Front panel¶
The Front panel of the PolyPulse is divided into different sections. This page will guide you through all sections.
The instrument is split into two main sections. The touchpads and the mixer up top give direct control over all five tracks, while the section below the touchpads only control one track at a time.
Track controls¶
Up top you will find the mixer. Each track has the following controls:
volume sets the track volume.
send sets the amount of signal sent into the effects bus. By default the effects send is routed to the Audio effects chain of track 5.
track opens the track in the editor below.
edit+track opens the track settings menu.
At the start of each note the LED blinks and the pulse mini jack sends out a short trigger.
The black square is a touchpad that is used for Morphing between four different sounds.
Additionally track 1 has a clock input mini jack and track 2 a reset input mini jack allowing for synchronization to external sequencers Sync with other gear.
Tip
The brightness of the LED when it blinks is an indicator of the track’s volume, so you can get an idea of what tracks are playing notes and if they are supposed to be audible.
As these controls are always accessible and unaffected by any menu’s that might be opened on the screen, the track controls play an important role during performances on stage. The volume control allows you to mix, add and remove the different parts of your composition, and the morphing touchpad provides expressive control over the sound engines.
Editor¶
Numpad and screen¶
The screen is used to navigate through different GUI’s and menu’s. The main parameter GUIs are automatically opened based on user interaction.
For example: after touching one of the sequencers encoders the sequencer GUI is opened.
files opens the file browser used to load and save projects, sounds and samples. See Projects and files.
samples opens the sample manager which is used to organize samples into lists that can be played by the various sound engines. See Sample lists.
FX switches between controlling the synthesis engine or audio effects with the sixteen encoders on the right side of the instrument. See Audio effects
settings opens the PolyPulse settings menu.
edit+settings opens the firmware menu where you can see what firmware version is running, reboot the firmware and safely shutdown the PolyPulse.
The four orange keys in a row: pattern, notelist, cue, and morph are used in combination with the numbered piano keyboard keys to select different slots. For example: holding down pattern while pressing 7 will switch to pattern 7 on the current track. Key combinations like this are listed as pattern+# in the manual, with # referring to any of the numbered keys.
Encoders¶
The PolyPulse has two banks of sixteen encoders:
The encoders on the left side of the numpad are used to control the Poly pulse sequencer. These encoders directly correspond a set of parameters whose names are printed on the panel.
The encoders on the right side of the numpad are used to control the Sound engines, Audio effects and Assignable modulators. As what parameter then encoder controls depends on the screen that is opened, there are no parameter names printed on the panel.
To see what parameters drawn on the screen correspond to which encoders on the instrument, look at the rectangles in the lower left corner of the screen:
In this screenshot we can see that we are currently editing track 3, because we see the number ‘3’ the screen and the third big rectangle is highlighted. Looking at the twelve highlighted rectangles we can see that the parameters on the screen correspond to the the following twelve encoders:
