Recording - December 2017 - 34

Soundware Showcase
Figure 2

move through the various features, you
get advice on anything you haven't yet
encountered. The inevitable annoyance
factor of "help bubbles" is easily mitigated by having a choice-dismiss for
now, dismiss this one bubble forever,
dismiss all forever, or reset the whole
help system. (Figure 2)
The main UI for all of the SSO libraries
has 3 basic panels, each with additional options. The Overview Panel is the
primary status and control view for
articulations, mixes, and the most essential
control functions. An "easy mix" section
is set up to set the apparent distance of
the overall voicing in the patch from
near to far. Memory management tasks
such as purging of unused mic mixes
or samples happens automatically. This
could cause clicks and pops if you are
trying to mix while playing continuously,
but that's to be expected.
There is of course a more advanced
mixer just within reach. This allows, for
each instrument loaded, to adjust velocity
range, to mix signals either per-articulation
or globally, to downmix a signal to mono
and then pan it manually (by default, all
samples are stereo and pre-imaged), and
load/save/copy mixer presets.
The Overview Panel also has four basic
Controls (Dynamics, Vibrato, Reverb,
Expression) which can be mapped to any
MIDI Control Change message, or adjusted via sliders on the panel. Dynamics is
34

RECORDING December 2017

typically mapped to the mod wheel, and
is especially well suited there; I used the
mod wheel and was able to quickly adapt
a playing style suitable to an expressive
oboe solo, for example. Finally, along
the bottom of the panel are the available
articulations (playing techniques) available for the instrument. Any unavailable
features are greyed out, so you are only
presented with what's available for that
loaded instrument-very helpful.
The General Controls Panel gives
some more depth to the general settings,
as well as additional control over the
behaviour of the instrument loaded. Access to
the three mic placements can be mixed
directly, and can be saved in (or loaded
from) a preset. Here you may also disable
the "purge unused" function-this is useful if you are perhaps switching between
two voicings and would rather have
them cached. Voice transposing and
MIDI CC mapping of the velocity setting
(as opposed to the standard mod wheel)
also appear in this panel.

An important and useful feature is the
round-robin behavior, which facilitates
the way that round-robins are played
back. Layering, neighbor zones, and
transpositions are all available, which can
be especially useful in ensemble instruments. The ability to manage round-robin
behavior per instrument is a nice feature,
augmenting the already rich feel of the
playback of instrument samples.
The Controllers presented on the Overview Panel are expanded to six, with the
two additional controllers being Release
and Tightness. For certain instruments
and styles, these can be very useful, but
not as much generally, so relegating
them to an "advanced" panel for when
they're needed is a good option.
The Articulation and Styles controls
seen from the General Controls Panel
have an added tick box to toggle the
purge for that particular style. This is
a more flexible option than a general
enable/disable of the purging. Remember,
when purging, clicks and pops may
result, but when not purging, you're
taking up memory; when working with
huge libraries, this is always a concern.
The Ostinatum (our final GUI panel)
is described by Spitfire as "not quite an
arpeggiator, not quite a sequencer". It
seems more like a pattern or template
generator, with or without additional
control input. This is one of the unique
features of the Spitfire experience, and
one which adds no small amount of
inspiration... especially after drowning
in a sea of samples and styles!
The Ostinatum allows you to build up
patterns (solo or using chords of up to ten
voices) which can be made increasingly
complex. A set of note lengths are selected

Figure 3
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - December 2017
