User's Manual

6.1 Settings 65
the control and selecting the desired number of voices. In general, a higher number of voices is
desirable but keep in mind that the CPU load is proportional to the number of voices used.
6.1.3 Master Tuning
Musical instruments are usually tuned based on a fixed reference, such as A440, and a temperament.
The reference is a note whose frequency is fixed, for example 440 Hz for the A above the middle
C of the keyboard in the case of A440. A tuning fork or electronic tuner is typically used to give
a reference note. A temperament is a tuning system, or a set of rules, which establishes how the
octave is subdivided and allows one to calculate the frequency of all the other notes in a scale.
By default, Chromaphone 3 is tuned using equal temperament and a frequency of 440 Hz for
the A4 note (MIDI note 69). These values are displayed under Reference Note and Frequency in
the Master Tuning section. One can transpose, or in other words raise or lower the frequency of
all the notes on the keyboard, by changing the frequency (in Hertz) of the reference note with the
Frequency parameter. Any note can be chosen as a reference by clicking on the Reference Note
drop-down menu. When choosing a new note, the value of the Frequency parameter is updated to
the current frequency of this new note in A440 and equal temperament.
The A440 button to the right of the Reference Note control is used to revert to A440 when both
the reference note and its frequency were changed. The Reset button next to the Frequency control
brings back the frequency of the reference note to its original value.
Note that the tuning parameters in the Settings window are used to fix the general tuning of
the synthesizer. The tuning of each layer, with respect to this reference tuning, can be adjusted
independently using the Tune controls in the layer mixer as will be discussed below.
6.1.4 Microtonal Tuning
An interesting feature of Chromaphone 3 is that it can be tuned according to different temperaments
using Scala micro-tuning files. Temperament files are loaded by clicking on the Tuning drop-down
menu which shows a list of available temperament. By default, the only temperament available is
the equal temperament. Other temperaments can be added by clicking on the Show Tuning Files
button just below the Tuning parameter and copying Scala files in this folder.
Selecting a new Scala file with the Tuning automatically triggers the loading of the correspond-
ing temperament. The reference note used as the base note for the scale described in the Scala file
as well as its frequency are set using the Reference Note and Frequency parameters of the Master
tuning section as explained above.
6.1.5 Macros
The Macros settings is used to assign an external MIDI continuous controller to the four Macros
modules used in each layer. One can select a specific controler from the list of controller numbers