Hi Rhinomaniacs, here is a new version of the monster:
version 2.06 adds:
- new spectral editing functions (read about them here)
- new, quick A/D/S/R editing for envelopes.
- next/previous buttons for waveform selection
- UI performance improvements
- Midi activity indicator and panic button
- and the usual bunch of small bug fixes 
and yes, the bug with incorrectly loaded microtuning scales is gone !
Enjoy,
‘Tick
It seems my previous post (the envelope modulation time mini-tutorial) gave away one of the features I have been working on for Rhino 2.06: quick ADSR editing of Rhino envelopes. Did you notice the new A, D, S, R parameters at the top of the envelope window ?
Rhino 2.06 will add 4 new, assignable A, D, S, R controls. They globally control the attack, decay, sustain and release of all envelopes. Each envelope has its own “amount” control, defining how much these global ADSR controls impact the envelope times.
The A, D, S, R controls can be assigned to any one of the user sliders, or to an external controller.
The video below shows the whole thing in action.
Some users have requested this (maybe the documentation is not clear enough), so here a mini tutorial showing how to make envelope attack time shorter for higher notes.
First define an envelope with 1 second attack, and set the modulation marker (the little downwards pointing triangle) to 20 ms.
and then use the Keyboard Time Modulation curve to define how this modulation is mapped across the keyboard:
That’s it ! With these settings, attack time will be 1 second for midi note C3, and 20ms for midi note C8. In between, it will move linearly from 1 second down to 20 ms.
Similarly, the Velocity Time Modulation curve can be used to control envelope times with velocity. And remember, each segment of the envelope has his own modulation marker !
so this site can now be accessed either with http://www.bigtick-audio.com, or http://www.bigtickaudio.com.
Still, I hate the fact that I had to pay a lawyer to get my domain name back.
Due to a legal dispute with my website hoster, I had to move to another server. Hopefully the disruption has been minimal, with the only visible consequence being the loss of a dash in the domain name. So yes, we are now http://www.bigtickaudio.com, until the lawyers and judges give me http://www.bigtick-audio.com back. At this point both domains will be valid.
After playing around with Rhino spectral editing functions yesterday, I wanted to add editing features to directly interact with the actual waveform. Because all of the internal computations are done in the frequency domain, modified waveforms are FFT-analyzed behind the scenes, and then resynthesized using the additive engine – renormalizing and removing any DC offset in the process.
The first part of the movie shows how to use spectral editing functions to generate a clean square wave, and the second part shows direct manipulation of the waveform. Horizontal drag resamples the left and right parts of the waveform to transform the square wave into a pulse of variable width. Vertical drag “pushes” the waveform around to generate interesting shapes. Now I must look for a way to add things like clipping, bit quantizing or sync retrigger…
I have been playing around with the additive editor lately, trying to reorganize the spectral edition features, and add more useful ones. Here is a short example, using the “interpolate” option to generate constant harmonics over the full spectrum…
… resulting in an approximation (because we only use 64 harmonics) of an infinite spike at the origin…
… then apply the “divide by harmonic number” transformation:
… and the resulting waveform is a saw wave ! Just refer to Dr. Fourier if you want to know why !
The only annoying thing is the oscillations around the edges. This is known as the Gibbs phenomenon, and it happens because we abruptly stop the harmonics series after 64. Fortunately, it can be reduced, by smoothing out the harmonics – this is exactly what the “anti-ripple” function does (applying a Hamming window over the spectrum)…
… leaving us with a beautiful, alias-free, pure saw wave to feed into Rhino’s filters !
It is also very easy to get a square wave from here, just use the “remove evens” function to get rid of the even harmonics:
So as they are, these spectral editing functions are already quite useful. One thing that could be added, though, is waveform editing functions for effects like PWM, quantization or rectification. Hmmm…. time to fire up xcode
Over the years I have written a number of vst synths and effects, many of which are now part of the vst history, dating back from the very first days of Steinberg’s sdk. They were proud companions of Neon or Pro-52 in the software arsenal of computer musicians in the previous millenium, and, according to the feedback I receive regularly, still find their way into many tracks today. However, with the launch of my new company, I have found that I need to better focus my energies, and I have thus decided to keep only Rhino in my current products list (don’t worry, more will come…).
This means that Angelina, EP-station, Rainbow, and many other unreleased effects are now and forever free to download. The only thing I request from you is to register on this web site – you will be able to download them after registering.
Happy music making !
so here we are… taking that dreaded first step… with a first post in the blog, a new website, a new Rhino version, and of course, many new ideas for future products… so watch this space, fellow musician – and feel free to leave feedback !
