Splash Instrument Manual

Transcription

1 Splash Instrument Manual Thank you for buying Splash from Wobblophones! You will find two instruments in the Splash library: Splash and Nebulon Splash. This manual will give you an overview of the Splash instrument included in the library. If you want to use the provided snapshots from Kontakt s snapshot menu, please install them manually. Alternatively you can use Kontakt s browser to drag snapshots to Splash to load them. More information on how to install the snapshots manually can be found in the installation instructions. Splash virtual instrument. The Splash virtual instrument is all about tuned water drops and streams. When playing Splash with your midi keyboard, you ll find yourself playing a kind of water piano, or perhaps a water organ. The Splash instrument gives you the ability to fine tune your drops, streams and even the bubbles that pop out of the water after the drops or streams have landed. You can tune Splash to give it a splashier or less splashy sound. You can even go far beyond and create previously unknown sounds with the built-in effects. This panel is the first thing you ll see when loading the splash instrument. We ll refer to it as the front panel.

2 The front panel. When loading Splash, you ll first see it s big front panel with two big knobs, a pipe with water and a splash in it, and the fine tune button. The big knobs are macro controls that allow for quick adjustments to the sound of the splashes or the bubbles. The splashes knob changes the drops or streams from not splashy at 1 to normal splashy at 50 to very wet and splashy at 100. When you twist this knob, you ll see the splash inside the pipe change according to the level of splashyness. The bubbles knob changes the bubbles that pop out of the water, after a drop has landed or a stream has stopped. It changes two things: their density and their high frequency brightness. The fine tune panel. On the left side of this panel you can fine tune the sound of the drops / streams. On the right side you can fine tune the sound of the bubbles. The blue lines that go from the FRONT switches to several knobs, indicate which knobs are connected to the two big knobs on the front panel. For the splashes knob these are Envelope DEC, Dynamics SUS and Equalizer HG. For the bubbles knob these are Density DNS and DCY and High Bell Filter GN. Their functions will be explained later, but now is a good moment to explain the way these knobs interact with the front panel knobs. When you change the value of any of the linked knobs, their new value will be linked to the value of the connected front knob. For example: if the splashes knob is at 50 and SUS is at 0%, then 0% links to 50. The SUS knob has a range of -50% to +50%, the splashes knob ranges from 1 to 100. Splashes 1 will be SUS -50%, splashes 50 will be SUS 0% and splashes 100 will be SUS + 50%. If you now change SUS to -10%, while splashes is at 50, then this relationship will change to: Splashes at

3 1 equals SUS at -50%, splashes at 50 equals SUS at -10% and splashes at 100 again equals SUS at 100%. So full splashes is always full splashes, and minimum is always the same minimum. But you can set the way in which the front knob changes the linked knobs from full to minimum. Splashes side. The switches FRONT on the left and right switch the interface back to the main panel. The INSERT EFFECTS and SEND EFFECTS switches take you to the insert effects panel or the send effects panel respectively. Envelope. The ATT and DEC knobs are used to set the attack time (fade-in) and decay time (fade-out) of each drop or stream. If you set the attack time to a large value or the decay time to a very short value, it is possible that no sound is heard when playing single drops. When this happens, reduce the attack time or increase the decay time, until you hear something again. Dynamics. The ATT knob is used to set the volume scaling of the attack portion of the drop or stream. Higher levels make the attack (beginning) of the drop or stream louder and more present. Lower levels make the attack less loud and less present. The SUS knob sets the volume scaling of the sustain part of the drop or stream. The sustain part follows the attack. It is the relatively stable part of the sound. Increasing this value, makes the drops / streams more splashy and somewhat more pitchy. Reducing this value, reduces splashyness. Equalizer. The equalizer is a 4 band parametric equalizer that you can use to color the sound of the drops. The LF and HF bands are shelf filters, so they cut or boost all frequencies below (for LF) or above (for HF) their frequency setting. LMF and LHF are low mid and high mid bands, and include a Q (bandwidth) control. LG sets the low shelf cut / boost. LF sets the low shelf knee frequency. LMG sets the low mid cut / boost. LMF sets the low mid frequency peak. LMQ sets the bandwidth of this band. Higher values mean a wider frequency band. HMG sets the high mid cut / boost. HMF sets the high mid frequency peak. HMQ sets the bandwidth of this band, higher values mean a wider frequency band. HG sets the high shelf cut / boost. HF sets the high shelf knee frequency. Stream. This switch turns the stream feature on / off. When switched on, water streams while you hold down a key. When switched off, only a single drop will be heard for every key you press. The two menus below the switch can be used to set up a key on the keyboard to toggle the stream on / off switch. The default key is c-0, and it is marked red. You'll find it one octave below the lowest key of the Splash instrument. Timbre. This knob crossfades between clear and murky water sounds. Bubbles side. Timing. The DLY knob sets the delay between a key press (or stream end) and the first appearance of bubbles. When a drop hits water, it can create bubbles under the surface. It normally takes some time for the bubbles to reach the surface, and then to pop. With the DLY knob you can set this delay. Natural values are around 150ms. Density. DNS sets the initial density of bubbles per second. It shrinks over time. The speed of this density decay can be set with the DCY knob. Setting DNS around 85 and DCY to 5, gives natural sounding results. High Bell Filter. This is a boost / cut filter for the high frequencies of the bubbles. FRQ sets the center frequency of the filter. BW sets the bandwidth in octaves. GN sets the amount of cut / boost in db.

4 Gain. Sets an additional cut / boost in db to the bubbles. The insert effects panel. The insert effects panel s signal flow is from left, top to bottom, to right top to bottom. To Send FX (left top). Delay sends the splash signal to the delay effect before any of the insert effects have processed the signal. Reverb works the same, except it sends the signal to the reverb effect. Distortion. ON / OFF turn the distortion on / off. TUB / TRN changes between tube distortion and transistor distortion. Each option has a different sound. Drive sets the amount of distortion applied to the signal. Tone works like a lowpass filter: it reduces the amount of high frequencies added by the distortion. Chorus. Depth sets the strength of the chorus effect. Higher values make the chorusing effect stronger. Speed sets the speed of the low frequency modulation in the chorus effect. Phase sets the difference between the low frequency modulations for left and right signals. Mix sets the mix between the unprocessed dry signal and the wet chorus signal.

5 Flanger. Depth sets the strength of the flanger effect. Higher values make the flanger effect stronger. Speed sets the speed of the low frequency modulation in the flanger effect. Phase sets the difference between the low frequency modulations for left and right signals. Colour adjusts the range of the flanger effect. Feedback adjusts the amount of signal that is sent back into the effect. Higher values result in a sharper, more intense effect. Mix sets the mix between the unprocessed dry signal and the wet flanger signal. 3 Band EQ. This is a basic 3 band parametric equalizer. Freq1, Freq2 and Freq3 set the center frequency of each band. Bw1, Bw2 and Bw3 set the bandwidth of each band. Gain1, Gain2 and Gain3 set the gain for each band. Convolution. This is an effect that alter the signal by convolving it with an impulse. It can behave like a filter, or turn into a reverb. ON / OFF turns the effect on / off. Mix sets the mix between the unprocessed dry signal and the wet convolution signal. Impulse chooses the impulse to use for the effect. This is an operation that can cause glitches and drop-outs in the sound while the impulse is loaded, so change it when you re not playing Splash. To send FX (right bottom) These knobs work just like the two on the left top, but instead send the sound to the send effects after the insert effects have done their processing. The send effects panel.

6 Delay. Delay can be used to create echos. Time sets the delaytime. It can set time in milliseconds or in several musically relevant timings. You can select between milliseconds and the musical timings by using the Base drop-down menu. Feedback sets the amount of delayed signal to be send back to the input of the delay effect. If set to zero, delay creates a single repetition of the input sound. With slightly higher settings, multiple repetitions are audible, with each repetition getting less loud. At really high settings, it takes very long for the echos to disappear. Damping reduces the high frequencies in the delayed signal: each echo has less high frequencies than the ones before. Panning sets the stereo spread of the delayed signal. At 100 delay works like a ping-pong echo. Reverb. This is a high quality convolution reverb. It uses impulses from real (or unreal) spaces to create realistic sounding reverbs. Impulse lets you choose which impulse file to use for the reverb. Loading new impulses causes drop-outs or other glitches in the sound, so you should only do it when not playing anything on Splash. Pre-delay sets the amount of delay applied to the signal before it gets processed in the reverb. It makes spaces bigger or smaller. Level sets the output level of the reverb. That's all! Enjoy playing and exploring Splash s sounds! If you have any further questions or suggestions, or need some more support, please contact us at support@wobblophones.com. Credits: All recording, editing, programming, interface design, sound design etc. by Wobblophones. Additional credits: Spring Mechanics impulse by Ernst van der Loo (ernstvanderloo.com).