Audio Input
The harp can be played by sound as well as by wind. Your DAW can feed audio into the plugin -- a voice, a guitar, a field recording, a whole mix -- and blend it in with the drone.
It is off until you ask for it, twice over. The plugin's audio input starts switched off, and the input itself starts disconnected, so nothing you have already saved sounds any different. To use it you need to do two things:
- Route audio to the plugin in your DAW. How you do this depends on the host -- in most it is a sidechain or side-chain input on the plugin's slot. Some hosts connect it for you the moment you open the plugin; that on its own still changes nothing, because of step 2.
- Switch the input on with Audio In On. Until that moves, the input is silent.
Once it is on, Audio In Route decides what the input does.
Strings -- the harp resonating what you play into it. This is the setting the input starts on, and the interesting one. Your audio is fed into the twelve strings the same way the wind is, so they ring in sympathy with it -- through the materials, the tuning, the mutes, the coupling and the body you already have set up. Play a voice, a drum loop or a pad into it and you hear your harp answering it, not a filter. Bring Audio In Drive up for more of it. The sound you get is your patch's, so it changes completely when you change preset, retune a string or mute one.
Two things are worth knowing. You do not need Audio In Direct up to hear this -- with Direct at zero you hear only the harp ringing, and nothing of the input itself, which is often what you want. And the wind does not have to be blowing: turn Wind right down and the strings live entirely off what you play into them, which is the plugin used as a resonator rather than as a drone.
Body -- playing through the box. The input goes into the hollow wooden body instead of the strings, so it takes on the cabinet colour of whichever Body shape you have chosen, without the strings pitching it. A quicker, plainer effect than Strings, and a good one on a full mix.
FX sends the input to the reverb and delay only, and Modulate adds nothing to the mix at all -- it is the route to pick when the only thing you want the input to do is drive a control, which is the next section. Whichever route you pick, Audio In Direct independently sets how much of the raw input you hear alongside the drone -- so on Strings or Body you can have the resonance alone, the input alone, or any blend of the two.
Letting the input drive the wind. Whatever route you choose, the plugin also listens to how loud the incoming audio is and can use that to move one of the harp's own controls. Turn Audio In Env Amount up and the control named by Audio In Env Target rises and falls with the input: sing louder and the wind gets up, stop and it settles again. Wind is where it starts and is the one to try first -- the harp gusts in time with what you play into it -- but you can point it at Gust, Turbulence, Brightness, Body or Sympathy instead.
Audio In Env Attack and Audio In Env Release set how quickly it reacts and how slowly it lets go. Short values chase every syllable; longer ones follow the shape of a phrase. The release is longer than the attack to start with, so the harp swells with you and eases back rather than chattering.
Two things worth knowing. This works on every route, not just Modulate -- so a single vocal can ring the strings and drive the wind at the same time. And it never actually moves the on-screen control or writes anything into your preset: the lean is live only, so your patch is exactly as you left it, and your DAW's automation lanes stay clean. What the input is doing to the sound also pauses for a moment while you change preset, then picks up again -- the same way the pitch-bend wheel behaves.
There are no on-screen controls for it yet. This first release makes the input available from your DAW's own list of the plugin's controls (the generic parameter view, and anything you can automate), so you can already record it and automate it. Dials on the plugin's own panel come in a later version.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Audio In On | The master switch. Off means the input is not listened to at all. |
| Audio In Gain | Trim for the incoming signal, from silence up to a healthy boost. |
| Audio In Pan | Places the input left or right. Centre leaves it exactly as it arrived. |
| Audio In Phase Invert | Flips the input's polarity -- useful if blending it against the drone thins the sound out. |
| Audio In Low Cut / High Cut | Trims the bottom and top off the input before it is blended, so it sits under the drone rather than fighting it. Both start fully open. |
| Audio In Route | Where the input is sent: Strings rings the harp with it, Body plays it through the box, FX sends it to the reverb and delay only, and Modulate adds nothing to the mix -- pick it when all you want the input to do is drive a control. Starts on Strings. |
| Audio In Drive | How hard the input drives the strings, or the body. At zero the input does not reach the model at all. |
| Audio In Direct | How much of the input you hear blended in with the drone. Starts at zero. |
| Audio In Env Amount | How far the incoming audio's loudness pushes the control below. At zero it does nothing at all, which is where it starts. |
| Audio In Env Target | Which control the input drives: Wind, Gust, Turbulence, Brightness, Body or Sympathy. Starts on Wind. |
| Audio In Env Attack | How quickly it reacts to the input getting louder, from a twitch to a slow swell. |
| Audio In Env Release | How slowly it lets go again once the input quietens. |
The input goes through the plugin's reverb and delay along with the drone, so an effect you switch on treats both as one sound rather than leaving the input dry on top.
Changing preset while audio is playing into it does not interrupt the resonance. The harp crosses over from the old patch's strings to the new one's without a gap, so a voice you are resonating keeps ringing through the change rather than dropping out in the middle of a take.
Bypass passes audio through. Once you have routed audio in and switched Audio In on, bypassing the plugin passes that audio straight to the output instead of going silent -- a bypassed plugin behaves like a piece of wire, which is what a bypass on an effect slot is expected to do. If you have not switched Audio In on, bypass is silent exactly as before. The switch matters here because some DAWs connect the input for you without being asked, and a bypassed instrument should not start playing something you never chose to feed it.