Synthstrom Audible Deluge [inc. Open Source development]

Sounds pretty good to me. Thanks for sharing!

Ok, so again, Ron the man delivers. Check this out for examples on the new synth engine.

Starts at 03:20, if you wanna skip ahead.

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Iā€™ve really enjoyed using the arranger. The ability to easily add unique instances into the arranger at any point allows for a lot of variation. Iā€™m impressed by it.

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So far for me the best bit of 2.0 is ā€œmixed kitsā€ last night I had a single monster kit including ND2, Elastic Drums and samples. All on one track and sampling it all was one touch away.

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So howā€™s the sampling workflow? Is it simple enough to get a thing sampled on the fly?

I guess no quantized sampling Ć  la Octatrack?

Itā€™s very straight forward. And you can get perfect start and end points from the sampler, it triggers on sequencer start and can end by the end of a bar. You canā€™t, however, define trig points for sampling like the Octatrackā€™s recorder trigs, such as for example ā€œStart sampling at the eight stepā€.

But if you just want to capture perfect loops, then thatā€™s no problem at all.

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A couple more minor annoyances that I have come up against, no instant mute for song track without pressing shift, it does cued mutes without shift - which seems backwards to me, Iā€™d prefer instant mutes not to require shift and cued mutes to require shift, much more playable that way.

No way to ignore incoming midi clock, can be quite problematic when using it in a larger setup.

It is a little too easy to accidentally record an audio file to sd card when what you actually wanted to do was enter sequencer realtime record, could be a bug as I never had the problem on 1.4. Also the fact that you still canā€™t then delete the erroneous recording without putting the card in the computer or using downrush.

A lot of what I want to do isnā€™t (yet) possible, for example most parameters can be easily mapped to midi commands, but stutter canā€™t be, doesnā€™t seem to make sense to me as operationally it should not make a difference if a local button activates it or a midi key, it is literally a few lines of code, and would make the stutter feature 100 times more useful.

It seems that to be a beta tester you are required to join facebook, ugh I hate that, I think it is a mistake to limit it in this way as it puts a lot of people off, and probably accounts for some of the obvious ommissions as a limited beta user base is not going to pick up on everything. The forum is ok if a bit quiet, I think they could certainly benefit from expanding in these areas.

Overall though Iā€™m pretty impressed with the Deluge still, it has the capacity to be a lot better with some operational enhancements, some slight tweaks and some of the missing yet expected features to be added would make it a force to be reckoned with. It reminds me of when the Octatrack first came out, before slices were implemented, it was still a powerful beast but not hitting its potential. I think Synthstrom seem committed to improving it though, so hereā€™s hoping that the next update addresses some of these things.

I have experienced a few bugs and crashes, but overall it is pretty stable.

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Out of interest how do you find the midi sequencing compared to the pyramid?

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My workflow is really heavy on sampling, so coming from a MPC I was worried.
I was wrong.

Thereā€™s multiple sample modes and different ways to sample, so the below is just MY workflow.

As you donā€™t have a line in monitor, I start by creating a kit, setting an oscillator to input, draw a long note and forget about it, now when I press play I monitor the line in. (Takes two seconds, really)

As I usually sample from other gear, I either create a midi kit or synth. Now sampling is simple as hold down the record button and pressing a pad, the moment you press the pad sampling start.
Now press pad+load and you automagically go to the last recorded sample, click to assign et voila.

This is also the same process you use to resample a pad which contains audio, in my case, sampling/resampling is turning into a rabbit hole as itā€™s too easyā€¦

You can also resample the internal engine, set to the correct start/stop or just press record and record from either the mic or the line in.

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Okay! Thanks for the writeup, clarifies it a lot.

And quantized sample start/end is possibleā€¦ interestingā€¦

The Pyramid has better editing, more outputs, and of course the midi fx, so is a fair bit more capable on the composition front, but the Deluge has the DAW like arranger and a fairly jammable song mode which allows a bit more flexibility in structure than the Pyramid, but for midi sequencing the Pyramid is still my go to device for synths and drum machines that have limited or no internal sequencer. Iā€™d say the Deluge for midi sequencing composition is on par with Elektron with some +/-, not at all bad, if I did not have the Pyramid Iā€™d probably be using it for midi sequencing, as it stands I just use it to sequence internal sounds for now.

Yeah, I already posted a bunch of suggestions on the forum :slight_smile:

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Sorry - tried searching the Synthstrom forum and Deluge manualā€¦ How is this achievable? :-o

By launching the recording as you launch the sequencer, you get a perfect start point from any source, internal or external.

You can then stop sampling at the end of any bar. So if you got an eight bar banger going from your Rytm, for example, you stop the Dellieā€™s sampling during the eight bar and it will cut by the end of it.

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You can compare it to the OTā€™s recorder trigs, but with locked start and end points for loops. Very neat.

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Thanks for the really helpful writeup! Snd aldo @andreasroman - much appreciated!

Feels like a bit of a blind dive, as all features arenā€™t all that documented, but it seems v/ convincing. Itā€™s between this and Digitakt, I think.

Can the aforementioned quantized sampling be triggered in the middle of a playing pattern?

For sure. Once the sample is in there, you can launch it down to the 64th of a step.

I like to create glitch beats by assigning a sample to a predictable sequence - say 1 5 9 11 15.

Then, I spread out multiple triggers on the 64th resolution of a step across the sequence, but use conditional trigs to randomize when they play. Extremely effective and makes even a simple 8-step feel alive over minutes of repeat.

Deluge is out of stock now. Maybe for some months. They posted on FB some days ago that any electronic component isnā€™t available at the moment. I fear itā€™s hard for a small business that only sells one product :unamused:

Mind to show what it sounds like? You kind of retrigger slices conditionally if I understand you right, donā€™t I? Total noob with the deluge.

Yep, thatā€™s right. Iā€™ll record something tonight and post it here.

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All right, so here we go @pmoldzio:

Four tracks. All samples. The drums from a Moog DFAM, the synths from a SH-01.

The first track is a simple 16 step beat, nothing going on at all. No conditionals, no variation.

The second one is the first one, but with conditionals added, though without randomisation. Youā€™ll notice the snare moving in and out, and the kick acting more like a percussion instrument at times.

The third one is the second one, but now with randomisation added to the hi-hat for glitches, as well as for the snare.

And the fourth one is the third one, but now with harmonics added. A simple lead and a bass, also designed with the idea that thereā€™s a basic structure in place, but with conditionals from the Deluge to create variation.

Since the Deluge offers a slightly different version on conditionals than Elektron, allowing for example different notes to be played on the same step depending on the trigger, it opens up options for more complex harmonic variations than the Elektron system, as well as options to open up for a more elaborate structure based on conditionals even within simple tracks.

The Elektrons offer more variations on the conditionals themselves, such as play only on the first turn or always but not on the first run, fill conditionals and other such things. But the relationship between the triggers are more elaborate on the Deluge, so even if the options seem deceptively few in comparisons, the musical variations they provide are greater, if youā€™re into shifts between the harmonics themselves.

Also, seeing as you can implement conditionals down to a 64th of a step - which is what Iā€™m doing on both the snare and the hats - it offers variations on conditionals than can also create interesting rhythmic sequences - kind of like random ratcheting or retrigs.

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