Ableton/Live/UG/31 Instrument Reference/01 Analog
- Analog is a virtual analog synth made with Applied Acoustics Systems. It doesn't copy one vintage synth; it combines features of several.
- It uses physical modeling: equations for analog circuits are solved in real time, with no samples or wavetables.
- Garden notes: Ableton/Instrument/Analog/106 Bass
- Two oscillators and a noise generator feed two multi-mode filters, each followed by an amplifier. The filters can run in series or in parallel.
- Two LFOs modulate oscillators, filters and amps, and each filter and amp has its own envelope.
- The interface is a central display surrounded by the shell. The shell holds each section's main controls; the display shows the selected section's visualizations and extra controls.
- A Global section holds volume, vibrato, polyphony and similar settings, and an MPE section maps pressure, slide and per-note pitch bend.
- Modeled oscillators, so no aliasing. Each has an on switch (Osc 1, Osc 2) and a level slider.
- F1/F2 — balance between Filter 1 and Filter 2; centered sends equally.
- Shape — sine, sawtooth, rectangular or white noise. Rectangular enables Pulse Width (100% is a square with odd harmonics only; low values sound thin), which an LFO can modulate.
- Octave, Semi, Detune — tuning; Detune moves in cents, up to 300 cents either way.
- Pitch Mod — LFO amount, and Key: how far pitch follows the keyboard. 100% is equal temperament, 0% ignores note pitch. C3 always plays the same frequency, so oscillators with different Key values move further out of tune with each other the farther you play from C3.
- Pitch Env — Initial pitch and the Time to glide to the final pitch.
- Sub/Sync — Sub adds an oscillator an octave down (square for saw or rectangle, sine for sine, off for noise) at a set Level. Sync restarts the waveform from a hidden oscillator whose rate rises with Ratio; 0% has no effect. Mapping Ratio to a mod wheel is a suggested use.
- White noise through its own -6 dB/octave low-pass filter, with an on switch and level.
- F1/F2 — balance between the filters.
- Color — the low-pass frequency; higher is brighter.
- Noise has shell controls only, so the display doesn't change.
- Two multi-mode filters with independent settings, flexible routing, saturation and modulation.
- Fil 1 / Fil 2 — on switches; the chooser beside each picks 2nd- or 4th-order low-pass, band-pass, notch, high-pass or formant.
- Freq and Reso — cutoff and resonance. With a formant filter, Reso moves between vowel sounds. Filter 1's Freq: Ableton/Instrument/Analog/Filter/1/Freq
- To F2 (Filter 1) — how much of Filter 1's output feeds Filter 2.
- Follow (Filter 2) — Filter 2's cutoff tracks Filter 1, including its modulation; Filter 2's Freq then sets the offset.
- Freq Mod and Res Mod — modulation of cutoff and resonance by LFO, note pitch and filter envelope; negative values lower them.
- Drive — saturation after the filter: Off, three symmetrical Sym modes, or asymmetrical Asym modes; higher numbers distort more.
- After each filter an amplifier sets level and pan, with its own envelope.
- Amp 1 / Amp 2 — on switches; Level and Pan knobs.
- Pan Mod and Level Mod — modulation by LFO, note pitch and amp envelope. With note pitch on Level, middle C stays the same and positive values make higher notes louder.
- Besides the oscillator pitch envelopes, each filter and amp has an ADSR envelope, all four with the same controls in the display, plus velocity and looping.
- Attack, with Att < Vel to shorten it at higher velocities; Decay; Sustain (fully left removes sustain, fully right removes decay); Release.
- Env < Vel — velocity scales the whole envelope.
- S.Time — lets the sustain level fall while the key is held; lower is faster.
- Slope — linear or exponential segments.
- Legato — a note played while another is held continues that note's envelope.
- Free — skips sustain and goes straight from decay to release, so notes have equal length; suits percussion.
- Loop:
- Off — plays once.
- AD-R — attack and decay repeat until release.
- ADR-R — attack, decay and release repeat while held.
- ADS-R — no looping, but attack and release play once more on key release, which can mimic audible dampers.
- With Free on, AD-R and ADR-R act as if the key is always held.
- Two independent LFOs that modulate oscillators, filters and amps.
- LFO 1 / LFO 2 switches, Rate in Hz or tempo-synced divisions.
- Wave — sine, triangle, rectangle, stepped random noise or smoothed noise. Width shapes triangle (toward up or down saw) and rectangle (pulse width); 50% gives a pure triangle or square.
- Delay — time before the LFO starts; Attack — time to full depth.
- Retrig — restart at the same phase on each note; Offset shifts the phase.
- Volume, vibrato, unison, glide, routing presets and keyboard settings.
- Volume — overall output.
- Vib — a dedicated pitch LFO on both oscillators with amount and Rate. Display adds Delay, Attack, Error (random variation per voice) and Amt < MW (mod wheel control of depth).
- Uni — stacks voices per note with Detune; the display picks two or four Voices and a Delay between them.
- Gli — glide with Time; with Legato, glide only on overlapping notes. Glide Mode Const keeps time fixed; Prop scales it with the interval.
- Quick Routing — four buttons set common routings without touching levels, tuning or waveforms: each oscillator to its own filter and amp; both oscillators split across both filters; everything through Filter 1 and Amp 1; or serial Filter 1 into Filter 2 and Amp 2.
- Keyboard section:
- Octave, Semi, Detune (±50 cents) for the whole instrument.
- PB Range — pitch bend range in semitones.
- Stretch — stretch tuning as on pianos: positive raises high notes and lowers low ones; negative does the reverse.
- Error — random tuning per note.
- Voices and Priority — polyphony, and which notes get cut when it runs out: High keeps higher notes, Low keeps lower, Last keeps the newest.
- The MPE switch in the Global display shows three MPE sources: Pressure, Slide and NotePB (per-note pitch bend).
- Pressure and Slide each have two destination choosers with amount sliders, and activity LEDs.
- Note PB — per-note pitch bend range in semitones.
