A few Nostromo questions

This forum is for discussing Rack Extensions. Devs are all welcome to show off their goods.
Post Reply
User avatar
Jagwah
Posts: 2549
Joined: 16 Jan 2015

16 Jan 2018

This synth has really intruiged me but I havea few questions.

Can I automate the way it sweeps between waveforms, or can I assign a rotary knob to it, rather than using an LFO?

There was a recent favourite REs of 2018 poll and this did rather mediocre, any ideas why?

I don't keep up with all the crazy sales, but I imagine with so many so often I would have to be mad to buy this, and would be much better off waiting until the next sale has this synth in it?




Cheers!

User avatar
joeyluck
Moderator
Posts: 11029
Joined: 15 Jan 2015

16 Jan 2018

Jagwah wrote:
16 Jan 2018
This synth has really intruiged me but I havea few questions.

Can I automate the way it sweeps between waveforms, or can I assign a rotary knob to it, rather than using an LFO?

There was a recent favourite REs of 2018 poll and this did rather mediocre, any ideas why?

I don't keep up with all the crazy sales, but I imagine with so many so often I would have to be mad to buy this, and would be much better off waiting until the next sale has this synth in it?
You could set the wave sweep rate to 0Hz (tempo sync off).
Choose a waveform such as waveform 1.
And then sweep it using the Phase knob.

Nostromo is one of the coolest and most unique synths. Not only for it's approach and interface, but also for it's very flexible random patch generator.

The most popular synths are usually composed of things and presented in a way more familiar to users. One of my favorite synths outside of Reason is Synplant. Also another very unique synth with a really cool approach to exploring patch creation through randomization. And many people know it and love it. However, if some music publication did a poll about favorite synths, you would be seeing other, more common-type synths.

I wouldn't draw any conclusions from the poll :)

User avatar
dvdrtldg
Posts: 2386
Joined: 17 Jan 2015

17 Jan 2018

Jagwah wrote:
16 Jan 2018

I don't keep up with all the crazy sales, but I imagine with so many so often I would have to be mad to buy this, and would be much better off waiting until the next sale has this synth in it?
Well it's a gamble isn't it. Everything (almost) goes on sale eventually, Nostromo has been on sale before now so it's unwise to assume it won't go on sale again. The question is, how badly do you want it and how much money do you have to spend?

User avatar
Loque
Moderator
Posts: 11170
Joined: 28 Dec 2015

17 Jan 2018

Jagwah wrote:
16 Jan 2018

There was a recent favourite REs of 2018 poll and this did rather mediocre, any ideas why?
eXpanse is the most popular one and it deserves it. The way you can morph (not fade) wavetables, create your own and load wavetables, the many wave modifiers and fm is awsome. And its so easy to program. The only thing it really lacks is a bigger mod matrix.
Reason12, Win10

User avatar
Bumbum
Posts: 183
Joined: 14 Jan 2017

17 Jan 2018

one thing i really like about Nostromo is that experimenting is made easy and its really fun! big mod matrix and enough LFOs guarantee that you have almost everything ready in same device. then just hold few keys down and dive into the abyss.

edit: and customer support is great, panda is active member here and participates discussion.

User avatar
theshoemaker
Posts: 595
Joined: 21 Nov 2015
Location: Germany
Contact:

17 Jan 2018

The sweep you are asking for is mentioned in the tips and tricks in the manual
http://lectricpanda.com/NostromoSpectra ... _2_0_1.pdf und "External/Manual​ ​control​ ​of​ ​the​ ​sweep" like joeyluck already explained. Have a look at the Tips and Tricks section. It's worth it.

Nostromo is similar to Animoog on the iPad from it's oscilators, Nostromo has 3 with up to 8 offsetable voices per OSC, where Animog has 1. The Animoog basically has a Matrix of rows and columns and you can load a sample in each row. Forgot what the columns are for. I really how you can jump between samples. A feature I'd really like to have in terms of workflow is to not use a waveform, but define your own morphing path like with the Animoog. It's the same result: you morph/xfade between samples, but the workflow changes and you are more free in how you are patch designing.

Just tagging Rob the Panda in here ... maybe it is a feature he like to add to
rcbuse wrote: Nostromo 3
:PUF_figure: latest :reason: V12 on MacOS Ventura

WongoTheSane
Moderator
Posts: 1851
Joined: 14 Sep 2015
Location: Paris, France

17 Jan 2018

Here's why why it didn't fare better in the poll, in my opinion.

It's not a traditional synth, in the sense that the oscillators are markedly different from what we're used to - instead of selecting a shape for them (sine, square...), you select a 3-layers variable sweep between 9 oscillators with a variable frequency content. Because of this, you rarely pull up Nostromo to program a sound you have in mind. You can do that with more traditional synths ("let's make a Reese bass" for instance), but it's more difficult with Nostromo (unless you know the synth inside out, in which case it's as easy as anywhere else). But it shines in another domain: out-worldly sounds. And the philosophy is the exact opposite: instead of going "I'll program this sound", you generally let it create a sound you like, tweak it a bit and build your song around it. The randomizer is absolutely amazing. But you never know where you're going. You use it to surprise yourself and take your song some place you didn't expect. It's an inspiration machine.

So in this sense, it cannot be first in a poll that asks: "what's a day-to-day synth you couldn't do without?". It's not a bread-and-butter synth, it's a rare spices synth. And it does this job amazingly well.

User avatar
theshoemaker
Posts: 595
Joined: 21 Nov 2015
Location: Germany
Contact:

17 Jan 2018

WongoTheSane wrote:
17 Jan 2018
Here's why why it didn't fare better in the poll, in my opinion.

It's not a traditional synth, in the sense that the oscillators are markedly different from what we're used to - instead of selecting a shape for them (sine, square...), you select a 3-layers variable sweep between 9 oscillators with a variable frequency content. Because of this, you rarely pull up Nostromo to program a sound you have in mind.

Actually I've been thinking like this in the beginning, too. Its just a matter of preference and education. I guess, most users are used to see the waveform instead of the wave specture. Once you know which partials a Saw, Sine, Square is made of and you know how to read the spectrum waves from Nostromo its straight forward.

Problem is: Most users aren't used to it. And I agree it gets more fiddly. But if you once get used to the spectrum tables in the basic section. You should know how to setup a basic sounding synth.

BA1 is sawish
BA2 is a Sine. Just the first Harmonic set
BA3 is squareish
BA4 is trianglish

so i guess that is the reason, they are the first 4 basic spectrums :)

I'm just thinking about what Nostromo would look like it it had spectrum modifiers like eXpanse/Parse/Europa ... I guess a modifier per slot in an osc would be overkill, but a sliding window modifier over the xfaded wave or the just selected spectrum would be awesome. Just think about a modifier which would move along the wavesweep and morph the spectrum in the slot itself. I mean the 9 Slot OSC already is doing this (sweeping the specturm) But I'm talking about dynamically changing the spectrum of one slot.

Hmm overkill? Or would the engine allow something like this?
:PUF_figure: latest :reason: V12 on MacOS Ventura

Post Reply
  • Information
  • Who is online

    Users browsing this forum: Ahrefs [Bot] and 27 guests