Audio Architect 4.0

By Cliff Suttle
cliffnotes@harmony-central.com

January 18, 1999

So . . . you say that you always wanted to build your own synthesizer. The only problem is that you wouldn't know a soldering gun from nail gun. You're sure that if you only got an electrical engineering degree in college, instead of German Literature, you could show those guys at Korg and Roland a thing or two. Well . . . thanks to the guys at Audio Software Limited, it time to put up or shut up.

Audio Architect is here! If you have a PC and half a brain you can design your own synth without so much as lifting a resister. So all you gear heads out there saying "If I only had one more LFO I could get the perfect sound!", can have your wish.

Audio Architect (AA, list price: $149.00 U.S.) is an interactive synthesizer design system that allows you to take different sound components and string them together anyway your little heart desires. Based on the Modular Audio Engine (MAE) developed at Cambridge University by Harry Richardson, AA has a lot of unique features that allow the dreamer in you to get creative.

Now, with the glowing praises behind me (that really don't tell you anything anyway) lets talk about what AA is and isn't. In my view, AA is for sampler freaks that are always looking for the next hot sound. It could also be good for developing sound waves or sound effects for computer games, movie sound tracks, web pages, or similar needs. Using the built in sequencer module, you may also use AA to create dance and techo loops. Basically, any function where you can take an arbitrary sound file and then play it or manipulate it.

What it isn't - a real time synthesizer that could be played (at least not yet) via a MIDI (Musical Instrument Device Interface) controller or a sequencer. This is because there is a serious MIDI delay. The MIDI delay (or latency) is defined as the amount of time that passes from when you press a key on the MIDI keyboard until the sound is actually produced by the speakers. All synthesizers and sequencers have this problem. However, on something like a Korg Trinity, this time delay is so small that you wouldn't be able to notice it without a nano-second clock. Using AA you can easily hear the MIDI delay without any timing system at all. In my very unofficial tests, the delay time was anywhere between one tenth of a second and a half second (for very large sound networks). This makes playing AA in real time almost an impossibility for all but the best of keyboard players - you would actually have to play ahead of the beat. You can use AA together with a sequencer by making a few modifications to your score. AA is nice enough to supply a function that displays the time needed to calculate your sound. You can then perform a backward time shift in your MIDI tracks to account for this delay. Once again, though, you have a be pretty good with your sequencer. A better method to perform live is to create .wav files and load them into a sampler player. This will also improve the polyphony (the number of notes that can be heard at one time) over AA which is a little low (ten notes maximum).

I asked Max Malcolm at Audio Software Limited about the MIDI delay problem and here is what he had to say:

The lag is our Achilles Heel and something we are intent on resolving. It is not actually related to processor power, so the lag you are hearing [on your PII-333 test system] will not be very different from that on a P150. The problem is that we are using the generic Windows commands to communicate to the sound/MIDI card. This has an inherent lag, (because it is bad software!) but we felt that this route would provide broad compatibility and ease of use for most users. We are looking into building a VXD to make AA act like a piece of hardware. This will allow us to communicate directly with a MIDI port thus reducing the lag. It will also offer benefits when running AA with other applications. This is something most of the developers here view as fun - so it should not take long. We would aim to make a patch release for this version so all users can upgrade their current system.

Currently though, the best way to use AA is to sample the final output (either as a .WAV file or to a hardware sampler). Personally I use Seq 303 from Techno Toys to come up with lines and record them to disk, importing the results into work I am doing. Really the biggest bonus for AA is creating sounds that just can't be made on other synthesizers and filling the gaps in my rather sparse studio!.

I personally am hoping that they can fix this problem, because I would love to be able to play the sounds in real time. So my best wishes to Max in England and the crew of 50 rave programmers in India on solving this one.

Interface

The version of the software I tested was 4.0 which was released on October 9th of this year. This version had many nice extensions to the software in it. But since most of you probably have never seen this software before I will not delineate between new or old features.

When you first start the product, you are greeted with a screen like the one below.

The default opening screen

The opening screen after undocking the tool bar.

Here is my first tip for anyone using the product. Undock the tool bar. On many monitors, the toolbar will not display all of the modules that are available. This is a real problem since in my case, the modules that were missing were the ones that allowed you to make a .wav file of the sound or hear the sound through the speakers. To undock the toolbar, point the mouse on the toolbar, but not on a button. Next, drag the toolbar on to the screen background and resize the module palette window. Now your screen will look more like the one to the right.

Normally, the next step is to select an input source. This will be the source from which AA will determine what notes to play. AA gives you three choices here. You can select MIDI (to use a keyboard plugged into the MIDI port of your computer), a quasi MIDI file, or a sequencer module which allows you to create a 16-step sequence to drive the sound network and play it back. This feature is very good for creating dance tracks, but is a little difficult to use.

The way modules are selected and placed into your network is very nice. All you have to do is click on the desired module in the tool bar and then click anywhere on the network window. The icon representing this module instantly appears. Once the module is on the network window, it can be dragged anywhere you want. There are no set locations that the modules must be locked into which really allows your creativity to roam free. Once you have positioned the module you can double click on it to set the module's properties.

The MIDI input module properties window.

In this case, you can set the MIDI port, channel, detuning, and other MIDI input parameters. It would be nice if you could rename the modules in order to keep better track of complex networks, but unfortunately you can't.

Next, we are going to add a sound source, an amplitude filter to give power to the sound, and an output source. For my simple example I have chosen a square wave and for my output source I have selected the sound card. At this point you need to make connections from one module to the next by clicking with the right mouse button and dragging to the next module. In the sample below, note that control signals such as MIDI input use black arrows and sound signals use red arrows. This is very nice for keeping track of complex networks.

Our very simple example network.

Our example here is probably the simplest sound you can make, but networks can be much larger like this additive synthesis network. The great thing about AA is that you can create very complex and unique sounds using the many available modules. AA comes with a fair number of example networks that you can learn from and use as templates for your sounds.

If you'd like to hear what Audio Architect can do, check out the audio clips below. A couple more network diagrams are included as well.

In general I found the interface to be quite user friendly. I did find a number of bugs in the system though, so if you buy a copy, be sure to go to the AA web site (www.audioarchitect.com) and download the patches when available.