that neuron 1’s synthesizer voice is generating a hi hat sound, we’re done with our hi hat part.

We’ll use neuron 2 for the kick. We connect neuron 1 to neuron 2 so that neuron 2 receives pulses from neuron 1. We want the kick on quarter notes, which means once for every four sixteenth-note pulses that 2 receives from 1. Setting neuron 2’s Threshold to three does the trick; it will receive three pulses without doing anything and then trigger its synthesizer on the fourth. This means, though, that it will first trigger partway into each measure, and that’s probably not what the kids like to dance to. Hence the Offset control: setting the Offset to 3 initializes the neuron’s counter with three rather than zero. When the neuron receives the first pulse when the transport starts, its counter will advance to four, which exceeds its Threshold setting of three, and the neuron will fire its synth voice right on the beat as we desire.

It still hurts my brain, but I get it now.

I feel like the way forward with this thing is to forget entirely starting with simple beats and just embrace the oddness.

Yeah pretty much. Yesterday I've started with Harmony Bloom/Quanta and Axon messing around with both until they complemented each other well, then added the core drum machine elements with a normal sequencer. A nice inspiring way for me to start Techno tracks now. I guesss I'm going to use two Axon instances going forward, one for lower and one for higher percussion.

Feels better than going through folders of recorded percussion loops and sample slice randomizations.

wim

@kirmesteggno said:
Feels better than going through folders of recorded percussion loops and sample slice randomizations.

I like it better than Euclidean sequencers too. I often feel a little bored with what I come up with them.

I wish badly that it had scenes though. I don’t like that everything is destructive.

filo01

@Spud said:
Cool app, but man the interface is so tiny. Might be a dealbreaker sadly. Pretty frustrating trying to hit those tiny buttons.

True. I thought there must be a bug at first because I didn't able to run any item from Randomize group with my finger. It would help if whole item (tiny square + label) will react to tap.

Luxthor

@rs2000 said:

@yellow_eyez said:

@kirmesteggno said:

@catbox said:
I am really loving the app! Only one small thing: Have anyone figured out how to audition the individual drum synths? I can only trig them by the sequencer, which is a little awkward when tweaking the sounds.

I think you can using the level knob in the mixer section (turning down the levels of the other nodes), also make sure you don't use an FX send to another node. Solo somehow isn't enough (finding it out right now).

Yes you guys are lucky with consumer protection. We don’t have that here at all. Still the Wild West of capitalism in the good ol Us of A

Idc either way AD deserve to be supported for rolling out this app at $4…that’s a rollout! And for something so expansive…their on my list of dev to keep on eye on

How are you liking it so far (and all you guys)?

I quite like it!
Apart from the unusual, maybe slightly complicated but fun sequencing engine, I do like the drum synth part.
Not too many parameters but Chris has managed to hit quite a few sweet spots.
Been tweaking a few factory presets and came up with some nice drum/electronic percussion sounds.

Out of curiosity, I've loaded Axon3 in my recent sound effect track from
https://patchstorage.com/space-radio-voice-transformer/
and it feels like the perfect match!
I haven't played with Axon's individual outputs yet, has anyone tried?

AudioDamage limited multi-output on only three channels, I really don’t understand the reasoning behind this decision.

The drum synth part is phenomenal, it’s like Noir on steroids. I can’t believe how effective FM and Timbere XY pads are. You can sculpt the desired sound in no time.

Spidericemidas

Loving it.

catbox

I an loving it too! The drum synth sounds great, and the sequencing concept remind me of Soma’s Ornament-8, which is my absolute favorite sequencer in hardware.

Spud

@filo01 said:

@Spud said:
Cool app, but man the interface is so tiny. Might be a dealbreaker sadly. Pretty frustrating trying to hit those tiny buttons.

True. I thought there must be a bug at first because I didn't able to run any item from Randomize group with my finger. It would help if whole item (tiny square + label) will react to tap.

There is a bug in the app where the label font and size changes and it becomes unresponsive.

Spud

@yellow_eyez said:
so glad to hear yall love it too
It is a little buggy it seems OR there are lil UI idiosyncrasies I still have to work out. We’ll see over time

It's def a bug. Sometimes it needs a full restart to get it sorted.

Anyone have a good grasp yet on controlling the node relationships? ****

After clicking the route button, the first node selected is the sender, the second one is the receiver.

kirmesteggno

@wim said:

@kirmesteggno said:
Feels better than going through folders of recorded percussion loops and sample slice randomizations.

I like it better than Euclidean sequencers too. I often feel a little bored with what I come up with them.

I wish badly that it had scenes though. I don’t like that everything is destructive.

Maybe it's too interconnected for that code wise.

When I come up with something usable I just save it as a preset now. Didn't know that it was multi out when I bought it, a nice surprise.

Gavinski

Although it's strange they didn't give a separate out for each node, for a drum synth, 3 outs should be fine I reckon, for most purposes.

Luxthor

@Gavinski said:
Although it's strange they didn't give a separate out for each node, for a drum synth, 3 outs should be fine I reckon, for most purposes.

There are essentially four channels, if you count the master one. I agree It’s enough for most of the usage before needing to insert another instance.

bygjohn

@yellow_eyez said:

The only thing is the oscilloscope doesn’t work for me. Idk why ? Also sometimes it SEEMS like it takes two passes to get something to kick in or be recognized as changed …idk

Further up the thread it’s mentioned that they were having instability problems that they narrowed down to the scope, so they disabled it. I guess they might re-enable it in an update if it they can fix the problem.

I agree it takes a little time to figure out what it’s doing (I’m nowhere near getting a proper handle on it yet), but it’ll suddenly produce something magical even if you’re not sure quite how you got there.

I’m loving it! I like apps that have depth when you get digging in there, but also are capable of doing amazing things while you learn. Instant gratification plus lots of stuff under the hood is a great combination.

kirmesteggno

@Gavinski said:
Although it's strange they didn't give a separate out for each node, for a drum synth, 3 outs should be fine I reckon, for most purposes.

I bought Axon for "toploop" percussion, so basically everything above low toms in the frequency range.

For kicks, low toms and other drum sounds I stick with 909/808 samples or romplers and then run them each through Dials or RX950 and a clipper.

What's funny is that I just found out these days that I could trigger other instruments from a non midiFX Drumcomputer instance in AUM, I first assumed that I had to use a midi track and dedicated sequencer version for it.