Learn Archives

Rotary Speaker Effect

Written by Bad Mister on May 16, 2018. Posted in 2010s.

The ROTARY SPEAKER Effect
To get the full effect of the following make sure you setup your Motif XS/XF or MOXF in stereo. This is important because the Rotary Speaker effect outputs a stereo result. The Rotary Speaker effect type is very programmable and you should attempt to get into editing it to your liking. Anytime you call up a sound and/or an effect which it is not to your particular taste this is the time to roll up your sleeves and dig in. Here is some information that might help in getting the most out of your Motif XS/XF or MOXF tone wheel organ Voices and their Rotary Speaker INSERTION EFFECT.

A Rotary Speaker physically turns its speaker and horn to produce a Doppler effect, giving a very distinctive sound – most commonly heard on tone wheel organs. The term “tone wheel” is the generic term for a Hammond Type electronic organ made popular in the late 40’s through the mid-1980’s. This organ generated tones with a series of spinning wheels (tone wheels) – and was often connected to a particular specially designed speaker/amplification system by the Leslie Speaker company. This cabinet featured two moving (rotating) speaker components: a high frequency horn and a low frequency rotar. Using motors, gears and belts the speaker components were literally spun around, producing a unique Doppler effect that became deeply associated with the Hammond Organ ‘sound’.

You have the following Rotary Speaker (Leslie simulation) parameters within the ROTARY SPEAKER Insertion Effect. (Doppler effect is explained typically using a siren attached to moving vehicle, like a fire engine or police car. The pitch seems to rise as it approaches and then falls as it passes by you. It’s acoustic physics but don’t let that deter you, it’s a great sound for the B3 tone!!!)

_ “Speed Control“ is the switch that determines the current speed condition, Fast or Slow. The setting is either “Slow” or “Fast” – this is assignable to a controller (typically MW). The Mod Wheel acts as a switch. It simply selects SLOW or FAST. Each speaker component’s transition speed is individually set, as is the actual slow speed, and fast speed (see parameters below).

_ “Drive Rotor“ – Determines the depth of the modulation generated via the rotation of the rotor. This impacts the low frequency output. If you find the low frequency ‘pulsing’ disturbing you can reduce its impact here (lower the value).

How to hear this parameter: Hold a single low note, “G1”, as you increase and decrease the value. Contrast this to when you hold a high note, “G4”, while increasing and decreasing this value. While this rolling sound is typical of the real thing, you can program how much of it is present in your resulting sound. You will notice that within many of the Insertion Effects you find parameters of Equalization – be aware that this specifically balances frequency output for the effect signal (separate from the Voice’s Dry Level signal and it’s EQ). When considering the effects and their contribution within your total mix, having control over the EQ of the effected signal separate from the main channel is a huge advantage. It can be the difference in clarity – it is like having a high resolution lens, as it can bring focus and sharper intelligibility to your overall mix output.

_ “Drive Horn“ – Determines the depth of the modulation generated via the rotation of the horn. This impacts the high frequency output. In general, this is what is heard most and adds clarity to the swirling sound, as it is high frequencies that tend to bounce around in the environment (low frequencies tend to spread out an move surfaces).

How to hear this parameter: Hold a note in the mid or upper range, as you increase and decrease this parameter. Try increasing it 5-10 units each time. Notice what changes in the character of the swirling high frequency content.

_ “Rotor/Horn Balance“ – Determines the volume balance of the horn and rotor. This controls the impact of high frequency horn’s output versus the low frequency rotor output. “

_ “Mic L-R Angle“ is the position of the ‘virtual microphone’. Not available for real time control – for obvious reasons – this parameter will influence the phase of the resulting sound. In audio, in general this type of phase shifting is to be avoided. Same as why you don’t change EQ settings in real time. As you approach a certain angle you will hear an actual “shift” – the parameter emulates the position of the virtual microphones as they attempt to capture the Doppler effect of the Rotary Speaker cabinet. At certain angles you will get a phase shift inversion – another reason this is not available for real time movement. Moving the microphones in a field of rotary speakers is simply not possible in this particular reconstruction. Use this parameter to pick a location for your ‘microphones’.

How to hear the influence of this parameter: You must position yourself in an equilateral triangle with your monitor speakers to feel the “Mic L-R Angle” change (alternatively, you can use a good set of stereo headphones). Press [EDIT] > using the [SOLO] button solo the high frequency percussion. As you change the value (the angle) from 0 degrees toward 180 degrees you will notice the signal move from being a pin point source in the “dead center” of the stereo field toward distinctly being split into two signals, equal in each speaker. This parameter is not something you would typical want to change during a musical performance as an unnatural shift in phase could occur. Set this as you desire. Set it and forget it.

_ “Slow-Fast Time of R“ – is rotary speaker transition time or acceleration/deceleration. This parameter is assignable in any Control Set.
_ “Slow-Fast Time of H“ is the horn transition time or acceleration/deceleration. This parameter is assignable in any Control Set.

These parameters control the “all-important” Transition Time of the high frequency Horn and the low frequency Rotor when the Speed Control Switch is activated. Setting these independently gives the speed up and slow down more character. In general, the low frequency Rotor’s belt would take more time to transition from SLOW to FAST or from FAST to SLOW due to its massive size. You can emulate a really loose belt by increasing the transition time. Please do recognize – this is one of those developments that was totally an unintended thing. A new and working Leslie Speaker would transition virtually immediately from SLOW to FAST or from FAST to SLOW, it was only with age did the belts start to slip and the transition time became noticeable. This became “cool” but was not the intended function. Eventually, modifications were done to the rotating speaker to make it transition gradually – with the digital recreations you can exploit this without having to stretch the rubber belts!

_ “Rotor Speed Slow“ is the Slow setting for the speaker 0.000Hz ~ 2.650Hz. This parameter is assignable in any Control Set.
_ “Horn Speed Slow“ is the Slow setting for the horn 0.000Hz ~ 2.650Hz. This parameter is assignable in any Control Set

The SLOW speed setting is the absolute speed of the Rotor or Horn when Slow is selected and the Transition Time has elapsed.

_ “Rotor Speed Fast“ is the Fast setting for the speaker 2.692Hz ~ 39.70Hz. This parameter is assignable in any Control Set
_ “Horn Speed Fast“ is the Fast setting for the horn 2.692Hz ~ 39.70Hz. This parameter is assignable in any Control Set

The FAST Speed setting is the absolute speed of the Rotor or Horn when Fast is selected and the Transition Time has elapsed.

The other parameters are for Frequency/Gain of a 2-band EQ. These parameters are assignable in any Control Set.

Just FYI the Modulation Wheel acts as a switch. It simply selects SLOW or FAST – it is not an OFF or ON, although it can be.

In VOICE mode you can edit the INSERTION EFFECT directly. From the main VOICE mode screen, press [F6] EFFECT> to take the shortcut to the EFFECT EDIT-Common screen. The Sub-Function buttons will give you access to the various processors. Shown at left, [SF3] INS B is selected. The Category of effect is TREM&ROTARY (Tremolo and Rotary Speaker), the TYPE is “Rotary Speaker”, and there are several PRESETS to choose from. These Presets are starting points and should be tweaked to your liking.

Call up the VOICE: PRE1: 110(G14) Stop Rotar
As the name implies and if you study this Voice, you will see that the both the “Rotor Speed Slow” and the “Horn Speed Slow” are set to 0.00Hz (no motion). Now the MW acts as an ON/OFF…

From the main VOICE screen:
Press [F6] EFFECT – this is a shortcut to the EFFECT EDIT screen
Press [F1] CONNECT – here you can see an overview of the routing

You can see that the Rotary Speaker is setup as INSERTION EFFECT “B”

Press [SF3] INS B to view the Rotary Speaker parameters

The time it takes for the Horn to ramp up to speed (8.75Hz) is determined by the “Slow-Fast Time of Horn” parameter.
The time it takes for the Rotor to ramp up to speed (7.74Hz) is determined by the “Slow-Fast Time of Rotor”

Hope that helps… explore, you will find that the Rotary Speaker is extremely programmable…

MOTIF XF VST Editor

Written by Bad Mister on May 16, 2018. Posted in 2010s.

A Getting Started Guide: Motif XF EDITOR VST

There are two different ways of running the Motif XF Editor. It can run as a standalone program, or it can run as a VST3 plug-in for audio integration, called the “Motif XF VST”. The VST version requires a DAW software capable of running VST3 plug-ins. The advantage of running the XF Editor as a VST is that it allows not only advanced audio routing, but when you SAVE your DAW Project file, all the Voices, Mixing setup and settings of your Motif XF are remembered along with the Project. When you next open this Project it will restore every setting of your Motif XF!

VSTi Audio Routing:
The advanced audio routing means you can use software based plug-ins to process your individual audio streams coming from the Motif XF. Without this advanced routing you would typically be recording just standard MIDI tracks into your DAW (Cubase), and as we all know MIDI is not audio and therefore processing MIDI tracks with Plug-in Effects is not possible. But VSTi routing means that the MIDI data for the hardware XF engine will be routed in such a way that the MIDI data travels from Cubase to the XF (hardware) tone engine which returns audio to Cubase via the special VST AUDIO LANE provided for VSTi synths. This audio lane allows you to hear exactly what will be rendered when you execute the “Audio mixdown”. VST Instruments all play through the VST INSTRUMENT FOLDER which contains an AUDIO LANE and an AUTOMATION LANE – the AUDIO LANE is “virtual” audio, it is not yet printed as an audio waveform – you are simply monitoring the audio before it is rendered as a Waveform by the process known as EXPORT AUDIO MIXDOWN. This is exactly how all soft synths are treated – via the ‘virtual audio’ lane prior to rendering the waveform. It is only during the EXPORT AUDIO MIXDOWN that the “virtual audio” becomes “real audio”. External VSTi are rendered in real time – this makes sense because the MIDI data needs to be played back to the XF for the XF to generate the AUDIO which is then converted to a high resolution audio waveform on the computer.

Saving your VSTi Setup:
When you Save the Cubase Project, you do not have to save the Motif XF VST data separately. It is automatically saved with the Cubase Project. So exactly like any software synthesizer you may have used, the Motif XF and all its Voices, Edits, etc., are saved as apart of the Project itself. You can opt to save just the CURRENT MIXING setup or you can Save the entire Voice Library contained in your Motif XF at the time of the project. This includes any MIX VOICES, or custom USER VOICES you may have created. If you are using the XF Editor as ‘standalone’ naturally, you will need to save an Editor File (.X3E) for your Motif XF setup and you will need to restore it manually.

We cannot strongly enough recommend that the one thing you should do while learning to use the Motif XF VST is to read through the 55 page online (PDF) HELP manual that comes with it.

The Standalone version of the Motif XF Editor cannot be run simultaneously with the VST version because you only have one Motif XF (in all likelihood).

Let’s see how the Motif XF Editor VST is accessed within Cubase as a VSTi (depending on the version of Cubase you are using – screenshots might be slightly different)…

· Start a NEW PROJECT
· Use the EMPTY Template
· Once the empty Track View window is showing:
· Go to DEVICES > VST INSTRUMENTS (or use the quick key: F11)
In the first space in the VST Instrument Rack click and select “External” > “D – Motif XF VST”

This is how you access the new “Motif XF Editor VST”. In a similar scenario as you would in setting up any VSTi, you will be asked if you want to create a MIDI track assigned to the “Motif XF VST”.

Create the MIDI track.

The MIDI track for Motif XF data and a VST Folder for the audio lane will appear. Later you can create as many MIDI tracks, assigned to this VSTi, as you require. Each new PART you want to use in your multi-timbral Motif XF requires you create a new MIDI track assigned to the Motif XF VST’s MIDI IN. Do not miss this point. The “Motif XF VST MIDI In” (circled in red in the screenshot below) is different from the “Motif XF MIDI In” – and is selected as different. The VST MIDI IN allows the MIDI stream to traverse the graphic user interface that you consider the “editor”. Not only do the keys on the graphic keyboard indicate what you are playing, the knobs and parameters in the Editor will animate in response to the data you are generating – it is literally the Motif XF’s 1:1 representative in the computer. Each MIDI track will address this one instance of the Motif XF VST. The number of audio lanes will depend on the number of audio Outputs you activate for the Motif XF.

Activating outputs is done on the VST INSTRUMENT rack by clicking on the OUTPUT icon [=> (indicated in the yellow box below) or by activating them in the Motif XF VST Editor (upper right corner of the Editor VST). You can select to activate all outputs or simply click on the output you require. There are 8 Stereo Outputs listed. The first stereo pair (the Main L/R) is always active.

There is a small arrow in the upper right corner of the Motif XF Editor VST which will open an Options dropdown which lets you keep the Editor: Always on Top, you can Copy settings, Load Preset…, Save Preset…, create a Default Preset, make A/B comparisons while editing, Activate the 8 Stereo outputs of the FW16E, etc.

Important note: Remember multiple MIDI PARTS can share an audio output. You may wish to group your musical PARTS to outputs, as makes sense for your music project. PARTS of your Motif XF MIXING setup are routed to the different OUTPUT buses with the OUTPUT SELECT parameter on the main Editor window (on the far right of the screen).

The Editor will launch. If it does not automatically find the ports and communicate with your Motif XF take the following steps:
· Make sure the Motif XF is set to communicate via either USB or FW (depending on what you are using for MIDI communication). You do so by pressing [UTILITY] > [F5] CONTROL > [SF2] MIDI. Under the heading “INTERFACE” set the MIDI In/Out parameter for how you are communicating, FW or USB. (The Editor cannot be run with just a 5-pin MIDI interface).

· The screenshot shows FW selected as the MIDI IN/OUT, select “USB” if that is your MIDI communication route.

· On the menu bar of the Motif XF Editor VST click FILE > SETUP

Make appropriate Device and Port settings on the Setup screen and click OK. Shown at below is the FW/1394 configuration. FW is a perfect situation for this Motif XF Editor VST because it will allow you to use as many as 8 pair of audio outputs simultaneously from the Motif XF.

Special note for those using USB-MIDI and/or another external audio interface: If you are using the USB-MIDI port for MIDI, you will need to additionally connect your external audio interface in order to successfully use this Editor’s audio routing functions. Select USB and turn the DETAIL ON.

Select for PORT 1: “Yamaha Motif XF7-1” under MIDI OUT.

Select for PORT 4: “Yamaha Motif XF7-4” for both MIDI IN and MIDI OUT

(The screenshot examples were done on an XF7, of course, if you own an XF6 or and XF8, this will be reflected in your screen.

MIDI and AUDIO
The VST version of the Editor works by establishing both the MIDI path between your computer software applications (Cubase) and an audio path for the returning audio signal. Often you will see reappearing question where the answer outlines the difference between MIDI and audio. We will repeat that discussion, here, as it is pertinent. MIDI data cannot be heard. It only represents the music as notes on staff paper represent the music; as holes punched in the paper of a piano-roll represent the music… these coded messages must be reinterpreted and translated back to the instrument of origin, (or another suitable tone generator) in order to be turned back into music (audible to the human ear).

By establishing a signal path that routes the MIDI data from Cubase to the Motif XF tone engine and then returns the audio from the XF to Cubase, we can establish the same kind of relationship that a computer-based VSTi has. When you launch a computer-based VST Instrument, you establish a MIDI track for the data that is routed to the VSTi engine, because its audio path is known (within the computer) you can process the signal using VST Effects and use the EXPORT AUDIO MIXDOWN to render your MIDI data to audio tracks. Basically you are sending MIDI to the tone engine and then returning audio from the tone generator… the only difference is the Motif XF is external hardware. External to the computer – we reach it by ROUTING the MIDI signal back to the hardware, and the AUDIO signal then arrives in the Cubase VST INSTRUMENT audio lane!

The VST EDITOR allows you to establish this type of communication by enabling the returning audio path. Each of the assignable (FireWire) outputs and the stereo L&R outputs are made available. Shown below is the VSTi INSTRUMENT SETUP within the Motif XF Editor VST.

Go to FILE > VSTi Setup

The center panel shows the FW outputs of the Motif XF (which is acting as your computers audio interface). “Motif XF Main L” and “Motif XF Main R” are the main Left/Right output of the Motif XF. All PARTS routed to OUTPUT SELECT = “L&R” will travel to the DAW via the indicated bus: “MOTIF XF 1″

Special note for USB users: In the center panel you would select the Audio Return Ports of your particular Audio Interface. If your audio interface supports just stereo, you would set the first RETURN for the LEFT and RIGHT channels of that audio interface (you will not be able to use all 16 buses simultaneously). In order to use the 16 simultaneous outputs requires the FW16E FireWire expansion option. If your audio interface has more input channels you can additionally connect the 1/4″ Assignable L/R jacks on the XF’s back panel.

Auto Sync parameter:
To really start enjoying your Motif XF Editor VST it will be important to get a handle on the Auto Sync function. This deals with the direction of the flow of information. You have two choices: Data can flow from the Motif XF to the computer, or vice versa, from the computer to the Motif XF. Thinking this through, if you start work in the hardware Motif XF, and want to capture what you have done as far as setup data, you want the arrow pointing from the XF to the computer. However, when you have archived a session and wish to recall your work, this is when you want the arrow pointing from the computer towards the XF.

Stating this sounds so very obvious, but you will not appreciate it until you wipe out some work that you have done by replacing it with all piano Voices in all 16 PARTS. Even if this happens to you, do not panic. Remember the hardware XF can be returned to the last stored state by simply recalling the current program. So even if you have a setup you’ve made in the XF and you have the Editor’s AUTO SYNC setup to go in the wrong direction, all may not be lost. You can simply recall the current Program in the hardware XF and then set the Auto Sync in the correct direction.

Also learning to use the ONLINE/OFFLINE function will be important. Anytime you want to make a change in the hardware without the software documenting it, you can simply click the ONLINE option. This will take the Editor OFFLINE. You can try out your change. If you like it and want to keep it you can bring the Editor back ONLINE.

· ONLINE (active) data will automatically be synchronized in hardware and software

· OFFLINE (active) data will not automatically be synchronized

· OFFLINE (non-active) you have a problem to troubleshoot as you have no communication.

The “BULK > DATA SYNC” function is also an important tool. This tool allows you to initiate Bulk dumps from the Editor to the Motif XF (TRANSMIT) or to receive bulk dumps from the XF into the Editor (RECEIVE). This can be accomplished with the Editor in the active OFFLINE status.

Data Sync can be used to import the Normal USER and Drum USER Voices into the Editor – this, as mentioned, is useful when you want to store an entire Library (all or a bank of Voices that you used for this Project) – Rather than limit you to just the 16 Voices of the multi-timbral MIXING setup, you can have the Project store/recall every Voice currently in your Motif XF. This is useful when your Project includes several Program Changes and/or you are not completed and wish to keep your current Library of Voices available. To restore all the VOICES in the Library, you would opt to configure the AUTO SYNC SETTING for VOICE (if you recall, we did not have that set to synchronize, because it does take some time to restore all 512 Normal User Voices and 32 Drum User Kit Voices from memory and this would only need to be done once, and for this specific use case).