Experience The Quantum Leap Stormdrum 2 User Interface!

“Stormdrum 2” comes with a comprehensive yet easy to use graphical interface with plenty of controls to help you customise your sounds. Here is an overview of some of the main controls avaiable:

Round Robin Reset Button

A round robin articulation is one in which several different samples are recorded with all parameters, such as volume, speed of attack, and so on, being essentially constant. The PLAY Engine then knows to alternate between the two or more samples during playback. The goal is to avoid what’s often called the “machine gun effect,” in which playing the same sampled note repeatedly causes the unnatural sound of consecutive notes being mechanically identical. You can use this button to reset all round robin instruments on demand. Or use your choice of a MIDI note or MIDI control code to reset them one instrument at a time from a MIDI keyboard or the data stored in a sequencer project.

Stereo Spread Controls

The knob in this set of controls affects the apparent width of the sound of the instrument within the soundscape. Turning the knob all the way to the left makes the sound seem to come from a specific location as indicated by the Pan control. The more this knob is turned to the right, the wider the apparent source of the sound, making it harder to pinpoint in the stereo field.

The Left and Right buttons specify the source of the input for this control, the left or right channel. Note that by clicking the button that is on, you can turn it off, which means that neither channel is selected.

Filter Controls

The Filter controls take the sound of the instrument, and modify it by filtering out some of the sound above a certain frequency. This type of effect is commonly called a Low Pass Filter.

The Frequency knob – determines where the sound starts to be filtered out.

– determines where the sound starts to be filtered out. The Resonance knob – specifies how much the filter “rings” at the dialed frequency. The higher the resonance knob is set, the more focused this ringing becomes.

The graph gives you visual cues about the frequency distribution you are creating with the settings you select.

Reverb Controls

A generic Reverb control is described in the main PLAY manual, and that description applies here as well. The Reverb control in Stormdrum 2 contains an extra knob, Predelay, not present in most other PLAY UIs. Increasing the level with this knob delays the onset of the reverb so that the initial section of the sample is unaffected. This feature allows the sound of each attack to maintain its true color while the rest of the note still gains the benefit of the reverb effect.

Sensitivity

This control defines a mapping between the velocity of the MIDI notes and the velocity of the notes that sound. Being able to control the sensitivity is primarily useful when playing live, for example on a keyboard, drum pad, or Zendrum.

The Graphical Representation of the Envelope

The total width of the graph represents the total length of all phases of the envelope. Therefore, when you change something in one part of the graph, for example, the decay, you may see the slopes of other components, the attack and the release, change as well because those phases become a larger or smaller percent of the whole; this is as expected.

Read more about these controls in the User Manual HERE