Summary of "Phase Plant - Full Walkthrough (100%)"
Phase Plant - Full Walkthrough (100%)
Summary of Content:
This extensive walkthrough tutorial covers Kilohearts' Phase Plant synthesizer in great detail, explaining its architecture, features, modulation system, oscillators, effects, and advanced patching techniques. The host (Virtual R) systematically explores every major component and demonstrates practical sound design applications.
Key Technological Concepts and Product Features:
1. Interface Overview & Signal Flow
- Phase Plant's interface is divided into three main sections:
- Generators: Oscillators, samplers, granular modules.
- Effects: Three serial lanes (Lane 1 → Lane 2 → Lane 3 → Master).
- Modulators: LFOs, envelopes, random generators, utilities, MIDI controls.
- Each generator spawns its own group with an output envelope controlling volume and signal routing.
- Signal flow is top-down within groups; envelopes gate output.
- Multiple oscillators can be layered and routed independently or summed together.
- Routing devices like Ox and Mix allow complex signal combining and phase manipulation.
2. Oscillators and Sound Sources
- Analog Oscillator: Classic waveforms (saw, square, triangle, sine) with controls for tuning, pulse width, phase restart randomness, and unison modes (smooth, hard, synthetic, creative modes like frequency stack, pitch stack, and chord quantization).
- Wave Table Oscillator: Supports factory and user-imported wave tables (Serum, Vital compatible). Includes wave table editor with EQ and tilt EQ controls, frame morphing, band limiting, and unison modes.
- Sampler: Drag-and-drop sample loading with start point, loop modes (infinite, sustain, ping pong), reverse, root key setting, and envelope controls.
- Granular Oscillator: Grain density, rate, randomization of position, timing, volume, pan, reverse playback, pitch randomization, and chord modes for creating pads and textures.
- Noise Oscillator: Multiple noise types (pink, brown, white, stepped bitcrush noise) with stereo width and randomness controls.
3. Advanced Oscillator Techniques
- FM (Frequency Modulation) and Phase Modulation setups using oscillators modulating each other’s phase, harmonic ratio, frequency shift, and level.
- Use of wave tables as modulation sources to emulate warp modes like bend, mirror, pulse width modulation.
- Sync emulation with custom wave tables and modulation of oscillator level to reduce artifacts (sync window).
- Layering oscillators with different tunings, unison settings, and modulations to create complex, evolving sounds.
4. Modulators
- Variety of modulators: Envelopes, LFOs, LFO tables (wavetables as LFO shapes), random modulators with smooth/jitter options.
- MIDI-based modulators: Key tracking, velocity, note gate, pitch wheel.
- Utilities: Remap (maps modulation input to custom curves), scale, sample and hold, slew limiter (adds glide to modulation).
- Complex modulation routing with multiple sources modulating the same parameter and modulation amount modulation.
- Random modulator combined with remap used for probabilistic pitch changes and dynamic parameter variation.
- Envelope triggering modes: Always, never, legato first note.
- Polyphonic modulation support (poly button) allowing per-note modulation chains, essential for physical modeling and resonator patches.
5. Effects Section
- Serial routing of three effect lanes with flexible routing options.
- Effects include distortion, filters (various types including nonlinear, comb filter, resonator), delay, reverb, chorus, pitch shifter, EQ.
- Distortion preview waveform and dynamics preservation control.
- Use of Mix and Ox devices for parallel processing and phase inversion.
- Snap Heap plugin integration for advanced multi-effect parallel chains with macros.
- Multipass plugin for multiband processing (compression, gating, upward/downward expansion).
- Polyphonic mode in effects allows independent effect chains per note.
- Creative effect setups demonstrated for basses, plucks, and complex textures.
6. Physical Modeling & Polyphony
- Demonstrated physical modeling patch using noise + resonator + filter with key tracking.
- Polyphonic mode duplicates effect chains per note for realistic multi-note physical modeling.
- Use of key-tracked resonators and EQs to simulate acoustic instrument overtones.
- Mention of Joel Blanco Berg’s patches for realistic physical modeling in Phase Plant.
7. Global Controls
- Master pitch modulation for vibrato.
- Global pan and glide settings.
- Global unison layer on top of per-oscillator unison, with independent random sequences per voice for rich, evolving textures.
Tutorials, Guides, and Examples Provided:
- Step-by-step setup of analog and wave table oscillators including unison modes.
- Creating and modulating FM/phase modulation patches.
- Using
Category
Technology
