steinberg hypersonic- sound on sound

8/2/12 Steinberg Hypersonic

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Published in SOS February 2004

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Steinberg HypersonicPC/Mac Virtual Workstation Synth

Review s : Softw are: ALL

If you could have one VST Instrument thatemulated a hardware workstation, giving youenough polyphony to produce a completearrangement with a fairly standard computer,would you be interested? Steinberg and Wizoothink you would...

Mark Wherry

The use of software instruments is almost ubiquitous in music production today,it's easy to forget that less than five years have passed since Steinberg

released the first versions of Cubase with support for VST Instruments. Whilethe idea of a computer program that generated sound was nothing new, VSTInstruments represented the first time such a program could be integrated sotightly within a sequencing environment, using the same VST plug-in technologythat was already popular for software effects. At the time, Steinberg supplied

Cubase with the Neon synthesizer, a simple subtractive synth that didn't soundso great, and used most of the processing of my humble G3 for a few notes, butwas still exciting because of the technology and working method it promised!

Neon was soon followed by Steinberg's own LM4 sample-based drum module, then other developers starteddeveloping VST Instruments and technology to incorporate software instruments into their products, and therest, as they say, is history.

Most software instruments usually dedicate themselves to offering one particular method of creating sound, soyou might have a synth, a drum player, a sampler, and so on, all running as separate VST Instruments. Thisleads to a situation where you need to have a handful of different instruments loaded in order to put some ideasinto your sequencer, which isn't necessarily a bad thing; but this practice forces you to create a set of templatesthat preload certain instruments when you need to start writing.

While there are obviously dedicated instruments (synths, drum machines, and so on) in the world of hardwareinstruments, there's also a breed of device known as the workstation, which bundles samples, synthesis andeffects into one easy-to-use and immediate system. Korg popularised this concept with the famous M1 and arestill the market leaders with their Triton range of instruments, although modules like Roland's JV/XV series, andYamaha's TG/XG series also took the studio by storm when they were released during the '90s. So much so, infact, that I'm willing to guess that 90 percent of the people reading this article will own or have owned one of theaforementioned devices.

While the software market is flooded with subtractive synths and samplers, there have been relatively fewattempts at the software workstation or 'sound module'. IK Multimedia's popular Sampletank software

(reviewed elsewhere in this month's SOS) gets close to the concept, providing a streamlined interface to alarge selection of sample-based sounds, as does Plugsound. However, nobody has really come close theimmediacy of using an instrument like a Korg Triton, and this is where Steinberg and their collaborators Wizoo— the design team is the same one responsible for Virtual Guitarist and Xphraze — hope to score with theirlatest collaboration, Hypersonic.

Take Off

Hypersonic is supplied as a VST Instrument for Mac and Windows users, and Mac users also get an AudioUnits version for running under Logic. Each instance of Hypersonic is 16-part multitimbral with a maximum of1024 voices (64 voices for each part), and you can have up to 32 individual outputs, which are assignedthrough 16 output banks. These output banks can be configured as either stereo, mono, or quad, although thelatter quad (four channels on one fader) output is only available to Cubase SX v2 and Nuendo v2 users — in allother hosts, a Quad channel will be displayed on the mixer as four mono channels.

In this article:

Take Off

Flying Hypersonic

What A Performance

Patching It Together

First Compressions

The Hyper Display & Knobs

Editing

Sounds Like

Developing Themes — Paul

Kellett & Mark Ovenden

Further Soundings

Effects

Conclusions

Steinberg Hypersonic £280

prosIncredibly efficient, both in terms of

processor and memory usage.

A large selection of playable and

useable sounds, every bit as good as

you'd expect from a hardware

workstation, and in many cases better.

An intuitive user interface makes

Hypersonic quick and easy to work

with, and makes editing Patches

simple.

The synthesis and effects algorithms

add tremendous flexibil ity to the

instrument.

consAlthough you can edit the patches

fairly extensively and save your own,

power users don't get full control over

every parameter (at least, not in this

version), and can't create new sounds

from scratch.

summaryHypersonic may not be a new idea,

but it's the most successful software

implementation of the workstation

concept yet seen, and one of those

rare instances where the developers

seem to have provided a truly well-

thought-out product. Any musician

who needs a quick starting point when

writing, or an efficient mobile

playback solution, would find it worth

their while to check out Hypersonic.

information£279.99 including VAT.

Arbiter Music Technology +44 (0)20

8970 1909.

+44 (0)20 8202 7076.

Click here to email

www.arbitergroup.com

www.steinberg.net

Test Spec

IBM T40 Centrino laptop with a

1.3GHz Pentium-M, 768MB of DDR

PC2100 RAM and an ATI Mobility

Radeon 7500 graphics card with 32MB

of memory.

Echo Indigo Cardbus audio interface.

Steinberg Cubase SX v2.0.1.

Steinberg Hypersonic version

reviewed: v1.0.

Sound On Sound : Est. 1985



In terms of the sound library, Hypersonic is supplied with a 1000-preset patch library that cover a huge range ofinstrument types. And although Hypersonic does play back sample-based material,

this is just one element of a patch's sound, as Hypersonic also contains a virtual-analogue synth engine (featuring two oscillators with multiple waveforms, pulse-widthmodulation and sync capabilities), a three-operator FM engine (one carrier and twomodulators in parallel), and a wavetable synth engine. And, of course, no workstationwould be complete without a healthy selection of effects: Hypersonic allows up to 64effects to be used simultaneously, four for each individual Part.

As you'll come to realise, Hypersonic is incredibly modest when it comes to usingyour computer's resources and, as such, Steinberg advise Windows users to have atleast a 500MHz Pentium III- or Athlon-based machine (although a 1GHz processor isrecommended), and Mac users to have at least a 500MHz G3 or, preferably, a G4. You'll need 256MB of RAM

to run Hypersonic and 300MB of free hard disk space. If you're thinking that these requirements seem a littlelow when compared to similar products, take a look at the 'First Compressions' box later in this article for moreinformation, as this situation is not all it seems.

Hypersonic is the first VST Instrument from Steinberg that requires a hardware copy-protection device (oftenaffectionately referred to as a dongle) to be attached to your USB port in order to run. Cubase and Nuendo

users will already be familiar with the type of dongle that's supplied with Hypersonic, and the good news is thatit's possible to transfer the licence from a Hypersonic dongle to your Cubase or Nuendo dongle, saving youfrom having to have two dongles plugged into your computer. The bad news is that I've heard of some users

having problems with the drivers required for Hypersonic's copy protection, where you might need to reinstallyour sequencer or contact Steinberg for a new code when there's an error transferring licences.

However, I didn't personally experience any copy-protection issues during my time with Hypersonic, so I have

no complaints. And, in fact, this hardware method is in some ways preferable to Xphraze's CD-ROM-basedprotection, which actually prevented me from installing the product on my IBM T40 laptop.

Flying Hypersonic

Hypersonic's main interface consists of a single window that's split into three basic sections. At the top on theleft, there's the Part area and level strip that together show a list of the loaded instruments with basic levelcontrols. To the right is the Display area. Here, you can select from a series of pages where you choose

sounds and configure patches and Hypersonic's system settings. And, along the bottom, you'll find thePerformance sections, which offer an on-screen keyboard, information about the currently loaded patch, andperformance controls.

The list of patches in Hypersonic is shown in the default Load page selected in the Display area as a tree-view-styled list where the patches are organised into folders based on the general family of sounds to whichthey belong, such as acoustic pianos, drums, and so on. Loading a patch is simple: double-click on theappropriate patch and it will be loaded into the currently selected slot in the Part area, where there are 16 slotsin total to represent 16 MIDI Channels. One thing I noticed here is that, initially, it's easy to double-click a patchwhile forgetting to select a different Slot, losing whatever instrument was previously loaded into that slot in theprocess. A quick 'load last instrument' key would have been neat, but this is a minor quibble.

Each Slot in the Part list has a corresponding Mute, Link and Level control, and the first and last of these are

fairly self-explanatory. The Mute button mutes the corresponding Part in Hypersonic, working independently ofany Channel/Track mutes in the host, and also doubles as a MIDI Indicator when a Part is in normal playbackmode. The Level control adjusts the volume of a given Part, and this also responds to Controller 7 (volume)Change data, such as that generated by a MIDI volume fader in Cubase's Inspector.

A common criticism I've heard of Hypersonic's Mute button is that there isn't a corresponding Solo feature, butto be honest, I wondered why there had to be even a Mute button — your host sequencer already has plenty ofMute/Solo functionality, and it's easy to forget you've muted a Part in Hypersonic once the window's closed.

The Link control allows you to 'link' slots together so that MIDI input from one channel can trigger multiple slotsat the same time. For example, if you load a piano patch into the first slot and a string patch into the second,you can enable Link mode on the second slot so it also responds to data sent on the first MIDI channel — theresult would be piano and strings playing together at the same time. This is a great way to layer sounds, andyou can layer anywhere between two and all 16 slots to create fairly vast sonic creations. The only caveat is thatyou can only Link a Slot to the Slot or group of linked Slots above, which means Slot 2 can be linked to Slot 1,but Slot 3 can only be linked to Slot 1 if Slot 2 is already linked to Slot 1. This is easier to experience ratherthan explain, and, in practice, it just means you have to plan ahead if you want to create specific layeredsounds. It is however possible to have multiple linked groups of slots in a single Part list, so you could link Slot2 to 1, and Slot 4 to 3, for example.

Once you start getting into Link mode, you'll be able to get more out of this feature by exploring Hypersonic'sMIDI settings page, which allows you to set key and velocity ranges for a Part, along with a semitone-transposesetting, and a tuning option in cents. Using these settings in combination with Link mode allows you to create



Hypersonic's Setup page allows

you to set which of the virtual

outputs are active, and there's

also a handy indicator to inform

you of how much memory is

currently being used.

One of Hypersonic's main sell ing points is

its efficiency, as demonstrated here with

the playback of a Project in Cubase SX on

a 1.3GHz Pentium-M laptop.

more interesting combinations by transposing or detuning layers against each other, or creating keyboardsplits in terms of pitch and velocity. The MIDI settings page also enables you to set the maximum number ofvoices for a Part (between one and 64), and there's a parameter Lock so that the settings on this page aren'treset when you load a new Patch into a 'locked' slot.

Getting back to the main interface, the Level control, as mentioned earlier, allows you to adjust the volume of agiven Part, and also includes an indicator that highlights the current setting of a Level control. However, by right-clicking on the Level label at the top of the level control strip, you can set the indicators to one of three othermodes besides Fader Value: Velocity, Polyphony, and Audio Level. These three modes turn the indicators intoanimated VU-style meters that illustrate either the velocities of incoming notes on a given Channel, thepolyphony usage of a Part, based on the maximum number of voices set for that Part, or the audio output levelof a Part. These modes don't offer any numerical values to make them indispensable, but they can still be quitehelpful.

What A Performance

In keeping w ith the w ay Wizoo's sample libraries and products such

as Virtual Guitarist are organised, you can select betw een three

different quality settings in Hypersonic's Setup page. When you f irst

load Hypersonic, it's w orth noting that the quality setting is actually

set to the middle, Default, value — for the best quality you'll need to

select 'XXL', and for slightly less quality but better performance, you

can select 'Eco'. In practice, I left Hypersonic set to 'XXL' since the

programming seems to be so eff icient that it didn't make much

difference on my computer. This w as clearly a major design aim for

the team behind Hypersonic, as programmer Paul Kellett explained.

"My initial thought w hen w e f irst started making a w orkstation w as

that it had to have loads of voices and not use all of the computer's

resources. So that w as my main focus, and a lot of effort w ent into

making it eff icient. A hundred-and-something voices shouldn't be a

problem, even on last year's or the year before's computers. I tend to

develop on slow er machines deliberately, just so I can check it's

going to w ork for everyone. There's no point a developer having

dual-processor 2GHz machines and then saying 'w ell, it w orks f ine

for me!'"

As an example of Hypersonic's eff iciency, one Project using a fully

loaded instance of Hypersonic set to 'XXL', playing back around 20

MIDI tracks, w ith 22 effects enabled, used betw een 30 and 40

percent of my 1.3GHz Pentium-M's processing pow er (see above). And in terms of memory usage, the 16 loaded Patches for this instance of

Hypersonic used up just 34.2MB for all manner of synths, basses, drums and other instruments. One w ord comes to mind: impressive.

Patching It Together

If you've ever used a hardware workstation, you'll know that it's not always easy to find the patch you want, andthis is one area where Hypersonic's well-thought-out architecture becomes apparent. The Load page featuresa search field where you can type in a keyword for the sound you're looking for, and a Search Results folder atthe bottom of the list is opened to present a list of suitable patches — type 'piano' to find the piano sounds, forexample. Cubase SX and Nuendo v2 users will be accustomed to this method of finding patches already,since the Patch Selector already offers this functionality, and Hypersonic's category folders also show up hereas well.

However, the big advantage in searching for patches using Hypersonic's interface is that the search facilitydoesn't just take the patch names into account: every patch also contains a number of keywords to describethe character and tone of a sound, which are also searched when you're trying to find an appropriate patch. Forexample, you could type in 'nasty synth' to find a suitably nasty synth sound, and right-clicking on the searchfield before entering any text reveals the base keywords in a pop-up menu that you can use in your searchstring. This is a great example of how computer-based interfaces can really make an instrument better, and I

think this is often an area where Wizoo score over their competition. Spectrasonics' Atmosphere might be agreat-sounding instrument, for example, but how quick is it to navigate through the list of available patches?

Another tremendous bonus with Hypersonic is that the Patches load really, really quickly. So quickly, in fact,that most of the time you wouldn't even realise there was any delay between selecting and being able to play aPatch — just like the good 'ol days, some might say! But seriously, with so many Patches on offer, coupled withthe easy navigation system, you can select different sounds and try out new ideas really quickly. This isespecially beneficial to Cubase and Nuendo users who might want to keep the Program Change pop-up menuopen and use the cursor keys to select different Patches during the playback of a Project.

Some of the patches in Hypersonic's list are preceded by a pair of wavy lines, indicating that they're layeredpatches containing more than one particular sound, such as (to use a familiar example), piano and strings.While you could use the Link mode, as described in the last section, to construct such layered sounds, thedisadvantage with this approach is that you end up using two or more slots. Layered patches, by contrast,contain multiple sounds that can be used within a single slot. And, unlike on a hardware workstation, because a

Hypersonic patch can contain a large number of elements, and each element can generate up to 64 notes atonce, a layered piano and strings patch still offers the maximum polyphony of 64 notes. Layering doesn't cutdown your maximum polyphony, in other words. However, you can't create layered patches yourself — in fact,



The Patch Overview Edit page

offers basic control over

parameters including pitch-bend,

glide and the settings for the

arpeggiator.

you can't create any sounds in Hypersonic from scratch yourself, and even the options you are offered forsound-editing are relatively limited, though it is still possible. For more on this, see the box above.

First Compressions

As sampling rates and bit depths increase, coupled w ith the size and meticulous detail of sample libraries such as the Vienna Symphonic Library,

many people f ind comfort in the old 'bigger is better' adage w hen judging products, assuming that the size of the library is proportional to its quality.

While this can often be the case, judging Hypersonic's 250MB collection of samples against, say, Sampletank's 4.5GB library is completely

misleading, since one of Hypersonic's most clever achievements has been to compress a much larger library dow n to the 250MB collection that ships

w ith it, providing a large selection of high-quality sounds w ithout using up your computer's resources unnecessarily.

To f ind out more about this, I asked Hypersonic programmer Paul Kellett to explain how and w hy Hypersonic's sample library w as kept so lean. "All

the sample data is compressed on disk and in memory, so it doesn't take up much RAM and the patches are quick to load. In order to keep the memory

usage to a minimum, no sample data gets loaded more than once if it doesn't need to be. So you can load up various pianos, and if they use the same

piano sample, it's only in memory once.

"I'd looked before at w hat Gigasampler w as doing in terms of compression, and they've got a 2:1 compression algorithm. It w as quite easy to f igure

out w hat it w as doing, so I did something similar." How ever, the big difference betw een the w ay Gigasampler can compress sound and the w ay

Hypersonic's sample data is compressed is that Wizoo opted to use a lossy form of compression, w hereas the method employed by Gigasampler is

lossless. "I decided to make ours slightly lossy, but in listening tests in a decent studio w e couldn't tell any difference betw een the slight loss in some

of the samples and no loss, so I don't think anyone w ill notice the difference."

In using Hypersonic, I had to agree w ith Paul; I w asn't ever aw are of any artefacts due to the compression. It's a tricky balancing act to use enough

compression to drastically reduce the f ile size and memory requirements, w hile not losing enough data that it makes an audible difference. And

there's another technical issue, too. Paul: "The really tricky bit is coming up w ith a w ay of compressing the data so you can play it back easily w ithout

any signif icant CPU load. The compression to do that is far more complicated than the decompression — it takes 10 times longer than real time to

compress the data, just so it can play back w ith a really simple algorithm."

So to w hat extent w ere Wizoo able to compress the sample data for Hypersonic? "It's dow n to around eight bits per sample, so if it w as 16-bit, it's

half the size, and if w as 24-bit, it's a third of the size."

The Hyper Display & Knobs

A nice touch in the bottom-right area of Hypersonic's interface is the Hyper Display, which offers textualfeedback when activating certain commands, such as Link mode, and which, more usefully, contains adescription of the currently loaded patch. Some of this information can be slightly humorous, such as thedescription for the 'Transylvania Pipes' patch: 'Bright thick pipe organ. Great for those contemplating worlddomination.' Others offer handy playing tips such as, 'Clarinet. Knob 1 selects mono mode. Natural loosetuning.' for 'Loose Clarinet'. While it's a small detail, it's a nice one.

Another great feature designed to make playing with Hypersonic easy is the set of six Hyper Knobs, locatedjust above the on-screen keyboard at the bottom of the window. Every patch contains six pre-programmedparameter controls that assign the six most significant sound-shaping parameters in a patch to the HyperKnobs, providing the user with immediate access to the most important performance parameters in a patchwithout having to delve into the Edit page. The Hyper Knobs are labelled appropriately on Hypersonic'sinterface for the patch loaded in the currently selected Slot, and are easily adjusted by using the mouse.

However, once you start using the Hyper Knobs, you'll soon be wondering whether you can assign these sixcontrols to MIDI controller numbers — and, of course, you can. By default, the Hyper Knobs are assigned tocontrollers 16 to 19 and 80 and 81 respectively, although you can change this to one of eight other choices byclicking on a knob's label and choosing from the pop-up menu. You can't assign a controller number of yourchoice to a Hyper Knob, which may disappoint some users, but there is the option to make your selectedcontroller number only control the Hyper Knob. As the manual says, this Exclusive option could prove useful ifyou want to use the sustain pedal to toggle the rotary speaker in an organ patch rather than sustain notes.

Editing

Although you can't create your ow n Hypersonic Patches from scratch, you can save your ow n versions of

existing Patches based on edits carried out in the Edit page. When you access this, Hypersonic presents you

w ith a subset of pages, each one representing an element used in a Patch. When you select the Edit page for the

first time, Hypersonic brings up a Patch Overview edit page w here general settings for the Patch are configured,

such as the pitch-bend, mono and glide settings, along w ith the parameters relating to the arpeggiator, such as

Mode (direction), the number of octaves the arpeggiated notes w ill span, the number of notes in the arpeggio,

and the sync and latching options.

The other Edit pages available for a Patch are represented by a series of boxes that run vertically along the left

side of the Edit page, representing a top-dow n structure for the signal f low . Each synthesis or sample element in

a patch has its ow n Edit page w here you can adjust f ilter and amplif ier envelope settings, for example, and any

of the settings for Patch effects are also duplicated on the effects element pages (marked 'FX') w ithin this overall

patch-editing structure.

In terms of controlling the actual sound, aside from basic velocity- and f ilter-enveloping options, and standard

range and tuning controls, there's really only one control, Waveform Adjust, w hich offers different functionality

depending on the type of sound generator used in an Element. For a sample-based Element, Waveform Adjust

moves the start point of the sample further forw ard, w hereas for a virtual-analogue Element, it adjusts either the

pulse w idth or the sync, depending on the type of w aveform used for a given Element. In an FM Element,

Waveform Adjust modif ies the amount (or depth) of the modulation, and in a Wavetable Element it selects the

w aveform w ithin the w avetable.

On the w hole, the Edit page is clearly laid out and far easier than editing the Patches on a Roland JV1080, for

example. How ever, one small area for improvement is that the list of Elements only has space for 16 boxes, and some Patches use more than 16

Elements. In these cases, you click on the low est Element or arrow , and the list scrolls dow n, w hile clicking the top Element allow s you to scroll up

through the list again. In large Patches you can easily lose track of w here you are; adding a small scroll bar w ould be a nice bonus in a future

version!



Hypersonic Head Sound Designer Mark

Sounds Like

Once you start to explore Hypersonic's sound library, you'll soon begin to realise just how vast this collectionreally is — you'll be able to lose hours (if not days) going through what's on offer without too much difficulty.Despite the wealth of sounds on offer, all of the patches are well organised. Along with the search facilitydescribed earlier, this makes appropriate sounds easy to find.

Wizoo provided much of the sample content for Steinberg's LM4 sample-based drum VST Instrument, andhave always had a healthy stock of drum, percussion and loop-based material in their sample library; so it

should come as no surprise that the quantity and quality of Hypersonic's drum and percussion sounds is prettyhigh. The Natural Drums category provides plenty of acoustic drum kits, from fairly unprocessed kits to hugelive affairs with stadium-sized reverbs, a kit with gated reverb for Phil Collins fans, some lighter jazz, soul andfunk kits, and a neat lo-fi number. All of the drum sounds sound fairly punchy, although it's easy to pull this backusing the onboard filtering where appropriate.

For those times when electronic drum sounds are required, Hypersonic offers around twice the number of so-called Contemporary kits compared to the acoustic provisions, with plenty of variation. Here you'll find anabundance of stylised 808 and 909-inspired kits named after musical genres where they might be useful, suchas ambient, trip-hop, and two groups of hip-hop kits for German and American producers respectively — suchis the cultural divide, apparently! Again, Wizoo have excelled for years at this type of material, and the qualityand variety of the electronic kits is no surprise — the only comment I'd make, as a laid-back kind of a guy, isthat some less aggressive kits might have made for more variety.

Complementing the selection of drum kits is a collection of Drum Loops, which are pretty creative and cover avariety of styles; although, again, they do lean towards the extreme rather than the sublime. The interesting thing

with the loops is that they play back in sync with the tempo set in your sequencer, thanks to Hypersonic's built-in ability to slice loops, Recycle-style. What's more, the individual slices of a loop are assigned chromatically tothe lower keys in a Patch, while the loop itself plays at various pitch offsets in the upper keys. Very cool!

There's a seemingly endless selection of percussion sounds, which are organised into chromatically mappedkits in the Natural and Contemporary Percussion categories, and chromatically pitched samples in thePercussive category. The Natural Percussion category features acoustic percussion instruments, includingsome Disco kits with all the bongos you'll ever need — and, er, Windchimes. Moving swiftly on, theContemporary category focuses, as you might expect, on more electronic offerings, organised into kits labelledby suggested musical genres, such as trance, R&B, hip-hop, industrial, and so on. There are some truly greatnoises in this category, perfect for building interesting loops, or for those of a Goldfrapp-style percussivepersuasion. The pitched percussion is equally useful, with an abundance of agogos, cowbells, and more, whilethe Mallets category is where you'll find marimbas, vibraphones and xylophones — but strangely, noglockenspiel!

The acoustic piano sounds are taken from the same source sample material used for Wizoo and Steinberg's

grand piano VST Instrument, The Grand, and a selection of patches cover the natural type (relativelyunprocessed), bright type (think Elton John), soft (think Schubert Impromptu), and honky-tonk (maybe this wouldbe good for Scott Joplin). There's also a cool '70s-inspired phased piano patch. In terms of quality, theacoustic pianos are better sounding than most piano sounds that are supplied with workstation-style products,whether hardware or software, and are really quite playable. There are obviously better sample-based pianosavailable in a different class of product, such as the many piano libraries that have been produced for

Gigastudio, but this is rather an unfair comparison, especially since Hypersonic's piano sounds sound really

good in the context of a full Hypersonic production.

Of the other keyboard sounds, the appropriately 'over-the-top' pipe-organ sounds are a great deal of fun,especially 'Subsonic Church Organ'. On the pop organ front, there's also a selection of Hammond-esquepatches that make use of Hypersonic's built-in rotary speaker effect, and some synth organ patches that makeuse of the analogue and FM synth engines. Many of the organ sounds, along with the electric piano and clavinetsounds, are taken from material used in Wizoo's Magnetica collection, and are of a very high quality indeed —the electric pianos all have suitable warmth and are exceptionally playable. Finally, for those who want to doAdams Family theme covers or, again, be Goldfrapp, there's also a handful of Harpsichord patches, includingthe rather brilliantly names 'Nastichord'.

Developing Themes — Paul Kellett & Mark Ovenden

I had the pleasure of visiting both Steinberg and Wizoo's headquarters last September, just as w ork on

Hypersonic w as being completed, so I took advantage of the opportunity to speak w ith the programmer,

Paul Kellett (best know n for his w ork on MDA's instrument plug-ins), and lead sound designer, Mark

Ovenden, about their w ork on the project.

"The initial idea w as a much simpler plug-in that Wizoo have w anted to do for a long time," explained

Paul, "w hich w as to use the company's sample library and add some synthesis to make a decent

synthesizer. It sort of grew out of control, because w e then thought it w ould be a nice idea if it handled

other types of synthesis like FM and virtual-analogue, and also had a decent selection of effects. It turns

out that doing a w orkstation in softw are is a huge job!"

"From a programming perspective, I started from stuff I had already for simple sample playback,

synthesis and f iltering. In fact, there are many things in Hypersonic that draw on w ork I've done before,



Ovenden.

Programmer Paul Kellett.

Hypersonic's Element Designer was used

by the design team to develop the list of

preset Patches.

but are based on past things I've done right and past things I've done w rong and learnt from. It's sort of

best-of-MDA, in that there's lots of synthesis and f ilters and effects w hich are similar to things I've done

before, but because it's now a year or tw o later, I can do it better."

Given that Paul and Mark's off ices are only a couple of doors apart, I asked Paul if it w as diff icult to have people developing sound content w hile the

plug-in code itself is still evolving. "I've learnt from past experience to keep the content a completely separate thing from the plug-in," explained Paul.

"So after making the initial tools to make the plug-in capable of loading multi-samples, the content and the plug-in can be completely separate, and I

can w ork aw ay not caring w hat the sound content is going to be in the end, and the people doing the sounds can w ork aw ay not caring about w hat

the plug-in's going to do."

Paul previously w orked on Steinberg's Virtual Guitarist and Groove Agent, and I w as interested to know

how programming Hypersonic differed. "Virtual Guitarist w as alright, but it w as structured so that

users ended up w ith thousands of f iles on their hard disk, w hich turned out to be a bit of a problem. So

in Groove Agent, w e w ent the other w ay, and ended up putting everything into just three big f iles. But

that meant people w ould have to replace enormous f iles if there w as a problem. So for Hypersonic,

w e've gone for somew here in betw een. There are no really huge f iles involved, in case there's

something w rong in one and it needs an update, but there's a sensible number of things to deal w ith and

it's all laid out logically on the hard disk. So if people really don't like the harmonica and accordion bank in

Hypersonic, they can just delete the f ile, and the plug-in carries on w orking w ithout it quite happily."

The sound-design w ork began at around the same time as Paul's programming, as Mark Ovenden

described. "Wizoo have a fairly good set of resources now , w ith The Grand for pianos, Halion String

Edition, and a lot of the synthesizer stuff, so much of the sample data already existed and just had to be

reprocessed and reprogrammed. None of the samples are massive, but w e made 'Eco' versions of

anything that's over a certain size, so that users can be more memory-eff icient if they need to be. Most of the sample-library industry is creating

bigger and bigger libraries at the moment, but w e w ere intentionally trying to keep it compact. In the end, w e w ere pretty surprised at how small w e

managed to get it.

"All the sample data I started w ith in this project w as in 16 or 24-bit stereo format, so there w as a little bit of processing and looping, and I use

Wavelab for this type of w ork. I w as alw ays a Mac guy, but a year and a half ago, I started to use Wavelab, and it's really great. I also use a large

amount of customised automation w ith Quickeys, so it's very fast for me to drop a thousand samples in there and loop them.

"After the editing w as complete, w e built the instruments in Halion, w hich means you can test

everything, and do all the mapping. Paul had a pretty good system for converting the data. We have a

special development tool called Element Designer [shown right — Ed] that has all the synthesis aspects,

w ith a really ugly GUI. You can have up to 64 Elements per Patch, and each element can be a sample-

based, virtual-analogue, FM, w avetable, or effects-based element. Most normal Hypersonic Patches are

four to 10 elements layered on top of each other, w ith three envelopes available per element, and a big

modulation matrix w here everything can modulate everything else. Hypersonic users only see a really

simple GUI w ith macro knobs, but the actual synthesis behind it is very complex and pretty

sophisticated."

As explained elsew here in this review text, the six Hyper Knobs make life simple for the user, but the

flipside of this w as a great deal of w ork for the sound designer. Mark: "The basic brief w as to pick the

six most dynamic and useful parameters for every patch. This added tw o months of w ork to the w hole

project for me. There are six thousand knobs in total and each one has to be labelled appropriately!"

Now that they've completed w ork on Hypersonic, it w ould seem that the team's next task w ill be... to

continue w orking on Hypersonic! Paul: "Unlike some plug-ins, w e don't w ant to leave it sitting at version one forever — w e do w ant to update and

expand it. Making it able to read sample expansions is an easy w ay to do that, so that w e can expand it as and w hen w e get more sample libraries.

But also, w e w ant to make it a bit cleverer and add some features, and particularly more control. There's a lot of hidden f lexibility, features and

synthesis parameters in there that the user doesn't get access to in version one, but it's all in there and I particularly w ant to give the user some more

access to the clever stuff. Already, the legato playing of some Patches like the saxes and clarinets should sound a great deal better than your usual

synth set to mono and playing legato."

Further Soundings

The collection of bass and guitar sounds is also rather vast, with various categories covering synth, acousticand electric basses, along with acoustic and electric guitars. I've always liked Wizoo's synth basses, and thereare plenty of treats in this collection, some of which just use Hypersonic's built-in virtual-analogue synth engine.The Acoustic Bass category is perhaps the weakest, offering just two patches, but having said that, both arenicely playable upright basses.

The acoustic guitar is a notch above what I've heard in most hardware workstations, and there's a nice Patch

that tries to be intelligent with the fret noise. However, Hypersonic's electric guitars deserve a special mention,because rather than being the obligatory poor workstation-style electric guitars we all know and love, they're

actually pretty good. The reason for this is that Hypersonic includes respectable amp-simulator and overdrivealgorithms, and these settings are assigned to Hyper Knobs. With a little bit of tweaking, you can usually comeup with a sound that may not be utterly realistic, but is certainly convincing in the context of a full arrangement.The other neat thing about being able to adjust the amp tone of the sound is that you aren't restricted to thecheesy overdriven guitar sounds most people are used to hearing on this type of product — softer and slightlygrittier sounds are also possible.

The string ensemble patches use the same basic material from Wizoo's evolving Claudius Bruese Orchestrasample library, which is available on-line at www.wizoosounds.com and forms the basis for Wizoo and

Steinberg's Halion String Edition Volume 1, an orchestral strings VST and DirectX Instrument. As you wouldexpect, this means the orchestral string ensembles aren't bad at all, with well-rounded legato patches, andspiccato and pizzicato patches that have a reasonable amount of character. Again, there are variations withoctave doubles, various filtered and layered patches featuring harpsichords, pianos, guitars, choirs and so on.The only omission on the strings front is the lack of solo stringed instruments, such as violin and cello — butsince these types of patches sound pretty bad on most workstations, maybe this isn't a great loss.

There's a useable collection of orchestral woodwind and brass Patches as well, but if you specifically want

orchestral sounds in this price range, you might be better considering the new Garritan Personal Orchestra or

EastWest's Symphonic Orchestra Silver.



The Effects page.

On the synthesizer front, Hypersonic has plenty to offer and, again, this is no surprise. Firstly, the instrumentdraws on three real synth engines behind the scenes, and secondly, Wizoo have an excellent reputation forsynth programming. There really are too many sounds to go through in detail, but there is category aftercategory of cool sounds, including Poly Synths, Techno Synths, Arpeggios, Soundscapes, various specialeffects categories, Hard Leads, Soft Leads, Soft Pads, Bright Pads and Moving Pads. And on the subject ofpads, the Vocal section also includes some amazingly huge synth choir soundscapes, such as Digital Choir.

The collection of synth sounds, in particular, makes use of many clever Hypersonic features where, again, thesimplicity of the interface masks you from the complexity, which is exactly how it should be. The Arpeggiocategory of sounds all make use of Hypersonic's built-in arpeggiator, which you also can use with any other

Patch, and there are also Xphraze-inspired features that you can hear in Patches from the Moving Padscategory, for example.

If, after spending some time with Hypersonic, you do exhaust the current sonic offerings, don't worry; Wizooand Steinberg have chosen to implement 'expansion slots': another workstation-inspired feature that will enable

you to expand the available sounds and functionality of Hypersonic. Clicking on the small arrow located at thebottom of the Hyper Display reveals space for software 'expansions', and Wizoo intend on offering additional

sample-based material in the future as Hypersonic expansions, which may include the ability to import andconvert your own sounds from other sources.

Effects

Hypersonic includes 34 effects algorithms that can be used as both an integral part of a patch's sound (Patch

effects) or as Global effects, so many Parts can share the same effect. They are as follow s:

Reverb, Hall Reverb, Non-Linear Reverb, Early Reflections.

Delay, Stereo Delay, Long Delay, Tape Delay.

Chorus, Quad Chorus, Space Chorus, Ensemble, Flanger, Phaser, Deep Phaser, Detune, Phase Shift,

Pan/Tremolo, Rotary Speaker, Stereo Width.

Wah, Talkbox, Shelf EQ, Parametric EQ, Enhancer.

Limiter, Compressor, Multi-band [Compressor], Gate.

Distortion, Overdrive, Amp Simulator, Bit Reduction, Modulate L/R.

Hypersonic allow s you to have four effects simultaneously for every Part via four effects slots, w hich means

you can have a maximum of 64 (ie. 4x16) effects for every instance of Hypersonic. The four effects can be

made up from any combination of Patch or Global effects, but you can't use the same effects slot for both a

Patch effect and a Global effect at the same time. The preset Patches contain effects settings already, of

course, but it's easy to add or remove effects and adjust the parameters on the 'FX' editing page.

One question I asked myself w hen I f irst started using Hypersonic w as how the effects w ere routed to the multiple outputs that are available, but

this w as quickly answ ered. The 'FX' page allow s you to route the output of each of the effects slots to any output you like, and there's even a pan

control, giving you plenty of f lexibility in how you mix Hypersonic's effects. For example, you could route the global reverb or delay effects to a

dedicated output and apply additional processing such as EQ or f iltering from other plug-ins you might have installed on your system.

For mixing w ithin Hypersonic, there's also an appropriately named Mix page w here you can control the levels of the effects on each Part, the output

for each Part and its panning. There's even a handy duplicate Lock toggle for each Part w hich prevents Mix (or MIDI) settings from being overw ritten

w henever you load a new Patch into that Part.

Conclusions

There's a cliché that's often wheeled out by those writing about music technology, which observes the fact thatthe amount of music written by an individual is often inversely proportional to the amount of gear that personhas at their disposal. In some ways, this is understandable, since getting your head around the number ofpossibilities presented by many different pieces of hardware and software can often detract from the process

of actually coming up with good musical ideas. And this is where Hypersonic can be both useful and fun: it hasa broad enough scope to offer plenty of sounds, but at the same time is nicely self-contained and quick to workwith.

Hypersonic is never going to compete with racks of computers running Gigastudio with the latest and greatest

sample libraries; but, on the other hand, it isn't supposed to. To me, Hypersonic is intended as a creativeinstrument that provides a large collection of sounds, and is efficient enough to provide a generous amount ofpolyphony so you can produce fairly substantial arrangements without taxing even the most humble of

computers. I can see Hypersonic being useful in large studios as a way of sketching out ideas, for example,before adding sounds from other sources if needed. I can also see it being a hit in the education market, wherea computer workstation might have previously had a small sound module attached; there is now no need for

extra sound-generating equipment with Hypersonic installed.

My first thought when I saw Hypersonic was that this would be a great instrument for laptop users. A couple ofmonths with it only reinforced this opinion. I can safely say that anybody who makes music on a laptop will

absolutely love Hypersonic, since the self-contained one-computer music-production environment is just whatany laptop junky requires. As proof of this, I'm sitting finishing this review on a plane somewhere above the

Atlantic Ocean, and I can safely say that Hypersonic makes in-flight music production better than I've everexperienced before!

Overall, it's difficult not to be impressed by Hypersonic. It's not that it's a revolutionary product; it's more that it's



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a great idea well executed. Its deceptively simple interface belies the complexity and amount of work thatclearly went into developing the product, and the attention to detail in both the programming and sound designis exceptional. Oh, and it's also a great deal of fun.

Published in SOS February 2004

steinberg hypersonic- sound on sound

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