Ugo Audio Tunguska User's Guide

Tunguska

Version 1.1 www.ugoaudio.com

Installation

Open the zip and place the Ironhead folder in your host’s VST folder. Yup, that’s it. No annoying
copy protection, no tricky registration and no troublesome installers.

Overview of Tunguska

Tunguska is a multi effect that was designed specifically to be a companion to Ironhead. It can
be useful as a master effect for the whole kit, or on specific percussion sounds sent to Tunguska
from Ironhead’s additional outputs.

Of course while Tunguska may have been designed with Ironhead in mind, it can be great with
other sources as well.

Tunguska may be a small effect, but it can go from providing useful, subtle, tweaks to your sound,
to mutating it into something completely different from the original...and all with the same fast and
easy interface style of Ironhead.

Another element borrowed from Ironhead is the morphing. Tunguska’s two key components are
its granulator and filter, both of which can be morphed between two states, allowing you to bring
additional movement to your grooves.

Tunguska’s effects are wired in series and the order of the effect controls from left to right
indicates the signal path, starting with the Grain, then into the Dirt, the Filter, and ending with the
Delay. Turning off a section will bypass it, letting the signal flow directly to the next section.

Also, Tunguska has a stereo signal path, so the positioning of your incoming audio can be
retained.

Master Controls

Input

Adjusts the volume of the incoming audio.

Mix

Adjusts the ratio of uneffected (dry) to effected (wet) signal you will hear.

Output

Sets the output volume.

ES

This knob adjusts the sensitivity of the envelope follower.

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Grain

While Tunguska can be used with any source, the granulator’s is most useful on drums because
its pitch shifting does not track incoming pitch or midi notes. The granulator can be cool with any
piece in Ironhead’s kit, but it can be particularly fun with the Thuds and Dings, and it can really do
wonders with the Bonks.

X axis

Adjusts both the speed and size of the grains. Settings further left get
looser and more choppy sounding. Settings further right become somewhat
more metallic sounding and eventually become higher pitched.

Y axis

Sets the pitch of the grains. A setting around the middle will be closest to
the pitch of the incoming audio. Higher or lower settings will raise or lower
the pitch of the grains.

Hint: Holding down CTRL while adjusting an XY knob (or a slider) will allow you to fine tune your

setting.

On

This turns the granulator on or off.

Morph

Switching this on will allow the granulator to be morphed between it’s A and B control states. (See
the Morphing section for more details.)

A/B

Clicking this lets you switch the display between the A and B control states. The “A” state is the
default for normal usage. When morphing, the A state can be thought of as the starting point of
the morph. Conversely, the “B” state can be thought of as the destination. Since the B state only
applies to the morphing, it’s controls only effect the sound during morphing.

E

Turning this on allows Tunguska’s preset envelope follower to modulate the grain pitch. The
attack and decay of the envelope have been preset to what I found to be a particularly useful
setting for percussion.

For those who are new to envelope followers, this is a type of modulation that responds to the
amplitude of the incoming audio signal, so the more dynamic the incoming audio is, the more
variety you’ll get from the modulation. In essence, quieter sounds will trigger, the less modulation
than louder sounds. This makes for a very “playable” effect.

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Dirt

This consists of a preset distortion and a downsampler, allowing you to go
from adding some edge to your sound, to a mean, digital, lofi, freakout.

Dirt Switch

Turning this on activates both the distortion and the downsampler.

Dsamp Slider

When in its upper most position, the downsampler is inactive and you will only hear
the effect of the distortion. Lowering the slider kicks in the downsampling. The lower
the setting, the lower the pitch and the more distorted the sound will be.

Filter

For the most part, Tunguska’s filter is a low pass filter. However, some other bands are mixed in
there to make it useful for all instruments in Ironhead’s kit. The filter is also highly resonant.

While I have adjusted it in an effort minimize the risk of squeels and other such major frequency
spikes while working at its highest resonance settings, side effects of this sort are still possible
and can depend on the volume and frequencies of your input material. As a result, some caution
is advised when working with the highest resonance settings.

X axis

Adjusts the resonance

Y axis
Adjusts the cutoff

On

This turns the filter on or off.

E

Turning this on allows Tunguska’s preset envelope follower to modulate the grain pitch. Using this
in conjunction with high resonance settings and moderate to lower cutoff settings will produce the
most squishy sounds. In addition to being cool on drums, this is also a lot of fun with bass, guitar,
or keys.

Morph

Switching this on will allow the filter to be morphed between it’s A and B control states. Because
the morphing will effect both the cutoff and the resonance, you can achieve the standard filter
cutoff sweep effects as well as sweeping between more or less resonant filter sounds.

A/B

Clicking this lets you switch the display between the A and B control states. The “A” state is the
default for normal usage. When morphing, the A state can be thought of as the starting point of
the morph. Conversely, the “B” state can be thought of as the destination. Since the B state only

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applies to the morphing, it’s controls only effect the sound during morphing.

Delay

This delay section actually consists of two delays running at once. They are both controlled by
the same On/Off switch, Feedback slider, and Stereo Slider, but they have independent speed
controls. When the delays are set to the same speed, it will sound like you’ve got a single delay
running. But if you set them to different speeds, you can create ping-pong delay effects.

On

Turns the Delay on or off.

Fbk

Adjusts the amount of feedback for the delays. The higher the setting, the
longer the delay will continue to repeat.

Str

This adjusts the stereo spread of the two delays when they are set to
different speeds. Note that when they are set to the same speed, you will
not hear any stereo spread.

Also note that the Pan setting for an instrument will also effect the placement of it’s delayed
sound.

Speed

These two controls adjust the speed of the delay. The speeds are set to divisions of your host’s
BPM.

Dot

Turning these on will create dotted note times for the delays. Setting the delays to different
speeds, then making one dotted, can produce some cool delay rhythms.

Morphing - Overview

Morphing is a term that is most commonly associated with computer graphics and is used to
describe the process of transforming one object or image into another. Tunguska and Ironhead
offer an audio version of this process.

Both the Gran and Filter have two separate sets of vector controls, these are called the A and B
states and they can be adjusted however you wish. You can toggle between the A and B control
views by clicking an instrument’s A/B button.

The A state controls are the default set and they adjust the sound when the morphing is off. When
the morphing is on, you can think of the A state as the starting point of your morph. Conversely,
the B state can be thought of as your morph destination. So when you are anywhere in the

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process of morphing, you are either going to, or returning from, the B state.

To hear the changes you are making to the B state of in instrument, you must first turn on the
Morph button (next to the A/B button), then move the Morph slider up into the B position. The
morph slider can be moved by any of the following methods:

- Your keyboard’s mod wheel

- The built in LFO

- MIDI CC #1

- VST automation

- Your mouse

- The Morph slider’s own A/B jump switch

Morph Controls

Morph Slider

This is the master control for morphing. With the slider all the way down,
you will hear the A state settings. With the slider all the way up, you’ll
hear the B state settings. Anything in between the two will be some
degree of morph.

A/B Jump Button

This is the button next to the Morph slider. When the LFO is off, this
button will make the Morph Slider jump between A and B. This is handy
for when you just want quick access to the B state, and don’t actually

need to hear the transition. Since the B state can be set to provide
totally different sounds than the A state, jumping between A and B states can provide you with
super fast access to dramatically different sounds.

Note that when the LFO is on, the A/B Jump button will switch between the current LFO
modulation position and the B state.

LFO

This LFO will modulate the morphing in sync with your host’s BPM. When the LFO is on, other
forms of morph control (mod wheel, etc.) will not work properly. The LFO can be setup to morph
slowly or very quickly, and a variety of wave shapes are available.

On

This switch turns the LFO on or off.

LFO Amount Slider

This controls how close to the B state the modulation will go. So the higher the setting, the closer
to the B state the maximum point of the morph will be. With the slider all the way up to the top, the
morph can go all the way from full A to full B.

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Speed

This controls the speed of the LFO, based on divisions of your hosts BPM.

Waveform

This lets you set the waveform shape for the LFO. The options are Sine, Saw, Ramp, Triangle,
Square, and S&H (sample and hold / random.)

Known Bugs

Morph slider / refresh rate

When the morph slider moves fast enough it exceeds the GUI’s refresh rate, which can cause
visual glitches such as making it look like there are two knobs, that the is not moving its full
distance, or that it appears twitchy and a bit random. This is just a visual issue though. Fast
movements from the LFO, automation or CC/mod wheel, all control the morph properly and the
sounds change just as fast and smoothly as they are supposed to.

FL Studio

When Tunguska is loaded you may experience a lag between when you press play and when the
sequencer starts. A lag also occurs when pressing the rewind button. This problem is caused by
an incompatibility between Tunguska and the reset procedure FL runs every time you play/rewind.

To fix this problem:

1. Press the options button in FL studio (at the top of the screen)

2. Choose the Audio Settings from the drop down menu

3. Turn off “Reset plugins on transport”

Project5

The same problem occurs in Project5. Unfortunately though, this host does not offer the option of
turning off the reset so there is no solution for it right now. However, the faster your computer, the
less lag you will notice. So if you’ve got a newer computer, you may not run into this problem at
all.

Dual core processors + multiple instances

Unfortunately VSTs built with SynthEdit are not properly compatible with dual core processors.
Single instances work fine, but multiple instances can cause crashes in hosts that have multi
processor support activated. Jeff McClintock, SynthEdit’s creator, is aware of the problem and has
mentioned that the fix for it will be in the next update (1.1) of SynthEdit. As soon as Jeff releases
this fix, I will release an update to Tunguska to solve this problem. In the meantime, there are a
few workarounds for this issue.

1. Make additional copies of the Tunguska dll for each extra instance you expect to need, and
give each a new name. (eg: tunguska2.dll, tunguska3.dll, etc.) Hosts consider each an individual
instance, and therefore do not run into the multiple instance conflict.

2. Freeze each instance before loading another one, especially if your host has an “unload while
frozen” option.

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3. Turn off multi processing in your host. Of course this is the least desirable of the three options
since it negates the benefit of having a dual core, but it does work.

MIDI Chart

Parameter MIDI Parameter MIDI

Morph Slider CC 1 / Mod Wheel

Grain A X CC 2 Grain B X CC 4
Grain A Y CC 3 Grain B CC 5
Grain Morph CC 6 Grain AB CC 7
Grain Env Follower CC 29 Grain On CC 8

Dirt On CC 9 Downsampler CC 10

Filter A X CC 11 Filter B X CC 13
Filter A Y CC 12 Filter B Y CC 14
Filter On CC 15 Filter Env Follower CC 30
Filter Morph CC 16 Filter AB CC 17

Delay On CC 18 Delay Volume CC 19
Feedback CC 20 Stereo Spread CC 21
Speed 1 CC 22 Dot 1 CC 24
Speed 2 CC 23 Dot 2 CC 25

Input CC 26 Mix CC 27
Output CC 28

Envelope Sensitivity CC 31

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Credits

Tunguska 1.1
Created by: Ugo (Chris Sciurba)

www.ugoaudio.com
[e-mail]

This synth incorporates synthedit modules and prefabs by:

Chris Kerry - www.chriskerry.f9.co.uk
Dave Haupt- www.dehaupt.com
e-phonic- www.e-phonic.com
Etric Van Mayer - www.evmsynths.com
Kelly Lynch - www.rubidiumhexafluorosilicate.com/synthedit/
Lance Putnum - www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~ljputnam/synthedit.html
Rick Jelliffe - http://extra.schematron.com

Presets by:

PS - Jeff Rhodes of Perimeter Sound Arts
EA - Elvar Aron
Ugo

Additional thanks:

Jeff McClintock, for creating SynthEdit
Steinberg, for inventing VST
The Yahoo SynthEdit users group
KVR - www.kvraudio.com

License Info

1.Do not distribute this VST or install it on other people’s computers. This is a single user license
so if you know someone who might like this product, please encourage them to buy copy of their
own. So feel free to spread the word about how great the Ironhead/Tunguska bundle is, but just
don’t spread the VSTs themselves.

2.You are using this software at your own risk. While I do what I can to prevent trouble, I claim no
responsibility for damage to your hardware, software, income, reputation, sleep habits, hat size,
or person should something go wrong.

3.You may transfer your license if you wish, but you must arrange it with me first so the new
owner can get tech support and updates.

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