Basic Operation

Toolbar ⚓︎

The topmost part of the Multiphonics interface is called the toolbar.

• Show Patches Opens the Patch Browser panel.
• Current Patch Name This area shows the name of the current patch¹, and provides left and right arrows to navigate to the previous or next preset.
• Help Button Opens the About window, which shows the product version and your registration information. Clicking on the Multiphonics CV-1 Manual button will open the manual you are currently reading.

The controls on the left part of the toolbar let you configure your workspace.

• Panel Switches The panel switches will show or hide the left, bottom and right panels.
  • In the left panel, you can switch between the Patch Browser and the Module Browser.
  • In the right panel, you can switch between the Effects Panel and the Settings Panel.
• View Menu The View menu has options to go directly to one of the five panels, and can be used to change the opacity of the patch cables in the rack.

To the right of the toolbar, you will find the New, Save and Undo/Redo buttons, along with the level meter.

• New The New button clears the rack, allowing you to start a new patch from scratch. If you click on it by mistake, don’t panic: click on the Undo button to revert to the previous patch.
• Save The Save button opens a dialog that lets you save the patch. Saving is described in depth in the Patching—Saving Patches section.
• Undo The Undo button lets you cancel the changes you made to the patch (in reverse order). Multiphonics is very forgiving: every change in the rack can be undone, even loading a new patch or clearing the current patch with the New button. Up to 100 changes to the patch can be undone.
• Redo The Redo button re-instates the changes that have been undone. It is only active if you have not changed the patch since the last undo.
• Level Meter The level meter shows the current RMS value of the outputs. For geeks out there, it is calibrated so that a 10Vpp sine wave—such as the Classic VCO sine wave output— registers at 0dB on the level meter. The peaking (PK) LED will turn on after a few samples of clipping, which occurs when the signal goes beyond ±25V.

Patch Browser ⚓︎

The patch browser is found in the left panel. It is split in two parts: the collection list and the patch list.

A patch is loaded by double-clicking on its name in the patch list.

Patch Organization ⚓︎

The patch list shows all patches from the currently selected collection.

There are three collections:

• Factory contains the patches that ship with Multiphonics CV-1.
• User contains any patch that you created, modified or imported from another source. It also contains a special Featured folder, as described further.
• All fills the patch list with all patches from the Factory and User collections.

In the patch list, patches are stored in folders named after different types of sounds such as Basses, Leads, and so on. To reduce visual clutter, a folder can be closed by clicking on its name.

Featured Folder ⚓︎

The Featured folder is a special folder that is always listed at the top of the patch list. It is stored in the User collection even though it initially contains patches a selection of the AAS staff’s favorite patches.

Any time a new Multiphonics CV-1 plug-in instance is loaded, it will automatically open the first patch in the Featured folder. Since this folder is in your User library, you can replace its contents with a selection of your favorite patches.

If you like a patch from the Factory library and want to keep it in the Featured folder, simply click on Save in the toolbar and choose Featured from the folder list. The patch will now be easy to find at the top of the patch list.

If you delete all patches from the folder, it will not appear in the Patch browser and new plug-in instances will open with an empty rack.

If you delete the folder entirely, it will automatically be re-created and filled with the original AAS staff picks.

The first time the standalone version of Multiphonics CV-1 is launched, it will load the first patch from the Featured folder. After that, it will automatically recall the contents of the rack as they were when it was last used.

Renaming, Moving, Importing and Exporting Patches ⚓︎

Each patch is a small file stored on your computer. Instead of inventing a new way to organize and manage files from inside Multiphonics, we decided to take advantage of the powerful tools that are already on your computer. Any file operation you may want to do on a patch can be done with the Finder (Mac) or Windows Explorer (Windows).

To open a Finder or Explorer window in the folder where a patch is stored, click on its name in the browser to select it, click on , and select Show in Finder (Mac) or Show in Explorer (Windows) from the menu.

Renaming or moving a patch is just a matter of renaming or moving its file. Here is an example of how to rename and move a file on a Mac:

Exporting a patch is done by sending the file to its intended recipient. Conversely, importing a patch is done by copying a file you received into a folder in your User collection. You can open a Finder or Explorer window in your User collection by right-clicking (command-clicking on Mac) on the User collection name in the collection list and selecting Show in Finder (Mac) or Show in Explorer (Windows) from the menu.

The User and Factory collections are stored in two different folders on your computer. Since Factory patches are stored in a read-only area of your computer, it may not be possible to rename, move or add new patches in that collection.

The patch browser only displays patches stored directly in a collection’s folder, or in one of its sub-folders. For example, in the following hierarchy, the patch Hidden Bass under Sub-Folder would not be visible:

• Basses visible
  • Deep Bass visible
  • Electro Bass visible
  • Sub-Folder not visible
    • Hidden Bass not visible

You can use this to your advantage to hide unfinished patches that you don’t want to see in the browser for now, but that you may wish to revisit later.

Module Browser ⚓︎

Modular synthesis patches are made of interconnected modules: tone generators, filters, modulations sources, etc. These modules are found in the module browser.

Modules are organized in these categories:

• Audio Generators These modules produce audio-rate signals. A patch will usually contain at least one audio generator to produce sound. This category contains voltage controlled oscillators (VCOs), noise generators and pulse generators.
• Clocks & Sequencers Sequencers let musicians create musical sequences, beats, arpeggios or complex CV patterns that play at a rate defined by a clock signal. Clock modules can provide these clock signals.
• CV Generators The purpose of control voltage (CV) generators is, as their name suggests, to generate voltages that will control other modules through their modulation inputs. This is where you will find envelope generators and low frequency oscillators (LFOs).
• Filters Filter modules will shape a signal by filtering-out some frequencies. They may also color a sound by adding emphasis to some frequencies, and even add new harmonic content through saturation and audio-rate frequency modulation.
• Mixers Mixers combine multiple signals together.
• Signal Processors Signal processors are modules that modify a signal in some useful way. For example, the Slew Limiter will limit the rate of change in a CV signal, the Delay will delay a signal by a given time, and the Inverter will invert the polarity of a signal. By itself, a signal processor will not do much, but judicious use of signal processors can add a new dimension to a patch.
• VCAs This category contains voltage controlled amplifiers (VCA), which control the amplitude of a signal from the amplitude of another signal. VCAs are used to vary the output volume of a patch, but also to modulate the amplitude of CV signals, thereby creating complex modulations from simple sources.

For more information on how to add new modules to a patch, please refer to the Patching—Adding Modules section.

Effects Panel ⚓︎

All patches have two built-in effect sends: a Delay and a Reverb. Their settings can be adjusted in the effects panel.

At the bottom of this panel, a CPU meter shows the percentage of CPU time used by the patch.

Please be aware that modern CPUs sometimes automatically adjust their clock speed to preserve energy depending on the demands of the running software. This means that on some computers, a light patch may display a higher CPU usage percentage than a heavy patch, because the CPU will run at a lower clock speed when the lighter patch is loaded. Multiphonics patches are usually quite light on the CPU, so you should not need to worry too much about the CPU load.

Settings Panel ⚓︎

Audio & MIDI Setup ⚓︎

This section is not available when using Multiphonics CV-1 as a plug-in in a DAW.

The Setup button opens the Audio & MIDI Setup window, where you can choose your audio output and MIDI input devices. This is described in the Introduction—Audio and MIDI Configuration section.

MIDI Settings ⚓︎

The MIDI Settings section lets you choose the MIDI pitch bend range and the source for the Mod 1 and Mod 2 outputs on the Keyboard module.

When using Multiphonics CV-1 in a DAW, these settings will be saved with your project so that you can configure different instances of the plug-in to respond to different MIDI control changes.

By default, Mod 1 is mapped to the modulation wheel (MIDI CC 1), and Mod 2 is mapped to channel pressure (sometimes called the monophonic aftertouch).

If you want the current setting to be used by default, click on Save as Defaults. If you want to revert the current settings to the default ones, click on Load Defaults.

On-screen Keyboard ⚓︎

The bottom panel provides an on-screen keyboard, which can be useful to trigger patches when no MIDI keyboard is available. The on-screen keyboard can be transposed with the Octave arrows.