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Heptagen

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Heptagen
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  • Granular Synthesis on the Deluge

    I found a way to make the deluge do some granular synthesis, something I have missed since the beginning. Quite funny to me that it was there all along. I hope you find this useful.

  • We're OK :)

    @Ian_Jorgensen First and foremost: Thank you for giving us some insight on what is going on behind the scenes! I didn't know whether you were doing exceptionally great or bad (and I was not the only one to wonder about that), so this cleares things up big time.
    Oh yeah and congrats on your popularity and success! I totally get where you're coming from when trying to slow down the sales. It's still funny. I kinda like it that it's such a human response instead of going full business mode. Such an Ian thing to do. ;) I hope that you find a way to deal with the "too much work" problem in a way that sits right with your team, yourself and your customers alike.

    Here are my two cents on the communication: To me little signs of life every few days are more valuable than long periods of total silence followed by a wall of text. At my job I have to communicate with customers and the thing I've noticed is that projects are allowed to take waaaay longer and people are far more patient if they get a message every once in a while - it doesn't even matter that much what it says. A small question or stating that we're on it and making progress, stuff like that.
    In my opinion, you could take social media way lighter than you do atm. Stream is down and you're on vacation? Small tweet / IG post: "Stream is having technical difficulties, will be back on in two weeks." And not worry about it anymore. Things happen. To know that you're aware takes all tension out of it.
    I'd love it if you posted on instagram every once in a while, just some lighthearted and mundane things. A pic of the place where deluges get repaired. Show us your workshop pet. Some (mildly) interesting facts about the company or the deluge. Just don't sweat it, it's not about polished PR but to show that you're still alive and well. Would emphasize that synthstrom is a collective of humans, not just a faceless business.

    About the platforms: Everyone has their own preferred platform and they all have their advantages and disadvantages. It's impossible to make everyone use one platform. That said, your move away from facebook to this forum was absolutely correct, very necessary and so so good! This works so much better as an archive and a knowledge base. That's something that fb, discord, and ig can't offer. If someone wants more immediacy and the freedom to get off topic, join the discord. (Though I REALLY wouldn't mind if you found a way to switch the forum to discourse, I love that software!)

    people tend to be politer when emailing me than when commenting indiscriminately and anonymously online

    Please don't let it get to you what people on the internet say. A lot of times there are just some misunderstandings or someone just had a bad day or was drunk posting. I'm happy for you that you realize when you get stressed and react accordingly. Nobody benefits from it if you snap or burn out. Maybe you could pass the day to day social media stuff to someone else in your crew? Just a thought. I think it could help.

    I'm wishing you and rohan and the rest of your team all the very best and I'm excited for the months to come! Stay strong and have fun!

  • About that display...

    I keep stumbling upon peoples complaints about that tiny display and how the deluge would be perfect with a bigger one and more information on it.

    I just really feel the need to express my utter satisfaction with the display, in my opinion it is one of the key features of the unit. You see, when I researched different grooveboxes my head spun with all the facts and details about the different units, so I took a step back, grabbed a piece of paper and wrote down why I wanted to have a groovebox and which functions it should have.

    And pretty quickly I realized that the main reason to go dawless was to get away from that damn screen because it totally screws up my creativity. Theres just something about screens that switches my head into a different mode thats pretty useless for creative processes.

    As soon as I understood that, the question of which groovebox to pick got a whole lot easier: An MPC One was no option because of its display and menu diving. Same with the Polyend Tracker.

    Since having the deluge, making music feels like playing an instrument again, instead of working in an office.

    So Synthstrom, take my heartfelt THANK YOU for that tiny display and keep doing what you're doing. You're definitely on the right track and so good at staying true to it.

    Feel free to disagree, but lets spread some positivity! :smile:

  • Please sign up to our Beta Testing Group if you wish to take part


  • About that display...

    Well, originally I opened this thread to set something against the constant nagging about the display but it's always on the verge of derailing and I guess here we go again.

    I don't get why people keep talking about and hoping for a deluge 2: synthstrom has repeatedly stated that they are not planning to nor interested in making a different hardware version. And honestly that's one of the many reasons to love them even more. I invested in this piece of gear knowing that it won't be devalued by some unnecessary hardware iteration, like every other manufacturer does. Not only the unit that I hold in my hands but also the very concept of the deluge are both built to last for a long long time and that is the change I want to see in this world.

    To anyone having strong feelings against the 4 digit display, let me gently point you to the concept of creative limitation. There are some beautiful things to learn about yourself when being confronted with limits and one of the worst things ever happening to me creatively is the limitlessness of music production on a computer.

    @hexagon5un said:
    "That would be the "delugian" way to do it. :)"

    +1 That's what I'm talking about. Rohan has found some amazing ways to solve workflow problems. His solutions are so nice, it would've been an absolute shame if he never had to look for and develop them, had he designed the hardware to work the traditional way. It's not always the path everyone takes that is necessarily the best. And he proved it.
    I'm in for every new usecase of the grid for displaying various information - the delugian way :) Like a keyboard mode for kits or showing folders and files as an overview. But not because I hate using the display, but because it fits the philosophy of the deluge so well.

    I for one not only love the deluge despite it's display, but all the more because of it. It has character. It's confident. It's fun. What's not to love about that.

  • Move/Reorder Rows within Kit Clips

    This changed with v4.0:
    Press and hold the mute and the audition pad of the row you want to move and rotate the "vertical" knob.

  • Aspiring Deluge owner questions : Vocoder ? Auto-Tune ? Auto-Sample ? Advanced sample navigation ?

    Hey, I hope I can help :)
    1. There's no vocoder. The osc trick is nice but it works different to a vocoder: It just puts out what you put in, but pitched. Note C3 is the base note, so the unaltered input gets put out. If you hold C3 E3 and G3, what you put in will be tuned to a major chord. But keep in mind that you have to have very stable pitch, because
    2. it doesn't have autotune. No plans in that regard are known. The pitch detection feedback doesn't alter the sample content in a way autotune would, it just repitches the whole sample to make it match the normal pitches used in western music.
    3. No auto-sample. I guess you could manually create a bunch of samples, move them into one folder and then make a multisample instrument out of it, but it is far from autosampling and you'd need a computer for moving the files anyway.
    4. There's no limit (that I know of) for depth of folder structure. You can search for samples by typing on the keyboard, but only in the current folder you're in, not the ones deeper down. As far as I know it does accept big SD cards, but I think the performance of scrolling through the files and folders might be a bit slower - I could be wrong though, I haven't tested that.

    I'll be upfront: The deluge is not a good choice for vocal processing, unfortunately. Besides the points already mentioned, it doesn't have a traditional compressor/limiter and eq. I tried some vocal stuff, but the vocals pretty much go through the deluge unaltered. If I were to make a serious song on it, I'd process the vocals on the computer.

    The inputs can easily be split the way you describe it: when choosing the input source, you can select between left, right and stereo.

    If you've already tried the MPC (One? Live?), what were you missing that you hope to find in the deluge? If it is what I think it is, maybe the akai force would be the better choice for you? I think it has pretty much everything you're asking for. ;) (-> example of vocal processing on force)

    Ian_Jorgensen
  • out to fx box and back in as audio clips?

    You would only be able to use this to record stuff into the deluge and do it with monitoring set to off. Otherwise you'll create a nasty feedback loop. So yeah, this is possible, but not for live playing but only for recording and then playing the recorded part from the deluge.

  • Midi track -> External Synth -> Record as sample -> Create synth with sample

    While we're at it: is there a way to manually pitch a single sample in a multisample instrument? I've had the deluge pitching one sample wrong and all others right, rendering the whole instrument useless.