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SoniqWare MT-1

Friday, November 6th, 2009

It can be beneficial to split audio source material into separate frequency bands (eg, bass, midrange and treble) for processing purposes, and multiband effects are now commonplace in the computer musician’s plug-in folder.

While they can be harder to get to grips with – and can do more harm than good if used incorrectly – they do give you a degree of control and flexibility that’s not found with single-band processors. Compression, limiting and distortion are typical processes you’d find in multiband form, but MT_1 from Soniqware is a little different in that it’s a transient processor – it enables you to boost or subdue the attack and release portions of your signal independently, in four frequency bands.

In detail

The interface is much like any other multiband effect, with a graph displaying the crossover points and separate controls per band. The linear-phase crossovers work in a straightforward manner, and have three slope options (12dB/24dB/48dB per octave), and adjustable crossover frequencies (the minimum width of any one band is an octave, eg, 1.2-2.4kHz).

The fun begins when you start using the controls to adjust the transient content of each band. You manipulate the attack and release (aka sustain) stages using gain (-/+12dB) and time controls for each. The latter dictate how long the attack and release stages are boosted or attenuated for, with ranges of 1-100ms for attack and 10-1000ms for release.

For instance, with a short attack time, you can add a sharp ‘click’ to the start of a drum sound, whereas longer times will give more of a brutal punch. There are makeup gain sliders and solo/bypass switches enabling each band to be auditioned in turn – handy for fine-tuning settings.

“MT-1 is a transient processor – it enables you to boost or subdue the attack and release portions of your signal independently, in four frequency bands.”

One downer is that the makeup gain is applied even when a band’s processing is bypassed, making it hard to set up ‘like for like’ comparisons. Also annoying is the fact that there’s no global reset button, and resetting band crossover points can shift them to illogical positions.

On the plus side, the global Link switch enables you to (relatively) adjust the controls on all bands at once, which makes dialling in the exact amount of attack/release gain on all channels easy as pie, though, as we’ve said, a global reset button would be handy to return a preset to its default state.

Highly useful when dialling in any kind of subjective effect processing is good old A/B comparison functionality, which enables one to flip back and forth between different setups. The effects of dynamics processing can be quite difficult to judge, so we were pleased to see that MT-1 comes with A/B/C banks as part of its built-in program manager, with each bank containing 16 slots. You can load a preset into each bank, then flick between them by selecting A, B or C, or simply create them by clicking on one and dialling in your own setups.

One downside is that browsing about in bank B takes the A and C banks to the corresponding preset slot, slightly reducing functionality. More worryingly, trying to load a saved preset using MT-1′s preset manager resulted in an error stating that the FXP file was “inappropriate”, though we were able to save and load via Cubase’s preset system without a hitch.

Worth mentioning is that the MT-1 can operate in stereo, left or right channel-only and mid/side modes to boot.

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Moog Moogerfooger MIDI MuRF

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

The Moogerfooger MuRF already comes in two flavours, the standard version and the bass version. This latest revision rolls these two variants into one unit with a switch to change the filter ranges between mids and bass, but the most important change is the addition of a MIDI input.

Though the MIDI MuRF still possesses CV (Control Voltage) inputs for parameter control, as with all Moogerfoogers, the introduction of a MIDI input allows for full external parameter controls via this more widespread protocol.

Before looking at what can be done via MIDI let’s first look at what the MIDI MuRF can do on its own.

Overview

The MIDI MuRF is an array of eight resonant band-pass filters, the individual levels of which are set by the eight sliders. These filters are controlled by the animation parameters (Pattern, Rate, Envelope and LFO), whilst the Drive (input), Mix and Output knobs adjust the overall effect blend. The animation controls can be adjusted via CV and/or foot controllers/ switches via the input jacks at the rear of the pedal.

Moogerfooger midi murf

The Pattern selector accesses 12 animation step sequences per frequency type (toggled via the Freq switch). The first of each 12 has no animation and turns the MuRF into a static filter array which can be used to achieve some lovely scoops and peaks. The LFO switch adds some basic movement to the sound as it sweeps the filter frequencies as a group, though this requires CV or a foot controller to adjust the rate.

“The MIDI MuRF is an array of eight resonant band-pass filters, the individual levels of which are set by the eight sliders.”

The essential character of the MuRF kicks in with the other 11 patterns, which are pre-programmed sequences with anything from eight to 64 steps. These sequences trigger an envelope for each of the eight filters, the shape of which is determined by the Envelope knob (more later). The clever part is that the triggering can either be momentary (on for a sequence step only) or latched (on until the next trigger which turns it off again). This produces rich variations in patterns that may take several revolutions around the sequence to resolve.

Changing the filter levels further adjusts the balance within the patterns to radically change their rhythmic emphases. This effect is generally referred to as ‘step filtering’.

Envelope

The Envelope control is just one knob and sets the behaviour for all the filter triggers. At its 12 o’clock position the filter attacks and decays are even and resemble a triangle wave, but by rotating clockwise/anti-clockwise the attack/decay is lengthened, thus smearing the filter overlaps in time. Further rotation starts to shorten the whole envelope so a more pulsed shape is achieved, which works wonders for harder rhythmic patterns.

The Rate knob controls the overall stepping speed, with a corresponding LED flashing red to indicate it. When a foot switch is used in the Tap/Step socket the LED will flash green to indicate the tempo – a small detail, but it really helps when it’s on the floor amongst a mass of other pedals.

On the subject of LED colours, the Drive knob controls the input gain and can be used to introduce some smooth distortion into the signal, and so the corresponding LED goes from green (signal present) through yellow (optimum level) to red (clipping occurring).

Another detail that impresses us about the MIDI MuRF is that when both output jacks are used the filters are split so that the odd numbered ones go to the left and the even numbered ones go right, which creates great stereo panning tricks.