- Kilohearts Ensemble Instruments
- Kilohearts Ensemble Review
- Kilohearts Ensemble Piano
- Kilohearts Ensemble Meaning
Kilohearts has launched a sale on two of its snapin audio effect plugins, offering a 50% discount on Flanger and Ensemble until July 10th, 2019. Kilohearts Ensemble and Flanger – half price Posted by Plugin Arena Jun 26, 2019 Until the 9th of July, 2019, Kilohearts is discounting their Ensemble and Flanger products by 50%.
Ensemble assemble!
The Ensemble effect creates the illusion of many voices playing in unison. Much like a chorus, it creates this effect by playing delayed copies of the incoming sound. On top of this, it modulates the phases of each voice to create a silky smooth result without any metallic flanging. The delay times for each voice are also modulated in order to detune each voice slightly.
- Voices
- Number of voices to play simultaneously.
- Detune
- How quickly to modulate the delay for each voice, affecting how detuned the voices will be.
- Spread
- Pans voices left or right for a stereo effect.
- Mix
- The dry/wet mix of this effect. A lower value will let some of the unmodified signal through.
- Motion
- Selects between different patterns for the modulations of the voices.
- Settings panel
- Whenever you have your mouse cursor over a snapin there is a small arrow at the top right corner (not visible in screenshot). It opens a settings panel where you handle presets.
It also has a 'randomize' button that can be useful. I guess.. - Enabled checkbox
- The small checkbox to the left of the plugin name is a checkbox that bypasses the effect when disabled.
- Resize handle
- The bottom right corner of all Kilohearts plugins is a resize handle for scaling the UI to any size. This allows you to get a good view of the controls whatever the screen resolution, and also comes in handy if you need big controls, e.g. when using Ensemble as a real-time effect on a touchscreen monitor during a live set. (This is not available when the snapin is used inside a snapin host.)
Ensemble is a snapin
Kilohearts plugins work great together, and all the snapins can work double duty as modular components inside our snapin hosts. There are several different hosts that allow you to apply any number of snapins in various contexts, like to each individual band in the band-splitter Multipass, or add your full effects chain right inside the preset of the synth Phase Plant.
Download and installation
With your confirmation email you will get a download link to the Kilohearts Installer (1.69 MB download, EXE/DMG installer). It will quickly help you with the setup and installation of the plugins you purchased, and any others you might like (like the other free ones). It is personalized for you, so no need to copy-paste any licenses.
Payments are securely handled by 2Checkout.
All Kilohearts plugins are available through the installer as 64-bit VST, AU and AAX plugins for Windows and Mac. Most of them are also available for Reason Studios Reason, but if you are a Reason user you have to get your plugin through the Reason Studios Shop.
The Kilohearts Toolbox
The snapins work best together and the Kilohearts Toolbox offers heavy bundle discounts. It is divided into tiers so you can start out with what suits you the best!
- Sound comparison
- Snapins - PDF manual
Snapins - Online manual
Visualize, man
I feel that the most significant benefit to Phase Plant is how visual it is. Nearly everything that can be communicated with some sort of movement is animated when necessary.
The animations are high frame rate, glitchless (mostly) and there’s nice bits of eye-candy sparsely scattered around.
Per-voice modulations are only active when the voice is active, and some controls even show ‘clone’ animations for each voice. The LFO is an example of per-voice animation clones.
Let’s not forget the tooltips (in the bottom info bar) for every single control. Top notch.
If there’s any single feature that separates Phase Plant from the competition: it’s how visual it is, and how well it’s done.
Modulation
Basically anything that outputs a signal can modify nearly any control, and do it cleanly at audio-rate.
It’s almost always animated too. Good stuff.
Automation
Macros and then some.
The VST 2, VST 3, AU and AAX plugin formats are not equally well-specced for handling a large number of changing automation parameters. It’s a fact of life.
Phase Plant gives you the main synth parameters: pitch wheel, mod wheel, master pitch, polyphony etc… plus effect lane gain/mix.
Modular elements must be assigned to one of 8 macro knobs to be automated. Macro assignment is a simple process that mimics any other modulation assignment in Phase Plant.
I’ve seen a number of people complain about this sort of workflow, but unfortunately it’s not going away until everyone starts supporting VST3 or AAX (hah) uniformly. At least Phase Plant makes macro assignment easy and utilizes a consisted interface for it.
Parallelism
Parallelism
Phase Plant allows you to store generators in groups, which means that everything in the group gets sent to the next thing when that routing logically makes sense. What does ‘logically makes sense’ mean? If a generator has no potential path to output from the group, then it is not routed. If there is a path to an out device, then it is routed.
There are 3 parallel effects lanes which provides you 3 layers of potentially polyphonic (one instance of each lane per voice) effects. The effects lanes each have their own mix control and individual routing. This is incredibly powerful for making complex sounds.
(Note: I am slightly bothered that there’s no encapsulation inside the effects lanes. It would be nice to throw in a multipass in the effects lane.)
There is relatively less functionality here than some of the competition, however the interface’s ease of use and ease of understanding what is happening in a patch are an acceptable tradeoff for absolute functionality.
Browser
The browser is a bit of a letdown in 2019. There’s no search, no rating and no tagging. It’s purely folder based.
You can organize things on disk a bit, but who wants to do that?
At the very least, search would be helpful.
Generators
Analog
Analog
Before we start, let’s be clear that this is a “clean” generator. Almost no aliasing is present, and the waveforms appear to be theoretically ideal. I’m not entirely sure what’s “Analog” about it, but I also don’t care.
Analog is a single oscillator with a good bit to offer. You get one of 4 shapes, sync, pulse width, 8 unison voices, fine(semi cent)/coarse(harmonic) tuning, phase shift and an interesting shift parameter that frequency shifts the signal by a fixed value.
There is almost nothing exciting about Analog except what you can do with it, and the fact that it’s technically competent. I think that can be pretty exciting in itself though.
Visualization
Sample
There’s 2 things that are awesome right off the bat with Sample: the waveform drawing and the built-in selection of samples. (and that you can use it as a modulation source)
From there you get a basic sampler that ties pitch and speed together. The frequency shifter is right there just like in Analog, and thankfully you’re offered the ability to change the root pitch of the sample.
When you change the loop points or offset, there’s a cool ‘pop-in’ zoom visualization that shows you the waveform up close. I like that feature quite a bit. I do wish that there was some more context for the drawing, and that the zero crossing points (or near to them) were made more obvious. It’s still a useful idea regardless.
Then again the whole idea falls apart when you realize:
- You can’t change the zoom level
- The amount of resolution available for adjusting offset/start/length is insufficient for anything but the tamest samples. Try a 1 minute long sample and now the coarse value jumps around multiple “windows”. This leaves you to using multiple full-screen drag passes with shift-drag to get to where you may want to go.
For playing samples that you don’t need to fuss with much, it’s ok. If you are someone that likes a sample-based workflow inside your monster synth… Phase Plant might disappoint you.
But… audio-rate modulation :)
Noise
Noise is cool, and not because of the slope-adjustable wide-band noise, but because of the key-tracked noise.
There’s “stepped” (highly harmonic) and “smooth” (single band) noise sources which are essentially bandpassed noise centered around the note input into the synth. Useful and cool.
A step further in utility is the ability to use a constant or random seed for the noise, which allows you to guarantee the same sound output every note is played (or not). Having deterministic output is extremely important when using it as a modulation source and it’s a nice convenience as a sound generator as well.
Kudos kHs. One of the better noise sources you can find on a digital synth.
Distortion
Distortion
Distortion… as a generator? Nah.
Distortion takes input from the modules above, distorts it, then outputs it to the next section.
It’s available in the generator section to let you distort the signal between generators.
Filter
Same as Distortion but with the wimpy filter effect. Meh.
Group
Group
Group is the gate that disallows routing to flow between devices. Audio moves in a top-down manner and is absolutely stopped by a group.
Groups also allow you to visually collapse the interned generators.
Aux
Aux has 2 types of input and 2 types of output.
INPUT
- Module above
- Modulate the central control
OUTPUT
- Output to next module
- Audio Rate modulation signal
At first glance it would appear that there is no use for this module because you could have routed signals direct (and multiple mod signals mix at the destination), and modules naturally route themselves.
Aux allows you to route signals ‘backwards’, and route signals across groups. It’s essentially a link between the modulation system and the audio routing system. It took me a while to understand why I’d want to use the Aux module, but when I realized the power of using generators as modulation sources it was GAME ON.
Mix
Mix
It takes multiple signals from generators (in the group) above it, and mixes them. Unnecessary for output, but great if you want to use multiple mixed sources for single-sources audio-rate modulation.
Output
Sends the signal of the preceding modules to the effects lanes. I personally find this to be one of the most annoying aspects of Phase Plant: the use of out/mix devices to route.
I can understand that having a fixed or deterministic routing scheme allows for more flexibility in other places, but the difficulty for the end-user comes when you want to disconnect devices from the signal flow. That requires moving them to another group or using an aux devices (or using an out that’s set to no output).
I can’t count how many times I became frustrated trying to get a generator to route where I wanted it. The out device’s existence is what I feel is the core of the difficulty.
Modulators
Envelope
Envelope
Envelope is yet another simple device. Unipolar (0% to 100%), bipolar (-100% to 100%) and inversion with a simple DAHDSR envelope.
The attack, delay and release parameters have adjustable curve amount, but no editor. In fact, there is no envelope editor… and that’s ok. If you want an edited envelope then use a one-shot LFO… which isn’t always an acceptable option.
One of my complaints about the envelope is that the grid is not labeled even though the knobs and editable nodes show values. It seems that the grids are drawn at about 410ms?
The envelope module is one of the few places where a seemingly minor complaint ruins the device for me. Phase Plant has no built-in envelopes for generators, so it’s entirely possible that you may have a number of envelopes in your patch, and figuring out which one is what you want can be daunting. Some extra graphics to communicate the shape/timing of the envelopes beyond a light grid would be appreciated.
It really is a minor thing… but I found that it annoyed me fairly often.
The next issue is that using an LFO as an editable envelope is painful to get timings correct. The LFO editor divides the editor into equal divisions rather than showing you precise times. That is great for periodic LFO usage, but when attempting to use it as a time-dependent envelope… ack.
And of course… LFOs don’t react to note on/off, so you lose your sustain and release capabilities.
Bleh. Better envelope facilities please kHs!
LFO
0.10hz to 50hz. Low frequency oscillator indeed. Syncable to tempo of course.
It has most of the things that you’d expect for a simple LFO, but the coolest thing is that you get to see the position of each LFO triggered per voice. It’s a small thing but it really helps to understand how the LFOs are affecting the current patch. It would be nice if they were colour coded to correspond to the ‘voice number’ (with some definition of how voice stealing/stacking works).
There’s 4 default waveforms: Saw, Sine, Square, Triangle. Most importantly there’s an editor as shown. The editor is simple, but powerful. You add nodes and remove nodes. There’s two types of interpolation: sharp and smooth. You can define a grid to snap to, and the grid is a division of one cycle for X, and 0-100% for Y. It’s not the most powerful LFO editor, but it’s quick and easy to use. I tried to find fault with some of the missing features, but given the ability to use audio generators… you can do most anything you want.
If you want an audio rate LFO, then you need to use an Analog generator with the harmonic parameter set to 0, and not have it in your signal path.
MIDI Note
MIDI Note
MIDI Notes come in values from 0-127. This is normalized to unipolar values between 0% to 100% or bipolar values between -100% to 100%.
This modulator could be a lot better. MIDI Note values often require some sort of scaling to be useful, either linear or log (since that’s how we hear notes). Often something in between is desirable. Phase Plant doesn’t have any simple way to rescale modulation, which makes MIDI Note a good bit less useful.
HOWEVER, using MIDI Note to modulate other modulators makes things a bit nicer. This could be an entire article/video in itself, but all is not lost.
MIDI Pressure
MIDI Pressure mapping, still needs scaling.
MIDI Velocity
MIDI Velocity
Velocity to modulation. It suffers from the lack of easy scaling just like MIDI Note.
Max and Min
Min
Two Modulation inputs and at a given instant either the smallest (Min) or largest (Max) value is selected.
Useful for anything that requires limiting a signal’s bounds.
Multiply
Multiply takes two inputs, multiplies their values at a given instant.
Multiply is largely useful for scaling values. Unfortunately there’s no graph scalar (time, value). It’s a fixed value or A*B.
Effects
3-Band EQ
3-Band EQ
3 EQ bands. If you need something more precise or involved then try Slice or Carve.
Bitcrush
Quantizer (reduce bit-depth) and decimator (reduce sample rate).
The “Quantize” knob lets you control how much quantization occurs. The ability to dither is quite cool and is missing in many other quantizers.
The ADC/DAC Quality settings appear to be the steepness of filters going into and out of the decimator. Higher Q values seem to have a steeper value.
Carve EQ
Carve EQ
Chorus
Simple chorus that combines 2 or 3 versions of a signal, delayed, with the original version. The delay time can be modulated in a ‘tape-like’ fashion.
If a more complex chorus is needed then Ensemble has your back.
Comb Filter
Comb Filter
A comb filter is essentially a chorus that isn’t modulated. The original signal and a delayed version of the signal are combined.
I appreciate that the delay is expressed in terms of hz between peaks rather than how much the cloned signal is delayed. Using hz between peaks makes it much easier to reason about when utilizing modulators.
The stereo switch is super neat. The polarity (of the delayed signal) is switched on the right side. The end result is a wide sound that still collapses elegantly to mono. I’m surprised I haven’t seen or noticed this in another product before.
Compressor
It’s your typical compressor with RMS and Peak modes.
I would prefer if the threshold+meter control was not linear. Having equal distance between -10, -20, -30 and -40 is not homologous with typical production needs. I appreciate that -20 is centered, but this would be more useful if there was an auxiliary VU or RMS meter.
The sidechain facility is easy to use.
Delay
Delay
It’s a delay. You should know what this does.
The bonus here is the duck parameter, which is a dynamic mix control that applies the envelope of the input signal to the delay mix.
Disperser
An allpass filter with an interesting extra GUI.
All frequencies pass at the same gain, but you can adjust a/the delay of a given range of frequencies. The interesting “Pinch” parameter lets you adjust the shape of the affected spectral range.
Disperser is invaluable when used in the parallel effects lanes, and of course it’s your portal to impressive modulated phaser type effects.
Alone though, Disperser just makes for some really neat sounds. Allpass filters are fun in a way that’s difficult to quantify… just try it.
Distortion
Distortion
Essentially a waveshaper with 5 preset shapes. The spread control is a neat control to add per-channel bias (DC offset).
I’m not entirely sure what the dynamics control is doing. It seems like it’s taking the envelope of the input signal, and applying it to the output signal. Something like an upwards expander on the output that’s sidechained to the input.