TIMBRE EDITOR

The Timbre Editor is a powerful tool to create and edit custom user Timbres. Timbres can be designed by modifying existing Timbres, importing audio files, or recording new audio files. Once you are happy with your custom Timbre, it can be saved to the Timbre List and loaded into the ASE at any time.

CREATE NEW TIMBRE, EDIT TIMBRE, AND RECORD NEW TIMBRE

These three controls represent the main methods of accessing the Timbre Editor. The “+” represents “Create New Timbre”, the waveform represents “Edit Selected Timbre”, and the circle represents “Record New Timbre”.

AUDIO WORKSPACE OVERVIEW

The Timbre Editor provides an audio Workspace within which up to 16 audio files can be ordered, trimmed, cut, copied, pasted, and further adjusted to create new and distinct Timbres.

As in the X/Y Grid, there are 16 columns in the Workspace, each representing a waveform within the Timbre. When a waveform within a Timbre is playing, playback is looped at the frequency of the note that is playing, beginning from the left vertical gridline of a column and ending at the right vertical gridline of a column. For this reason, it is not necessary to use audio files with waveforms that line up perfectly with the grid. In fact, it is not even necessary to use “musical” or tonal audio in Timbres, as the looped playback within a column will naturally generate a tonal waveform out of any audio, to often unexpected results!

Each Audio Object in the timeline contains a visual depiction of the waveform, a header with a number between 1 and 16 assigned to it, a Start flag in the upper left corner, and an End flag in the lower right corner. With the cursor tool selected, it is possible to move an Audio Object to another location in the Workspace by touching the center of the Audio Object and dragging. To trim an Audio Object, drag the Start or End flag to a new location. When moving or trimming Audio Objects, Start and End flags will automatically snap to vertical gridlines when released, ensuring that Objects always align with Timbre waveforms.

ACTIVE PRESET AND TIMBRE EDITOR

When the Timbre Editor is active, all 8 Timbres in your active preset are temporarily replaced with the Timbre that's currently being edited in the Audio Workspace. This allows you to play the Animoog Z Keyboard and evaluate how the Edited Timbre sounds in your Preset.

When you leave the Timbre Editor, your original 8 Preset Timbres are restored.

TIP: Tweaking the Comet trajectory and leaving blank spaces in the Edited Timbre can be a fun way to introduce rhythmical patterns in your Preset.

CURSOR TOOL

To select an Audio Object, touch anywhere within an Audio Object while the CURSOR TOOL is active. The Object header and flags will change from dim to bright green. Touch the Audio Object once again to deselect.

When the CURSOR TOOL is active, Audio Objects can be rearranged by touching and dragging them left or right. The Audio Workspace will intelligently rearrange all the Audio Objects when you let go of the one you're repositioning.

AUDIO OBJECT CLIPBOARD

CUT

When an Audio Object is selected, the Cut button in the lower left of the Timbre Editor becomes available to use. Touching this button will cause the selected Audio Object to disappear and be stored in the clipboard so it can be pasted elsewhere.

COPY

When an Audio Object is selected, the Copy button in the lower left of the Timbre Editor becomes available to use. Touching this button will store a copy of the Audio Object in the clipboard so it can be pasted elsewhere.

PASTE

Audio Objects stored in the clipboard can be pasted into blank waveform columns in the Workspace. Click near a vertical gridline and a cursor will appear on the nearest gridline. If there is an Audio Object stored in the clipboard, the Paste button will be dim green, otherwise it will be gray and unavailable to use. Touch the Paste button to paste the copied Audio Object into the Workspace.

AUDIO PAN & AUDIO GAIN

To the right of the CURSOR TOOL, CUT, COPY, and PASTE buttons are the AUDIO PAN and AUDIO GAIN buttons. These buttons, along with the CURSOR TOOL button, override each other such that only one of these three modes can be active at one time.

AUDIO PAN

With the AUDIO PAN TOOL selected, touching and dragging left to right inside an Audio Object will move the waveform within the Audio Object forwards or backwards in time. Once the waveform has begun moving, a Sample Offset display will appear below the Workspace for as long as it is held, in place of the buttons that are usually present. The number below “SAMPLE OFFSET” indicates precisely how many samples and in what direction the audio has shifted. The displays to the left and right of the Sample Offset indicator show a zoomed view of the audio waveform where it crosses with the Start and End flags, respectively. When the Start or End flags align with a point in the waveform in where the left and right sample cross the zero boundary, a “ZERO CROSS” indicator will appear beside the corresponding display. It is best practice to align your Start and End points with zero crossings to avoid pops and clicks, but it is not necessary.

AUDIO GAIN

With AUDIO GAIN TOOL selected, touching and dragging up and down inside an Audio Object will scale the amplitude of the waveform, resulting in the audio sounding louder or quieter. Once the waveform amplitude has begun scaling, a GAIN and PEAK display will appear below the Workspace for as long as it is held, in place of the buttons that are usually present. Gain indicates how much louder the Audio Object is relative to the original WAV file, in decibels. Peak indicates how many decibels the Audio Object is below or above the maximum usable volume level (headroom). When the amplitude peak of the audio has exceeded the available headroom, “OVER” will appear beside the dB value – when this happens, it is very likely that audible distortion and digital artifacts will result.

TIMBRE EDITING PREVIEW

While editing a TIMBRE in the Audio Workspace, it's possible to preview what your audio will sound like when going through ASE.

NOTE: during playback you might not hear the audio you expect because ASE always cross-fades between adjacent waveforms as part of its vector synthesis component

PLAY

Touch the PLAY button to play through the entire Timbre. The PLAY button will turn bright green while playing and become dim green again once playback stops. Pressing the PLAY button during playback will cause playback to stop.

LOOP

Touch the LOOP button to activate looped playback. When active, the LOOP button will turn bright green and playback will continue endlessly, starting again at the beginning of the Timbre once it has reached the end. Touch the LOOP button again to deactivate looping and playback will end at the end of the Timbre, or press PLAY again and playback will stop immediately.

AUDIO IMPORT

The TIMBRE, WAV, and RECORD buttons provide various way of importing audio into the Audio Workspace.

TIMBRE

The TIMBRE button is only available to use when a blank waveform column is selected with the CURSOR TOOL (indicated by the Timbre button turning dim green). Pressing the TIMBRE button brings up a Timbres list, which can be filtered by Groups and Tags.

Select a Timbre and press IMPORT to load the Timbre into the selected area of the Workspace. Press CANCEL to exit back to the Timbre Editor without making any changes.

TIP: You can quickly select a Timbre and import it by double-tapping on the Timbre in the list

WAV

The WAV button is only available to use when a blank waveform column is selected with the CURSOR TOOL (indicated by the WAV button turning dim green).

Pressing WAV will open a file selection window, allowing you to select a WAV file saved to your device to load into the Timbre – this will then bring up the WAV Editor window.

The top waveform displays the entirety of the WAV file audio, while the bottom waveform displays a clip of the WAV file that spans the full duration of a Timbre. The cursor position in the top waveform view indicates the start point of the audio that will be applied to the Timbre – when the cursor position is moved, the waveform in the bottom waveform view will change accordingly. The waveform in the bottom view can be trimmed by using the Start and End flags, and this trimmed selection will be used in the main Timbre Editor workspace once inserted.

The CURSOR TOOL, AUDIO PAN, PLAY, and LOOP buttons all behave similarly to their functions in the main Timbre Edit window.

The NORMALIZE button increases the gain of the audio such that the loudest peak in the WAV is at the very top of available headroom, or 0 dB.

The INSERT button will place the selected portion of the audio in the WAV Editor at the cursor position in the main Timbre Edit window. Press CANCEL to exit the WAV Editor without inserting the audio into the Timbre.

NOTE: an UPDATE button will appear in place of the WAV button when an Audio Object is selected. Press Update to bring up the WAV Editor for the selected Audio Object. The WAV Editor will appear the same as it does when loading a new WAV file, except an UPDATE button will appear in place of the INSERT button, indicating that changes in the WAV Editor will be applied to an existing Audio Object.

RECORD

The RECORD button is only available to use when a blank waveform column is selected with the CURSOR TOOL. Use the RECORD function to record a new WAV file directly into Animoog Z using the Audio Input Channel 1 of your device.

The RECORD button is only available to use when a blank waveform column is selected with the CURSOR TOOL. Use the RECORD function to record a new WAV file directly into Animoog Z using the Audio Input Channel 1 of your device.

Press RECORD to bring up the Record window. The Record view is almost identical to the WAV Editor, except for the addition of a RECORD button, and the top waveform view displays the newly recorded audio instead of a pre-recorded WAV file.

Press RECORD to create a WAV file of audio captured live from Audio Input Channel 1 of your device. Press RECORD again to end Recording. The audio can be further edited and inserted in the same manner as you would in the WAV Editor.

TIP: on macOS, your computer's microphone and speaker are treated as different audio devices by the operating system. In order to record through the microphone while playing back through the speaker, you need to first create an Aggregate Audio Device through the Audio MIDI Setup application that can be found in the Applications > Utilities folder, and then select that Aggregate Audio Device in Animoog Z's SETTINGS

ADVANCED TIMBRE RECORDING

ASE works with any audio content and experimentation with raw recordings can result into very interesting sounds. You never know what you'll get!

It is also possible to optimize timbres in order to reproduce the sonic characteristics of your source material. To achieve this, a single cycle of your recording should be exactly 1024 samples long, which corresponds to one of the 16 waveforms in the Audio Workspace. We found that the most reliable way of achieving this is by setting your Audio Interface to a sample rate of 48kHz in Animoog Z's SETTINGS and to produce your source tone at a frequency of 46.875Hz. Recording with these settings should result into cycles that are exactly 1024 samples in length (48000 / 46.875 = 1024).

Once you have the recorded audio data, you can use the AUDIO PAN tool to to align the start of your cycle with the boundaries of the Audio Object by relying on the ZERO CROSS indicators.

The method described above was used to create most of the built-in Timbres that ship with Animoog Z.