utopia 2 readme 

about
signal flow
user notes
gui

about

utopia was the first vst i released! being aware that quantity does not necessarily imply quality, i think i've put ~200 synthedit-compiled .dlls on the web since then thanks to panicnow.net, so this ~sets a personal landmark.

a big thank you to jeff mcclintock for synthedit, and all of the synthedit collusionists and end users. it's a pleasure to help democratise the means of expression :)

utopia is ~ ("roughly") modeled on classic analog hihat synthesis.

signal flow

the oscillator section has 3 sine oscs (chris kerry's low cpu 'audio osc' module) which are phase modulated by either pitched sinewaves or white noise. a standard 'depth' setting controls pm depth to all oscillators. further pm is provided by chaining oscillators in series (2>1, 3>2, 3>1)

the oscillators are summed, preamplified and fed to three bandpass or highpass filters: one used for the attack portion, one for the hihat tone and one for the cymbal tone. these flters are selectable from 6db to 48db rolloff.

the attack (same setting for each individual sound) closed hat, open hat and cymbal are separately enveloped for amplification.

USER NOTES

the closed hat, open hat and cymbal sounds are conveniently triggered anywhere on the keyboard by consecutive keys.

due to this method of keysplitting, the cymbal will not trigger at exactly the same time as the hihat. dragging the cymbal hits back or forward by one tick in your host will solve this :)

because all sounds use the same oscillators, the sync option will cause pulses in sustained sounds (eg. cymbal) when other sounds (eg. closed hat) are triggered. this may be a desirable effect.. my dr110 does the same thing.

gui

osc sets frequency of sine oscillators
mod sets frequency of modulation oscillators
sync syncs oscs to gate (discrete only with sine modulators)
type selects sine (pitched) or noise (unpitched) modulation
depth depth of modulation osc effect
arrow knobs trim chain modulation between oscillators
same sets all arrow knob paths to 'depth' amount


pre preamplification for each filter (prevents distortion)
f frequency of filter (attack portion, hihat tone, cymbal tone)
Q resonance of filter
pole 6 to 48db rolloff in 6db steps
bp selects band pass instead of high pass filtering


dec decay of amp envelope (attack, closed hat, open hat, cymbal)
amp amplification amount
exp selects exponential slope instead of linear


pan pans hihats or cymbal
vel velocity sensitivity of hihat or cymbal
amp global volume



see also 'dystopia' plugin for 808 hihat emulation

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