Blamsoft Expanse User Manual

Name: Blamsoft Expanse
Brand: Blamsoft
SKU: 2580317
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3.0.0 User Manual – Rev A

©"2016"Blamsoft,"Inc."All"rights"reserved."

Overview

Expanse brings wavetable synthesis in Reason to the next level. At the heart of Expanse are

four wavetable oscillators with waveform modifiers, an additive engine, and modern unison

capabilities. There are two multi-mode filters with tons of modes each offering their own

unique sonic flavor. Three LFOs with many unique waveforms and five powerful graphical

envelopes offer modulation capabilities. The Mod Matrix destinations cover the entire synth.

Six pristine onboard effects allow you to do all your sound design “in the box”. And a flexible

sequencer tops it off. The sound quality of Expanse will make your previous favorite synth cry

as it gathers virtual dust. You will love the experience of creating sounds once you have

learned Expanse’s powerful features.

©"2016"Blamsoft,"Inc."All"rights"reserved."

Structure

Knowing the structure is the first step to understanding Expanse.

Oscillators

Four oscillators are mixed together into two parallel signals.

Filters

The parallel signals from the oscillators go to Filter 1 and Filter 2. It is possible to route the

output of Filter 1 into Filter 2.

Envelopes

There are three mod envelopes and two amp envelopes. Each filter’s cutoff frequency is

controlled by one of the envelopes.

LFOs

The three LFOs have their own dedicated modulation targets and can be used as sources in

the Mod Matrix.

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Amps

The filter outputs each go to an amplifier. The amps have their own amp envelopes to control

their gain. It is possible for Amp 1’s Envelope to control Amp 2. When Filter 1 is routed to Filter

2, Amp 1 is not connected.

Mod Matrix

In the Mod Matrix, you can modulate destination parameters using various modulation

sources.

Effects

There are six onboard effects. An external input can be connected to the effects section. A

sidechain input can be connected to the compressor effect.

Sequencers

The Sequencers allows you to create note, gate, and velocity patterns as well as modulation

(CC) patterns.

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Sections

Getting familiar with the overall layout is the second step to learning Expanse.

The blue sections all relate to the oscillators, and the green sections all relate to modulation.

Wavetables

Additive Engine

and Sequencer

Tuning

and

Unison

Mixing

Filters

Mod Envelopes

LFOs Amp Envelopes

Mod Matrix

Effects

Performance, Portamento, and Patches

Mods

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Performance/Polyphony

This upper left section includes parameters found on almost every modern synth.

• Pitch Wheel – Controls the pitch during performance, also is available in the Mod Matrix.

• Mod Wheel – Performance control that is routable in the Mod Matrix

• Polyphony – Adjusts how many simultaneous notes can be played by setting the number

of synth voices. A synth voice is active when its amp envelope is not zero.

• Pitch Bend Range – Adjusts the range of the pitch wheel effect in semitones

• Legato/Retrigger – When set to Legato and polyphony is set to 1, envelopes do not

retrigger if notes are continuously played with no breaks

Tip: You can set the pitch bend range to 0 and use the pitch wheel as a performance

parameter after assigning it in the Mod Matrix.

Patches

You can browse the factory sound bank, or save and load your own patches in the upper

middle section.

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Portamento/Volume

The upper left section offers Portamento control and output volume adjustment. Portamento

provides a gliding of pitch between notes.

The Portamento section provides some neat features that aren’t commonly available.

• On/Auto – When set to On, portamento affects every note change. When set to Auto,

portamento only affects legato playing, the first key press does not have portamento.

• Glide/Gliss – When set to Glide, portamento is a typical smooth sliding of pitch. When set

to Gliss, portamento occurs in semitone steps. It is easier to hear this effect at higher

pitches

• Time/Pitch – This affects the speed of the portamento glide. When set to Time, the glide

takes an equal amount of time for all notes. When set to Pitch, the glide time depends on

the distance between notes because the pitch changes at a constant rate.

You most likely are familiar with the volume control. If not, turn it up, see what happens!

Oscillators

Expanse features wavetable oscillators. This type of oscillator is based on a set of

predetermined single-cycle waveforms. Single-cycle means one period of oscillation. A table

consists of 256 single cycle waveforms that can be individually selected using the position

control. There are 67 tables that come in the Expanse sound bank. Wavetables in the Serum-

compatible format can be loaded externally. In addition, wavetables can be created by

sampling an external oscillator at a low pitch. The raw wavetables can be manipulated using

the mods (modifiers), translating them into other unique waveforms that can sound quite

different from the original. Each oscillator has up to 3 modifiers that can be active

simultaneously. An Additive Engine allows you to duplicate the waveform at harmonic

multiples of the original. Unison allows multiple detuned copies of the waveform to be played

simultaneously. Finally, there are mixing controls. The oscillators can be routed to either, or

both, of the two filters.

Selecting Oscillator 1-4

On the far left of the Oscillators section, there are buttons to select oscillator 1, 2, 3, or 4. You

can think of these as pages or tabs. When an oscillator is chosen, the controls (except for the

mix section) change to the selected oscillator.

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Wavetable

The current waveform for the oscillator is shown on the left side of the Oscillators section.

Keep in mind that this display shows the effect of Mods and the Additive Engine. You don’t

necessarily see the wavetable raw waveform.

• Position – Position moves through the individual frames of the table. If you’re not familiar

with wavetables, you can think of it as adjusting the waveform shape.

• Random – This determines how random the starting phase of the oscillator waveform will

be. This is usually not noticeable unless you are using a unison density of more than 1.

When using unison, you can turn Random down to create a Laser Zap effect.

• Noise – This control cross-fades the oscillator waveform with white noise.

• Sample Browser – You can browse for one of the wavetables included in the sound bank

Wavetables folder, load your own Serum-compatible wavetable, or create a wavetable by

sampling a synth. See the Wavetables section for more details.

• Import setting – This can be set to spectral morph, crossfade, or off. This setting only

applies when there are less than 256 frames in a wavetable. See the Wavetables section

for more details.

Mods

The Mods (modifiers) transform the raw waveform from the wavetable. The three Mods

process the waveform in order (except for when using the post settings).

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• Mod Selection – Selects one of the Mod algorithms

• Amount – Controls how much the Mod affects the waveform or a key parameter of the

Mod

• Pre/Post Harmonics – When Post is enabled, the Mod processes the waveform after the

Additive Engine

There are a wide variety of Mods to choose from:

Off

No modification

Frequency Modulation

Phase Distortion

Ring Modulation

Sync

Hard Sync

Inv

Invert part of the waveform

Rev

Reverse part of the waveform

Dec

Sample rate reduction (decimation)

Quan

Quantization (bit depth reduction)

Clip

Apply gain and hard clip

Fold

Apply gain and foldback

Sat

Apply gain and saturate

Pinch

Inverse saturation

Gate

Zeroes out part of the waveform like a PWM

Juno

Zeroes out parts of the waveform like a PWM at 2x frequency

Mirror

Reversing Sync

Zoom

Zooms into the beginning part of the waveform

Wrap

Apply gain and wrap around from top to bottom

Low pass filter

High pass filter

Phase

Adjusts phase, effectively rotates waveform

Contracts waveform toward the center

Out

Expands waveform toward the edges

Sine

Applies a sine amplitude shaper

Odd

Keeps odd harmonics

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Even

Keeps even harmonics

Pluck (Mod 3)

Creates a Karplus-Strong pluck. Oscillator noise amount is useful with this

mode.

FM Routing

(Mod 3)

Creates an inter-oscillator frequency modulation connection

RM Routing

(Mod 3)

Creates an inter-oscillator ring modulation connection

Additive Engine

The Additive Engine duplicates and layers the base waveform at harmonic frequencies.

Commonly, in additive synthesis the base waveform is a sine wave. In Expanse, the base

waveform is the wavetable raw waveform with Mods applied (except for when Mods are

configured as post-Additive). You can edit the layering by dragging the bars in the display.

The bars above the middle adjust the magnitude of the waveform at that frequency. The bars

below the middle adjust the phase. The light gray bars represent octaves. For more details,

see the Additive Engine Theory section.

Ctrl/Cmd click, Shift drag

The harmonic bars can be reset to default or adjusted more precisely using the standard

Reason modifier keys.

Copy, Paste, and Reset

By using alt-click on the display, you have the option of copying or resetting all the oscillator

settings (except for the wavetable). Copy copies the settings from the current oscillator to the

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clipboard. Paste transfers the settings from the clipboard into the current oscillator. Reset sets

the current oscillator settings to their default values.

Spectral EQ

The Spectral EQ allows you to shape the spectrum of the oscillator. You can draw curves using

the editor, creating your own filter curve. Here is a summary:

• Double-click to add or remove points

• Drag the segments to adjust the curve

• Shift drag to snap to a horizontal increment

• Ctrl/Cmd drag to snap to a vertical increment

• You can snap to both a horizontal and vertical increment using both Shift and Ctrl/Cmd

• Shift drag on a curve adjusts the two adjacent points

The EQ has Offset (frequency in octaves) and Depth (gain) settings with modulation capability

for each. You can route Keyboard to EQ Offset to achieve a consistent mod across the

keyboard. There are presets in an Alt-click menu.

Tuning/Unison

The oscillators have basic tuning controls combined with advanced unison features. The basic

tuning controls are:

• Fine – Fine tune in the range of -0.5 to 0.5 semitones.

• Semi – Semitone offset of -11 to +11 semitones

• Octave – Octave offset of -3 to +3 octaves

Unison creates multiple copies of the oscillator waveform that are slightly out of tune with one

another. By adjusting these out of tune waveform copies, you can create thick sounds with a

wide stereo field. The unison controls are:

• Tuning – This controls the intonation spacing of waveform copies. The single note settings

use various math equations to determine the spacing. The choices are Cubic, Squared,

Exponential, Linear, Logarithmic, and Square Root. As the setting is moved from Cube

towards Square Root, the spacing goes from clustered near the root pitch to widely

spaced away from the root pitch. There are also dual note settings that allow some

waveforms to play a fourth, fifth, or octave interval from the fundamental pitch.

• Density – This sets the number of simultaneous waveforms that are playing

• Blend – When Density is odd there is always a root pitch waveform playing. This

determines the volume mix of the root pitch versus the other copies. When Density is

even, this determines the volume mix of the two waveforms nearest to the root pitch

versus the other copies.

• Detune – This setting controls how far in pitch the waveform copies are from the root

pitch

• Spread – Each waveform copy has its own panning. As this control is turned up, the

panning of the waveform copies is spread across the stereo field.

There are also two tuning controls in the main display.

• Keyboard Tracking – This setting controls much the oscillator tracks the keyboard notes,

from not tracking to tracking exactly at 100%.

• Drift – Drift creates instability in the oscillator tuning, this can be used subtly to give an

analog feel or more drastically to make an oscillator unpredictably out of tune. Note, this

setting is most effective with low density settings and more than one oscillator in the mix.

Mixing

The four oscillators can be mixed without using the oscillator pages. Each oscillator has its own

controls.

• Pan – Adjusts the pan of the oscillator from left to right

• Mix – Sets the volume level of the oscillator

• F1-F2 – Adjusts the mix of the oscillators into Filter 1 or Filter 2. When turned all the way to

the left, the oscillator goes 100% into Filter 1 and 0% into Filter 2. When in the middle, the

oscillator goes 50% into Filter 1 and 50% into Filter 2. When turned all the way to the right,

the oscillator goes 0% into Filter 1 and 100% into Filter 2.

• Solo – Allows you to solo a single oscillator and mute the others

Wavetables

Using the browser, you can load wavetables into Expanse’s oscillators. You are not limited to

the wavetables provided by Blamsoft. Wavetables in a Serum-compatible format can be

directly loaded into Expanse. You can also make your own Serum-compatible wavetables

using Serum or other audio software, or programming environments that offer wav file

output. The format is as follows.

- 2048 samples per single-cycle

- Maximum of 256 frames (positions), less than 256 frames will be morphed or

crossfaded according to the import setting.

- For example, a 256 frame wavetable has exactly 524288 samples. If you use a powerful

audio editor, such as Audacity, you can see the exact number of samples in the file.

You load any sample into Expanse and it will do its best to create a wavetable. Low notes with

a steady pitch work best.

Import Setting

When there are less than 256 frames in the Serum-compatible wavetable, extra frames are

created that make a smooth transition between original frames. You can also limit the number

of frames that are used so a jumpy wavetable can be made smooth. The Spectral Morph

settings results in a smooth transition of frequency domain components, Crossfade results in a

smooth transition in the time domain, or Off provides no transitions.

Sampling an Oscillator

You can sample an oscillator to create a wavetable. Expanse processes an audio sample and

extracts the periodic waveforms present in the file. For Expanse to do this well, there are some

things you can do to help. Here is the procedure for creating a wavetable, other settings will

work but not in all cases.

1 Create a steady pitched note on the oscillator you want to sample. Low notes are best.

These are the ideal notes.

Sample Rate

Note

44100

F0 – MIDI Note 17

88200

F1 – MIDI Note 29

96000

Gb/F#1 – MIDI Note 30

176400

F2 – MIDI Note 41

192000

Gb/F#2 – MIDI Note 42

2 Make the clip several seconds long, it is recommended to use at least 10 seconds.

3 Use “Bounce in place” and “Bounce clips to new samples” to quickly create a sample

that can be loaded into Expanse.

See the Creating Wavetables tutorial on the Blamsoft website for more details.

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