Week 149: Morphable LFO Auto-Panner I think the Z3TA+ is underrated as a signal processor. It can expose its synth elements (filters, VCA, effects, etc.) to process incoming audio, with or without the Z3TA+’s oscillators.
Perhaps one reason why the Z3TA+ doesn’t get used much as a signal processor is because if you want an effect that’s always “on,” the Z3TA+ has a VCA and envelope generator—so you need a MIDI note (either played or programmed) to keep its gate turned on. Then again, you’ll probably want a MIDI track anyway, so you can record controllers that tweak parameters in real time. (For more information on how to use Z3TA+ as a processor, refer to
this article from
Sound on Sound magazine, or the info starting on page 134 of
The Big Book of SONAR Tips.)
GETTING STARTED The screenshot shows the Z3TA+; sections that aren’t needed for the auto-pan functions are grayed out.
You can
download a .FXP Auto-Pan preset, then either drag it anywhere into the Z3TA+, or load it by clicking on the Z3TA+ Program button and navigating to the .FXP file. The envelope is already set up for always-on operation as along as a key is pressed or a note sounds, so MIDI–wise, all you need to do is:
1. In the Z3TA+ header’s VST2 drop-down menu, select
Enable MIDI In.2. Create a MIDI track; assign its output to the Z3TA+, and the input to your controller of choice.
Now whenever you want to enable audio, press a keyboard key or enter a long note in the MIDI track. The MIDI track is also useful because this patch uses the mod wheel to control panning depth (in fact you’ll need to turn up the mod wheel if you want to hear the panning this preset does).
MORPHABLE LFOS What makes this auto-panner really interesting is how the Z3TA+ handles LFOs. Each LFO has two waveforms, and in addition to the expected Sync and Phase switches, a Mode option determines how they interact. Here are the options for the LFO output. Note that you’ll need to retrigger the LFO to hear the results of any changes you make.
Morph: Morphs between Waveform1 and Waveform2 over the time set by Time slider.
ADD: Mixes Waveform1 and Waveform2, with the balance controlled by the Time slider (note: the output won't change over time).
IADD: Same as ADD, but inverts Waveform1.
SUB: Same as ADD, but inverts Waveform2.
ISUB: Same as ADD, but inverts both Waveforms.
MUL: Represents the sample-per-sample product of Waveform1 and Waveform2.
MIN: The minimum value between Waveform1 and 2
MAX: The maximum value between Waveform1 and 2
HALF1: The first half-cycle of Waveform1 and second half-cycle of Waveform2
HALF2: The first half-cycle of Waveform2, and second half-cycle of Waveform1
ONE-SHOT: The LFO produces one cycle, then stops.
OTHER COOLNESS There are 48 waveforms, as well as DC and the option for 10 user waveforms. When triggered (e.g., by playing a note from the keyboard), the Delay and Fade controls come into play; however these are of limited use when using the Z3TA+ as an audio effect because triggering is also what allows the audio through.
Offset “weights” the panning more toward one side than the other. This control, as well as the Time and Speed controls, can respond to MIDI controllers via MIDI learn.
Next, consider the Modulation Matrix. There are of course a lot of possibilities, but this one is fairly simple—being able to control the panning depth (i.e., a crossfade between the centered/unpanned signal and the panned signals). For this application, the control curve is B-LIN+, which converts the bipolar LFO output to unipolar so it can drive the Main Pan destination. The Mod Wheel determines the actual depth (with the maximum depth set by the Range parameter).
BUT WAIT—THERE’S MORE! The Z3TA+ has two filters, and each can pan independently. So if you want something like a non-filtered signal (i.e., set the filter Type to off) to pan back and forth slowly while a resonant, bandpass-filtered version of the signal pans rapidly, you can do this independently of the Main Pan parameter.
[AN OFF-TOPIC SIDE NOTE] My new album project, “Simplicity,” is now available for streaming from
my web site and
YouTube channel. Except for the last cut and the acoustic drum parts, the recording and mixing was done exclusively in SONAR (including processors and virtual instruments). The basses were all from the Gibson Expansion Pack; many of the Rapture Pro sounds were stock, with the rest coming from an as-yet-unreleased expansion pack. The guitars are Gibson, and the mics are the Neat Worker Bee and King Bee. Mastering and mixing was done over Les Paul monitors, and tracking and editing used the KRK KNS-8400 headphones. Overall I think it’s a pretty good example of what you can do with SONAR and a relatively modest recording setup.