Image.Line.Morphine.v1.4.3.WinAll.Incl.Crack.rar
Image-Line Morphine

Additive synthesis is a powerful way to generate new and beautiful sounds. It?s so powerful, in fact, that until only a few years ago, you needed a super-fast computer to do it in real time in any robust way. Today, off-the-shelf PCs and Macs are fast enough for additive, but defining a single additive sound can involve sculpting the parameters of dozens of partials. The partials change from moment to moment, so programming a complete sound may mean editing hundreds or even thousands of data points. Other types of synthesis, such as sampling and real or virtual analog subtractive synthesis, are generally easier to work with.
Even so, a few intrepid instrument designers have taken the plunge, and the user interface tools they?ve developed have made programming your own additive sounds not only possible but fun (in a tweaky sort of way). Image-Line Morphine is the third full-featured additive soft synth I?ve looked at, following VirSyn Cube, Camel Audio Cameleon 5000, and most recently, U-he Zebra 2 (reviewed Sept. ?03, June ?04, and Feb. ?07, respectively).

OVERVIEW
Morphine?s sound comes from four sources Image-Line calls Generators. Each Generator provides a solid set of tools for additive synthesis, and in fact many of the factory presets use only one Generator. For more complex sounds, you can activate all four and morph among them using a multi-stage two-dimensional X/Y envelope (see Figure 1).

Morphing is different from mixing: Behind the panel, there?s actually only one tone source, not four. The settings of the four Generators govern what that tone sounds like from moment to moment. If, for instance, you create a patch with a single partial, give this partial a different detuning in Generators A than it has in B, and then morph between A and B, you?ll hear the frequency of the partial glide smoothly from one value to the other. Now, realize that you can do that for up to 128 partials, and you?ll begin to sense the possibilities.

A modulation matrix with 12 routings (see Figure 2 on page 74) lets you use velocity, aftertouch, pitchbend, or any MIDI continuous controller message to drive any of the parameters, which include things like the global ADSR envelope?s segments and the depth of detuning for each Generator. You also get direct routings (not via the matrix) that make velocity or MIDI note number determine the envelope rate for each Generator. Four multi-segment envelopes can also be modulation sources. Since these can loop, they also function as LFOs.

Real-world sounds often include noise, so an additive synth that aspires to emulate such sounds needs to be able to produce noise, not just sine waves. Morphine has a sample playback widget for this purpose, and ships with about 100 noise samples, including both attack clicks and longer noise beds that can be looped. The noise section has its own resonant filter with low-, band-, and highpass modes, but otherwise, the implementation seems basic: There?s no envelope dedicated to the noise sample, noise pitch doesn?t track the keyboard, and you can use only one noise sound per preset. This is because Image-Line intends for you to modify the noise source using mainly the modulation matrix: Options here include modulating the noise section?s filter parameters, routing MIDI note number to the amount of noise heard, and using envelopes as LFOs for the noise source.

One of the coolest features of Morphine is its ability to use any sample you load (AIFF and WAV formats are supported) as the basis for resynthesis: Instead of playing the sample outright, Morphine analyzes it, then re-creates the result using additive methods. In my experiments, this never produced a tone that was exactly like the original, which isn?t the point ? if you want that, use a sampler. Instead, the results I got were often sonically provocative. A long, echoing electric guitar loop, for instance, was transformed into a tonal wash that had an ethereal quality that reminded me of Brian Eno?s ambient music. Incidentally, resynthesis was a notable feature of New England Digital?s pricey and gear lust-worthy Synclavier (see ?Vintage Gear,? May ?02).

As for Morphine?s effects, they?re basic but useful: chorus, stereo delay, reverb, EQ, and a drive knob for adding distortion. The delay has no sync-to-tempo feature, but the pop-up for its time parameter shows miliiseconds, so whip out that calculator.

GENERATORS
The heart of Morphine is the Generator section. It?s very well laid out, and the hardest thing about learning it is that you?ll encounter some possibly unfamiliar terms: spectrum and breakpoint (see ?Jargon Jockey? on page 74). Basically, breakpoints are milestones along the road your sound travels, and at each one, that sound can have a totally different harmonic character, or spectrum. There are two primary ways that Generators help you micro-manage that spectrum: Within each Generator, you create a looping envelope that contains an essentially unlimited number of breakpoints. For each breakpoint, you then define a spectrum of up to 128 partials. These are overtones by default, but can be individually detuned. This is powerful stuff.

If this seems like a lot of parameters to deal with, well . . . it is. Luckily, Morphine makes the process easier by intelligently creating partials for you as you insert new breakpoints: When you add a new breakpoint to the right of the previously-final one, it gets the same partials as its predecessor. Insert a breakpoint between two existing ones, and it will have a blend of the partials to its left and right.

The breakpoint envelope for each Generator has its own rate knob, which speeds up or slows down an envelope after you?ve designed it. Key tracking and velocity modulation of the rate are also provided. The envelope can loop forward, backward, forward then backward, or not at all, with loop start and end points that you can set anywhere. If you switch on the Release Loop button, breakpoints after the loop end point will play through once you release the key.

For each partial at each breakpoint, you can set amplitude, amount of detuning, and panning. Panning turns out to be subtle but interesting: Using a looping envelope, I created a Leslie-like swirl as the overtones panned independently of one another.

Velocity-to-amplitude (i.e. volume) response is adjustable for each partial, but globally for the entire Generator, not individually within each breakpoint. There?s also a spectrum window, in which the amplitudes of individual partials can be adjusted across the entire Generator without having to edit them in dozens or hundreds of breakpoints. This is a very workable system, especially in combination with the various mouse tools. You can adjust the values of individual partials, grab all of the even- or odd-numbered partials at once, grab every third, fourth, or fifth partial, or use any of four ?filter? tools, which operate on different bandwidths around the point where you click.

You can also define a separate set of breakpoints, each with its own partials, for as many key zones as you?d like. Yes, Morphine?s keyboard layout can resemble that of a multisampler, so it?s possible to shape instruments whose response varies across the keyboard, or create split keyboard layouts for gigging. (Splits only, not layers. To do layers, you?ll need to load multiple instances of Morphine.) The command that inserts new keyboard zones isn?t quite as friendly as the one that inserts new breakpoints, but using the Copy Spectrum and Copy Breakpoint utilities, you can copy a zone, then start fine-tuning the partials as needed.

Unlike its delay effect, Morphine?s breakpoint envelopes can sync to host tempo, within limits: Breakpoint positions will snap to a quarter-note grid, but not to eighths or sixteenths, much less triplets. Morphine takes a minimum of 0.01 of a second to transition from one breakpoint to another, and the transitions are beautifully creamy ? I heard no glitching or artifacts of any kind ? but they could be snappier. If you?re looking for envelopes that will do propulsive rhythms with sudden, percussive sound changes, another synth (Image-Line Sytrus comes to mind) would be a better choice.

FACTORY PRESETS
I can?t quite shake the feeling that Morphine?s sound design crew was trying too hard to emulate traditional instruments when they should have been indulging in creative flights of fancy. The results vary from instantly recognizable but not-going-to-fool-anybody (Rhodes, acoustic piano, clarinet, steel drums, upright bass) to grotesque (string section and cello). A few presets, such as harp and Clavinet, are quite good in some pitch ranges but less realistic in others. Curiously, ?English Horn? is actually a sort of reedy French horn.

The most evocative and striking material is in the Pads & Atmospheres category. I would definitely use some of the Atmosphere presets in a sci-fi soundtrack, and the pads are warm and rich. On the other hand, more than half of the patches in the SFX (special effects) category aren?t using the additive synthesis engine at all, only the sample-playback engine.

Morphine has no trouble doing realistic filter sweeps, even though it has no traditional filters, apart from the one in its noise section. The lead synth presets are useful, but they lack a certain clarity or edge. I liked ?FeedBack,? a good demonstration of what additive synthesis can do, and the hollow mystery of ?Source Morph.? But for leads, I would be inclined to go with an analog-style soft synth rather than Morphine. Ditto for bass: There are some usable presets, but nothing that got my pulse cranked up.

That said, some of the more interesting analog-style presets sound like the designers sampled analog synths playing a single note, then resynthesized the sample. This technique has a couple of big plusses over plain old sampling. First, the resynthesized tone?s duration stays the same as you play up and down the keyboard. Second, you can get under the hood of the tone in myriad ways, such as adding more detuning to produce an ?out-of-focus? or even clangorous tone.

IN USE
I found it very practical to use several instances of Morphine in my 3GHz Pentium 4 PC without overworking the computer. The CPU meter in Steinberg Cubase 4 barely moved when I started playback ? I would have expected an additive soft synth to be much more demanding on the CPU. But after using Morphine for bass, pad, and lead (over some Spectrasonics Stylus RMX drums), its sound began to seem a bit ?puffy? or ?floaty.? Let me explain. When I loaded a couple of other synths, Morphine?s sound seemed to recede behind them, even when I turned up its volume. When I switched my musical concept and went for more of a gentle groove, which you can hear in the sound example at www.keyboardmag.com/1007120, Morphine seemed much more in its element, and I felt good about using it for all three parts in the mix.

CONCLUSIONS
If you want to explore additive synthesis, Morphine is an excellent choice ? it?s well-designed and beautifully implemented. In a mix, it can provide some wonderful colors that would be difficult for most instruments to duplicate. I do hope Image-Line will release more presets, and soon, as the initial sound set comes nowhere near doing justice to the power of the synthesis engine. That?s all the more reason to dive in and start creating your own sounds, which I?d urge you to do even if the factory presets were flawless. Though Morphine is not my first choice as a do-everything synth, particularly for more aggressive sounds, I?m very glad to have it in my soft synth rack.

JARGON JOCKEY
Subtractive synthesis: The method of creating sound that we?re most familiar with from analog, virtual analog, and sample-based synthesizers: You start with a complex waveform that has a lot of partials in it, then use a filter to remove what you don?t want.
Additive synthesis: The process of building up a complex tone by mixing (adding) sine waves. If subtractive is a broadsword, additive is a scalpel.
Partial: A harmonic component of a complex tone. Each partial is a sine wave, and can have its own frequency, amplitude and phase, which can change from moment to moment. If the partials in a tone are whole-number multiples of the fundamental, they?re called overtones or harmonics.
Spectrum: The overall frequency content of a sound, from bass through midrange to treble.
Breakpoint: A point in a multi-segment envelope where one segment ends and the next begins.
CLAIM CHECK
According to Frank Van Biesen of Image-Line, ?We don?t believe an instrument like Morphine should be targeted directly at just one type of musician. Because you can resynthesize any sound you want, this synth is not limited to one audience. On the other hand, additive synthesis leads to very convincing pads, and can generate sounds with lots of internal motion, so we?ll probably see Morphine used a lot in soundtracks. Morphine features a large set of tools and macros to edit spectra ? each harmonic can have its own velocity response, for instance. It?s also CPU-efficient enough that you can get a rich, clean sound for both live playing and mixing with other tracks, without having to bother about track freezing.?

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