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RoEx Audio has introduced Phosphor, a new software instrument for macOS that uses spectral synthesis to convert images into audio.

Spectral synthesis is very different from other types of synthesis. It builds on the idea that audio can be represented as a spectrogram, an image where time runs left to right, frequency runs bottom to top, and brightness represents loudness. A bass note is a bright horizontal line near the bottom. A siren is a diagonal streak. A snare is a vertical column.

Instead of converting audio into a picture, though, Phosphor inverts this and turns pictures into sound. You can ‘paint’ directly on to the spectrogram, or load an image, and Phosphor will synthesize audio from it.

Because of the nature of this approach, Phosphor is probably best suited for sound design – creating textures, drones and soundscapes – that you then export for use in your DAW.

An example of Phospor in action:

Features:

• Spectrogram Canvas – Draw directly on a frequency-vs-time canvas. The vertical axis follows a logarithmic scale mapped to musical octaves, so equal distances always equal musical intervals. Includes piano roll overlay, beat grid, and snap-to-note.
• Colour Mode – In standard mode, brightness controls loudness and every frequency is a pure sine. In colour mode, hue shapes the timbre, red produces sawtooth-like warmth, green gives square-wave hollowness, blue creates soft flute-like tones. Saturation controls harmonic intensity.
• Four Synthesis Engines – Choose how your spectrogram becomes sound.
• STFT for classic spectral synthesis with iterative phase reconstruction.
• Additive for clean, precise oscillator-bank synthesis.
• Noise Band for textural, granular results.
• Blend to mix tonal and noise components.
• ADSR Envelope – Shape the amplitude dynamics of your sound with a full attack-decay-sustain-release envelope. Visualize the envelope shape in real time as you adjust parameters.
• Image Sonification – Load any photograph, painting, fractal, or generated image. Phosphor maps the visual composition to audio, brightness to loudness through a perceptual dB curve, vertical position to pitch, horizontal position to time.
• Flexible Export – Export in WAV, AIFF, FLAC, or MP3. Choose 16-bit, 24-bit, or 32-bit float at 44.1kHz or 48kHz. Optional peak normalisation. The exported audio uses iterative phase reconstruction for clean results.

Phosphor is available now as a free download, no account required.

Gingoduino is a free, open source music theory engine for Arduino and other embedded systems.

It brings notes, intervals, chords, scales, harmonic fields, fretboard engine, musical events, and sequences to Arduino, ESP32, Teensy, Daisy Seed, Raspberry Pi Pico, and other platforms.

Features:

• 12-note chromatic system with enharmonic equivalents
• 42 chord formulas with reverse lookup (identify)
• 40+ scale types and modes with signature, brightness, relative/parallel
• Harmonic field analysis with T/S/D functions and roles
• Fretboard engine: violao, cavaquinho, bandolim, ukulele with fingering scoring
• Musical events (note, chord, rest) and sequences with tempo/time signature
• Open source under an MIT license.

Gingoduino is available now via Github.

via adafruit

Electronic musician and Ableton Live co-creator Robert Henke has shared a free Max for Live device that puts a stereo spin on Live’s existing Filter Delay device and adds some nifty feedback routing.

Filter Delay features three stereo delay lines, each of which can be set to 16th-notes, dotted 16ths, 16th triplets, or 32nd-notes – this value can then be multiplied by up to 32 using the adjacent Time control, producing delay times of up to 2 bars in length. A Global Delay Time control on the left-hand side adjusts all three delay lines simultaneously.

Each delay runs through a band-pass filter, with controls for centre Frequency and Width joined by a Global Frequency control that can be used to modulate the filters across all three delays at once. Alongside the typical feedback routing you’d find in a standard delay, you’re also given the option to combine all the outputs and feed them back into all the inputs, if you’re feeling particularly chaotic.

Alongside the feedback routing, Filter Delays introduces some interesting stereo capabilities absent from the OG Filter Delay. The Pan control dials in panning before the signal hits each delay’s input – and between the values of 50 and -50, that’s all it does.

Once you push it beyond those values towards 99 and -99, though, the Pan control folds back a polarity-flipped version of the signal into the other channel, and dialled up to the maximum, this means the signal is centrally panned but out of phase across both channels. This can be used to produce some creative stereo effects, especially when combined with the Channel Swap control, which switches the left and right output of each delay line.

“I wrote the original Filter Delay for Live 1, released in 2001,” Henke writes on his website. “Recently, I rediscovered it and wanted to add a few more options that were missing in the Ableton device. This led me to create a new version in Max4Live.

“The Ableton Filter Delay was one of the first devices I developed, partly inspired by the filtered delays in my Lexicon PCM 80. Back then, CPU limitations were a major concern, so the original effect only includes three mono delays and less flexible feedback routing.”

Whether you’re someone that uses Filter Delay on a regular basis, or relies on the recently updated Delay device instead, we see no good reason not to download this updated version of a classic Live effect. You’ll need either Ableton Live Suite or the Max for Live add-on with Standard to run Filter Delays. Henke says it’s only been tested with Live Suite 12, but it may work with earlier versions.

Find out more on Robert Henke website.