Is it just me, that every time i listen to Manatee vids, Italo Disco, Fleetwood Mac, 10CC etc come to my mind? It has a certain positive “balearic” vibe that is really very nice.
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I have not had a ton of time to dive into the Manatee lately, but I do think it’s fair to say that by default it’s fairly polite. The additive oscillator workflow is cool, but so far I’m struggling to use it in a distinctive way I think. Every patch I make just sounds like a chiming Manatee patch. 
It’s a lovely and interesting device though, so I’m hoping once I dig a bit more I can find some additional funk.
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Today’s Manatee discovery: have you been looking to LFOs or the mod matrix to do trems and vibrato? No need! There are dedicated settings for this:
- Go to the
PLYmenu by pressing the PLAY in theSOURCESsection. - Tap the +→ button twice. You’ll end up on the
VIBscreen. - Here you can adjust the vibrato frequency, the amount (1–255 or
WHLto let the mod wheel do it) and also the “rise” (how long it takes it to fade in). - Tap the +→ button again, and you get to the
TRMscreen. - The settings here are the same, except they’re controlling tremolo of course.
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If you read over on
“a smart blend between additive and wavetable synthesis, granting the adventurous musician the possibility to sculpt and articulate his sound from the timbre spectral level.”
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I’d love to hear an explanation of this. Certainly I haven’t found anything in my explorations that have anything to do with wavetables in, like, the PPG sense.
I suspect it’s talking about the interface (as in, it lets you scan variations of additive spectra as easily as you’d scan a wavetable) rather than suggesting it actually plays back wavetables in some way under the covers.
On the other hand, the Sub button has the letters WAV silkscreened as one of its options. It’s currently unselectable. Maybe in some future firmware?
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At fredslab.net/dev there is a new firmware!
The new Manatee firmware -
MPE Support - is online, I will write an article about it on Kickstarter
tomorrow.
Summary
Meanwhile here is the change-log from version 1.05:
V1.05 16.10.2024 - MPE Support
- Adds two zones MPE support
- Allows Part 1 to be used as MPE Zone 1 preset
- Allows Part 2 to be used as MPE Zone 2 preset
MIDI channel configuration is ignored for MPE Parts- Revamps MPE related system pages (Member channels, Master bendranges)
- Adds default MPE modulations (pressure / vibrato, CC74 / cutoff)
- Interprets MIDI RPN 0 (MPE bendrange) & RPN 6 (MPE configuration)
- Renders Preset & Multi changes instantaneous using MIDI Program Change
and Song Select messages- Kills the concept of Primary Voice for ENV-F, ENV-A & LFO-F influence
on part modulation targets. The latest voice played has precedence.- Adds ENV-F, ENV-A & LFO-F as extra expressors
- Optimizes LP / BP / HP filter models
- Improves voice render list sorting
- Improves spectrum preview glypher
- Fixes clocking reset when saving user data
- Fixes text location in clock quantize page
- Fixes a couple of engine state cleaning bugs
Edit: Link to more info @ https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tooro/manatee-multitimbral-mpe-synthesizer/posts/4225716
Edit2: 1.05 is not recomended to install. Use 1.06 below instead
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V1.06d 24.10.2024 - Bugs fixing + Performance
- Reduces audio latency by 0.5ms (latency now < 2ms)
- Fixes voice render list algorithms
- Fixes ENV-F, ENV-A, LFO-F sources & expressors for part targets (mod-matrix)
- Improves resource meter accuracy and removes LCD glitches
- Latest voice triggered has precedence on part modulations
- Multi remembers original preset slots to use as saving default slots
- Improves DSP load balancing scheme
- Removes meaningless calculations in audio process
- Removes legacy fields in cores exchange protocol
- Allows slot fold-over in in preset / multi save page
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Has anyone had any luck getting Manatee to reliably work with an MPE instrument?
I’m using a linnstrument—I’ve been playing this since august and even with the latest firmware, and after reading the notes on kickstarter, I have been (very) unsuccessful. A demo video would be great.
Here is a french review of the Manatee.
@ 30m10s there is a short part with MPE. No setup of it though.
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Great to see another good demo, I am always looking at them, I’ll get a Manatee one day, if money gets better (It’s certainly not very expensive so it feels doable)
I’m always curious in these videos if it’s a choice or not that they don’t do any real super thick bassy patches, is it hard to get those low fundamentals on it? Is it a lack of a sub octave? I feel like the EQ could help as well, and yet I don’t seem to hear them.
Don’t get me wrong it’s beautiful in the midrange and high up, it seems unusually capable there, i’d just love to see that range explored.
So an interesting thing about the preset spectrums of the Gen osc is that many don’t play the fundamental. So if patching with only that, it’s easy to end up with “thin” or “airy” sounds.
Thankfully the manatee provides a really nice Sub osc that can fill out that fundamental and anchor the sound. And there’s a built-in cross-fader between the two to let us really dial in that balance.
And Gen isn’t always the best place to go for meaty bass, anyway. Relying on the Sub alone provides a ton of options — from filter-plucked saws to 2op FM basses.
But the Gen osc is the fun new part of the synth, so I think a lot of people focus solely on it at first. And that tends to mean “not very bassy” patches. I wouldn’t take it as an indictment of the manatee, but rather a sign that its depths aren’t getting explored yet.
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My main concern was that maybe this perceived lack of bottom end was because the Sub Osc is more useful as a full on oscillator, meaning it isn’t sitting there as a sub octave, rather it’s used alongside the spectral generator, but that’s kind of an interesting thing the spectra tend to not have their lowest fundamental, could the spectrum generator be detuned down an octave below the other oscillator and just run a sine on that fundamental? If so, that’s basically a sub octave generator (and a flipped relationship between the main/sub), and you could anyway do a bunch of overtones on that spectrum, hmm.
See, this is why I gotta get one of these…
Tbh just looking at it a bit my concerns are allayed, there’s tricks to do all the stuff I talked about it seems, can get a long way just with tuning.
Such a cool machine!
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Hi folks!
Great info here, thanks for all your contributions! I just got my Manatee and, being relatively new to the synth-game, I’m struggling a fair amount wrapping my head around some aspects of the machine. While awaiting the full manual with great expectations, I wonder if you guys could help me out a bit?
First of all, and I’ll leave it at that for the moment, I’ve had no luck so far in trying to update the firmware. I use my Digitakt as midi interface and everything seems to work properly (firefox), but when I hit the ok button on the web-ubdater page, nothing happens… any clues what I might be doing wrong?
As far as I know, you can’t use a Digi box as an interface in this way. I ended up buying a cheap “real” USB interface (I think it’s a Roland UM-One).
Thx for your quick reply! Bummer, I’ll try to go the sysex route (never been there before). Oh, the joy of learning…
Congrats, it’s a really nice machine. For the update I find the web app unreliable on my system - instead I download the Sysex and use a librarian app to update. That has been very reliable for me, though I did need to tweak the message size a bit to get it working. I second the point about needing a specific midi interface - I use my RME interface for that, though I have also successfully used a Mio XC USB-MIDI interface, which may be a good option.
Couple of other points: firstly, you may want to check the Manatee thread on Modwiggler as Fred is active there, so more likely to assist (he’s also very responsive over email!); secondly, while waiting for a manual, you might like to check @jemmons page for some guidance on how the synthesis works.
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Thx, you guys are fantastic! I’m already an eager student of @jemmons page! Any (newbie friendly) librarian software you would recommend?
I’m using SysEx Librarian on the Mac and find it very straightforward. If you’re on Windows perhaps someone will else will have a better suggestion there.
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I was able to update the firmware from browser.
When I had issues, it was because the interface I was trying to use did not have the ability to transmit midi (scarlett 2i2). I had to fish my 8i8 out of the box and it worked as per the instructions on the Fred’s Lab site.