6.0

Mixers and Audio Objects
170
can switch between the sawtooth wave at the very left of
the dial, and the pulse wave, which continuously covers
the rest of the dial’s turn. Listen closely to sonic differ-
ences of the waves—the sawtooth wave gives you a bright,
string-like sound, while the pulse wave covers a continu-
ous range from bright, hollow, clarinet-like sounds at the
left of the Mix control, and bright, nasal, clavinet-like
sounds at the right end of the Mix control. And, of course,
everything between, depending on the setting of Mix. As
the icons indicate, turning Mix clockwise narrows the
width of the pulse wave. Try it and listen to the results.
There is another difference between these two waves. Se-
lect the sawtooth wave, locate the Vib/PWM control and
turn it up. You will hear the pitch of the sound going up
and down and up and down and so on. This cyclic pitch
change is called a “vibrato”, thus the abbreviation in Vib/
PWM. The vibrato intensity is set with Vib/PWM. The vi-
brato speed is set with the Speed control below Vib/PWM.
Now switch Mix to pulse wave and turn on Vib/PWM. You
will not hear a vibrato, but a cyclic change in the sound
color itself. This sound change is achieved by modulating
the width of the pulse wave, as if you would manually turn
the Mix control. This is called “pulse width modulation”,
abbreviated to PWM. The speed of this cyclic sound
change is again controlled with the Speed control below
Vib/PWM. Both principles, vibrato and PWM, are the key
features to bring life and animation to your pad sounds.
So much about the oscillator of the Carpet Sweeper, on to
the filter. It features the main controls already familiar to
you from the introduction: Cutoff for darkening the sound,
Resonance for sharpening it. Please try these controls in-
tensively, as they are the most effective and thus impor-
tant tools for your sound creations.
Let us jump to the Attack and Release sliders. They control
the volume course of the sound. The higher Attack, the
longer it takes the sound’s level to raise from zero to full
level when you press a key. As long as you hold the key, the
sound’s level will be full. As soon as you release a key, the
sound’s level will fall from full to zero in the time specified
with Release. The higher Release, the longer it takes the
sound’s level to fall from full level to zero when you re-
lease a key.
But Attack and Release are not only used to control the level
course of the sound, they can also be used to move Cutoff
automatically up or down from the position you set. Please
note that you will not see the Cutoff control itself moving,
but you will hear the appropriate effect. To hear it, turn