Analog Warfare v1^™

Stereo VSTi Bass Synthesizer

• 2 standard modelled oscillators

• 1 phase distortion modelled oscillator

• 3 independant clippers

• 3 independant Amp ADSR modules

• 3 independant state variable filters

• 3 independant filter ADSR modules

• 1 Frequency Modulation Envelope module/Switchpanel

• 1 modulator with more then 30 routing options

• 1 standard LFO with more then 30 routing options

• 1 BPM synced LFO with more then 30 routing options

• 2 BPM synced lpf delay's with panning

• 1 stereo chorus

• 1 phrase arpeggiator/Sswitchpanel

• 1 Midi Keyboard with notehold/Switchpanel

• 1 Midi settings panel

• 1 knob and sliders read out panel

• 4 Switchpanels

• midi automated on most usefull controllers

• 127 midi assignable parameters

• 128 standard editable patches

• Supports wave/aif  rendering up to 24bit/96khz

The oscillator module is the starting point for the patches. It produces a choice of simple waveforms, like sinus, saw, pulse, ramp, triangle plus white or pink noise. The Analog Warfare Bass Synthesizer comes with 3 oscillators. Oscillator 1 and 2 are identical oscillators.

• 1 waveselector

• PW:  pulse width, makes oscillator's shape restart preliminary without finishing its phase, only for use with a pulse waveform.

• Fine: Pitch Finetune

• Sync: Sync Osc 1 and 2

• Octave : Pitch detune

• Semi: Pitch Detune

Phase Distortion Synthesis was pioneered by Casio in the 1980's and is based on the idea of distorting the playback phase of a sine wave.

By speeding up the playback of one section of the sine wave, it can approximates the shape of a sawtooth waveform. It produces a double sinus, saw, pulse, saw-pulse, square and 3 different reso types.

• 2 waveselectors

• PW:  pulse width, makes oscillator's shape restart preliminary without finishing its phase. Useable on all waveforms.

• Fine: Pitch Finetune

• Sync: Sync Osc 1, 2 and 3

• Octave : Pitch detune

• Semi: Pitch Detune

ADSR amplitude envelope with pan and main volume of the oscillator, in this case oscillator 2. Get's it's signal from the clipper.

• Attack - Controls the rate of the attack, 0 V is quickest, 10 V slowest

• Decay - The Decay rate

• Sustain - The hold level, while the gate is high (key is down).

• Release - The Release rate

Pre gain input, 5 different modes: bypass, gain, limit, reflect and digital. Note that the reflect and digital mode have a minimum clip of 1volt. The clipper is directly placed after the oscillator, and outputs to the Amp Envelope.

• Clip:  Clip amount

• Gain: Pre Gain amount

• Clipmode selector

Filter Envelope 3x

State Variable Filter. Changes the frequency content of the sound. Provides Low Pass (only low frequencies pass through), High Pass, Band Pass, and Band Reject outputs. The resonance control adds a peak to the response (great for dance music bass lines). 2 pole, 12 db/ octave response.

Cutoff is used to block certain frequencies from a sound. In a standard LP (Low Pass) cut/reso filter, cutoff determines the range of high frequencies to be cut. However, in modern software and hardware synthesizers you will notice that cut/reso filter comes in many "flavors", such as HP (High Pass), which cuts the low frequencies of the sound instead.

Resonance effect originates from an artifact in the original cutoff filter used in old hardware synthesizers. It is narrow band of frequencies, near the cutoff level, where the sound is amplified. Today this artifact can be easily avoided, but it is still available though, because it can be used as a special effect. Changes in the cutoff level together with high resonance produces interesting phaser-like effect, which is one of the reasons for the popularity of the TB-303 bass synthesizer.

• Attack - Controls the rate of the attack, 0 V is quickest, 10 V slowest

• Decay - The Decay rate

• Sustain - The hold level, while the gate is high (key is down).

• Release - The Release rate

• Env amnt - Envelope to Filter wheel - The amount of modulation of the filter envelope over the filter cutoff value (negative or positive). This amount is added to the existing cutoff value.

• Key amnt - The amount of modulation of the notes pitch over the cutoff values.

Modulator

LFO 1

Adds modulation to an instru-ment patch. There are 7 different sources and more then 30  different destinations to route to. The modulator can read for instance both LFO's, pitch bend and modulation wheel. Mod amount sets the depth of the modulation. First selector is the source selector, second selector is the destination selector.

• Mod amount - modulation depth

• Source - 7 options

• Destination - 30+

LFO stands for Low Frequency Oscillator. Such oscillators are used to modulate a property in a synthesizer or effect. It can be used to simulate natural instrument effects, such as vibrato (by applying LFO to pitch) and tremolo (LFO applied to volume), or can be used to change gradually a setting to create special effects, such as applying a LFO to the cutoff value, thus creating phaser-like effect. LFO 1 is not BPM synced but has a key follow option. With this option the LFO restarts its wave. Lfo rate sets the speed of the wave, lfo amount the depth of the wave. First selector is the waveselector, second the routing source and third the routing destination. Last minute change: added lfo phase for clicking lfo waveforms.

• lfo rate - speed

• lfo amount - lfo depth

• waveform - 18 modulation waveforms + "Off" option

• source - direct, wheel

• destination - 30+

• Keyfollow - On/Off

Again, LFO stands for Low Frequency Oscillator. Such oscillators are used to modulate a property in a synthesizer or effect. It can be used to simulate natural instrument effects, such as vibrato (by applying LFO to pitch) and tremolo (LFO applied to volume), or can be used to change gradually a setting to create special effects, such as applying a LFO to the cutoff value, thus creating phaser-like effect. LFO 2 is BPM synced. Listens also to the Key Follow option of LFO 1. With this option the LFO restarts it's wave. quantize sets the speed of the wave, lfo amount the depth of the wave. First selector is the waveselector, second the routing source and third the routing destination. Lfo's takes in some cases more cpu power when routed to certain modules. Last minute change: added lfo phase for clicking lfo waveforms.

• quantize - lfo speed

• lfo amount - lfo depth

• waveform - 18 modulation waveforms + "Off" option

• source - direct, wheel

• destination - 30+

• lfo 2 BPM - BPM selection

Delay 2x

Stereo Chorus

BPM synced Filtered Feedback delay effect. Can be set to Off for cpu relief.

• Selector 1 - On/Off

• Selector 2 - Quantize

• Pan - Pans delay left/right

• fbk - Feedback

• mix - delay level

• lpf - Low Pass Frequency

Stereo Chorus Effect.

• Level - Chorus strength

• Delay - Sets the minimal delay of the delay-line inside the chorus.

• Depth - This controls the range of the chorus action. The chorus delay will be swept between delay and delay+depth. If you set this value to zero, the flanger will remain 'static' as the delay will stay constant.

• Rate - This is the speed of the depth and delay

• midichannel - All, 1 to 16

• bend range - Pitch bender range

• monomode - On/Off

• Retrigger - On/Off

• Porta - Portamento time

The Analog Warfare Bass Synthesizer has 4 switchpanels accessable thru the button at the bottom right corner. This button toggles between the main, arpeggiator, frequency modulation and keyboard panel.

Phrase arpeggiator with 7 arp modes. Off, forward, backward, forth and back, back and forth, forth and back2, back and forth2.

• Phrasemode - Sets arp's melodyline

• Octave Range - sets the octave range from 1 to 4

• transp mode - transpose mode Free/Reset

• Note cut - Note duration

• Hold - Hold pushed keyboard notes

Frequency Modulation (FM) - When turned on, modulates the frequency of oscillator 1 and 2.

• FM on/Off - Frequency Modulation Enable/Disable

• Attack - Controls the rate of the attack, 0 V is quickest, 10 V slowest

• Decay - The Decay rate

• Sustain - The hold level, while the gate is high (key is down).

• Release - The Release rate

• Depth - Modulation depth

• Key - Modulation Strength

Midi keyboard with hold function. Very handy for pre listening sounds and controlling the arpeggiator. The hold button resides at the keyboards top left corner.

Simple readout of all parameters set by knobs and sliders. Can be set to Off for cpu relief.

Our installer automatically installs the Angular Warfare VSTi without any need for manual actions to the proper Cubase plugin folder. However, you can still alter the setup path to another plugin directory. Most sequencers have an option to load plugins from a user specified directory, but most seek for plugins in the cubase plugin folder.

For fruityloops users...

Start FL Studio (if it is not already running).
In the Channels menu, select Add One. In the submenu that opens, select More...
You will see a window listing all instrument plugins available in FL Studio. At the bottom of the window, click the Refresh button and select Fast Scan.

The plugin you have installed should appear in the plugin list in red color. If this does not happen, please make sure you have followed the previous steps properly.
Place a checkmark before the plugin name if you want it listed in your favorites and close the window.

Now the plugin is installed and can be used as a standard FL Studio instrument.

VST plugins and how they are used

VST plugins are applications which run in your ordinary MIDI sequencer or in your audio editor. They can be instruments or effects.

Synthesizers
A synthesizers is called a VSTi (i = Instrument), but often people just refer to them as VST plugins and omit the i, no matter if they are instruments or effects.

The VST Technology
The VST technology was developed by Steinberg Soft- und Hardware GmbH. You might have used some of their software, such as Cubase, Cubasis, Cubase SX or Cubase SL. Nowadays almost all audio and MIDI sequencer software can handle plugins of any type.

Support
And if the software you use doesn't support plugins in the VST format? Software packages which do not support them usually support the DXi plugin standard and in those cases you may insert an adapter. The adapter "wraps around" the plugin and makes the sequencer think it's a DXi plugin (that's why this kind of adapter is sometimes called a wrapper).

A couple of good and affordable adapters on the market are Cakewalk's adapter, Tonewise's DirectiXer and VST-DX from FXpansion. FXpansion's adapter was called Amulet in earlier releases.

Mixing with Plugins
VST plugins can be used as insert effects, when you're mixing, or as send effects. The beauty of plugins is that you may allocate any number of instances of the plugins, as long as your computer's power can cope with it. The same applies to instruments, allocate as many instances as you need and as your computer can deal with.

Latency
You will notice a slight latency on all systems, when you work with plugins. All sound cards have a certain latency, on some it's low, very low, but it's there. It's dependant on how fast the sound card (and computer) is. The host sends small buffers of audio to the sound card and the card plays the audio buffer. The smaller this buffer is, the shorter latency you will get. But if the buffer is small, then the card has to work harder, because it will receive more buffers per second. That's why low latency requires a fast sound card. For Soundblaster Live and Audigy 1/2 users we recommend the KX driver by Eugene Gavrilov for latency's of down to 2 ms. Get a totally free of charge download at www.kxproject.com

Hosts
So ... which hosts can be used with Analog Warfare? Analog Warfare has been tested on a number of different MIDI sequencers. They have also been tested with software that doesn't support VSTi plugins, but DXi plugins, for example SONAR 2.0. In that case the above adapters were used.

On a budget Athlon 2400+ with 256 slow sdram and a cheap motherboard, the idle cpu load is about 1.2% with effects enabled (tested in Aodix). The Analog Warfare Bass synth takes much less cpu load though then for instance the Novation V-station VSTi. wich takes in idle state 5% in Aodix on the same testsystem. In FL studio the CPU load that Analog Warfare takes is less or about 1% so it depends also how the sequencer handles the plugin, thus cpu load varies on different tested sequencers. Note: Polyphony takes some processing power due to the many filters and clippers incorperated which get multiplied when stroking more then one key. This Bass synth is intended to be used as a monophonic synth, but can be used as a polyphonic synth (handy for loopcreation, the synth supprts  rendering up to 24bit/96khz).

The following MIDI sequencers and audio editors were used to test the Angular plugins on Windows:

* Cubase
* Aodix
* Cubase SX
* Audio Mulch
* Project 5
* Acid Pro
* Orion Pro
* SONAR 2.0
* Logic
* Fruity Loops
* etc...

In addition, users have reported that the synth- and audio plugins work fine on the following software:

* Renoise
* Cubasis
* Cubase SL


Basically, if the manufacturer says VST plugins are supported, then it should work.

Minimal system requirements: Pentium III or Athlon 800 mhz with 256 SDRAM, SVGA 800x600, soundcard with low latency ASIO drivers.

Typical system requirements: Pentium 4 2.4 ghz or Athlon XP 2400+ with 256 mb SDRAM, SVGA 1024x768, soundcard with low latency ASIO drivers.

Now go get your hands dirty.....! ;-)

Info and Support idj@angularmomentum.net