W48: Cometary Trails - Finite Distances
By boorch on December 1, 2024 6:44 pm
I recently acquired a Sonicware LIVEN Ambient Ø. As (I) expected it has similar quirks and unconventional (or rather... questionable) design choices as the other Sonicware devices (like Sampltrak or Lofi XT 12), especially when it comes to the sequencer. Despite my slight disappointment, the "sound" was inspiring enough to come up with a quick jam for this week's "weeklybeats".
What I like:
- Straightforward workflow. Easy to come up with decent ambient/drone ideas rather quickly.
- Decent reverbs. Don't expect something close to Blackhole or Microcosm, but shimmer is nice.
- Blendwave Synthesis (which is essentially the name they chose for an array of morphing bread and butter wavetables) is implemented nicely
- No menu diving. Everything at your fingertips. Sometimes you need Shift or Func key-combos, but at least it's not Mortal Kombat fatality level combos like most Roland devices (or Lofi XT 12) have. It's not "Elektron Level" tight, but then again, this device does not have (or need) that sort of complexity.
What I don't like:
- Arpeggiator works only for "live play". So if you sequence chords and turn arpeggiator on, they will play as... chords. Such a bummer, especially when there's already a nice, straightforward random probability implementation that works with the arpeggiator as well.
- There's no real arpeggiator rate control. The only control you have is the "note length", which is sort of like the "pattern speed" on Elektron boxes where you can set 1/2, 1/4 etc, and this defines arpeggio rate.
- Only way to "record" arpeggios is... well... live recording, which literally "bakes in" the notes arpeggiator spat out. As far as I can see, there's no real quantisation as well, which makes recording arpeggios even more challenging.
- Filters (like other Lofi XT 12) leave a lot to be deserved. They sound dull, but at least can be washed away with the nice shimmering reverb.
here's a video of the performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8Vn1CH2hH0
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