Radias transpose glitch-Just me??

synthjunkie · Post by **synthjunkie** » Thu May 16, 2013 3:27 am

Hi, I just got my Radias used from the Guitar Center. Oddly enough, they packed it horribly and one of the rack ear corners was actually bent pretty good. I have played through all of the sounds and tested all of the buttons and knobs and it appears that everything is working well, except I ran into an oddity when transposing the octave down from my midi connected keyboard (novation ultranova).

On some sounds, when I change to the sound and play it, it's fine. When I then hit the octave down button on the keyboard, the sound is transposed down by an octave but the sounds is altered. It sounds harsh and wrong. If I transpose back up, it's normal again. If I do the exact same thing and transpose up by an octave instead of down, there's no change.

If I change to another sound, then transpose down, then switch to the sound it just happened on, it plays fine in the lower octave.

Is this a known issue? It looks like I have version 2.0 loaded and it doesn't happen on every sound.

For instance, on factory preset A12-Wave Pluckin, I switch to the sound with the keyboard not transposed at all. It sounds fine. Then I transpose down an octave (hitting octave - button on midi keyboard). The sound is distorted and almost sounds like a sub osc was added and detuned with distortion. I'll switch to the next sound, and it won't happen at all. I'll then keep it transposed down on the next patch and switch back to A12. It plays in the lower octave just fine without any change in sound. If I stay on that patch, transpose up, it's fine, then transpose back down again and it sounds distorted again.

I'm sure it's a glitch since it doesn't happen on every sound. I just want to make sure getting banged up in shipping didn't cause any strange issues.

Thanks for your time and help!!

xmlguy · Post by **xmlguy** » Thu May 16, 2013 5:51 am

You have discovered the evil magic of what happens when you stretch a wave beyond its ability to make any sense. It's like what happened to Gollum after wearing his precious one ring for too long. Originally he was a regular Hobbit, but then he got stretched into oblivion so much by wearing the ring over centuries that he became a sad, horrible remnant of himself.

That particular program took a rather normal kalimba PCM sound that was actually a drum PCM, and then already pitch shifted it down by more than 4 octaves (transposed down by a value of minus 52), so that when you hit transpose once more, you made it lose its mind entirely. You can't pitch shift sounds infinitely up or down without unavoidable side effects. You were already at the limit with that sound, and you crossed over when you hit transpose one more time.

The good news is that it looks like your Radias is working fine. The bad news is that you won't be able to transpose that sound down any further. But, you could reprogram a similar sound using synthesis to simulate the same elements of a kalimba, which you can transpose down to the point below your subwoofer's ability to reproduce it. That will require some synth programming skill, and the Radias is a great synth to use to do it. A kalimba will usually require at least two synth timbres, one for the percussive strike and another for the metallic resonance.

synthjunkie · Post by **synthjunkie** » Thu May 16, 2013 12:52 pm

Thanks for your response xmlguy. While I understand what you're saying, I don't understand why that would the issue. I say that only because if I transpose the keyboard down an octave *BEFORE* switching to that specific patch-then switch to that patch, there are no problems and the sound plays perfectly an octave lower with no strangeness.

It's only when I am already on the sound and transpose down that the issue appears. Even if I transpose down 2 octaves before switching to that specific patch (or any other patch I found this happening on), and then switch to the patch, the sound is fine sonically and is transposed to the right place.

I'm assuming it's some sort of SW bug but if it is, I'm sure others have noticed it. I just want to make sure it's not me.

I appreciate your reply

Synthoid · Post by **Synthoid** » Thu May 16, 2013 1:14 pm

xmlguy wrote:you crossed over

...to the dark side.

May the oscillator be with you.

xmlguy · Post by **xmlguy** » Thu May 16, 2013 4:27 pm

If you want to find out exactly what's causing this problem, you can do so by following two simple strategies: divide and conquer, and "which one of these is not like the other".

Since you observe that the problem you see only occurs on some programs but not others, then there MUST be a difference in the programming that specifically accounts for the difference in the behavior.

You can use divide and conquer to narrow down which parameter(s) is responsible for the behavior.

The most obvious differences between the A12 patch with others is that it:

Uses a Drum PCM waveform
It's radically detuned
It uses a comb filter

There are other differences, but those are the most likely suspects. You do have the Radias software editor downloaded and running, right? You'll probably never find out the difference if you have to do menu diving to change parameters between tests. So change a parameter, test transpose to see how it's affected, then repeat. You can exclude whole sections of the synth by changing one or two key parameters. For example, you can disable the effect of the filters by changing the routing to single, the type to lowpass, and the cutoff to maximum - allowing everything to pass throught the filter untouched. The virtual patches can all be set to intensity 0. etc. etc. etc. one section at a time, do a quick test before and after, if no change after, then you know that whole section had no effect.

Start cutting out sections until you see transpose change behavior. It will happen sometime before you get to a basic init patch.

synthjunkie · Post by **synthjunkie** » Thu May 16, 2013 8:29 pm

Thanks again. It's not the Drum PCM. I tested it a little more. It happens on several sounds in the Strings/Pad category. In that category, Patches A,B,C&D-11 work fine when transposed. But then patches E,F,G,H-11 exhibit the issue when transposed. it almost seems like when I transpose the LFO rate goes bonkers (fast).

I'll pull up the editor and take a closer look. I was just wondering if other people saw this same issue or if it had something to do with my specific unit.

I just got the Radias yesterday so i need to spend a little more time understanding the patch layout before I can analyze this issue.

Can I ask, do you, or anyone else find this problem on these specific patches??

If not, then I think I may return this unit since I reset everything to factory default. If you don't have the problem and I do, then it's defective...I would think.

xmlguy · Post by **xmlguy** » Thu May 16, 2013 9:45 pm

Unfortuately, I can't confirm the problem because I've got a halfaRadias - better known as an R3.

A lot of things on the R3 are identical to the Radias, but the problem you describe isn't one of them. Maybe someone else can confirm.

X-Trade · Post by **X-Trade** » Sun May 19, 2013 5:38 pm

I don't have the default preset bank loaded on my Radias, otherwise I'd have a look.

I expect a lot of radias owners also clear it out and reprogram from scratch as I don't think the presets were very good.. Rather they were very good but a lot of them weren't really useable as they were too 'show-offy'.

synthjunkie · Post by **synthjunkie** » Mon May 20, 2013 7:20 pm

Thanks all for the input. Didn't really spend the time yet to figure out what was wrong with those original patches but have loaded other patch sets and fiddled around with my own and haven't seen the issue crop up again. Just glad to know it wasn't something wrong with the Radias.\

This synth is definitely going into my live rig once I get everything programmed and get the keyboard for it.