Rapture wavetable questions

OK, I've looked at the press releases and watched the videos of Rapture...they've been showing off the modulation and filter sections a whole lot, but nobody's explained what the oscillators do. They're wavetable, yeah. Single-cycle or multi-cycle? Can you load your own samples? Can you draw your own samples, like in CreamWare's Vectron? If it's multi-cycle, can you do single-cycle scanning, like in Propellerhead's Maelstrom? Can you stretch and shrink wavetables, like in Vectron? There are many unanswered questions.

Does anyone from Cakewalk care to explain? The alias-free sounds are promising, but if it doesn't have the features I need, it'll be a big let-down. I've been looking for an wavetable synth like Maelstrom that'll allow you to load your own samples, which Maelstrom doesn't do, and is alias-free, which Vectron isn't.

Thanks,

Shayne

OK, I've looked at the press releases and watched the videos of Rapture...they've been showing off the modulation and filter sections a whole lot, but nobody's explained what the oscillators do. They're wavetable, yeah. Single-cycle or multi-cycle?

The 'oscillators' can be single-cycle wavetables, multi-cycle wavetables, samples (any size, bit depth, samplerate, uncompressed in wav/aiff or compressed in ogg-vorbis) or multisamples (in sfz format).

Can you load your own samples?

Yes.

Can you draw your own samples, like in CreamWare's Vectron?

Your own wavetables then you mean. There's no GUI functionality to draw. You can draw those in specialized editors and then load those in Rapture.

If it's multi-cycle, can you do single-cycle scanning, like in Propellerhead's Maelstrom?

No. That's what makes Maelstrom 'graintable', not wavetable.

Can you stretch and shrink wavetables, like in Vectron?

No.

There are many unanswered questions.

Really? I overlooked those. Where they are? I'll be glad to answer if I can.

Does anyone from Cakewalk care to explain? The alias-free sounds are promising, but if it doesn't have the features I need, it'll be a big let-down. I've been looking for an wavetable synth like Maelstrom that'll allow you to load your own samples, which Maelstrom doesn't do, and is alias-free, which Vectron isn't.

Well, I'm inclined to say that Rapture is not anything like Maelstrom, sorry. It still sounds great though


-René

No, it won't be a letdown. Of course I can draw my own samples in an audio editor. What I meant by "stretch and shrink" samples was a feature of Vectron where you can specify how much of a imported sample you want to take, and then it changes pitch accordingly to turn it into a single-cycle wave. You can take a 128- to 1xxx-length sample and it takes care of all necessary adjustments. Without that, the pitch would change depending on how much of the sample you used, and you'd have to figure out how to bring it back up to pitch. Hmm, maybe that'd be a new feature for Rapture 1.1?

If it doesn't do "graintable" sampling that's OK -- Maelstrom isn't going anywhere!

Thanks for your answers,

Shayne

Granular synthesis is indeed very interesting. Granulab is a granular synth with just a few features but it can show you what a granular synth can do. It can't be midi up and played as per the usual insert into track, it's just a tiny app not a dxi or vst. I use it to capture sounds as it will record it's output. And it's fine for this.

http://hem.passagen.se/rasmuse/Granny.htm

load up with a fat noisy crowd in .sfz

Of course, that was always going to be my preferred option. …and I've already prepared some “dark exotica” for you…

This is an updated version of an experiment I was trying to scare Chad & René with recently: DIY Granular v2.0.

Probably took me more like 3 or 4 × 15 mins, in all honestly (by the time I'd sliced a hundred or so grains in BeatCreator, knocked up a quick macro in UltraEdit-32 and done a bit of hand editing to the sfz…)

If you're trying that sucker in P5, keys C2 - B3 play back the sample with the original rhythm. Be sure to try lowering and raising the tempo to hear the full range of the effect.

Also, sliding the Selection Tool up and down the KB from C5 onwards allows you to do some faux-throat singing. Would be fun on a ribbon strip or linked up to the X-Y Pad.

Lastly, patching in a pitch randomiser in the MIDI Matrix with a depth of, say, 1 octave and changing the BPM to 15 gets you a nice robotic yodel.

Oh, one other trick: try changing the ampeg_attack & ampeg_release values in the sfz to get more/less overlap between grains.

Grain-ola

Don't talk to me about Granola®… the “non-stocked item” status in Aussie supermarkets is still too hard to come to terms with. Not even the Adventist Bookshop has it anymore…



Damn! I can't find a box of that magic stuff anywhere.

Hey, I just found CronoX which has many of the features I'm looking for...granular wavescanning and all that. However, it isn't aliasing-free. Still, I was able to make some neat sounds easily with the demo. Both it and Rapture will be awesome additions to my synth collection.