Hey guys, I recently decided to give a try on Phase Plant and I really fell in love with all the possibilities it offer. But, I have some newbie questions regard the basic workflow on it, so if you guys could give me a light on these questions I would really appreciate it.

1st - Is there a way of copying the modulations from one modulator to another one? Or at least switching the type of modulator without needing to route everything from scratch?

For example, let's say I have a Basic LFO controlling the volume and filter cutoff, then I decide to switch it for a basic envelope or a Wavetable LFO. Is there an easy way of doing it? I think I could do it using the remap modulator, but then I would need to start the routing using it everytime which means more steps as well, so yeah, it would be nice to have a simpler way of doing that.

2nd - Is there a way of copying an envelope from the generators section to the modulation section? Or at least copy it's settings to that envelope?

 

I'm almost sure that none of 1 and 2 is possible, unfortunately.
I specially miss to be able to copy LOFs and envelopes.

 

Yeah, sometimes I need to exchange my LFOs for macros for example to have more control over it while producing, it would be handy if Phase Plant had a modulation matrix or some copy and paste features to help with this type of task.

In any case I got in touch with Kilohearts to see if they have an easy workaround for those tasks, or if they plan to add those features in the future. If they reply I get back here to update the thread. Let's hope for some good news.

 

not entirely sure if i understand this correctly, but Olymoon said: "... I specially miss to be able to copy LOFs and envelopes.".
you guys are aware that you can duplicate pretty much everything by holding ctrl and dragging?

you can exactly duplicate modulators (without destinations), generators, fx (with mod sources intact) and groups.
only thing that's not working is to duplicate to different sections (generators, modulators, effects)

 

Came here to say the exact same thing, I use ctrl+drag all the time, its an incredible time saver.

 

Thanks guys, but that function is very situational and not as useful in my workflow, most of the time I can go with the modulation curve if I need slightly variations of the same modulator. I still think Phase Plant really needs a modulation matrix. In any case I appreciate your attention.

Ps. you can only click holding ctrl, no need for actually dragging the modules unless you need them in another place of the chain. ;)

 

Yes, I know this, but it's not exactly the same.

 

yea would've been surprised i you weren't aware, but it sounded a bit like that so i wanted to be sure.
and it's true, a dedicated mod matrix with the ability to copy n' paste from/in/within there would be very nice.

discord is a great place to get in touch with the kilohearts folks. been there quite often in the past and was lucky enough to talk directly to one of the devs more than once. and if you don't catch one directly i'm sure they're reading pretty much everything what's brought up there.
(right now might be an unlucky moment though because most of the guys are currently at superbooth)

 

Yes, that's right.

 

Not sure if you found the solution but here is one. Create a remap in mod section then link an lfo or swap out any other modulation to remap modulate things from the remap. Check out Dash Glish tutorial @11.43 on remaps

 

"basically a masterclass", i do not think I have ever encountered a 3 hour youtube production video in 1 part. There is a recent ProducerTech "complete guide to phaseplant" with Seppa as the presenter. The "marketing" text shows it is about 4.5 hours also.

 

Oh, sorry guys, I think I forgot to update the thread, but I end up getting in touch with Kilohearts themselves and seem that it's not possible to do such things at the moment, but they said it's on their plans to implement those features in future updates

 

This is the developer's equivalent of "use your ears".

 

This video is pure gold. I watched it at the time it came out.
Each element is clearly separated, so, its length is not a problem.

Yeah, let's hope they also update their poor granular "oscillator", it's the weakest point of this synth.

 

Last edited: Sep 26, 2023

Yeah, it's been a while to be honest, but let's see,maybe they can surprise us on their next major update

I like their granular oscilator, it even substituted Pigments for me for that matter. But yeah, I usually go for sparse grains with a lot of reverb to create ambient patches and ear candies, maybe that's why I never found a issue on it. What exactly you hope them to improve on it?

 

OK, with Phaseplant, even before they implemented their granular "oscillator" you could do what you describe : a big patch done with reverbs and ptich delays, etc... And you could mimick a granular effect.
But a granular oscillator is much more than a sampler with some tricks. It should oscillate. Like the granular oscillator of Parawave Rapid.
So what I expect from them, first of all, is more grains, at least 100. And then the true capacity to oscillate.
Also a much better and precise control on the grain's envelopes.
The difference is enormous in terms of results and what you can do with it.

Right now, every thing you can do with their granular oscillator could be done without it. Using several samplers and modulating their loops. Plus a bunch of pitch delays and reverbs spared a cross the frequency spectrum.
I'm not speaking theoretically, as I've really done it, before they added the granular "oscillator" / aka sampler with some tricks.
I'll share a patch of these here later when I got in my studio.

Side note : I'm a legit user and bought the whole pack, as this dev really seemed promising. But this have been a total bad surprise and disappointment.
I never thought that after the good synth they created, they could screw this so important part....
Even VPS Avenger offers much more advanced granular engine.

 

Last edited: Sep 26, 2023

I too bought the whole pack too and am disappointed in the darn granular oscillator and thought up to this point that it was my user error to not getting the sound that I believe it should deliver. I'm thankful for the confirmation. Yes, everything else about the synth to me is top notch and I hope that with user feedback they'll work on it to be on par with all the other pieces of their glorious puzzle of an instrument.

 

So, I'm at my studio.
To use my patches, you'll have to download 2 samples. And the patches: https://files.fm/u/wqyh3mtpjr

Use them as you wish, it's a gift...

 

Wow, your description of Rapid's granular engine sound really interesting... I think I have not tried a powerful granular oscilator to have a good reference of it. Before Phase Plant the only one I've used was Pigments.

And yeah, I never thought about using a regular sampler to mimic a granular oscilator. That opened my mind to a lot of possibilities, thanks for the tip.

And thanks for your elaborated answer, I could really understand what I was missing, and I didn't even knew I was missing something.

 

I'm glad that going a bit off topic was useful.
You can't really mimmic a granular engine with any sampler, because you need more than one. And also, you need the sampler's loop to be as small as possible. Last but not least the loop smoothing feature must be good enough.
But you have all this with Phaseplant.
Take my presets, and multiply the number of sampler's, say 6 instead of 2. Replace my samples by yours. Try to chose harmonically almost linear samples (unless you want something weird) and add some ptich shifting effects with delays and reverbs, and you got something creative, flexible, and "granular".

The only problem with Rapid, is that I'm not sure it's worth its full price today , as it's abandoned. No update since at least 2 years now... And dev is a dick, in terms of support.
But as a synth it's really a good one.

 

Last edited: Sep 27, 2023