Surge Manual

[Ronald Frison]

Thisfirst section is intended to give you a brief overview of some conceptsthat are specific to this synthesizer and an introduction on how to navigate,manipulate, and use Surge to its full potential.

The VST3 version of the plug-in should be automatically installed in the default VST3 plug-in location andshould be found by your host application. However, the Windows version also comes with a portable mode:

To install, run the packaged installer. You will be given the option of automatically installing theAU Surge.component and the VST3 Surge.vst3 to their correct locations.The factory presets and wavetables will also be automatically installed.

This option allows you to type in the desired value of a parameter. Once the value popup appears, its text will alreadybe highlighted, and you can start typing the value right away. When you are done, simply press Enter to confirmthe change. To cancel and close this popup, simply press the Escape key or move any other parameter.

If a control is modulated, there will also be edit options for the amount of modulation for each modulation source.The entered value corresponds to the position of the modulation slider (blue slider) for that modulation source (see Routing for more information).

Some parameters can be activated or deactivated. If a slider appears transparent or is missing its handle,in some cases, it can be because the parameter is deactivated. To toggle it, simply use this option.

This is where you assign a MIDI controller to the desired slider. To abort MIDI learning on that parameter,simply right-click again and the option will now become Abort Parameter MIDI Learn.

This menu entry allows to directly modulate the right-clicked parameter from any modulation source in Surge.Once a source is selected, a pop-up window will appear and allow you to enter the desired modulation amount fromthat source.

There are two setups of all controls within the Scene section of the user interface.The Scene Select buttons [AB] determine which one is selected for editing.Right-clicking on these buttons brings up a context menu that allows you to copy/paste scene content.

Depending on the Scene Mode, these two buttons could also be used to choose which scene will be played.Indeed, whether a scene will generate a voice when a key is pressed is determined by the Scene Mode setting:

In both Key Split and Dual mode, if MPE is disabled, the system also supports MIDI channel routing where Channel 2 plays onlyScene A and channel 3 plays only Scene B. MIDI channel 1 and all other channels higher than 3 play the Split/Dual mode.

Finding sounds in Surge is easy: just press the arrow buttonsuntil you find something you like. If you left-click the patch-namefield (anywhere in the white area), a menu will list all availablepatches arranged into categories. A right-click will bring up a menu with just thepatches of the current category.

Clicking the store button of the patch browser opens the store dialog.This is where you name your new patch and choose which category itshould belong in. You can also create a new category manually here aswell. The patches you store will end up in the user section at the bottomof the patch menu. The store dialog also provides text fields for the name of the patch creatorand comments.

For instance, the first time you press the Tune button if no custom tuning is loaded, it will open the same menuas if you would have right-clicked on that button. Once a custom tuning is loaded however, left-clicking on it willturn the loaded tuning on or off.

Global Volume controls the last gain stage before the output. TheVU meter above it shows the output level and will become red if it goesabove 0 dBFS. You can choose to hard clip the global output either at+18 dBFS (default) or 0 dBFS.

Attack, Decay and Release are time-based parameters and can be tempo-synced by right-clicking on one ofthose sliders. You will also find an option to tempo-sync those three controls at once for each envelope generator.

If the envelope mode is set to Digital, there will be small adjustable orange fieldson the graphic. Dragging them horizontally allows you to choose the curvature of the different stages of the envelope.

Amp Vel. - Controls how the Amp Gain scales with velocity. Thisis neutral at the maximum position. Other settings provide attenuationat lower velocities, thus this setting will never increase the AmpGain parameter by velocity.

The modulation section is different from the sound generationand shaping sections as no audio data is passed through it. Instead itallows you to control the parameters in the other sections from varioussources.

You can also directly access the numerical modulation amount dialog (explained here)by holding down Ctrl/Cmd on the keyboard, then dragging the desired modulation source over the target parameter.

When clicking on one of the LFO buttons in the routing bar, both the LFO sourceselection and the LFO editor will be selected. However, the two actions can be separated, as you can choose which button is selected as the modulation routing source, and at the same time edit parameters from a differentLFO than the source.

This effectively lets you modulate the parameters of one LFO with any other mod source(s).However, as an example, note that logistically, an S-LFO can modulate parameters of an LFO, butan LFO cannot modulate parameters of an S-LFO(see Voice modulators vs. Scene modulators).

One one hand, a voice modulator has separate modulation paths for each voice, meaning it cancontrol voice-level parameters (like filter cutoff) but cannot control scene level parameters (like FX levels or scene pitch).

You will indeed clearly hear the cutoff of the filter moving independently for each note, which gives the impression that there are three LFOs and three filters (which there actually is!).The same principle applies for envelopes.

Compared to some other synthesizers, Surge does not have dedicated LFO, Envelope, Step sequencer orMSEG modulation sources. Instead, those are integrated within every LFO. This effectively enables theflexibility of having up to 12 LFOs, envelopes, step sequencers or MSEGs, and everything in between simply bychanging their shape.

Depending on the selected shape for a particular LFO, its name in the routing bar will change.When using the first 6 waveforms, it will be called LFO. However, when using the envelope shape, ENVwill be displayed, SEQ will be displayed when the step-sequencer is used, and for the MSEG, MSEGwill be displayed. Scene LFOs have their equivalent labels as well:

The Envelope Generators are of the 6-stage DAHDSR type that aremultiplied with the waveform generator, no matter what the selected LFO shape is.This means that if the LFO shape is set to Envelope, the output will simply be 100%,and can then be shaped by the LFO EG.

The two blue markers define loop-points in which thesequence will repeat once it gets into the loop. The left mouse button isused for drawing while the right one can be used to clear the values tozero.

The step sequencers inside voice LFOs have an extra lane at the top of thestep editor allowing to re-trigger the two regular voice envelopes(The Amplitude and Filter Envelope Generators) when the smallrectangle is filled at that particular step.

However, shift-clicking or right-clicking those rectangles allows the specified step in the sequencer to onlytrigger one of the two envelopes. When the step is half-filled on the left,only the filter envelope will be triggered. When filled on the right, only the amplitude envelope will be triggered.

The Deform parameter gives the Step Seq waveform a lot of flexibility. A value of0% will output the steps just as they look on the editor. Negativevalues will give an increasingly spiky waveform while positive valueswill make the output smoother.

To open this MSEG editing window, you can either click on the little pencil button next to the wave display (1),click on the wave display itself (2), or double-click on the MSEG icon in the modulation type selector (3):

Each segment has options in a context menu which can be accessed with a right-click in thearea of that segment. Some of them are only applied to the right-clicked segment, while others are appliedto the whole shape:

To the left of the Rate parameter, a small menu icon can be found. Clicking on it will reveal options tosave the selected LFO state, open previously saved states, and finally rescan presets to update the list.Presets will be categorized by modulation shape.

Finally, after setting up an LFO, its settings can be copied and pasted to another LFOsimply by right-clicking on any of them in the blue routing bar and using the option Copy and Paste.

By default, this modulation source is bipolar. However, you can switch to a unipolar version of it byright-clicking on it and selecting Switch to Random Unipolar. The two can also be used at the same time,so they can be considered two independent modulation sources.

Note that multiple parameters routed to that modulation source will all receive the same value (in percentage).To send different randomized values to different parameters, multiple LFOs can beconfigured in a way to do this and with greater control. See the explanation ofthe Rate parameter.

By default, this modulation source is bipolar. However, you can switch to a unipolar version of it byright-clicking on it and selecting Switch to Alternate Unipolar. The two can also be used at the same time,so they can be considered two independent modulation sources.

3a8082e126