Routing Signals in the Malstrm


Routing Signals in the Malström

One of the strengths of the Malström is that you can send, or route, signals from either oscillator to nearly any control. The oscillator signal paths are marked on the front panel with arrows, and can be directed a number of ways using the front panel's path enable buttons, marked with small connector icons (Figure 5.113).

Figure 5.113. A path enable button


The Malström can output audio directly from each oscillator, bypassing the Shaper and filter sections completely, as you can see in the simplified signal path diagram in Figure 5.114.

Figure 5.114. A simplified view of the Malström signal paths


The Malström's Shaper section

The Shaper section automatically gets routed out the Left:Filter:A output. If you send Osc B to the shaper, the signal will get sent out the Left:Filter:A output even if both the shaper and the filter are disabled.

The shaper is an extension of the oscillatorsit changes the shape of an oscillator's waveform at the cyclical level. Because it reshapes the wave, the shaper may not always behave the way you expect, and you'll need to do some experimenting to get comfortable with it.

For example, one would expect a "saturation" mode to simply boost gain and create more harmonics as a waveform starts clipping. However, when the shaper imposes waveform clipping on, say, a sine wave, maximum clipping isn't a noisy distortion-box type of soundwhen compared to a distorted guitar, it's a perfect square wave with a fairly mellow tone.

Sometimes the shaper may have less effect than you would expect (or even no apparent effect at all). It just depends on what's feeding into the shaper and the shaper type.

To add the shaper to Osc A

1.

Initialize your patch and disable Filter A.

2.

Set Osc A to play the Wave:Sawtooth*4 sample.

3.

With a melody loop playing, click the Osc A path enable button leading to the shaper (Figure 5.115).

Figure 5.115. Click the Osc A path enable button to the shaper section.


4.

Click the Shaper enable button (Figure 5.116).

Figure 5.116. Turn on the shaper.


5.

Select the Sine mode using the shaper's Mode button, and rotate the shaper Amt knob to 65.

Sine modulates the sound by imposing a sine wave to the oscillator. It can transform simple waveforms into more complex ones, or make complex waveforms sound smoother.

6.

Drag the Amt knob to its maximum setting; the sine wave rises drastically in frequency.

7.

Change the shaper mode to Saturate. This acts somewhat like a pre-amplifier or tube distortion; it can overdrive or warm up a sound, depending on the Amt knob setting.

8.

Change the shaper mode to Clip. This uses digital distortion for extreme clipping.

9.

Change the shaper mode to Quant. This reproduces "lo-fi" bit reduction and the resulting low-amplitude noise.

10.

Change the shaper mode to Noise. This acts as a noise modulator, multiplying noise with the incoming signal.



Reason 3 For Windows and Mac
Reason 3 For Windows and Mac
ISBN: 321269179
EAN: N/A
Year: 2003
Pages: 180

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