Quatschmacher
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Everything posted by Quatschmacher
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Probably my favourite Steely Dan record (with Pretzel Logic a close second). -
Another great one. I’ve had this for over ten years and in fact was just listening to it again a few weeks ago. A brilliant live set.
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Yep, sure is. I’ve got all her albums. There’s some live footage floating around on YouTube too.
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Sold - Morningstar MC6 MKII - midi controller
Quatschmacher replied to tonyclaret's topic in Effects For Sale
These are amazing. -
Lovely. I’ve got an Olympic White version of this on order. Should’ve had it by now but the Lakland workshop is currently shut. GLWTS. -
I’m already several steps ahead of you on that score: check the section of the manual called “FI as a replacement for standard single effects pedals”. Here I go through how to set it up as an envelope filter, wah pedal, chorus, flanger, phaser, octaver, etc. Have a follow through that as there are some good nuggets in there.
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Excellent. Glad somebody has got some positive use from that section; I felt the manual needed something like that. Is it worth my writing some more such tutorials?
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covered numerous times in the manual in FAQ, section on tuner and section on updates as already discussed, but worth mentioning. Take note @burno70.
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If you don’t need to save any custom patches from your pedal, simply use the Chrome browser updater. https://auraplug.com/panda/fiupdate/start.html It holds your hand through the entire process (be sure to let the updater install the factory soundset too otherwise you’ll have problems until you do). Ignore anything under “Future Impact I. legacy files”. When I wrote the manual, I assumed they would group all the necessary v3 files into a distribution package as they had done previously, which is why I wrote it as such - they didn’t. If you don’t go the browser update route (though there’s no reason not to) then you need the files listed as v3. See picture below. If you use the browser updater, then you don’t need to download the firmware. You’ll just need the v3 editor file (there’s a version of the manual embedded in the editor).
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Spectrum doesn’t require a deep dive to use. There’s loads available from the 6 presets on the toggle switch and you get access to 8 parameters from the pedal surface so a decent amount of variation can be had without ever touching the editor. I’m pretty sure there’ll be people who buy one and never need to. However, to fully explore what it is capable of, the editor is essential.
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Love it. The whole album is here:
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It does look like it, however it’s a 35” scale bass so perhaps it’s moved to still be at the same point on the string (harmonically speaking). -
My other gripe was that you couldn’t set separate thresholds for the up and down sweeps so a threshold setting which was good for up ended up being rubbish for down, this gave only a small usable range of sounds which use both filters together.
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Have a read of the the section called “editing the parameters” in either the quick start guide or the full manual. You’re quite right in that there’s no explicit mention of the data digit there; I’ll add a sentence to the next iteration of the manual. Thanks for pointing it out. The sentence from your quote above is the key one. Basically a data digit value of 5 on any of the pedal-top parameters means that the sound played is exactly as it was when it was saved in the editor. Any deviation either side changes the sound. It is only a coarse setting as many parameters have 128 steps in the editor, so making an adjustment on the pedal will change that parameter by quite a chunk. If I recall correctly it adjusts in a ratio relative to the patch’s saved settings, so how much it affects the sound depends very much on where the parameter is set in the editor in the first place. It’s a holdover feature from the deep impact, which had no editor and only had 9 onboard sounds so this control was how you got variety. I actually came up with an implementation idea for having the full range of the top-surface parameters be accessible from the edit dial but it would require a fairly major rewriting of some core code. It hasn’t been ruled out as a possibility but my guess is it’s unlikely.
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That’s cool. It is a very nice filter. Ultimately I missed resonance and frequency controls which is a reason I sold mine. 7 filters at once was a bit overkill too and I’ve had a fair few others too.
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As always, a read of the manual will tell you that you can have the pedal only cycle through banks of 10. Look at the section on the boot menu. However, if you’re using an external midi controller, which I highly recommend, there are midi assignments for bank up and down, so you can have both methods simultaneously accessible, which is by far the best way. Rolling off the passive tone helps a lot with double triggers. Also experiment with the note-on and note-off settings on the top of the pedal. Pay careful attention to muting the previous note before striking another, that is the main culprit for mis-triggers. Learning to trigger the FI cleanly has helped me improve my playing generally. 3rd digit is exactly what it says on the pedal surface, namely the “data”. Basically all parameters on the top of the pedal are adjustable between 1 and 9; 5 is “centred” and means the patch plays as per the settings saved in the editor when it was created. Some of my factory sounds were “doctored” by Panda after I submitted them to remove any midi assignments and these were mostly replaced with “accent” control (so controllable via playing dynamics). In several instances that dramatically changed how I envisaged the patches. I’ve uploaded my original versions to the file share site and these can be sent to the pedal and will overwrite the relevant patches. The originals sound way better in my opinion. When you get the editor up and running, do download my patches and browse them as I am sure there’ll be many you’ll like.
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I'm going to post this excerpt from the manual as I think it is a good route in:
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I didn't take your comments as negative criticism. I get that people learn in different ways and often being shown something is easier than reading off a page. That being said, I did try my level best to get the manual to read easily and I asked my girlfriend (who up until that point knew nothing about synths) to proof read it to make sure it was intelligible to a layperson (she''ll appreciate that particular wordplay). The Panel parameters make more sense when you grasp what they relate to in the editor. I didn't consider your questions beneath me and am happy to assist. I have spent many hours doing so both on and of the fora. However, often my explanations are better worded in the manual as I spent time crafting the sentences. What are you replacing then?
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I’m a user too, and an enthusiastic one at that - that’s how I ended up getting involved in the v3 project in the first place. That’s for several reasons. It’s not very well known. Panda has very minimal marketing. It’s not as immediately easy to get to grips with when compared with a couple of other products. As you said, it is a complex device and that takes time to learn. A big stumbling block I think was the original manual’s impenetrability. I rewrote the whole thing when I got involved and it is much clearer now. I spent a lot of time removing the ambiguities, writing in clear English and fleshing out explanations where I felt they were needed. I’ve added screenshots for everything too. I even discovered a feature I didn’t fully know about during the process. (I also think a fair number of users give up as they expect to just be able to play as they usually do without realising or being prepared to learn to “play the pedal”. Not suggesting this is true in your case but I’ve seen a number of instances of it.) Until such time that I can get some video together, the manual is the best and most comprehensive source of information on how to use and get the best out of this pedal. (I had suggested to Andras that he send Zach Rizer a unit to demo as his videos are really thorough but nothing came of that.) I’m also happy to talk through stuff one-to-one via WhatsApp video call for folks. Maybe I should do some kind of Facebook live thing. The parameters on the pedal are very coarse in their adjustment and, depending on the settings in the patch, may not always have any discernible impact. You can get some pretty good mileage out of them in most instances though. I’d seriously recommend going through the little tutorial I wrote at the end of the manual as it’ll give you a pretty good understanding of the fundamentals.
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@GisserD and I had plans to do a video but the pandemic has scuppered that. We looked into doing it remotely but latency issues have made it difficult. The manual will help you get familiar with the pedal. I wrote a section on building sounds from scratch too which will help familiarise you with certain functions. I strove to make the whole thing easy to understand and included examples to illustrate points. Pretty much most of the patches I designed were done on bass so can be played just fine on it. (There were one or two I made on keyboard and some certainly respond better that way, but that is inevitable as it circumvents the need for pitch detection.)
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I second that. I have this very model (and I must get round to getting some in the higher impedances). -
That was dry signal, octave up, octave down (via signal divide-down like most other analogue octavers) and fuzz going through a resonant filter with the fixed filter envelope sweep being triggered by note volume above the set threshold. No synth in sight.
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Yes, Chase Bliss are analogue pedals with digital controls to recall presets - a similar system to that used in stuff like the Moog Subsequent, Phatty, Minitaur, etc.
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This is also true of most current keyboard synthesisers. The DSI Pro 2 and Prophet 12 have DSP oscillators running into analogue filters. The envelopes on all current Moog synths are digitally generated. Bass Station II has DCOs. Novation Peak and Summit have fully digital FPGA oscillators.
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As @GisserD points out, both fully digitally generated oscillators or digitally controlled analogue oscillators (DCOs) are very precise compared to true analogue voltage controlled oscillators (VCOs). Much of the character of analogue synths comes from the imperfections, small variations and tuning instabilities of the analogue circuitry. Happily with digital synths, these imperfections can be recreated. On the the FI I have used the flexi controllers to add tuning drift to the oscillators (over and above the fine pitch offset offered as standard). This helps make the sounds more analogue in character. There’s a guy who has really done astounding work on this using the Prophet Rev 2 (a DCO synth). Using the gated sequencer, he has programmed in per-voice pitch, filter and envelope variations which really make it sound like VCOs. For the tech-minded among you, it’s a fascinating read. For non-tech people, just a listen to the comparison clips will show you the results. http://www.voicecomponentmodeling.com
