2CAudio - Kaleidoscope | It's A Trip. (2024)

It's A Trip!

Kaleidoscope is the ultimate sound-design tool and creative effects toy! It is an entirely new class of visual audio effects processors and is one of the most unique generative signal processing tools to come to market in recent history. Technically speaking, Kaleidoscope is a massively parallel bank of physically modeled resonators that can be tuned completely arbitrarily with scientific precision and dynamically modulated over time by over two million points of automation. In simplistic terms, Kaleidoscope uses pictures to control sound!

Applications and Uses

Kaleidoscope is a tool for intrepid sonic explorers who seek to help tell humanity's biggest narratives. It is designed with one goal in mind: to inspire and invigorate composers, sound-designers, and artists to push the boundaries of what is possible in cutting edge sound-design. Many products claim to offer never-before heard sounds. Kaleidoscope actually delivers them - in unfathomable abundance and ultimate fidelity. If you work in any of the following areas you owe it to yourself to check out Kaleidoscope!

• Sound-Design for Film, Television & Games • Scoring for Film, Television & Games • Ambient Music • Electronic Music • Academic & Scientific Research into Sound and New Music

Kaleidoscope represents literally an entire universe of sonic possibilities and is limited only by your imagination and willingness to think differently. Some of its most common applications are:

• Custom Sound Design • Special Effects Processing & Generation • Algorithmic Composition & Inspiration • Ambient Music Generation • Dynamic Filter Effects • Extreme Nano Textural Effects • Rhythmic Filtering & Synth Patterns • Dynamic Resonator Effects • Additive Synthesis • Vocoder-like Effects • Morphing Delay Effects • Extreme Spatialization & FIRs • Automated Volume & Panning • Harmonic & Tonal Reverb • Granular Effects

The Numbers

There are two different sets of content for Kaleidoscope, plus two additional optional add-ons. Let's run the stats:

The Kaleidoscope Demo contains: • 747 Total Files • 250 Presets • 347 Images • 115 Scales • 35 Waveforms

Kaleidoscope Retail contains: • 2,477 Total Files • 1,166 Presets • 945 Images • 254 Scales • 92 Waveforms

Architecture Volume 01 KS contains: • 14,059 Total Files • 7,696 Images • 4,545 Scales • 1,818 Waveforms

Architecture Waveforms 2010 contains: • 25,724 Waveforms

Galbanum Architecture Vol 01 KS is an add-on that provides over 14,000 resource files to Kaleidoscope. It is highly recomended, and therefore we make it possible to include with your Kaleidoscope order at a substantially discounted price. It can be added at a later date for the normal price as well.

Galbanum Architecture Waveforms 2010 is an is an optional add-on for advanced sound-designers. It is an absolutely massive library of over 25,000 waveforms that can used with Kaleidoscope to explore unlimited experimental tonalities appropiate for use in scoring and sound-design for visual media. The 64-Bit Wav format for this library is required for use in Kaleidoscope.

Concept Overview

Kaleidoscope is both an effects processor as well as a content generator, meaning that it is possible to synthesize completely new sounds without any input sound or MIDI performance data as well as to transform incoming audio signals in other-worldly manners.

Music is organized sound. The organization occurs in two axes: time and frequency. Kaleidoscope is a tool that offers ultimate control over musical organization in both of these domains. In music we call organization in time rhythm, and we call organization in frequency tonality. Tonality includes things such as tuning systems, musical scales, and harmony. Rhythm includes things such as tempo, meter, syncopation and groove. Kaleidoscope seeks to vastly expand our understanding of these definitions, rewrite music theory for the information age, and explore the areas in which time and frequency converge -- that is to say where tonality becomes rhythm and where rhythm becomes tonality. Additionally, Kaleidoscope offers unique control over the dynamic spatialization of the sound at each point in time a frequency and thus adds a third axis of creative control to the musical organization of sound: spatial choreography.

Kaleidoscope uses pictures to control sound. It scans an image from left to right where the horizontal access represents time, and the vertical access represents frequency. The brightness of a particular pixel in the image determines how loud the sound will be at that particular point in time and frequency. This is similar in some ways to a spectrogram or even to piano-roll notation in standard musical sequencers. The difference is in scope and the unprecedented level of control and flexibility offered by Kaleidoscope.

A single Kaleidoscope instance uses up to two pictures that can provide over two million points of stereo automation data to create incredibly intricate performances that evolve in time, frequency and space. These performances can be set to have any desired duration: an image could represent a one measure loop, providing 1/1024th note timing resolution, or it could represent an entire ten minute song. A single pixel could represent anything from one audio sample to one minute, one hour, one day, or more in duration, giving unprecedented control over performance time structures. Timing is sample-accurate for all cases and any tempo. Finally the timing of each Image Map performance can be independently set to establish evolving patterns and polyrhythmic structures that generate incredibly novel and interesting results that are guaranteed to keep the listener engaged with new surprises.

Vertically each row in the Image Map represents a different voice or note. Technically each row represents an independant resonator that can be tuned with scientific precision to any possible frequency to create any conceivable composite tonality. A resonator is a type of highly selective filter that drastically augments certain frequencies and drastically attenuates others. All sound in the universe is created by one form of resonance or another and every musical instrument has resonators! Kaleidoscope offers two primary types of resonators: Strings and Springs.

A String resonator mode could be used with a standard MIDI semitone scale to effectively create an 88, or more, note virtual string instrument that could be controlled by the incoming audio signal. An incoming drum loop could be tuned into something like an evolving Bach fugue in such manners for example.

Alternatively up to 512 Spring resonators could be used and tuned to match the measured resonant frequencies of some physical object for sound-design purposes, or tuned to a particular chord and all of its harmonics to create a moody drone suitable for ambient music or film scores. Kaleidoscope’s Spring resonators produce exponentially decaying sine waves. Summing them together at different frequencies and time varying amounts can effectively model anything and everything via a special form of additive synthesis. Kaleidoscope's internal white noise generator can be feed into its resonators to synthesize completely new sounds in this manner. Kaleidoscope offers tens of thousands of different tonalities to choose from including allowing the use of Galbanum Architecture Waveforms to function as tuning maps. It offers the most extensive tonality system of any tool on the market that we are aware of.

In summary the sound Kaleidoscope produces is a complex interaction of the characteristics of the input signal, the resonator settings, the current tonality or tuning, the visual performance data in the Image Maps, and the timing settings. It offers the ultimate control over the organization of sound in time, frequency, and spatial position and can produce an entire universe of new forms of music and utterly unique sound-design.

Manifesto

Kaleidoscope is designed to accommodate multiple experience levels and depths of understanding among users. It's an effectively an endless sea of potential where the surface levels have just as many rewarding lifeforms to look at, listen to and explore as do the mysteries of its depths. It is up to you how deep you want to go.

Kaleidoscope's core technology, algorithm structure, modular flexibility, and unfathomable depth will keep the world's best sound-designers actively exploring its possibilities for decades to come and it is destined to have a large impact on sound-design for visual media and electronic music. Its open file formats allow its content library to be expanded effortlessly by advanced sound-designers, aural architects, research and academic institutions, and anyone else who would like to jump in the deep end of current sound-design research. It is our goal to make Kaleidoscope a repository of knowledge and power tools that grant easy access to the bleeding edge of sound design to anyone who would seek it.

At the same time, somewhat paradoxically, Kaleidoscope is designed to be fun to use, almost to the extent of being similar to a game in some aspects of its design. It is designed to allow effortless exploration of controlled chance to generate custom material without expert knowledge. For this reason it is not critical to understand exactly the particulars of how a given sound is being created. Simple preset mutations are possible in various ways that can have macro effects on the current sound and instantly create something entirely unique and unheard by anyone else throughout history up to that moment. The simple act of combining and transforming tens of thousands of meticulously designed resource files in literally innumerable combinations and permutations can more or less auto-generate an infinite set of amazingly epic ready-to-use results with minimal effort.

Kaleidoscope can be used as an imagination machine in this manner to instantly produce incredibly intricate sound sculptures by selecting and manipulating visual art and pairing it with a desired tonality and timing. This is undeniably one of the most powerful and efficient ways for non-technical artists and composers to create completely unique and totally world-class sound-design without actually learning the intricate details of this highly technical discipline. It is simple to stay in the creative flow, and use Kaleidoscope in relative autopilot mode to quickly create material that transforms your project from something that sounds like everyone else on the market to something completely unique and personal. It can be the ultimate cure for writer's block and can function as an unlimited well of creative inspiration.

Finally, we will share a secret with you: it has been our experience that once new users start to hear the type of results that are possible with Kaleidoscope and they see how quickly and efficiently they can be produced, more often than not, we see a light turn on in their minds and they become interested in knowing more about the specifics of how Kaleidoscope works its magic. They start to desire to know more; they start to actually want to learn. Once this happens, they are hooked and are likely to be forever changed for the better in pursuit of understanding the universal organizational principals that are at work in Kaleidoscope. Not merely by chance, these happen to be the same organizational principals that govern the rules of music, art, architecture, design, engineering, and most other man-made endeavors as well as natural processes in biology, geology, and astronomy. At its deepest level Kaleidoscope explores purposeful sonification of the natural mathematical principals that govern most everything in the universe. Not surprisingly many of its results sound quite natural in oddly familiar ways.

In the days of 140 characters or less, social memes, Newsspeak, and other such trends, sometimes intelligence and learning is marketed as being uncool. Let us tell you quite clearly: this is a lie. Knowledge is power, and the more you understand the more effective you will be at this craft of music, sound, and everything else in life. Therefore we feel honored to be of service to have created something that we hope will inspire people by making the process of learning about the nature of organized sound, and thereby reality in general, fun, cool, enjoyable, and aesthetically rewarding. It is our aim to make acquiring substantive knowledge and understanding popular and cool with the next generation and we feel this is more critically important now than ever.

Ultimately we have created three things with Kaleidoscope:

• A power tool for the world's most knowledgeable professionals
• A toy for those who would simply like to have fun with radical sounds
• A crypto learning device that helps the second group on their way to becoming the part of first and aims no less than to impact a positive change on society as a whole by encouraging new levels of knowledge and understanding

Plays Well With Others

While Kaleidoscope is more or less a self contained oasis of unlimited sound-design potential, it is also designed to play well with others. First, and most obviously, it is a plug-in that runs in your DAW host environment. This means you can automatically sync it to the tempo of your song when using it for musical applications. Both the tempo and phase of Kaleidoscope's Image Maps are sample accurate and will never unintentionally drift out of musical time with your host. Secondly, Tuning Lock allows thousands of presets to be previewed in the context of a particular project while keeping the reference pitch and scale locked to fit your project.

Second, when using Kaleidoscope purely as a new content generator we encourage you to use additional plug-ins on its output such as our own Aether, B2, and Breeze reverbs. When used in the pure synthesis context, that is to say when using the built in white noise generator as the source signal that is feed into Kaleidoscope's resonator bank, its output should be considered as a "Dry" sound in terms of extra effects. Almost all other synths on the market have built-in effects processors that supply things such as reverb, delay, etc. The synth engine itself is almost always exclusively a mono process and the effects engine provides spatialization and other special effects. Unfortunately, these effects processes are usually added as an afterthought and not competitive with stand-alone processes whose sole and primary purpose is these effects. There is no synth on the market whose reverb can compete with Aether, B2, or Breeze for example.

Kaleidoscope is way ahead of the game in this regard. Its audio engine is already a fully stereo engine, in which unprecedented levels of dynamic control of the spatialization of the output is not only possible, but commonplace. When such dynamic stereo sources are fed into tools such as Aether, B2, or Breeze, which are themselves fully true-stereo processes and designed to augment existing spatial cues in stereo source signals, the result is quite simply devine. Spatialization and movement become almost like a new creative domain for sound-designers, composers, and artists to use as a new musical language. We like to call this Sonic Choreography.

Kaleidoscope is built upon the same natural principals that most real-world musical instruments are founded upon, and because of this its output also works well when used with other processors such as guitar amps, distortion effects, and pretty much anything else you can think of. Its is incredibly empowering to be able to create custom effects chains within your DAW host and design Kaleidoscope presets in realtime while the signal is going through this effects chain. Stand-alone tools simply can not offer such flexibility.

Finally, Kaleidoscope not only plays well with others, but also plays well with itself. Kaleidoscope is both a sound generator and an effects processor. One instance can be used to generate a sound, and this output can be fed into another instance which supplies additional effects such as modulating delays, additional filtering, or anything else you might imagine. Welcome to deep end of the Russian Doll, fractal cosmology nature of Kaleidoscope where everything converges to become one and many at the same time!

A Prism

A resonator is a device or system that naturally oscillates at some frequencies with greater amplitude than at others. Resonators are used to either generate specific frequencies or to select specific frequencies from a signal. “Select” in this context means that the resonator will attenuate all other frequencies except the so-called “resonant frequencies”. Thus a resonator is a type specialized filter; it passes the resonant frequencies and cuts all other frequencies. If a resonator is excited by some form of broad-band, spectrally-dense input signal such as a burst of white noise, or an impulse click, or the transients of a physical strike or pluck, or the noisy breath of a woodwind player, or the consonants of a vocalist, the resonator will quickly attenuate all non-resonant frequencies while allowing the resonant frequencies to sustain, or ring, or oscillate significantly longer than the non-resonant frequencies.

Consider the analogy of the prism. A prism is a triangular piece of glass that can be used to separate white light into its constituent spectral colors (i.e. the colors of the rainbow). The white light that enters the prism is equivalent to a broadband audio signal. “White” in the context of white light, as well as white noise, refers to the fact that the light or the noise signal has equal amplitude at all frequencies within the spectrum. The prism breaks apart the white light in a way that clearly demonstrates the presence of the various spectral components (i.e. colors). If the prism were able to selectively attenuate or cut some of these colors while at the same time passing or augmenting others, then the prism would be functioning like a resonator in many ways. This would be an even more accurate metaphor if the prism continued to output -- i.e. ring or oscillate at -- the selected colors for some time after the white light input was stopped. In other words, if we could build a prism that passed only red and yellow while cutting all other colors and it made red and yellow ring or sustain for some period of time after we turned off the input, this would be very similar to the behavior of a resonator. Kaleidoscope functions much like a selective time-varying prism by reacting to the musical input in very specific ways: drastically augmenting certain frequencies and drastically attenuating others.

Musical INSTRUMENTS

In the real physical world, all musical instruments use acoustic resonators that filter sound waves at specific frequencies. Resonators are a fundamental building block of the mathematics and physics of physical sound generation and filtering. Every musical instrument has resonators! Some generate the sound directly, such as the Strings in Stringed instruments, the head of a drum, the wooden bars in a xylophone, and the pipes in an organ. Some modify the sound by enhancing particular frequencies, such as a piano soundboard or the sound box of a guitar or violin. Organ pipes, the bodies of woodwinds, and the sound boxes of Stringed instruments are also examples of resonators. There is in fact an entire branch of musical instrument synthesis research and development called Physical Modeling that deals specifically with these topics and related ideas. Even real-world acoustic spaces such as anything from a small closet, telephone booth, or automobile, to large spaces such as concert halls and cathedrals can also be considered a type of resonator called an Acoustic Cavity Resonator. Kaleidoscope offers two primary types of resonators: Strings and Springs.

Strings

The Strings found on all Stringed musical instruments are simple resonators. Stringed instruments work by applying some excitation force in the form of a hammer strike, or a plectrum pluck, or the rubbing action of a bow to the String. This sets the String into motion and it begins to oscillate. In the spectral sense, the excitation action supplies a form of broadband noise. The String resonator takes this input energy and refocuses it into a select set of resonant frequencies determined primarily by the String's length, mass, and tension. Many types of resonators in the real world actually resonate at more than one frequency, and in the case of Strings these frequencies follow the harmonic series. Thus if the String oscillates at a fundamental frequency of 100Hz, it will also simultaneously oscillate at integer multiples of this frequency (i.e. 200, 300, 400, 500...). String resonators contain harmonics in the frequency domain and can be modeled as simple feedback delays in the the time domain.

String resonators can also be used for delay, reverb, and granular type effects when the resonator frequency is so low that it its delay period length moves out of the audio frequency range!

Springs

Spring resonators are the simplest variety of resonators. Springs oscillate at only one single frequency: the fundamental frequency. Spring resonators do not contain harmonics. A “Mass On A Spring” model and a Pendulum are two examples of such systems. This type of system is called a Simple Harmonic Oscillator in physics, and its behavior is called Simple Harmonic Motion. Shown below are the impulse response and spectrum of a Spring model without damping. It is identical to a sine wave.

Due to their single resonant frequency, sinusoidal nature, Springs are ideally suited to create any arbitrary spectrum by summing a large number of them together and precisely tuning each individually to any desirable tuning. Fourier and Modal Analysis methods can effectively be used to accurately model the resonant behavior of much more complex objects and match their spectrums. This can be thought of as a form of additive synthesis. An additive synthesizer with enough resolution in both time and frequency can effectively perfectly synthesize any sound.

To repeat: Spring resonators do not contain harmonics. A single Spring resonates only at fundamental frequency. At high enough feedback, Springs effectively produce sine waves. At low feedback they produce narrow band filter effects. Multiple Springs can be used as a form of additive synthesis.

Damping

Resonators in the real world do not continue to oscillate forever; they lose energy over time. This is called Damping in physics and is caused by things such as friction. In Kaleidoscope we refer to this as Feedback. This type of action creates exponential decay in the amplitude of the oscillation of the resonator. Shown below are examples of the behavior for damped Strings and Springs. Springs produce exponentially decaying sine waves. Strings produce an exponentially decaying series of delays.

In String Resonators individual harmonics do not necessarily have the same amount of feedback. In fact, in almost all real physical systems, including a plucked String as well as a concert hall, high harmonics generally have much lower feedback than the fundamental frequency. There is a Frequency Dependent Damping effect that generally happens in real-world systems, and this is referred to as Damping in Kaleidoscope.

High feedback produces more resonance and longer decay times. Spectral peaks at the resonant frequencies become taller and narrower, and stop band areas are more and more attenuated as feedback increases. Low feedback settings act more like band-pass filters and are not strongly resonant. Frequency dependent Damping achieves variable feedback amounts at different frequencies, and generally this is used to make high frequencies decay faster than low frequencies, as is commonplace in nature.

Adjusting Feedback and Damping can morph Kaleidoscope's behavior between that of a filter and that of an oscillator!

Driving

Resonators are specialized filters; they produce no sound of their own. Therefore to achieve an audible output, a resonator must be given some form of input energy. In the physical world, this input typically comes in the form of some form of impulsive energy input such as hammer strike of a plectrum pluck or some form of bowing action. In physical modeling synthesis the input is generally an impulse or a short burst of noise. In Kaleidoscope we take this concept much further and allow the user to feed any variety of audio signal into Kaleidoscope’s massively parallel resonator bank. The incoming audio signal becomes the driving force supplied to the resonators. The output of this system is an incredibly complex, yet strangely familiar, combination of the characteristics of the input signal, the resonator settings, and the action of the Image Maps, which we will discuss in the next section.

Feeding Kaleidoscope percussion loops for example is quite similar to the excitation forces that rhythmic hammer strikes supply to the resonators in instruments such as piano, xylophone, lute and other similar instruments. Feeding Kaleidoscope some variety of slowly enveloped noise would simulate the action found in bowed String instruments. Feeding it material that is already strongly tonal with long periods of static sustained notes will produce less predictable results where the result will depend heavily upon the spectral overlap of the input signal, the current tuning used in Kaleidoscope, and its feedback setting. In such cases, low feedback settings can be used in Kaleidoscope to achieve incredible dynamic filter effects. Feeding Kaleidoscope signals that are a mixture of transients and more sustained tones, such as a vocal signal, which is a mix of sustained vowels and transient consonants can achieve otherworldly results.

The real magic of Kaleidoscope, however, is found in the fact that we are not dealing with a single String or Spring resonator. We are dealing with up to 512 of them, which can each be independently tuned, independently modulated on input and output, and independently spatialized. This is similar to using your voice or drum loop to conduct a symphony played on a 512-String guitar, where each of the Strings is also independently moving around in space according to your specific choreography!

Envelopes

An Image Map is simply a massive two-dimensional array of modulation/automation data, in the form of a picture, which can be thought of as a collection of many complex envelopes. The image is scanned left to right over time, and each horizontal pixel row represents one envelope. The brightness values of the pixels in each row represent points on each envelope.

An envelope is simply a control signal that changes the value of some parameter over time. A simple example is the Attack Decay Sustain Release (ADSR) envelopes found on old analog synthesizers. These can be thought of a simple example of a 4-point envelope with a fifth point assumed to start at zero when time is zero. With such envelopes the user effectively has control over the X and Y position of four points. The algorithm then simply uses linear interpolation to create a straight line between them and this becomes the envelope which is used as a control signal to modulate things like oscillator amplitude or filter-cut-off in an analog synth.

There is no reason to limit an envelope to only 4 points. Many modern music software tools allow the creation of more sophisticated envelopes with many control points. After 10 or 20 points or so however, it becomes quite tedious for the user to manually edit control points to create interesting complex envelope shapes. For complex shapes it can be more beneficial to save the envelope as a wavetable, which is a simply nothing more than a series of evenly spaced X intervals and a Y value for each point. Additionally more sophisticated interpolation can be used to keep the envelope as smooth as possible. A properly interpolated 32-point envelope can already be quite accurate for example. There is no need to stop there though, wavetables can be much longer to allow for accurate representation of much more complex shapes. Wavetables can easily be 1024-points long for example, and this is exactly what Kaleidoscope offers. A single horizontal pixel row in Kaleidoscope represents two 1024-point envelopes, or 2048 points of automation data!

Elevation Maps

Standard envelopes are usually displayed in a 2D graph like shown above where time is on the X-axis and the Y-axis represents the parameter value, such as amplitude, at that point in time. Kaleidoscope uses pixel brightness as a representation of the Y-value of the envelope. Black pixels represent zero height, zero brightness, and therefore minimum parameter value. Maximum brightness pixels represent, maximum height and therefore maximum parameter value. Pixel brightness in Kaleidoscope can therefore be considered like an elevation map that shows how high each envelope point is. This would be like standing on a plane and looking at a mountain range, where the taller the mountain is at a particular point, the brighter it would be.

In the first representation above the same data is communicated in two different ways: both the height of the top edge of the filled area, as well as the brightness at that particular pixel communicate the same thing. We can get rid of one of these and communicate the same data using only one cue: pixel brightness. Basically we can rotate our modulation curve 90 degrees in the Z axis so that it is coming out of the page and directly at you in 3D space. In our mountain elevation-map analogy, the observer is no longer standing on a plane looking at the side profile of the mountain range. He is now directly above the mountain looking down and can no longer directly see its height profile; he can only see its brightness. It would be quite similar to a topographic map. The beauty of the brightness gradient representation is that there is no need to use lots of vertical space to display envelopes this way. We could communicate the same information using a single pixel row.

Image Maps

Once we start using multiple envelopes it is easy to appreciate how things can quickly get incredibly complicated and messy using old-fashion 2D X-Y view of envelopes.

As you can see, the brightness gradient style used in Kaleidoscope’s Image Maps, is much more readable when dealing with multiple envelopes - even a small number of them. Kaleidoscope actively uses up to 512 of them simultaneously, and in such cases, it would be ridiculously impractical if not impossible to display this data in the old style. Thus Image Maps are a highly efficient way to display and manipulate complex modulation data. Just try to represent something like the following using any other method; we dare you! The image below represents roughly a quarter-million points of automation data! This is roughly 1/8th of what Kaleidoscope is capable of controlling! Kaleidoscope can supply over two million points of automation!

Color & Spatial Position

So far we have talked about using brightness gradients to represent amplitude in modulation envelopes. It is also possible to use color (hue) in meaningful ways. Kaleidoscope uses color to effectively control stereo panning. Computer graphics use the three primary colors (Red, Green, and Blue) mixed in variable amounts to create any possible hue. Computer graphics thus use three color-channels. Stereo music and audio productions use only two channels. Therefore we can choose one color channel to represent the left channel, and another to represent the right. The third color channel is not used. This results in three possible color schemes: Yellow, Cyan, and Magenta. Volume is thus controlled independently for the left and right audio channels and this is exactly how standard gain panning is done in audio mixers. Visually this scheme produces nice hue gradients since computer graphics are based on the additive color principals of light.

Naturally Complex

To summarize all of the above, Kaleidoscope Image Maps use brightness to control amplitude and color hue to control stereo panning. An image map with vertical banding such as the first in the sequence below would produce a dynamic auto-panning effect that would change the panning of all lines by the same amount over time. An Image Map with horizontal banding would produce a frequency-dependent panning and gain effect that is static over time. We can generalize some and say that horizontal “banding” in image maps indicates changes over time, while vertical “banding” indicates changes over frequency. The important thing to realize here is that gain as well as panning can be both dynamic over time, as well as independent over frequency for each resonator line. Individual “notes” or voices can move around independently in spatial position and as well as change in gain as demonstrated in the last two complex examples. This is not possible with traditional MIDI-based synthesizers and effects.

Musical Tunings

Kaleidoscope offers up to 512 active resonators, each of which controlled by two independent envelopes. So what do we do with all of these? As mentioned, tuning of each resonator is independent and can be tuned with scientific precision (64-bit floating point) to any imaginable tuning. We could, and do, easily tune the resonators to a standard 12-Tone Equal Temperament scale (i.e. Semitones) and offer a full eight-octave range such a some concert grand pianos. We could, and do, offer different “stretch tuning” variations on this standard tuning. We could, and do, offer various historical tunings of the 12-Tone scale such as Pythagorean, Just Intonation, Well Tempered, etc.

Additionally if such tunings are used and traditional music structure is the goal, the Image Maps could look something quite similar to, if not identical to, Piano Roll notation in traditional sequencers. This would be a perfectly wonderful way to work with Kaleidoscope, and indeed in a future update we intend to offer MIDI import so that MIDI data can be converted to Image Maps to make this method much easier. In such cases you could feed Kaleidoscope a drum loop or use the built-in white-noise generator, and output a Bach fugue for example. In such cases we would not really need to use all 512 possible resonators. 128, 96, or even 64 lines would be enough.

A large part of the fun of Kaleidoscope, however, lies in the ability to use images that are both aesthetically pleasing visually as well as musically useful. This creates a certain challenge, as real music is generally performed by human beings with two arms, two hands, and ten fingers and thus playing more than ten notes at a given time is quite difficult. Therefore musical performance data is usually comparatively sparse in terms of its vertical density. We don’t generally find clusters of 64 different notes being played at the same time by pianists for example. Pianists don’t usually play with their forearms, nor would most people find the sound of an elephant sitting on a piano keyboard particularly musical.

Visual art on the other hand tends to have larger blocks of color, and can be “dense” in both the X and Y-axis. In Kaleidoscope terms, this would translate to many simultaneous resonators being turned on at the same time. Therefore the question becomes, how can we force such states to be musically useful? The answer is we limit the set of available notes to choose from in the tuning, so that there is less chance of unpleasing dissonances. The average person is not a huge fan of 12-tone serial music – no offence to Schoenberg or Scriabin – and most people find more simple harmonies much more palatable. Most popular contemporary music is highly tonal and in a single key signature or mode. Therefore we could, and do, offer tunings that limit the available number distinct musical notes that are possible to be excited. We offer things such as:

• 7 Tone scales and modes
• 5 Tone pentatonic scales
• 3, 4, 5 and more note chords
• Various harmonic series tunings
• Non-Western scales from ethnomusicology

If we reduce the number of available pitches however, we are now using even fewer resonators, and so the question becomes why do we need 512 lines? The answer is we can use two things to increase the number of used resonators:

• Partials: provide up to 64 partials of the given note/frequency

• Duplicates: provide up to 64 copies of the same note/frequency

Spring resonators as you recall, do not have harmonics. The Partials feature can be used to add them and the Image Maps can control dynamic gain and panning of each one independently, unlike simply using Strings without adding extra partials. Duplicates can be used with the Random detune knob to create thick choruses of unison notes that can also be controlled dynamically with the Image Maps.

Using Tunings based on musical scales or chords together with variable Partials and Duplicates can easily generate results that perfectly match the tonality of your musical project while allowing you to use dense, visually pleasing images.

Sound-Design Tunings

Additionally and perhaps even more importantly to sound-designers, Kaleidoscope is not only concerned with “musical” sound. It is concerned with all sound. Traditionally musical organization of sound is a very small subset of all sound that is possible. Every human being on earth, as well as every other creature, intelligent or not, here and elsewhere, is exposed on a daily basis to audio signals that follow much different organization principals. Animal sounds, nature sounds, mechanical-industrial sounds, sounds from deep space, music of the spheres, galactic radiation, alien sounds (?) etc. all have their own organizational principles. The good news is that with the right tuning and the right Image Map performance it is possible to emulate such sounds, as well as create an entirely new universe of sounds that have never before been heard – at least by us humans.

All sound in the universe is created by one form of resonance or another. Everything in nature can be modeled through the summation of sine waves and exponentials. Kaleidoscope’s Spring resonators produce exponentially decaying sine waves. Summing them together at different frequencies and time varying amounts can, in theory, effectively model anything and everything.

In addition to allowing the reference frequency to be set as a musical note and using standard musical tunings in the form of scale files Kaleidoscope can also set the tuning of each resonator in:

• Absolute Hertz: useful to match exactly measured resonances of real physical objects or “healing music”
• Period in Seconds
• Size in Meters: useful to model resonances of large acoustic spaces to create reverb presets using String modes
• BPM and Sync Period: useful to create tempo synced delay effects using String and FIR modes

Waveform Tunings

In effort to completely blow your mind, we also allow the use of Waveforms to function as tuning maps. Galbanum Architecture Waveforms for example, can be used in place of Scale files as tuning functions. We offer two bipolar waveform modes where the waveform function is centered on a reference note or frequency, which are good for creating microtonal clusters and spectrums. We also offer a Min and Max Hertz mode where the waveform tuning function is scaled to fit perfectly within the specified hertz range. You could for example, decide you needed some additional textural special effect in your mostly complete, dense electronic music mix. You could look at a spectrum analyzer and find some area of lower energy and use the Waveform Min Max Hertz mode to confine your new sound effect only to this range. Alternatively you might need some eerie high frequency texture effect to wind up the tension and cue impending doom in the sci-fi movie or game you are doing sound-design for. Or perhaps some textural sub-bass drone to emulate the sound of space ship warp drives in homage to Ridley Scott?

Stop wasting time searching through sample libraries for the perfect sound effect that fits your production needs. Instead simply generate a unique one that no one else has completely from scratch according to your exact and specific needs. Waveform tuning modes are excellent for creating experimental atonal special effects!

As you can see above, unlike FFT-based solutions, tunings do not need to be in order. Any resonator line can have any perfectly precise tuning ratio. Gaps between the frequencies of two adjacent resonators can be completely arbitrary and variable. Out-of-order tunings, such as occurs when adding Partials, can produce quite interesting results even with simple Image Maps. A simple diagonal gradient Image Map will give a filter sweep effect for example if the tuning is in- order, but the result will be much more complex and interesting if the tuning is out-of order. Kaleidoscope can optionally sort a given tuning so that the frequency of each resonator line is either in ascending or descending order. This is useful to try different variations of the same spectral content. Additionally, in-order tunings are a bit easier to think about and intuitively grasp the impact of the Image Map, which can be helpful when first learning Kaleidoscope.

User Buzz

“I must say, your hyperbole regarding Kaleidoscope was an understatement! It is a fantastic sonic tool.”

“it is really a trip, well done 2CAudio.”

“ Just have to say it after playing a bit around with all the presets (or most of them). This (especially combined with B2 and/or Aether) is just pure magic. I mean real f...... magic :) Thank you for creating this. I think this will give me endless hours of peace in my mind.”

“2CAudio strikes again.... with some new kind of craziness.”

“Absolutely unreal. Never heard anything like it... And I don't want to make any assumptions about how the company name came about, but I just had a nigh on religious moment listening to a preset and clicking through the increasingly psychedelic image maps - one of the immediate jumps from extremely fluid, biological patterns to some stark geometry reminded me of certain past experiences... The combination of having to think visually, spatially and aurally is really something I've never felt before while making music. So thanks for that, I guess!”

“the deeper I go into KS the less human vocabulary can describe the profound capabilities this technology has all I can say is artmatic is the ultimate front end and any of the 2c verbs are the ultimate back end for KS and tune it to A 432hz”

“The use of resonators like this is absolutely amazing! It sounds absolutely perfect for ambient producers, but i think you could also use this for many other things too. I think i see myself now owning all your products, because i appreciate the level of complexity you are putting into your work.”

“B2 is so good. I mean, b2 is the lushest, densest, sweetest and velvety reverb I ever tried.”

“Kaleidoscope sounds quite amazing!”

“That FIR vocal clip is out of this world!”

“Definitely going to get this after I understand a little bit about how it works! Looks very exciting and new since GRM Tools. Great work Andrew! ”

“So, wow I just dropped an old recording of my modular synth burbling away rhythmically onto a track and and I am pleased and impressed by all the weird sounds that come out the other side of the factory presets. A drone recording also produced some... well just incredibly cool sounds. ”

“I recently bought Kaleidoscope (congratulations, it's a very new and forward thinking plugin, as I was able to see while running the demo for nearly a month), being an owner of Aether.Now I would like to buy also B2. ”

“The possibilities on the resources available are so immense that it's very easy to get lost in the sea of newness and discovery.. which is a nice place too, but not to be premanently flying with the sonic angels, no down on terrafirma is good too. My interest in Kaleidoscope is more to use it as an effect, and generate new textures from musical program material.. Although some things are going to be loaded into a sample for realtime performance.”

“Congrats this looks incredible! Canít wait to check it out :) I will use it on the film I am scoring right now!”

“This thing is brilliant! You can just get lost in the possibilities... and easily need to remind yourself of the above. Andrew is a genius. A truly original idea put into form. So much fun. And I haven't even scratched the surface. I'm sure Andrew hasn't, either. Can't wait to see what else he comes up with for this... or anything else. Creative plug-in/effect of the year!”

“This thing is crazy! Instant music for Movie! Great job 2CAudio! Fantastic.”

“Wow - no brainer for me”

“Andrew, you're a manual-writing god my friend. Sometimes you're explaining a concept or function from 3 different angles just to make certain the reader can have a better chance to grasp the meaning. Also, just so you know, i'll be 'moving into extreme random-delay territory here shortly' ;) Anyway, Thanks for the great read. I'll be revisiting it frequently!”

“This is the first NAMM that I have missed in many years. I tell you this because, if I were amongst my favorite people, I would find you and give you a huge hug. Sounds a tad 'personal', I know but, the way I feel at the moment is personal, to say the least. I've been listening to Kaleidoscope's magic, as it weaves what I am certain to say, is Never before heard and VERY musical mangling of music. All at once; I have this nervous feeling deep within. Almost as if frightened. Yet, at the same time, I'm almost giggling with excitement. I am sitting here, imagining what the combination of Kaleidoscope and Omnisphere might do to the senses. Actually, I have No clue what to think.”

“Maaan, KS is hypnotic! I have just barely scratched the surface, very barely, and already I feel like I'm on another planet of sound!”

“I just purchased Kaleidoscope. I feel the great potential of the product.”

“Just checking your recent Kaleidoscope. WOW it's huge. One of the best FX i ever seen. Congratulations!”

“Enjoying KS . . . . . it makes my head hurt (but, itís wild). You really have taken sound to the edge of that wormhole!”

“IMO, this plugin really starts to shine when you tweak the pitch and textures out of it yourself to go along with your source material. The second I started doing that I saw the massive potential for sound design. This thing is awe inspiring! Love!”

“I think of it like an incredible scientific laboratory with infinite possibilities to modify the initial conditions of experiments. I've spent the last couple of days just running simple straight line images through it and playing with tunings and simple waveforms, mostly with the output module turned off. It's hard enough getting my head round the breadth of possibilities with even the simplest of experiments. I can see my synths gathering electron dust for the foreseeable future.”

“This is an amazing tool. I bought it last night and have been experimenting with it. Congrats to 2C Audio for some really innovative thinking.”

“Congratulations KS is stunning and definitely my next 'must have', and asap!”

“Holy sh*t Kaleidoscope can sound like a PHAT filter! I never in a million years thought I might be able to design filters with images alone. Of course there is much more than that possible but the thought alone is mind boggling.”

“2CAudio rocks!”

“This pretty much sums up the brilliance of what you’ve created; the infinity of possiblility. There is something here for everybody.”

“Grabbed this yesterday - amazing stuff. ”

“Hey guys, I'm a little late to the party, but I thought I would jump in and share my thoughts on this amazing plugin. 2cAudio's other effects are also incredible, but this one really grabbed me. What turns me on the most is that it's currently being used academically in scientific research to explore new possibilities in the field of audio engineering, which might yield unprecedented synthesis techniques to be more fully realized in future instruments and effects, or possibly sound equipment lending itself to real world applications later on down the road. But I'm getting ahead of myself. It's a really exciting (dare I say "historical") software that is sure to knock down some big walls in regard to sound design, especially within the realm of ambient music. It's nice to finally be able to break out of the granular rut, even though I love granular synthesis, and there appear to be some interesting granular techniques available in FIR mode. Finally, resonant filters are being used on a much more ambitious level than in previous softwares. I used to mess around with Ableton's resonators, wishing for a similar architecture in a 3rd party plug, and now here it is ... on steroids! ”

“This is your brain... This is your brain on kaleidoscope...”

“After having my mind blown by Kaleidoscope, I thought to begin to use aether again on my new 64 bit machines. Thanks so much and congratulations on your brilliant kaleidoscope release!”

“Wow! I think you and Daven from Amaranth should start an "Envelope Pusher's" group here on KVR! It's really nice to see some novel thinking that isn't tied to conventional hardware paradigms.”

“i have bought kaleidoscope and i really love the ability of sounddesign.”

“Getting some beautiful sounds out of it just a few minutes in.”

“Apologies for immediately focussing on things it can't yet do by the way - it's only because I'm so bloody excited by the raw sound and potential that I can't stop myself from imagining using it in every situation possible!”

More User Buzz

“You did it!!!!!!!!!!!!! You are a genius!!!!!!!”

“Looks like a really interesting piece of work, a bit of a standout in recent times I think.”

“I'm steadfastly refusing to read the manual. :) But damn, getting some fascinating and gorgeous material out the other end of KS... temptation rising.”

“Obviously a lot of the power of KS will be in short, extremely organic 'one shots', but the first thing I was struck by is the beauty of leaving a sequence running for a long time. It's so spectrally dynamic that you could create a beautiful track with just this, a drum machine and a couple of reverbs and delays, if you got a good grasp on how to force melodic evolution over time.”

“When something as powerful a Kaleidoscope is released it seems very open ended, it's a little ahead of it's time, and perhaps it will be a while before the average user has access to the kind of hardware to run this optimally..”

“This looks very very interesting !! looks fascinating !”

“can you imagine if it were possible to layer in a second image in each modulator to act as a mask over the first image.... now i've got divine breath preset loaded and internal timing activated in sec/hz...i see 100000 sec is the slowest/lowest modulation...doesn't even register in Hz... internal white noise for broadband source ...midium feedback..now seriously difficult to keep from drowsiness. this is the soundtrack of floating inside nebulae, since that's possible in my mind. yes, i think i would bounce down a long take of KS every day for sleep. wish i had this when i was fryin (bacon) and playing with screen savers and mind machines..i'd probably never find my way back from that infinite scintillating ball of yarn... perhaps it was better that it didn't exist after-all”

“A goldmine for electracoustic / electronic / noisy stuffs composers too !! Yes, it definitely requires some learning; it feels like an instrument on its own, with infinite exploration possibilities. ”

“WOW! I am sold. I already have Architecture from way back and so this new Kaleidoscope product sounds very exciting. How do you envision this amazing creative kindling material? ”

“I' really like the idea of the Kaleidoscope, don't have anything like it among my other plug in, perhaps I'm a little conservative that way, but with Kaleidoscope I see Andrew has reached a sweet spot where sound quality , user friendliness, interesting visual feedback, and visual related tools work together to create a whole new workflow experience with the emphasis on flow..”

“wow .. this looks amazing ! iím a massive Metasynth / Architecture fan so can see this will be right up my strasse .. great work !!!”

“Now since i can use it i see what this can do... and this is awesome and unique.... So congratulations to another great tool.”

“There is so much in this software, one does not see the wood for the trees. And it really has sweet spots that need to be found.”

“I want to point out that the manual (I've only been through the first 30 pages so far since I don't have much freetime) is VERY WELL written, it's very pedagogical ! I can't imagine that mount of work behind its writing. ”

“Congratulations for all your top notch plugins!”

“After playing around with the plug-in for a short while I quickly saw that it's more fine work from your shop. Really nice stuff! Wonderful (some might say obsessive!) attention to detail. I expect to enjoy Kaleidoscope for quite some time!”

“KS is an entire creative universe for me at the moment.”

“I'm a producer and television composer (I release and tour as The Flashbulb). BT and Richard Devine had a lot of great things to say about your products, and I finally looked into them. I just wanted to say that I think your work is on the forefront of the industry. It's innovative, rock-solid, and sounds absolutely beautiful. This is huge for me (and others, I'm sure), because I'm constantly frustrated with the current regimen of the industry either making yet another recreation of an analog synth I have sitting in my storage or yet another MIDI touch pad to control loops. I crave what can help me expand my own creativity, and 2CAudio hits it out of the ballpark in that category. So, anyways, thanks for doing what you do. :)”

“I am VERY excited to get Kaleidoscope and Architecture at the Great price. Awaiting your answer, as this will be the Coolest "effect" software that has Ever been created and . . . I cannot wait.”

“Kaleidoscope can sound many many different ways only using white noise, once get start feeding it your own input or making your own images the sky is the limit.”

“I will be getting this - still haven't demoed yet for speed issues, but even if I have to use it as an offline type of thing - freeze/ render / chop / grab / process / etc... Looking forward to exploring. I would oh course give a 'shout out' - credits are due indeed. I like your non-linear thinking with this effect, it really looks to handle the input data in a unique way - a sense of things colliding or so it seems - very interesting textures in the mp3s & videos so far ..! Wishing you all the best with this! - I can imagine all of you are working very hard to complete each step to your release.”

“I'm a sound designer and my main work is to provide content for royalty-free content libraries of sound effects. I would like to know, prior to purchase Kaleidoscope, what are the rules of usage in such a profession. Anyway, as with any great innovation, you have grey areas on the legal part.”

“Its crazy the amount of sonic diversity you can get out of this thing...”

“That's just friggin great...”

“After playing around with Kaleidoscope for a few hours, the best way I could describe it would be a "sonic playground"... an intersection between math, music theory, technology, and feelings all visualized before you. It really is an entirely new way to express these things.”

“I wanted to mention that your reverbs are excellent, and play well with the lexicon products. In fact, what sold me was how well the stereo image and tail held up through spectral shifting, the lexicons imploded a bit. I am also very interested in the EULA for Kaleidoscope, I haven't had a chance to demo yet, but I am a sound designer, and do release commercial sound libraries from time to time. Will this tool be something that I can use? I don't want to step across any lines, it's not my style, as I respect your work and the vision you have, but as a sound designer I am always on the lookout for new tools. ”

“Now that I've had a little time to look through the Architecture library, I really start to understand the brilliance of KS. The sweeps, envelopes, checkerboards, etc. really unlock the power to move way beyond the ambient washes I was coming up with earlier. Its obvious that a lot of thought and time went into both the plugin and the libraries, and I'm looking forward to exploring further.”

“I am "finally" gonna be able to grab that magical muse called Kaleidoscope. I read the offer to get the other effects at half off, so I went on an inquisition and Love those reverbs . . . a lot, too. (what d'ya think I am, wealthy?) Your stuff is SO good. You make a person go Nutz!”

“KS is just about the most exciting new development in sound that I've seen in quite a while! The possibilities really seem, literally, endless...”

“Congratulations to Kaleidoscope, seems to be a very interesting & intense tool, once again!”

“It's funny, since KS was released, I've ignored traditional music structures and simply thought in terms of sound collages and heavy effects experimentation. It's been a fun escape from tradition. I think I'll ride this out a little longer...”

“Man, this thing is PHENOMENAL!!!! bought it together with the architectual waveforms pack..... i made a couple of amazing sounds i never made before. some Aether/B2 after that and instant ambient drone bliss..... Amazing work you have done Andrew and Denis....AGAIN!!!”

“Thanks for a great product!”

“Kaleidoscope is really an unique world for sound-design and I'm absolutely hooked. Right now, I'm working on a soundtrack for a performance with myths. The dark texts in the performance really come to life with Kaleidoscope!”

“Absolutely wonderful news! That is absolutely tremendously wonderfully fantastic!!!! Thanks a lot!”

“Now I can hear the waveform and I am amazed what comes out of this oud extract - just WOWOWOW!”

“Incredible idea with this thing. It does truly sound great with the Perfect storm.. Because it's so tunable one can get a multi-sampled choir(s) (or anything else for that matter) lickety split. Deep lush drones.. fantastic rhythmic layers. Monsterous grainy fx... now I'll try my own inputs ;P I think one could play with this for days straight.. ”

1) KALEIDOSCOPE 1.1 UPDATE

Kaleidoscope was offically updated to version 1.1.0 on June 20, 2016. Changes are listed below. Go here to get the update: Kaleidoscope 1.1

1) MAJOR PERFORMANCE EHANCEMENTS

• Efficiency should be at least 200-300% better and many cases significantly more than that when using the latest generation CPUs.

•Efficiency is most improved for Spring resonators. String resonators are improved by 50-75% or so, before considering the other significant performance enhancements below.

2) RESONATOR THRESHOLD PREFERENCE

•Max Enabled Lines preference has been replaced with "Resonator Threshold". This is a much more intelligent scheme that disables resonators when their gain is below the specified threshold. This allows resonators which have very low volume and are inaudible or close to it, to be disabled, thus saving additional CPU resoruces.

•This setting is independant for Real-time and Offline, and a fairly high Threshold option of -48dB is provided to use on lower power CPUs. This can save a huge amount of CPU resources when dealing with presets that have very sparse images, and/or extreme Soft values (i.e. low amplitude of high frequencies.) Since the disabled resonators are extremely low in gain their contribution to the total sound is reasonably minor, and more aggressive (higher) threshold settings can be used for real-time to save additional CPU resources, while the rendered result can include the resonators that are disabled for realtime by using a lower threshold value.

•The 200-300% figure above is NOT including the use of this new preference, and is a fair test comparing equal active lines between KS 1.0.2 and KS 1.1.0. When using a threshold setting of -48 dB, many preset settings can see even more drastic speedups. Factory preset "Ancient Transmission 01" for example is almost 700% more efficient in KS 1.1.0 compared to 1.0.2!! SEVEN HUNDRED PERCENT!!

•Increases to efficiency via using Resonator Threshold apply equally for all resonator models, therefore many string presets may see speedups of a few hundred precent as well.

3) NEW BUFFER OPTIONS

•Kaleidoscope's buffering system has been completely redesigned.

•There are independant settings now for Real-Time and Offline. Offline Settings should generally be set to the maximum value which is currently an extremely large value of 65536 samples. Large buffers increase processing efficiency, and since we do not care about latency during offline renders, we can use an extreme setting to increase performance. This is particularly helpful for large multi-core systems.

•Realtime Buffer options now include "Auto". When using Auto KS does not use any additional internal buffer, and uses only the host/hardware buffer. In this mode KS adds ZERO ADDITIONAL LATENCY. The "Auto" mode should generally also be the most efficient for real-time use. (* Host buffers should still be set to a large value for maximum performance.) "Auto" should be the default choice for Real-time use. We may remove the other options and retain only Auto, depending on user reports/requests.

•Kaleidoscope works with any size host/hardware buffer including non-power-of-two sizes as are common with some Firewire devices.

4) FULL DOUBLE PRECISION END TO END

•Kaleidoscope is now a completely "double precision" process. The entire algorithm from input to oversampling, to all processing, to downsampling, to output is done entirely in 64-bit precision math. This is a scientific level of precision and results in a noise floor of something ridiculously low around -300dB or so. Kaleidoscope processing is effectively mathematically perfect.

•Not only is Kaleidoscope much faster, it is also more precise, which is usually considered an impossible task in engineering.

5) NEW FEATURE ENHANCEMENTS

•Feedback Relativity has a new bipolar range.Negative values increasingly reduce the decay time for high frequencies making them less resonant. This can help model various natural materials such as wood and biological materials where high frequencies do not generally resonate/ring very long.

•Mod Offset has a new bipolar range. Negative values will force some pixel values exactly to 0.0 (i.e. "black", i.e. "off"). This allows dense images with lots of non-black pixels to be make much more sparse. This produces very aesthetically interesting sonic results and allows "random picture" data to be a little more useful. It also has significantly performance implications when used together with the new Resonator Threshold preference, in that it will effectively disable more and more lines as their respective gains are reduced below the threshold.

•Mod Curve has several new interesting options including: Hyperbolic, Asymmetrical Bands, Warp, Iterations, Triangle, Chop, Dual, and Quantize.

•Combining the new Mod Offset range with the new Mod Curves produces and exponentially greater range of image transformation possibilities.