Alternative phase invert problem

[pianohenry]

I love my nord drum machine a lot! but last time when i did the midi tracking, i find that the phase will invert each time the midi triggered it... for example, on the kick drum, the "tone (or wave)" will be like + - + - + - + - ... and the "click" will be + + - - + + - - .... thus create a more "humanized" sound, might be good in some way, which is quite annoying for me, while i need the kick to be consistently the same... thus i tracked one single kick and pasted it over and over...

Is there a setting that i can fix this? please help!!!

[wartaler]

Interesting!

So, you say each time you trigger your bass sound the wave inverts phase,
your 'click' sound also alternates phase but in a different order/pattern

So I guess when the two sounds are layered, the problem then becomes cancellation in a particular pattern?

do the sounds (waves) always start at phase zero?
does it matter which tempo you play?

it is not a setting, I think,
I'm not an expert on synths, or drum synths, I don't know if it's intended,
- no idea how the 'old-school' machines behaved in this respect for example,

unless someone else here does have an idea about this, maybe you can ask Clavia themselves?

Best,
Albert

[initials]

Yes I have the same problem. I tried to layer 3 sounds to make a massive house kick but it seems the sounds blend together due to invert phase and the kick is indeed not consistent. Has anybody contact nord about this or do they read this forum?

Luc

[wartaler]

Hi,

I also recorded the Nord Drum, it gave me the opportunity to experiment a bit and look at the phase behavior;

I recorded one channel (one sound) with just tone (no noise or click) with a slow decay.

Using the trigger button, I played notes quickly following each other, and also some notes with more time in between, ...then I looked at the recorded signal in my DAW.

I noticed that when you trigger a new sound while the previous is still sounding, the phase of the previous sound will be the starting point of the new sound.

A sample will always be exactly the same, same start, same end, regardless of when you trigger it, but this is not a sampler obviously,

Here is my 'hypothesis' : perhaps the oscillator of the ND just runs constantly, and when you trigger it's the envelope that lets sound thru and fade away ..

(So) perhaps it's something that comes with a (/this) synth and is intended -

Cheers,

Albert

[gzifcak]

I've noticed something similar on my new Nord Drum 2. I'm sending it notes of the exact same length (shorter than the distance between two steps), and exact same velocity. I'm using wave A1, no noise, and no click, and no Timb Env, with Timbre all the way open. I hear varying pops at the beginning of the sounds. These are accentuated if I set the Punch to Pup. My first thought is that the oscillator is not resetting at each hit. They vary more with more frequent and unevenly spaced notes. It's also very obvious with some of the other waveforms that have more high frequency content.

Hopefully Nord will address this in an update. It seems like a drum synth should default to oscillator reset on note-on, the way any percussive object would. Perhaps they did this on purpose to add a little bit of "organic" variation, but in my opinion you should also be able to get predictably repetitive precision if you so desire.

[wartaler]

+1
I think that's correct, and in some cases it influences how variable the attack sounds with each hit - quite a bit..
You could be right that's it's meant to add some randomness* - or perhaps it helps to make the unit respond as fast as it does...
it would indeed be nice to at least have the option to let the oscillator(s) reset with each hit - I only hope it doesn't cause any noticeable latency -

Albert


*not truely random of course: if you adapt the tempo you play to the pitch of the tone, the behavior should stay constant

[Ecaroh]

I think I have this same issue if it means that some sounds seem to "cut" each others when they are played together. If this is intended feature I certainly don't like it! In my case I've noticed it with some claps and snare. I cannot put them together.

I am not sure but to me this seems to a new issue, I haven't seen it before. Maybe it came with last update?

Has anyone contacted Clavia about it?

[wartaler]

Hi JacksonP,

What gzifak and the OP are experiencing is within one channel: consecutive notes seem to have a slightly different sound, especially the attack - so that's in both ND1 and ND2 - I think the oscillators of a channel just continue running and are not reset when a new note is triggered - resetting them when triggered would make consecutive notes sound more consistent

Luc 'initials' in above post found that when you trigger 2 identical sounds from 2 or 3 channels at the same time thru MIDI - they partly cancel each other out on his ND1 - suggesting that oscillators between channels are not synchronised

Resetting the oscillators when triggerred would solve the first problem above and could also help to solve Luc's problem, although it then comes down to how accurate the timing of 2 simultaneously triggered/played notes is.

What you describe -at first glance- seems similar to Luc's problem with the ND1. However, you say you experience it trying to combine clap and snare sounds - clap is noise with an LFO - a phase related problem would surprise me..

I sometimes get the impression that there is some sort of dynamics processing on the total mix - or, could very well be my ears ducking under some high pressure notes ; )

Perhaps your problem is different, perhaps post a repro, upload a bank and/or recording, maybe in a new thread

Cheers,
Albert

[gzifcak]

So does Clavia actually watch this board at all or is there some other way to contact them about this?

I guess I'll make a thread for the feature request. To me it's a no-brainer. It should be easy to implement. Anything that's physically struck starts at zero-phase.

[gzifcak]

Actually...

I've just recorded a pattern

ND2phaseTest.wav

(1.81 MiB) Downloaded 174 times

and it looks like the phase does reset each time. If you zoom in on the waveform, you can see that it starts at zero on each hit and then proceeds to move above the zero line.

However, you can clearly hear inconsistencies between the hits. My patch is a sine wave (A1), with no punch, pitch set to 44, and bend set to 20 with a bend time of 0. Decay is 11E.

I remember my Yamaha RY30 used to vary in a similar manner when I used the bend envelopes, and those were samples starting from zero phase each time. Perhaps something is inconsistent in the shape of the bend envelope? This is something I don't think I can spot by looking at the audio waveform. Any ideas? How can we get Clavia's attention to ask about this and possibly get them to address it?

(Side note: I think when hits overlap due to long decay settings, the wave does not reset, in order to avoid the clicks that would result from jumping from the current position back to zero. At least this is what it looked like when I recorded some patterns with longer decays, and this is how I used to deal with this problem in Reaktor as well. I think it's appropriate behavior.)

edit: also just noticed similarly audible inconsistencies when using a short timbre env on a harmonically rich wave, and no bend.