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MFA-EXTENDED User Manual (English Version) v1.0

1. slow tast erwi ar env3 amt mii mode selx atia ENV3 MODULATION target 9 0 a JT J ae rate key depth phase wave s o AUEQ o ZA imersa Sr MEOE EEU EEO J i J rane key depth phase wave mode ome niig i E BROWSER E EFFECTS PHRASEIATOR E SETTINGS The Main Page The MAIN PAGE is divided into five sections that are pretty self explanatory if you are familiar with subtractive synthesizers Experts might skip this chapter though would still recommend a quick scan of the following since some things still might seem slightly unusual in comparison to the very simple synths like the MiniMoog or other ancient models OSCILLATORS This section is only available with the MFA EXTENDED the generic instrument and sets the basic waveforms its pitch and levels You have two oscillators 1 and 2 plus a noise generator which works independently Each oscillator offers 42 different combinations of waveforms SINE OSC1 or TRIANGLE OSC2 SAWTOOTH and PULSE sampled in 13 different width modes All combinations are sampled per key 85 samples ranging from C O to C 7 and do not contain any digital summing since this simply wouldn t sound authentic If you dial in both oscillators and or the noise the signals will be digitally summed but this works pretty well WAVEFORM SELECTORS SINE TRI and SAW can be set on or off with their corresponding buttons x r y ar E _ If the button is lit orange the waveform is activ
2. are located on the right side of your USER PATCH list To avoid o FE accidental overwriting of other patches only the active purple USER PATCH can be re saved with a simple click on the corresponding SAVE button If you for any reason like re ordering or cleaning want to overwrite a USER PATCH that is not active click on the corresponding SAVE button with the SHIFT key held Due to technical restrictions the amount of available USER PATCH slots is limited to 240 If you reach the last USER PATCH slot a warning will appear and the SAVE button in the SAVE CURRENT area will be disabled If you need more patches please refer to the EXPERTS SECTION to learn how this can be done DELETING PATCHES It s not possible to delete USER PATCHES what should that be good for If you created a custom patch by accident the slot can still be used for any other patch in the future by overwriting it remember to hold the SHIFT key to overwrite a patch that is not activated USING MULTIPLE INSTANCES If you are using multiple instances of either the MFA ONE or the MFA EXTENDED any USER PATCHES you save in one instance will be available in all other instances It doesn t matter if you arrange multiple ATCs inside one KONTAKT or load multiple KONTAKT instances You don t need to care about the last saving position when you are working with multiple MFAs at once the browser will always know the next free slot and automatically selects
3. please Believe me I m not a virgin when it comes to downloading sample libraries or software the easy way And admittedly I m probably lucky that had some good times where earned some money enabling me to not only buy the stuff that used but also the stuff that liked and it has been a pleasure to support the developers who deserved it don t know if these guys who always claim try before buy or buy it if you use it a lot were ever serious about that but even if they were I m afraid they also ruined a lot of people s lives albeit single developers or employees at bigger companies And the scene group members know that Otherwise they wouldn t place such statements inside of their nfo files There seems to be some kind of common bad conscious which hopefully doesn t only belong to the scene members but also belongs to you the musicians On the opposite do understand the idea behind this kind of thinking and still dislike some companies behavior when it comes to overpricing due to a good copy protection or overdone copy protection itself Both are disgusting for loyal users and always useless History shows that it is just a matter of time until any C R eLicenser or iLok2 are cracked Furthermore dislike the idea of treating occasional illegal users in a similar way to real criminals who hurt or kill people or steal or rob It s not like that Last but not least do understand t
4. INTRODUCTION The library you ve purchased tries to be as authentic as technically possible and you will hopefully recognize that it s invaluable to have such a powerful tool at your fingertips This has not happened before and admit to be very proud of this product which closes a gap between VA virtual analog the usual sample libraries and the real hardware Let me explain this It s impossible to recreate an analog synth in all its detail This is a bad start for this manual from a marketing point of view But it s true There are two kinds of approaches VA and sampled Most sample libraries that we know today have the problem of sounding very static and machine gun like when it comes to simulating synths Not to mention that none of them offers realistic pitch glide random deviation and formant correct samples some of them try to live with as little as with 1 5 zones per preset There are a few better replications on the market but a full range sampled synth with such a powerful engine has simply not been there before Well here you go When it comes to virtual synths the VA section seems to be quite developed so every week we are spammed with countless synths claiming to sound real Gimme a break Did you ever notice that they do not A real analog synth does simple things It relies on nature to calculate sounds faster than any CPU could It does not offer chorus or reverb because it simply doesn t need to
5. MEA EXTENDED Instruction Manual stop playing toys D raeh nynamicPurge iode z 19 000 samples j i 52 units In one DHRASEIATOR more than mic three unique built in patch sete analog amp hybrid enc CONTENTS Introduction About the MFA Watermarking Note on piracy QuickStart The Browser Loading Patches Saving Patches Main Page Oscillator section Filter section Envelope section Modulation section Glide section 4 MultiWaveMode SS SS Effects Real Chorus Jimmy Phaser Reverb Echo Phraseiator Settings Experts Section Credits o DD U KEY FACTS Two complete unique units within one library MFA ONE with 240 presets MFA EX with virtually unlimited patches 150 presets 240 user slots for custom presets per instrument More than 19 000 single samples 24bit Four filters Moog Oberheim Roland and Arp inside samples DynamicPurgeMode for intelligent memory management Easy to use custom patch browser New round robin and release engine for maximum authenticity Authentic mono engine with SmartRetrigger FX signatures captured from EVENTIDE TC and LEXICON hardware Real analog modeled chorus Top quality converters CraneSongHEDD 192 and RME QSeries Highly tweakable modulator matrix Sophisticated CHORD MACHINE construction engine Comprehensive ARPEGGIATOR Top modern MultiWaveMode MFA ONE Polyphonic mode And a lot lot more Chapter 1
6. side of the interface The display to the right eee shows the total amount of all activated steps in your chain One MULTIWAVE chain can have up to 128 steps The display to the left shows the LAST played step If it shows as seen in the illustration the chain will be restarted by the next played note Once the PLAY COUNT display has reached the number of total steps it will reset to 1 The button labeled with RESET MODE lets you choose when and how the step counter will be reset to zero To manually reset the counter set it to KEY To have your complete chain restarted whenever you want or need to just press the keyswitch BO the third lowest note on a 88 keyboard Of course you can and should use this whenever you are recording in a host software to ensure that your chain is always played as expected If you set the RESET MODE button to AUTO it will automatically reset after slightly less than one quarter note of silence i e all keys off to be more precise This is useful if you for example want to use the MULTIWAVE MODE together with the ARPEGGIATOR because it re synchronizes both engines if you start playing after a short rest SOME MORE WORDS That pretty much sums up the MULTIWAVE MODE I can only encourage you to play around with it as much as possible In many cases especially when used in KEY mode its results will appear quite random but once you got used to this new toy it wi
7. E a NOTE ORDER 88 8 0 o 0 Determines which note comes next if you play chords There are 14 different order types and DURATION RANGE SWING recommend fiddling around with them in in OCTAVES order to understand what they do exactly Just two presets need some explanation CHORD and YOU PLAY The first will repeat the complete chord that is played The latter will keep the order in which YOU PLAYed the notes and repeat this order continuously REPETITION SPEED Allows you to set the playing speed of the arpeggiator If you work inside a host software it will precisely synchronize to the host tempo With the standalone version of KONTAKT it will sync to the tempo that you have selected in the master section IMPORTANT If you work inside a host software and do not quantize things the ARPEGGIATOR behaves like what you play is what you hear That is very convenient in most cases but since nobody can predict the future it also introduces a recording latency which is unwanted once you quantize your playing If you have the Ay ARPEGGIATOR activated and quantized your recording you MUST dial in a time shift of 30ms in your host software for a precise tight playback LATCH MODE Here you can choose whether the arpeggiator stops or continues when you release the last note This is useful in some cases since it allows you to prepare nice new harmonies while the Arpeggiator continues The drawback is that it sucks
8. s the difference between the two instruments MFA ONE Inside this instrument s custom browser you will find a huge amount of preset patches Unlike the name they derivate from both SE synth units the ATC 1 and the ATC Xi The patch name tells you a few things about the sampled sound which was painstakingly multisampled per key from CO C1 to C7 C8 with up to eight velocity layers plus release tails if available and with round robin if necessary There are still a few things to notice Patches can either be ORI or HYB as indicated in the preset browsers headline The first means original and tells you that no modifications from the digital world of KONTAKT were made to get the sound of the hardware It s a kind of purist thing admittedly The extension HYB indicates that additional modules of KONTAKT have been used to achieve the result Don t be afraid this is no disadvantage to 98 of all users and I would bet to 100 of the audience With ORI patches most controls on the main page the main editing page are unavailable Ss hS With HYB patches you have full access to all digital domain controls again The two letters following the preset number indicate the type of the preset It s a rough o categorization and follows no rules but should give you an overview BS Bass LD Lead KY Key PD Pad CH Chord RY Rhythmic content FX Effect MFA EXTENDED This instrument is built
9. solution for the MFA ONE so the noise floor content was estimated on a per sample basis to get the correct reduction With any gain changes you apply i e ENV2 for volume control or that appear on sample release tails the overall noise might be slightly too quiet But I think the result is very close to the real hardware Please keep in mind that if you are in POLYPHONIC MODE the noise floor MUST sum up since the samples were not treated with artificial stuff like NR Noise Reduction to maintain the maximum quality Unless sell enough copies of the MFA EXTENDED I m unfortunately not able to get myself a CODE8 from StudioElectronics So you know what to do You might recognize that a lot of patches introduce a severe DC offset have investigated that further and tested five different SE units one of them the S6 000 flagship CODE8 thanks to Jorge The result was almost identical All SMART RETRIGGER TRIAL VERSION units show the same DC offset especially with the distortion unit activated even if it is set to zero It only appears if a sound is playing depending on the note s tune otherwise all units behaved perfectly You know what After dozens of hours and after DC correcting some samples to check what this changes I m convinced that one of the magic elements in the SE hardware is exactly this ever changing DC offset It s usually extreme on very low frequency notes but once you remove it the MFA ONE begin
10. INVERSION to 0 no inversion RESCALE SECTION This tool allows you to correct your playing according to the chosen scale and RE SCALE ma root key Imagine you have a song that is a in D MINOR and you want play along ROOT KEY without hitting any wrong notes Well just set the ROOT KEY to D and the RE SCALE to MINOR Now turn the activation switch on the left on Voila No matter what you play or what chord you may have programmed no note will ever disturb unless it s perfectly in D MINOR If you hit a note that is not in the scale it will be rescaled to the next upper matching note If you turn off all additional notes on the CHORD keyboard this will avoid any accidentally played notes don t know whether this function makes sense but as Nils already mentioned it s a great and intuitive learning tool Both blue TARGET buttons accept stepping backwards when holding the ALT OPTION key while you click on it ARPEGGIATOR On the right side of the PHRASEIATOR page you have the ARPEGGIATOR An arpeggiator repeats played notes depending on a variety of lt 2 ARPEGGIATOR NOTE ORDER J different settings and is still a very common tool in a lot of music productions since it was invented back in the 1960s REPETITION SPEED J Since this unit comes after the CHORD MACHINE it enables you to play complete LATCH MODE J passages with the strike of one note making it quite an impressive tool
11. Save function disabled Phraseiator not functional Cannot be rendered recorded or played back in host software CON DWM BP WN Limited demo patches 45 using only pure waveforms FAQS FAQs on V1 01 SPLASH SCREEN LIBRARY PRG CHANGES LOADING ANIMATION CONTROLLERS KONTAKT VERSION Yes they come from the beta testers No you cannot get rid of this silly dog tag splash screen A lot of functions that are necessary for the advanced file system of the MFA EX amongst other things need at least one user interaction This is why you have to click on your name The MFA EXTENDED cannot be added to the KONTAKT library list by default There are registry tricks to add anything to the library list but since this is probably not very legal cannot give you a description how this works Rumors say that some smart guy programmed a rather big search engine that wears the strange name Google A feature that is often overlooked is the QuickLoad function that KONTAKT offers Right click into the rack and then arrange your favorites as you like No fancy graphics but do we need that Implementing PRG CHANGE is more or less impossible since the engine needs some time to re initialize especially when you use the purge functions You are free to open as many instances of the MFA EXTENDED as you want for that purpose It unfortunately cannot appear as long as samples are really loaded into memory For the MFA EXT
12. The pA MFA EXTENDED like its hardware counterparts offers two W O Sy independent LFOs and they are represented in two rows ies wae one aes LFO RATE This controls how fast the modulation works Fully counter clockwise the LFO will work at approx 0 1Hz i e one cycle per 10 seconds fully clockwise it will go at around 250 cycles per second This is much faster than the hardware 50 sec would allow it but very nice for some real scary sound effects and even a simulation of an OSC sync or RingMod It s important to keep in mind that if the LFO WAVE is set to NOISE the LFO RATE control will be blocked for obvious reasons But it will of course remember the previous setting if you choose another waveform later LFO KEY Controls whether the LFO restarts on every new note or works continuously Lit orange when it restarts LFO DEPTH This knob controls how much of the LFO signal is attached to the selected target The further you turn it clockwise the heavier the modulation will be If you turn it all the way left no modulation will occur at all The LFO DEPTH knob has two different functions depending on what is set on the ENV3 TARGET menu When the ENV3 is set to LFO DEPTH it sets the maximum impact of the ENV3 on the depth regardless of any other settings Think of it as a kind of master knob If you want to have ENV3 full control over the selected LFO turn both the ENV3 AMT and the LFO DEPTH fully clockwise LFO P
13. To step through the presets click on the blue target button next to the preset display Once you have decided what to load just click the LOAD button below the preset display If it s grayed out it means that you cannot load this algorithm since it s already been loaded and active The presets wear names of world capital cities for a good reason Since the name is no indicator for the reverb effect sub type you will have to concentrate on the sound itself You can adjust the tonal character of the effect further using the following parameters e SEND e PREDELAY e LOWCUT e HIGHCUT SEND determines how much of the signal will be fed into the REVERB engine If turned fully counterclockwise the effect is turned off Be careful with your settings since it is easy to introduce distortion when setting the SEND level too high The PREDELAY determines the initial time delay gap ITDG This is the time difference between the original signal and the first audible reflection of the reverb engine LOWCUT and HIGHCUT allow for a frequency manipulation of the algorithms output where LOWCUT cuts the low frequencies and HIGHCUT cuts the high frequencies Surprisingly Be careful with this function It works on the impulse response rather than being a normal filter Therefore it may lead to some distortion if you hit specific frequencies Check it out it s hard to technically describe this phenomenon ECHO An ECHO also known as DELAY ad
14. and the shape is logarithmic This also depends on other parameters but it would exceed the purpose of this manual to write an in depth documentation about it An ENVELOPE shapes the signal over time and its most standard version has four controls to achieve that Attack Decay Sustain and Release ADSR Attack Decay and Release are time controlling knobs Sustain sets the level that will be present when a key is held right after passing the Attack and Decay times Attack and Decay times are relevant for the shape of the signal as long as a key is being pressed the Release time controls how long it takes until the signal is faded out to zero Sounds complicated Well just give it a try Load the default preset and turn the knobs on the ENV2 the VOLUME ENVELOPE play a few notes and see how the volume levels change over the time If you do the same with ENV1 the FILTER ENVELOPE don t forget that you will also have to lower the FREQUENCY and that you need to dial in at least some ENV1 AMT Both controls can be found in the FILTER section If for example you want the ENV1 to take full control of the filter set the FREQUENCY knob to zero and the ENV1 AMT to 127 fully clockwise You Il get used to it ENV3 is slightly more complex but also a very powerful and n l tricky tool The difference to the other ENVELOPES is that it target pose FES aJ can be assigned to 11 targets instead of being hard wired The target is selected with
15. do so On the other hand VA synths are well capable of doing waveforms that analog synths could never create Great Despite one exceptional VA plug in which will not name here their presets are covered with FX or offer weird modulation matrices to make them sound interesting right from the start or they are extremely CPU hungry still lacking the needed warmth and authenticity In the end all that matters is the pure sound No one cares if a waveform looks as expected if it sounds good Admittedly have also introduced a lot of FX with the MFA EXTENDED As far as convolution works they come from world class units the rest comes from KONTAKT itself For the purists out there please understand that having a good instant sound is also important for marketing But good news you have a built in option to turn all FX off on patch load By the way the chorus is not considered to be an effect because it actually is none instead of any DSP processing it takes surrounding or round robin samples detunes them at taste and spreads them in the panorama just like any capable analog synth would And now finally let s also bash the real analog world In the making of MFA EXTENDED quite a lot of people started to believe that I m a snake oil gearslut always choosing analog over digital vinyl over PCM vegetables over a burger They are wrong love burgers love the clarity of PCM love the possibilities that modern DSP programm
16. for most knobs and buttons if you hover over them with the mouse pointer And here is the next KONTAKT restriction bug This info is not shown for all buttons though it is written into the instruments programming code Third the target button which is used to scroll through the menus on most instruments k pages needs some justification It would have been far easier to program the usual up down aj arrows or something similar instead of this nasty button that only allows stepping into one direction Believe me But well this is just how the hardware works Since I m such a big hearted nice guy I ve implemented the feature to also step backwards hold the ALT OPTION key when clicking on long menus You may send me flowers Furthermore you should notice that you can always use the SHIFT and CTRL CMD keys for more convenient parameter editing SHIFT will allow fine adjustments CTRL CMD will reset knobs to their default value which depends on the parameter To see what you dial in all parameters will be shown in the corresponding page display see figure to the right This display s values usually range from 0 127 with some exceptions that are explained later in this manual Playing the MFA ONE patches you will notice that most of them repeat the octave between CO and C1 This is identical to the hardware All patches for those instruments have been sampled 1 1 and just a handful of the original patches can use the lowest oct
17. information from the D o M s hardware there is no need for an OSCILLATOR SECTION lt n Sa vs Depending on the kind of sound you ve loaded ORI or HYB the left most section of the MAIN PAGE will thus change the displayed control The illustration to the right shows the status of an ORI patch loaded into the MFA s memory but it looks an eno similar for HYB patches with the exception that the VOLUME ton I te ENVELOPE is at its usual place see below TIME STRETCHING DISPLAY Of course there is a reason why the VOLUME ENVELOPE is different on ORI patches It behaves different Basically it still offers you the usual ADSR stuff but it is optimized to preserve the original hardware experience Let s not get into the details too far feel free to write me an email in case you are interested Two things are important With some ORI patches the release knob is unavailable and shows a grayed out lock symbol instead This means that the patch features authentic release samples which can O of course not be altered The other important thing to keep in mind is that you can ab use the ADSR as a volume knob just turn both attack and decay fully counterclockwise 0 and adjust the patch volume with the sustain knob TIME STRETCHING A few patches in the MFA ONE have rhythmical content to capture all nuances of the filter section To enable you to have them in sync to your music they offer time stretching There is only one si
18. it for your next precious patch The only thing you should keep in mind is that if two or more MFAs of the same kind i e MFA ONEs are showing the browser page the browser will NOT refresh automatically once you save or modify a USER PATCH because you definitely don t want the MFA to scan the HD every few milliseconds To refresh the browser just click on the BROWSER PAGE button again and voila here you go Again you don t need to be afraid that one instance would ever overwrite or delete any previously saved patch This is not possible unless you force the application to do so with holding SHIFT and clicking SAVE recommend using multiple instances of KONTAKT instead of creating a multi instrument that contains more than two MFA EXs or three MFA ONEs Depending on how many cores your system has and other parameters this will soeed up things significantly Chapter 3 MAIN PAGE The MAIN PAGE is the engine core of the MFA EXTENDED library Here you will find the majority of parameters and controls that also exist in the real StudioElectronics hardware It might appear quite small in the beginning but I m pretty sure you will get used to it The great advantage is that you have almost the full control over your sound without the need to scroll through many sub pages p OSCILLATORS FILTER ENVELOPES Vy atiack FREQUENCY RESONANCE o O ta TIME STRETCHING Q a anas gt j h Q g
19. know PURGE STANDARD DynPurgeMode and LOADALL They can be accessed on the browser page By clicking one of the first four LOAD buttons in the MFA ONE HYBRID patch list with the SHIFT key being pressed the commands will be executed and are confirmed by the built in woman s voice over an acoustical feedback Sounds complex but just check it and you ll see She will explain what s going on e PURGE LOAD button 1 will unload all previously loaded samples from your RAM except the basic waveforms and the patch that is currently loaded and will then automatically switch to the DynPurgeMode see below e STANDARD LOAD button 2 enables the mode where any loaded samples will be held in the RAM until you close KONTAKT or hit PURGE e DynPurgeMode LOAD button 3 will unload the last used samples when you load another patch That means that the used RAM will always be the same depending on the size of the newest loaded patch alone e LOAD ALL LOAD button 3 loads the whole library into the RAM Be careful with this command unless you have at least 18GB on your DAW decided to leave this function accessible since it makes sense if you want to evaluate the whole library on a rainy evening Just make sure you select PURGE after you re done especially inside a host software HINTS In most situations you will not need to change anything the standard mode will suit you well If you run out of memory just select PURGE SHIFT LOAD1
20. machines like microQs NordLeads SuperNovas VirusTIs etc or even to real hardware machines but those situations were rare Sometimes used a LittlePhatty for some bass lines or my Voyager for screaming stuff but in the end that was no cure since the modern MOOG collection has brilliant keyboards with overheard bread and butter sounds To make a long story short in summer 2011 listened to some tracks that a neighbor of mine Stephan Bodzin a world renowned minimalist DJ composer had made and was thrilled by the great sound of the bass lines And then with one of his songs realized why those bass lines are so overwhelming I ve just heard a preset from the ATC 1 A whole song was made out of this formant shaping vowel preset that is active after the ATC 1 boots up Now you can use it on your own it s BS Yeah from the MFA ONE folder spent a long time on eBay to get an ATC 1 in good shape and right after that decided to buy another ATC Xi due to some modifications that just wanted to have So now more than one year later all this analog power is at your fingertips Well the ATC Xi not yet but guess what s coming next after you explored the endless possibilities of this library WATERMARKING Some anti piracy mechanisms went into this library but the most effective one is probably the watermarking As you might have noticed before downloading your copy it took some time to prepare your archives so that the
21. square There s a great article about this at http www soundonsound com sos Mar03 articles synthsecrets47 asp and it actually works More or less I ve spent about three weeks to implement PWM in the MFA EXTENDED Having two saw waveforms with a 180 phase moving sample offsets by script adding flangers trying square based pitch LFO using special recorded samples and moving the loop starts accordingly to the sample starts it all failed greatly Once it sounded like a PWM modulation but the speed was beyond control Then it phased out at some pitches Later it just sounded dull or harsh or whatever SAMPLES One day beta tester Nils said hey just re script the GUI and forget it No one will miss it but you it s already in the presets Yes think so No library of this size can be perfect To record edit and loop 16 000 samples took about 480 hours of work not to mention the programming and conception Believe me you definitely go nuts and even worse you become frequency deaf when you loop samples for more than 2 3 hours Thanks to my beta testers think that there will hopefully be no or just a few real clicks or pops but some heavy modulated samples from the ATC 1 are a nightmare to loop so it s all a compromise I m very happy if you would report any issues to me but just a few remarks before you start 1 Clicks that appear on start or end points of a sample are most likely NOT in the sample itself
22. that s it Thanks to the custom browser there is nothing else you have to do Things are different when you work in a host sequencing software When you save your project the instrument that has been loaded into KONTAKT will be included as it is including all the program code Opening your project will thus reload the version of the MFA EXTENDED which has been used in the project regardless if you have received and installed an update or not You can even delete the old instrument i e the NKI file not the samples or other resources from your HD the project will still load So if you receive an update and place the new instrument file into the MFA EXTENDED library folder you still have to load the update into KONTAKT inside of your host software No big deal since all your patches will of course remain untouched but if you need some of the bugfixes and or future enhancements you first have to reload the updated version into KONTAKT If you did rely on TotalRecall which should be the case you first have to save all used patches within the MFA EXTENDEDs browser before you can use your custom settings in the updated version Or just leave everything as it was hey you made your work with the old version didn t you and just load the updated version for all future projects REMARKS amp KNOWN ISSUES KONTAKT CPU HOST ISSUES PITCH Programming KONTAKT means spending 20 of the precious time for programming work
23. the HQI perfect algorithm but it s also a real CPU monster and its range is limited First wrote a script that would trigger higher samples instead of using the engine detune but the only difference that recognized was the significant higher RAM load due to extra samples from MIDI notes 104 127 With most of the ORI patches keys in the octave range 1 2 MIDI notes 24 35 are repeated one octave higher This is intended and reflects the behavior of the StudioElectronics hardware Most parameters of the MFA EXTENDED can be automated Though the internal routing matrix of the instrument already offers a lot of assignments you are free to either use your hardware controller or at least your host software to remotely access anything you want to Refer to the KONTAKT manual to learn how this can be done Basically just right click on any knob and hit LEARN Move your controller and that s it By the way Some knobs are already pre automated the expression pedal CC 11 goes to the ARPEGGIATOR duration the rest is programmed for the MOOG LittlePhatty Stagell as a remote control since used this unit to check the automation functionality One might think that it would be nice to have the time stretching available for all MFA ONE patches rather than only a few Yes At the moment of writing this is not possible Applying KONTAKT s time stretch algorithms to a sound affects deteriorates the sonic quality even with a se
24. the lower part of the arpeggiator display will change as shown in the illustration to the right Once selected the triangle toggles between the two editor modes VELO MUTE and DURATION If you want to go back to the basic press the triangle once more The VELO MUTE editor enables you to program repeating velocity curves and note mutes First VELO MUTE you need to turn it on with the metal switch on o the left Then you should decide how many z steps the pattern should have using the small slider that can be found directly below the purple pattern display The minimum amount of steps is 2 the maximum amount is 16 If you click on the slider and hold the CTRL CMD key it will snap to 8 steps Use the mouse to draw your velocity mute pattern As long as you hold the left mouse button the setting of each bar will follow your movement To draw a line do the same with the right mouse button pressed To mute a note just set the corresponding bar to the minimum value The DURATION editor lets you program the note length of each step In the middle of the pattern DURATION display you will see a small gray line which Gy indicates the 100 setting This means that the note length will not be affected by the pattern editor You can easily dial in this neutral value by pressing CTRL CMD and clicking on the corresponding pattern step Values below the gray line will decrease the note length values above the line will increase the note leng
25. want that authentic behavior for any reason a good reason is when KONTAKT refuses to emit any sound due to severe clipping I ve built in a function that offers you first aid Perform a SHIFT click on HYBRID patch 16 BS TeddiesPulse after loading at the browser page and a low cut filter will be engaged SHIFT click again to deactivate the filter the setting will be permanently stored If it is activated a warning will appear any time you fire up the MFA ONE But why is that filter deactivated by default Easy IMHO the original sound is superior The guys at SE know what they re doing the filter needs CPU power think about using an UAD or something if activated the MFA ONE tends to sound more like VA synths do there are better lo cut filters than the ones KONTAKT offers III CHOOSING THE RIGHT HD guess that today s most common kind of HD HardDisk is about 1 2TB large spins at 7200RPM has an average realistic seeking time of 10 12ms depending on various parameters and comes from a consumer budget line of its manufacturer Right Well there is nothing wrong with saving money but of course there is no light without shadow The shadows are speed reliability and noise Let s do the math from an example The MFA EXTENDED instrument loads about 4 000 samples into the memory at the start That means that the budget HD heads need 4 000 11ms 44 seconds just for finding the correct sectors Add some time for the actual dat
26. A EXTENDED to work When you load the MFA ONE instrument things are different Great effort has been taken to optimize the ratio between loading times and memory consumption and so the instruments have a custom purge engine that is pre configured for the most common tasks If you are an expert you can of course use the KONTAKT purge mode to reduce the RAM usage even further but would not recommend doing this since it s quite likely that you will experience some sound gaps Tweaking the expert settings for the purge mode see below is the better way to speed up the loading times depending on what suits your situation best Let s have a close look If you load any patches from MFA ONE you will notice that the engine loads additional samples into memory These samples will be held in RAM until you quit KONTAKT This is the standard mode and is thus activated by default If you re stepping through a lot of ORI HYB patches you will soon have a serious RAM load which might not be desired or even leads to memory problems And yes things do even get worse if you are working inside a host software because it will reload the MFA with all samples that you are holding in the RAM the next time you load your song or project For this reason have implemented some smart tools which admittedly need some reading but it s absolutely worth your precious time SETTINGS There are three settings for the MFA ONE s memory management that you should
27. ALE a DURATION RANGE SWING ROOTKEY in OCTAVES i 2 w 3a j am f E srowseR MAINPAGE E EFFECTS E SETTINGS The Phraseiator Page first View CHORD MACHINE As you might already guess this tool lets you play chords with just a single key Beta tester Nils also likes the CHORD MACHINE because you can learn a lot of harmonics and scales there Indeed Once you activate it the MFA EXTENDED switches into polyphonic mode what a great surprise If you switch it off again the POLYPHONIC mode will be reset to the last mode so you don t need to go to the settings page What s more important is the fact that the CHORD MACHINE will restrict your playing to monophonic input because it makes little sense to play more than one chord at once The CHORD MACHINE also offers an intelligent release trigger script if you play more than one note and release one of them the MFA EXTENDED will retrigger the previous played note chord until you have no more notes held With this feature it s a breeze to play cadences that are hard or even impossible to play in reality THE KEYBOARD Here you can manually set the chord that you want the CHORD MACHINE to generate The keyboard shows the programmed chord starting from C as the root key As shown in the illustration to the right this root key is eee A colored lilac and cannot be deactivated That means that the key that you actually play on the keyboard will ee a
28. All basic editing has been made with Steinberg s NUENDO 5 5 which offers amazing and simple perfect tools to automate the truncating process Those clicks come from KONTAKTS fade engine when attack and release times are very short especially on low frequency content All samplers behave like that but also most analog units do Not a real bug Try to find the ideal compromise between the ENV2 attack time and audible clicks Always keep in mind that even clicks may have some musical justification TR808 2 Clicks again With the MFA ONE authenticity had priority over clean sound Especially on sinusoid waveforms and low cutoff settings the hardware simply produces clicks And that s fine Unlike any other synth library that has been released yet the MFA ONE uses a really tricky engine based on countless random calculations to ensure that even with clicks and other crazy stuff there will be no repetitive character machine gun effect during your performance Plus RoundRobin if the math didn t cure the sound enough 3 If you are the surgical type of musician you will notice that there are a few velocity jumps on some ORI patches in the MFA ONE Due to KONTAKTS restriction to a maximum of 32768 sample zones it was impossible to sample every note with 8 or even more velocity layers Not to mention the manpower Each velocity zone costs about 1 3 hour of editing Crossfading or AET filters are sonically inacceptable both just
29. ENDED this is no problem but for the MFA ONE it may well happen that the animation disappears long before all necessary samples are loaded depending on your systems horsepower KONTAKT has no option to query the actual status of loaded samples The impact of controllers cannot be inverted Two beta testers say they want that but the third said no What no democracy Well the rule of democracy also teaches us that the King is always right And who is the King Well at least NOT the beta testers Kidding aside it would be easy to implement this feature but found it more confusing than helpful If you really want it feel free to e mail me You will receive a modified version easy KONTAKT 5 02 is required as the minimum release version There is absolutely NO WAY to load the library with earlier versions since they miss a lot of features bugfixes that are needed CREDITS would like to thank all the people who helped me in the making of this library albeit technical or mental support If you have the time visit the credits page inside of the instruments which can be accessed from the settings page While this page is shown it will play the Shostakovich Piano Concert No 2 OPUS 102 which performed live piano and programmed the orchestra EastWest HS Strings and Wallander WIVI not KONTAKT and you will see the credits which go to Nils Liberg R D Villwock G200KG Nils Volcker Christoph Ditsche Alex Radzis
30. HASE This button flips the LFO by 180 in phase This is especially important if you have the LFO KEY retriggering activated since it determines where the LFO waveform will start One might think that either the RAMP UP or the RAMP DOWN waveforms could be left out but give it a try there is a difference LFO WAVE Here you can choose between six different waveforms for the respective LFO e TRIANGLE e SQUARE e RAMP DOWN e RAMP UP e NOISE e RANDOM The last two seem to be quite similar but they are actually not Where RANDOM still gives you control over the modulation rate which is useful to create the typical S H effects NOISE just overrides everything and lets the engine go weird Please notice that if NOISE is selected the LFO RATE knob is temporarily blocked because don t know of a noise that would follow a given speed LFO TARGET Finally you need to decide what the respective LFO should control To be honest it s probably better to do this before adjusting the other poste Pree aj parameters of the LFO Both LFOs 1 amp 2 can control one out of 13 LEGI target different targets These are 1 OSC1 amp 2 PITCH 4 OSC1 FREQUENCY 7 OSC2 VOLUME 10 OSC1 PAN 13 PANORAMA 2 CUTOFF 5 OSC1 VOLUME 8 NOISE VOLUME 11 OSC2 PAN 3 RESONANCE 6 OSC2 FREQUENCY 9 MAIN VOLUME 12 NOISE PAN Again for 3 and 5 frequency means the pitch for the corresponding oscillator not the filter But abbreviating PITCH just l
31. K VELOCITY DEPTH PITCH DEVIATION OVER TIME Q A O ACTIVATE NOISEFLOOR e CREDITS SHOW LICENSE v1 01 BROWSER MAINPAGE EFFECTS PHRASEIATOR SETTING The Settings Page MOD WHEEL Here you can set the target for the MOD WHEEL and the DEPTH of its modulation Depending on the loaded instrument the targets differ In the MFA ONE hybrid mode all targets that are related to a single OSC are not available skipped since both OSCs were mixed at the analog stage directly sampled from the hardware and thus cannot be split up again The available TARGETS are CUTOFF NOISEVOLUME RESONANCE LFOIRATE OSC1PITCH LFOIDEPTH OSC1IVOLUME LFO2ZRATE OSC2PITCH LFO2ZDEPTH OSC2VOLUME ENV1DEPTH The DEPTH knob lets the MOD WHEEL take full control over the given target if turned completely to the right The other way around the MOD WHEEL will have no impact gt With the ATC 1s ORI patches you can still choose between off and CUTOFF to make things more interesting for some For an authentic purist s sound set this to off this removes any digital influences PRESSURE Here you can set the target for the PRESSURE monophonic aftertouch and the DEPTH of its modulation All settings are identical to the MOD WHEEL as described before with the exception that LFOs and the ENV1DEPTH are not available here VELOCITY The keyboard velocity the power or speed with which you struck the keys can control any of
32. LateBack PD Diamonds LD Sawadee OR HumbleBrag PD FilmNoir BS Q Placebo T AR 2600Lineup BS ModMyTicks KY Prophetic BS SpringTime BS FaintNot BS Yeah KY PhaseWurly T PD WithHisSaints AR Rollin4ever LD WrongfulLife BS AchtungBaby CH OuterSpace FX VeloZapper KY BubblyTB RY HarrisPilton E KY Orgligatory T KY DoubtfulCase AR WeedyDusk enter name USER PATCHES PD OverTones CH SlideMeHappy MW BackAndForth LD CableGuy CH LotsaFriends AR FragileWeAre LD WannaBePad PD NietzscheJr KY PradaGucci PD TheGayNinja RY Chipmonkees PD RevAggressor MAIN PAGE EFFECTS E PHRASEIATOR SETTINGS The Browser Page On the browser page shown above you can load all factory presets left three columns and build your own user patches right column For the MFA EX instrument there are 150 factory presets available from which 45 are shown on the left side On top of the third row you see two arrows Use them to scroll through all available presets If one arrow is grayed out it means that you have reached the very beginning or the end of available presets For the MFA ONE the preset browser is divided into two separately scrollable sections COMBINED HYBRID and ORIGINALS offering you a total of 240 presets patches 135 HYBRIDS 105 ORIGINALS On the right side you see another column described as USER PATCHES Here you can load or save your custom built patches When you install the MFA EXTENDED li
33. R activated when you reload a complete project That s service Chapter 8 EXPERTS SECTION I MEMORY MANAGEMENT The library aims to capture as many details of the ATC hardware as possible Unfortunately there is no light without shadow which means that it s quite huge Only a few of us have systems that are capable of holding complete libraries like this in the RAM and even if you are such a lucky guy it s still a nightmare to load all available samples into the memory Great effort has been taken to reduce all gt 19 000 samples to the absolute minimal size but having up to eight zones of velocity layering plus release and or round robin just needs some serious amount of sample space Whenever it came to making compromises decided to give the sonic quality priority over the RAM usage It can well be that some patches which don t sound spectacular at first touch have up to 500MB of samples which is rare whilst other patches that are impressively huge sounding just need around 25 MB It s all in the details to ensure that you have a long lasting and useful experience with this library BASICS When you install the library and load the MFA EXTENDED instrument it will use approx 800MB of RAM This space is necessary for the EXTENDED patches i e generic sounds including all basic waveforms noise some release samples and engine samples There is nothing left to be optimized since all loaded samples are necessary for the MF
34. a streaming and buffering and you will end up with about 1 minute to load this instrument In other words the effective loading speed is at 8 5MB s Well that s not too bad but also not really good if you keep in mind that SATA can theoretically transfer at least 15O0MB s With a professional HD like the WD VelociRaptor series things are getting much better The head seeking time is at about 3 4ms and the transfer is slightly faster too Loading the MFA EXTENDED from one of my WD VelociRaptor300s takes about 16 seconds I d say this is pretty acceptable Plus these HDs are 24 7 proof and virtually noiseless The cost per GB is below 1USD at the time of writing To push things further I ve also measured the loading times from my good old 120GB SSD SATA and from my 600GB SSD PCle card The results are 4 secs and 2 5 secs which is almost the same speed as loading it from RAM to RAM if you reload the instrument inside of KONTAKT Of course SSDs are still quite pricey and some tests show that they may still have some issues with their lifetime well had three budget HDs crashing in 10 years so don t know what those tests actually indicate Anyway just please don t blame the library for long loading times it s a matter of your budget IV LOADING ADD ON or THIRD PARTY CONTENT The MFA EXTENDED offers three additional slots where future preset add ons and or third party content can be stored Only one slot can be activated
35. activate another slot i e your new add on just hit the corresponding ACTIVATE button Only slots that are not already loaded will appear in purple to indicate that they are ready to be activated The MFA EXTENDED will manage everything for you and after a short time welcomes you with the first patch of the selected slot readily loaded If you want to switch back to your custom USER PATCHES just hit the GO button on top to restore all of your own patches After activating any of the slots or reactivating your user patches you are automatically taken back to the regular BROWSER PAGE If you want to leave the page without any changes made just hold the ALT OPTION key and click on the first top USER PATCH LOAD button again V UPDATING THE MFA EXTENDED This library is not only a library it contains more than 45 000 lines of program code to realize all authentic and sometimes more than authentic features Though the product has gone through a standardized beta testing and debugging it is very unlikely that it is delivered error free would be happy if you could send me a detailed bug report once you find something that hasn t been reported before updates of the KNOWN ISSUES list will be published on www mfasonic com as often as possible That being said it s also very likely that there will be future updates It s crucial to understand how the updating works If you are working stand alone just load the new instrument and
36. and assign the MOD WHEEL on the SETTINGS page see below to the same target Now even if you have set up everything else like LFO TARGET MIXERS etc properly you still need to consider three different parameters that could be the cause of nothing happening 1 Did you crank up the ENV3 AMT 2 Did you crank up the LFO DEPTH knob which sets the absolute maximum for the depth regardless what the ENV3 or the MOD WHEEL are saying 3 Did you move the MODWHEEL If not nothing will happen There is of course a system behind all this to allow for maximum versatility recommend continuing with the manual understanding the MODULATION section will make things easier INVERSE Just like the filter envelope ENV1 ENV3 can also be inverted so that its control value is then subtracted from the modulation target instead of being added To a m invert ENV3 click the small gray button in the center of ENV3 ATTACK and ENV3 atin cit decay DECAY as shown in the illustration It will then turn red Please notice that INVERSE is not working with any VOLUME target If you select OSC1 OSC2 or NOISE VOLUME as the target for ENV3 the INVERSE button will have no influence That makes sense right MODULATION You have already learned about how to use ENVELOPES to shape a sound in order to make it less static Another tool to add life to your sound is the LFO LowFrequencyOscillator LFOs can be used to add vibrato tremolo but also really crazy effects
37. and your memory is as free as it can be still allowing the last loaded patch and all generic patches to work as before If you are on a very poor machine or if you want to just step through a very huge amount of ORI HYB patches it is a good idea to enable the DynPurgeMode It will ensure that you will never exceed about 1GB of data loaded into the RAM ll OPTIMIZING THE SOUND All presets that have been made for this library had a maximum volume in mind I m very sorry about that since it is nonsense but also a selling proposition these days The good news is that unless you dial in polyphonic patches there will be no post processing If something clips just lower the volume With the polyphonic patches a limiter will be set but it s very gentle just higher peaks will force it to work It doesn t do any harm to the sound if you play within normal peak ranges and if you are reading this you will probably know how to handle that What is much more important to know is the erratic or intended behavior of the ATC hardware when it comes to different filter modules This library offers you the pure high end truth in all its samples so you also get the trouble If you play the MFA ONE the MFA EX is not affected because no hardware filters were engaged during sampling except for some self oscillation stuff and use an FFT analyzer you will notice that the frequency range from approx 8 26Hz is doing weird things If you don t
38. ar results using another filter If nothing helps play fewer voices know this sounds cynical but it is not World s top records have been realized with top analog gear and none of them ever offered more than 8 voices if even Question yourself why you would need more The library has been tested on Nuendo PC amp MAC Cubase PC amp MAC FL Studio PC Ableton PC and Logic MAC As far as can see there is only one last issue remaining All of those sequencers will have a short CPU spike when loading patches on the fly That s easy to explain KONTAKT has to set about 60 000 88 000 MFA EX MFA ONE is only 250 3 500 parameters which cause the CPU peak In the case of Logic MAC hitting LOAD crashed the host in rare cases when the project was playing This is why you cannot load patches into the MFA EX while your sequencer is running If you for any reason want to change this behavior of the MFA EX hold the ALT OPTION key and click on the first top and left PRESET PATCH LOAD button The MFA EX will speak a short confirmation and the security routine for loading patches while the host sequencer is running will be removed To re activate it just hold ALT OPTION and click again The setting is automatically saved and remembered You might notice that even on the most purist instruments there is some artificial pitch modulation with repeated notes This is intended and based on a random function inside of Kontakt which work
39. arounds And once you run into problems due to the countless restrictions and bugs that NI has built in you will be completely left alone in terms of help from NI s side They are the market leader so they don t need to talk to the developers Unless it makes sense for their own libraries they will not even think about fixing any bugs that gave me sleepless nights guess most developers know what I m talking about Hello Berlin On the other hand there is of course a reason why the MFA EXTENDED relies on KONTAKT With all its restrictions it s simply the best sampler available by far Pitching and internal modulation are awesome Filters and FX are really good and the possibility to script custom solutions is outstanding The MFA EXTENDED would have been absolutely impossible to realize with any other sampler on the market They all look like toys in comparison to KONTAKT to be more precise As long as you stay in the monophonic domain this will hardly be an issue My tests showed that even an outdated ACER laptop from 2008 with AMD dual core had no problems handling all monophonic presets This changes greatly once you activate the POLYPHONIC MODE but depends on the chosen settings in a way that s pretty impossible to predict If a patch maxes out your CPU you should first try to shorten the ENV2 volume This is the culprit in most cases Then lower the voices of the REAL CHORUS If that doesn t help try to achieve simil
40. at a time Once you load any additional content it will be shown in the USER PATCH browser But don t be afraid it will of course not overwrite your precious saved work To access the PATCH MANAGEMENT page hold the ALT OPTION key and click RESTORE USER PATCHES on the first top USER PATCH LOAD button The left side of the browser will change and PATCH MANAGEMENT appear as shown in the illustration to the right As you can see the MFA EXTENDED offers three additional slots for add ons If you activate this page for the first time all three slots are populated with free user files named from 1 3 These can be used to extend the amount of USER PATCHES But we ll come back to that later LOADING ADD ONS Let s assume you ve just purchased your add on and saved the two relevant nka files anywhere on your HD Choose any free slot and click the FILE SELECTOR Load the add on file that begins with 1 Then in the second file selector load the add on file that begins with 2 That s it The new presets are now stored in the selected slot and you are ready to activate them whenever you want to It s important to know that you only have to load an add on ONCE and never again unless you erase it by any means To verify if the loading process was successful the text field below the selected slot should now show the name of the add on ACTIVATING SLOTS Your newly loaded presets are not yet loaded To
41. ave since the frequency for at least one of the oscillators would simply go too deep for the human ear So repeating the lowest octave is a feature especially useful for the ARPEGGIATOR and not a drawback Last but not least you might get the impression that dislike KONTAKT when reading through this manual Well no don t like the attitude of NI s company policy in general but regarding KONTAKT this is more of a love hate relationship And one thing is sure Without the fantastic programming capabilities that KONTAKT offers this library would have never existed I ve written some notes about that in the REMARKS amp KNOWN ISSUES section of this manual if you are interested Chapter 2 THE BROWSER The MFA EXTENDED library comes with a custom browser that makes it very convenient to manage all of the patches no matter if they are factory presets custom patches or add ons Up to 1110 patches can be stored into one of the instruments which means a total of 2220 patches for the whole library MFA EXTENDED MFA ONE Let s have a look lt P ORIGINALS gt SAVE CURRENT COMBINED HYBRID PATCHES KY Universal LD VeloPierce BS Pencil PD QueenMum BS LukKreung l CH Avantgarden AR MooMooLand T KY AungSanSukyi LD Twitter RY HammerMe OR Thriller PD SpiderBaby KY Schizophrenic SY Huuva2012 RY Tasmanian BS TeddiesPulse PD ObieWahn BS TheWorm FX TheFoundry BS FlutterEnrique KY DontJump BS Late
42. brary for the first time there is only one very basic patch present LD default with the MFA EX KY Universal with the MFA ONE which is probably a good starting point for evaluating the endless possibilities of the engine LOADING To load a preset patch just click on the LOAD button that is next to the preset name A loading animation will appear and all settings will be recalled If you use the MFA EXTENDED the loaded patch will immediately be available after the animation disappears If you use the ATC 1 instrument it might take some additional time for KONTAKT to load all necessary samples into the memory This is indicated from the purge status LEDs in the middle of the instrument header Depending on your HD system and the amount and size of the samples that need to be loaded this might take some time Please refer to the chapter EXPERTS SECTION to get the most out of your system Once the patch is loaded its LOAD button will turn purple to LD default indicate that this patch is currently active If you make modifications to the patch but decide to discard your edits just BS EveryCharlie click on the purple LOAD button again to reload the patch Please notice that loading patches is per default disabled during your host software is playing in order to avoid CPU spikes and possible crashes on some systems This is only true for the MFA EX not the MFA ONE Refer to the REMARKS amp KNOWN ISSUES section which can be
43. ds copies of the original signal to the timeline Guys it s really hard to write a manual at this point since everybody knows what an echo is but need to write something about it when would prefer to be out in the sun with some friends You have five controls ECHO e SEND e FEEDBACK i a gt e TIME J A e DAMPING ae e STEREO A oo a J I d Even if you are not experienced with TIME DAMPING STEREO ECHO DELAYS you just need to play around with the controls to hear what they actually do The only note worth mentioning is that the ECHO DELAY time cannot be time synchronized because the whole Nl based effect is considered to be one that will probably quickly replaced with some DAW plug in and thus serves for demo purposes only By the way almost all presets that have the built in delay activated were based on 122 BPM just in case Chapter 6 PHRASEIATOR This page with the fancy name is more or less a gimmick but a quite impressive one It has two almost independent areas the CHORD MACHINE and the ARPEGGIATOR As indicated by the little white arrow on top the CHORD MACHINE comes first and then feeds the ARPEGGIATOR To activate one of the tools or both please click the small metal switch so that it points to the right MFA TENDED f 2 CHORD MACHINE 27 ARPEGGIATOR NOTE ORDER gt REPETITION SPEED 2 LATCH MODE a CHORDPRS M Toan oncov M oe P RE SC
44. e The SQUARE F waveform button is a turning knob which offers 13 states of pulse yng sawtooth sit saa width If you turn the knob fully counterclockwise the SQUARE 1 1 P m a _ waveform is disabled If you deselect all waveforms the oscillator will a pr be completely muted All possible waveform combinations within one tiange s wiooth square oscillator were completely generated by the ATC hardware and then sampled so there is no digital summing going on here in order to have the maximum authenticity OSC FREQ amp DETUNE The FREQ controls are available for both oscillators and set the basic pitch for its o respective oscillator in semi tones The available settings range from 0 24 which means two octaves and quite unexpectedly much effort has gone into realizing this For optimal sonic results it is recommended to use OSC2 for detuning not OSC1 See the Remarks amp Known Issues section of this manual if you like to understand what s exactly going on here If you really want to detune the basic pitch for any reason you should use the CHORDER see chapter 5 to transpose the root key This will trigger real samples instead of using the KONTAKT internal pitching algorithms Saak At the bottom right corner you will find the DETUNE knob It determines the micro pitching of OSC2 and can be set from 50 to 49 cents Use this parameter for fattening your sound the easy way before you try to add any FX MIXER The th
45. en the filter benidng downwards closes the filter If the PITCH WHEEL is released the filter jumps back to the frequency setting made on the MAIN PAGE Smoothly POLYPHONIC MODE PATCH SPECIFIC Hit the button to activate the POLYPHONIC mode Hit it again to return to the monophonic mode The maximum number of voices depends on various settings and your CPU But hey please respect the MFA EXTENDED and don t abuse this more is not necessarily better This setting is saved with the patches Please notice that activating the POLYPHONIC mode engages a limiter to prevent severe digital distortion Depending on the levels the amount of played voices and the FX distortion cannot be completely avoided though If it occurs simply lower the levels IGNORE FX ON PRESET LOAD GLOBAL If this button is activated lit orange loading a new patch will leave all EFFECT settings unchanged This makes searching for matching patches more convenient since you can concentrate on the pure sound of the new patch As a side effect this can also be used to copy effect settings from one patch Due to just another KONTAKT bug the velocity cannot be directly used to control the ENV3 amount if the ENV3 controls the volume of an oscillator Instead it will then control the sustain level of the envelope to another If you like the EFFECT chain you have just programmed activate the IGNORE FX button load the next patch and resave it That s it The IGNORE FX
46. er digital warmth so think of it as a bonus that might be the right choice for some sonic challenges PHASER This one is a standard effect from within KONTAKT but unlike you might expect it is really very good A phaser uses a filter creating a series of peaks and troughs in the frequency spectrum The position of the peaks and troughs is then modulated so that it varies over time creating a sweeping effect You have five controls PHASER e MIX e RATE ek 3 O yY y e FEEDBACK RATE DEPTH FEEDBACK PHASE e PHASE These should be clear so just in brief MIX controls the amount of the phaser RATE determines the modulation speed DEPTH determines the modulation depth FEEDBACK controls the amount of the effect signal that is routed back into the input of the effect and PHASE controls the stereo field REVERB This effect section offers you 50 completely different convolution algorithms from high end units like EVENTIDE and LEXICON The algorithms are divided into five CATEGORY PRESET cy CATEGORIES which contain 10 PRESETS each The categories are Halls Rooms Spatial Soaces and Effects suggest you J Jj E J P to play around with the different things SEND PREDELAY LOWCUT HIGHCUT that can be achieved here To select an algorithm just click on the blue TARGET button to switch through the five categories The preset display will change accordingly always showing you the first of the ten available presets
47. es the filter behavior according to the curve symbol that is shown on the button itself The button is lit orange when the filter serves as the common low pass and grayed out when it works as a band pass Only two filter types in the MFA ATC both lp bp hardware and this library offer a band pass filter The OBERHEIM and the ARP2600 Clicking the button has no effect if another filter is selected Well it still has one effect since it plays the relay sound that is emitted by the real hardware when pushing the button When in BP mode the filter cuts the low frequencies more and more the further you turn the FREQUENCY knob counterclockwise Especially for the TYPE4 filter it is corrected towards HP to make it appear more musical FILTER TYPE This control lets you select one the four available filter simulations plus BP for type 2 and type 4 which is a total of six The filter type is indicated on the dial To hear the changes J made here it is necessary to play at least one new note The good news is that changing ype the filter type on the fly will not lead to any crackles or gaps on any held notes The available filter types are e TYPE1 Classic MiniMoog 24dB Filter LP e TYPE2 Oberheim S E M 12dB Filter LP BP e TYPE3 Roland TB 303 Filter LP e TYPE4 ARP2600 Filter LP HP Two of the filters are able to self oscillate if you dial in a RESONANCE value of approx 100 or higher For security reasons the self oscillati
48. ese two celebrities needed to be bigger knobs that can A be found on the top of the FILTER section Per default the E FREQUENCY knob is turned fully clockwise and the RESONANCE knob is turned fully counterclockwise This means that the filter FREQUENCY RESONANCE is completely opened and the signal from the oscillators passes through it without any change If you begin to turn the FREQUENCY knob to the left counterclockwise the filter will reduce the frequency content more and more from high spectrum to the low spectrum The frequency where the filter begins to reduce the frequency content is known as the cutoff frequency The RESONANCE knob determines how much gain is added to the frequency range around the cutoff frequency that was set with the FREQUENCY knob The volume boost is basically relative so the resonance will in fact lower all unaffected frequencies instead of adding gain for a better sonic quality and to avoid clipping KEYBOARD TRACKING In the second row you will first find the KBD TRACK knob Keyboard tracking is probably one of the most misunderstood controls in the universe In many units it is even Qo completely left out but that doesn t mean it wouldn t be there it s just hidden for the kbd track user In other more modern units it s completely overdone and far more complicated than necessary The MFA s keyboard tracking is almost linear But what s it all about Without any keyboard t
49. found at the end of this manual to learn about the options SAVING CUSTOM PATCHES If you edit one of the patches the SAVE button in the upper right corner will light red to indicate that changes have been made To save your edits just click the red SAVE button in the SAVE CURRENT section A new USER enter name E PATCH will be generated which is now available from the USER SAVE CURRENT PATCH list every time you load the corresponding MFA instrument It is not necessary and not recommended to save the instrument itself with the KONTAKT browser The MFA internal browser handles everything for you It s a good idea to enter a name for your new User Patch before you actually save it Just click into the text edit field that is next to the SAVE button and enter a name The name may contain all characters and signs that are common except for umlauts and other exotic stuff You might end your typing with RETURN but this is not necessary If you forgot to enter a name this is no problem Just click on the USER PATCH you have just created and rename it as desired Hit RETURN and the name will be automatically saved You don t need to hit the SAVE button again The length of the name is not limited but since you will only see the first 15 17 characters it makes sense to avoid names like Keyboard TheBestPatchlHaveEverMadeWhen ICameBackFromDrinkingTheWholeNight PATCHES You can also re save your USER PATCH using the SAVE buttons that
50. hat it is impossible for anyone to buy everything that has ever been developed especially when you are the collector type and simply have it on your HD for no particular reason never using it since you just don t like it But the fact alone that you are reading this shows that you have a great understanding what s going on You already realized that a lot of precious time and money goes into developing such extremely detailed libraries like the one you have purchased or will purchase soon I m very thankful for that QUICK START 1 Open KONTAKT version 5 02 or later is needed 2 Click the Files menu and select Load In the upcoming file selector just point to the instrument MFA EXTENDED that you have installed to your disk and click Open Alternatively you can also use the KONTAKT internal browser the procedure is almost the same 3 The upcoming splash screen shows a silly dog tag with your name Just click on your name to proceed If you start up the MFA EXTENDED for the first time you should hear a simple saw waveform when you touch the keyboard 4 You are now in the patch browser of the MFA EXTENDED It is crucial to understand the structure of this library Don t sweat it it s simple If you bought the complete edition and open the instruments folder in the Kontakt browser you will see two instruments e MFA ONE e MFA EX That s all you need thanks to the MFAs built in browser But what
51. he REAL CHORUS the effect becomes less obvious so to understand what s going on it might be a good idea to turn the REAL CHORUS off JIMMY DISTORTION The distortion unit comes next in the effects insert chain Unlike you might expect if you know the structure of hardware ATC units the distortion is JIMMY considered to be an effect Let me explain why The newer ATC models have a built in distortion module that recreates a JimDunlop MXR 90 discrete distortion stomp pedal Believe it or not to rebuild p this 80 wall wart unit using the distortion effects that KONTAKT offers is J impossible Unlike the NI filters they just sound very digital It was one of the most challenging parts in the making of this library to get the sterile sounding LEVEL digital FX sounding like a few cheap transistors That s why it is declared as an effect With the real ATC hardware it would just jump into your face but with the digital simulation it sounds like a distortion that is modern Good thing that the library s MFA ONE instrument comes with so many real presets that contain real Dunlop distortion You have one parameter which does what it says e LEVEL Since the MINI SWITCH on the MAIN PAGE always introduces some distortion don t be too much of a purist here You simply cannot compare the warm analog sound of original hardware to the simulated DSP stuff But on the other hand there are also people who prefer the digital harshness ov
52. hevsky Sascha Dickers Ted Reedy Vera Broeske Ted Reedy AFFILIATES Your KSP editor is outstanding bet the guys over at NI are using it too You should consider to get seriously paid for all your effort Keep up the great work BigBob you know you are the genius Your math library is one of the fathers of this baby pray to God the time will come when I ll bring you the promised apple pie cannot promise it right now but l II do my very best What a fantastic work Without your program would have probably given up at an early stage How sad couldn t track you down to a person but maybe you want it like that Thanks for your mental support and the beta testing know sucked a lot starting each conversation with shit MFA is not working But in the end think we finally made it You made me get my first ATC What else could say Thanks for digging so extremely deep into all the parameters thank you for the panning and keytrack options many presets and so much more In a perfect world math would make the sound agree The MFA EX proves the opposite hah However your great personal support on watermarking was outstanding thank you so so much You are the knight of speed and the true master of the 70 Thanks for countless hours to realize the online shop which is working now hopefully sometimes Thanks for your critical eye on this very manual wish you all the best your music is just
53. ic content gets pitched as well That means that if we pitch a sample one octave upwards which contains a LP filter with a cutoff at 2000Hz or whatever the filter will now be opened at 4000Hz I ve tried to program a transition between the first and second sample in the middle of the portamento to reduce the effect but that just RINGMOD SQUARE PWM made things worse The sonic jump then comes in the middle of the glide where you would least expect it It might happen that a glide will in very rare occasions though end in a release sample and then terminate You would do me a favor if you could report the affected patches samples to me This is impossible with any sampler on the market Modulating an OSC from another OSC s voltage is still an USP of the analog domain I ve done some tests with the envelope follower that KONTAKT claims to provide but we do well to forget that It s far too slow to sound anything but digitally harsh VA synths already can do this quite convincingly but if you want the real thing go get it Good news if you select high rates on the LFOs you can achieve effects that are pretty close to real ring modulation Whatever you chose as your modulation target it will sound different sometimes very strange but on the other hand it enables you to dial in effects that are impossible with analog units unless they use voltages that are not available in the real world We all love square waveform
54. ifferent amplifier circuits one from the MiniMoog and one custom built The second circuit wears the name se1x which is another synth from the StudioElectronics range This switch is a little bit funny in the real hardware It cannot be programmed by any means and does absolutely nothing on some programs but increases the volume by about 2 5dB and begins to introduce distortion on others That made the implementation a little bit complex When used with the MFA EXTENDED it will always raise the volume and introduce a slight saturation depending on how much RESONANCE you dial in This happens when it is set to MINI With the other setting SE1X the signal remains unchanged On the MFA ONE instrument the characteristics of the switch are written into the respective patch so when you use ORI patches they will sound completely authentic With HYB patches you can still add the MODE SWITCH effect even if it s already inside the samples Try to set the switch to MINI if you want to achieve a modern crunch sound that cuts through the mix But don t forget that it s just an effect ENVELOPES The MFA EXTENDED offers three ENVELOPES numbered _ m from 1 3 from top to bottom ENV1 controls the FILTER M FREQUENCY ENV2 controls the VOLUME and ENV3 can be atini decay sustain reknes freely assigned to 11 different targets The time parameters are modeled after the original hardware so basically the minimum time is about 4ms
55. ing has added to the audio world hate the totally overpriced analog religion the always detuning and other instabilities of analog gear Not to mention the lack of TotalRecall and especially the lack of new ideas since 30 years But in the end don t see a reason why those two principles couldn t co exist And think that they actually do inside this massive library you ve just purchased ABOUT THE ATC SERIES from STUDIO ELECTRONICS realize it s dangerous to praise a product whilst looking at the celebrity list of users You never know how much budget went into the endorsement and marketing So you need to rely on your ears to judge if a product really made it into the music production Well Things are quite different with StudioElectronics doubt they do any endorsement at all This is simply not necessary Whether you go to the cinema and listen to Hans Zimmer soundtracks or listen to records from Beyonc Madonna Timbaland DaftPunk Britney Spears Dr Dre Outkast R Kelly SnoopDoggyDog Sting you will immediately feel at home if you are a lucky owner of their devices since you can tell the preset numbers Yeah there is no such thing as the best synth in the world but IMHO there must be something great in the ATC SE1 X OMEGA series Why else would one often see professional stage setups that have a Moog Voyager keyboard controlling some StudioElectronics hardware in fact It s a shame that Michael Jac
56. kson is no longer with us the THIS IS IT live setup contained a nice rack of StudioElectronics synths as you can see in the movie Sorry Bob your Mini is still amazing confess to be a long time user of several analog synths from StudioElectronics and especially adore the world famous ATC 1 which was released in 1997 got one of those units loving its versatile sound and ignoring all the people telling me that this was a kind of anachronism to use analog gear unless you are a freak or proud owner of used overpriced 909s or 303s Which were very famous during the late 90ies for a good reason cannot remember why sold my ATC 1 in 2002 Maybe it was collecting dust and somewhat out of tune maybe my girlfriend was in urgent need of new clothes Over the last few years with all those fantastic eye candy VST Instruments being released found myself in the situation that whenever have been in search for a solid and catchy bass sound started with the usual culprits in my VSTi collection tried to tweak some sounds added huge FX chains and EQ and dynamic modulations And yeah it sometimes sounded really good When got back to the mix admittedly needed to tweak the bass sound again but who cares When it came to the final mixing stage the bass sound needed to be replaced or at least tweaked again but who cares It s so convenient to use VSTis In a few situations then skipped the virtual stuff and went to hardware
57. l VOICES DETUNE SPATIAL samples will be triggered with every note Turning the VOICES knob fully counterclockwise the display will read 1 which means that only the original voice is heard This means the CHORUS is turned off The more VOICES you dial in the phatter the sound will get but much phat also can mean much thin So do yourself a favor and listen closely The DETUNE knob sets the pitch difference between the voices up to 90 cents The SPATIAL knob determines how the additional voices and the original sound are distributed in the stereo field High values will have them positioned at the edges of the panorama low values will sum them up in mono The panning is strictly level controlled not Haas shifted RANDOM PAN To achieve spatial width without ab using chorus FX RANDOM PAN or expensive voice doubling it s an old resource friendly trick to pan the oscillator outputs more or less randomly Unlike using the LFO panning which changes OM 7 periodically the RANDOM PAN works on a per note d P i basis Every time you hit a key the sound will be OSC 1 OSC 2 NOISE played at a new position in the stereo field and stays there as long as you hold the key Great on pads To activate the RANDOM PAN if you are on the default REAL CHORUS page just click on the page toggle text on the center top The knobs control how much panning is applied to the OSCILLATORS and the NOISE When you use this function together with t
58. ll be remembered next time you start the MFA it doesn t change when loading patches ACTIVATE NOISEFLOOR GLOBAL In the digital world NOISE is a rare thing Good luck that the MFA EXTENDED offers to add some noise floor to this cold world can smell what some of you think at this moment This guy is crazy why in the world should add noise to my great recordings But unlike the PITCH DEVIATION this is absolutely no gimmick and makes a lot of sense in many situations First off the noise floor is just authentic It comes from the ATC Xi hardware unit and has not been processed except for a comb harmonic filter on 50Hz which is the AC freq in Europe Second noise greatly reduces dithering and or sample rate conversion artifacts that are always present with single instruments especially with long volume attack or release times This also improves the stereo image when you use any of the stereo FX Third it just feels better Check it out There are of course some situations where you want to turn the noise off Having artificial noise is probably unwanted if you have other sources with noise so the noise floor rises higher than acceptable The other situation is when you work inside a DAW for final rendering and apply perfect noise like UV22HR dither Thus since the setting is global for all loaded instruments the noise will NOT start directly after total recall so you don t need to look whether you have the NOISEFLOO
59. ll soon serve as a fantastic source of inspirations didn t make too many preset patches that use the MULTIWAVE MODE because the loading times might scare some users initially But once loaded it makes sonic lines that you can hardly program with any other synth on the market If you love to push things to the limit you can also use the POLYPHONIC MODE together with the MULTIWAVE MODE Then hold one low key and play your alternating samples with the other hand Or dial in the ARPEGGIATOR with a DURATION set to 99 and create evolving soundscapes Or select high glide rates with MONOPHONIC MODE and RETRIGGER OFF and hear the engine morph almost seamlessly from sound to sound Please note that if you save a patch that contains a lot of different waveforms this will slow down the loading process significantly A few waveforms within the MFA ONE contain as much as 1 168 single samples and may in rare occasions eat up 750MB RAM If you choose 8 complex waveforms this could mean that loading a patch containing MULTIWAVE MODE would load a maximum of about 8 000 single samples using 6 GB RAM This is very unlikely but don t say you haven t been warned Chapter 5 EFFECTS As already mentioned in the introduction the MFA EXTENDED comes with some basic and some not so basic effects Of course they are more or less marketing ear candy and can be done better with your high priced plug ins inside your DAW but there are two important exception
60. lways be included in the harmonized chord Any other approach would be too confusing in the end and thanks to the inversions the wide lilac buttons numbered from 1 4 it s still possible to program and play any chord that exists The CHORD MACHINE can add up to four notes to the root key If you already have four harmonic keys activated and want to change the chord you first need to deactivate one of the previous keys The INVERSION buttons allow you to play up to four possible inversion of the programmed chord If you are a musician you will notice that the implementation is not correct in terms of music theory where the inversions go upwards not downwards But it makes a lot of sense here since with this trick you still have the root key always included The maximum amount of inversions is limited by the amount of programmed chord notes LOADING CHORD PRESETS You can choose from 30 preset chords and load them to the CHORD MACHINE CHORD PRS ue keyboard There are three categories MAJOR MINOR and SPECIAL As usual CATEGORY e you need to use the blue TARGET button to switch through the categories Each category holds 10 different presets For your convenience you can also step backwards to reach the desired preset just hold the ALT OPTION key when you click the TARGET button Once you have selected a preset click on the LOAD button to the left to activate this preset This will overwrite your previous chord and reset the
61. made things worse The good news is that you will not notice those jumps in a musical context and they are quite rare Thanks to a lot of scripting tricks which add live feel in many ways this should not be an issue during any performance or recording And of course you can still use the same patch in a HYBRID mode so there will be no more velo jumps 4 A few patches in the MFA ONE seem to be defective on the highest keys but they are not As mentioned before the recording is just 1 1 So sometimes the control voltage inside the ATC 1 is just not enough to do the right things on very high frequencies with fast modulating or OSC hard sync settings MEMORY USAGE MODIFICATIONS NOISEFLOOR DC OFFSET 5 Some sample groups in the MFA ONE contain distortion Yeah actually This is the MXR 90 unit in the hardware sometimes together with the MiniMoog circuit Rest assured that all samples are authentic Due to the complex SmartRetrigger and seamless portamento processes especially in the MFA ONE it s necessary to load all needed samples instead of using the DFD direct from disk functionality Some patches are large know I ve tried to speed up things by using the sample compression format that KONTAKT offers but though its compression is really effective I guess it s a modified FLAC codec it also has some impact on the CPU load This impact is not that severe but in the end decided to give a lighter CPU load priori
62. me stretch static pitching and EQ won t do any harm to the serial at all Delay Chorus Reverb Compression and Limiting do little harm but heavy phasing and especially distortion render it completely useless in most cases MP3 mic speaker re recording and broadcasting will again leave it intact The other restriction is the length of the played watermarked samples The algorithm needs some minimum length of audio files to be recognized plus some minimum repetitions If you use a short arpeggiated sound there will not be enough if any data for the decoder to retrieve the serial If you play long legato notes as with pads or strings it is likely that the serial can be retrieved within just a few seconds of the audio file Third after all that a criminal will most likely use a stolen credit card or PayPal ID a temporary e mail account and an anonymous IP and now my whole protection is almost worth nothing If a commercial production is done with a pirated copy the watermarking will help me but for private use Let s face the facts might be a synth idealist but try to live in the real world as well What could say One thing NOTE ON PIRACY The making of this library has taken 13 complete months of my lifetime and countless studio jobs that have cancelled to realize it Please e if you don t like it then it s probably my fault e if you like it and want to support my work please buy it e if you use it buy it without
63. n lets you choose if the distance of a played interval between two successive notes should affect the transition time or not If it s not lit the time between two notes remains identical If it s lit the time increases with the interval allowing you to use the glide as an effect for large interval jumps but still enabling you to play normal melody lines within smaller interval ranges Finally the RETRIGGER button One might question why this button is located inside the glide section well this is technically wrong but sonically right The RETRIGGER button lets you play smooth FILTER transitions between successive legato notes if it is off not lit and switches back to the repetitive trigger of the FILTER envelope if it s pressed lit So if you play legato you can decide whether you only want to play the pitch set RETRIGGER to OFF or the whole sound with every new key stroke If would be far beyond this manual to exactly explain what the RETRIGGER mode does when it s disabled Basically it crossfades between different samples at the current sample position whilst blending and altering the pitches relative to the given glide time and interval setting In the MFA EXTENDED or all HYBRID PATCHES in the MFA ONE this works best with shorter attack settings due to a KONTAKT bug which made me go nuts the workaround is good in most cases but the script interpreter is just not fast enough to have absolutely smooth results with all
64. ngle control because all other settings like graininess and formant shift are saved with the corresponding patches to achieve optimal results This control allows you to speed up or slow down the played samples Since time stretching always harms the sound to some degree it is only available for a few patches as mentioned before If you try to time stretch a patch that doesn t allow it the knob will smoothly return back to the neutral middle position to indicate that time stretching is not available If you have an ORI patch that utilizes time stretching it will be set to the best quality algorithm that KONTAKT offers The downside is that you will definitely experience some clicks on extreme settings it s simply too much math that needs to be done in realtime For the HYB patches lighter algorithms were chosen and in most cases each filter setting offers another algo That is a fun feature admittedly Anyways you can achieve very cinematic and or strange Special FX with that Once more can only encourage you to play with the settings and the TIME STRETCHING knob can be automated FILTER The signal from the oscillators generic or sampled is fed into the FILTER section Filters are used to shape the tonal character of a sound by manipulating the tonal spectrum This is a one way road because filters can only subtract not add something FREQUENCY amp RESONANCE The most popular controls are FREQUENCY and RESONANCE Thus th
65. on a different approach it holds all available pure waveforms of its analog counterpart It s extremely versatile since you can do any modification and even more that could have been done with the original hardware and includes simulations of all possible filter units for the hardware Moog ARP2600 Roland303 and OB HAVE FUN 1 There are still two exceptions First a sampler is obviously not an analog unit That means that even with RoundRobin it is simply impossible to sample all possible states of the random output of analog hardware Second legato portamento mode is controlled by a very tricky script which tries to simulate the behavior of the StudioElectronics hardware as best as possible Real connoisseurs will hear the difference during performance but don t be too esoteric SOME BASICS Before you start it s worth to notice a few things First it might be confusing that both the library and the generic waveform instrument are having the same name admit this is not ideal but the future plan is to have all three instruments under one hood As of today KONTAKT is far too restricted to even think about that but who knows what the future brings The good news is that the three instruments are almost identical and the few differences are pretty obvious or logical and of course explained in this manual Second you have an online manual integrated Just activate KONTAKTS Info Pane and you will find a brief description
66. on is stopped once the last key is released which is identical to the ATC hardware INVERSE If you activate this button it will light orange indicating that the FILTER ENVELOPE ENV1 is inverted That means that it will then subtract from the base frequency that has been dialed in with the FREQUENCY knob instead of adding its control signal ENV1 amp ENV3 AMT These two knobs determine how much influence the corresponding ENVELOPE has 9 9 ere gird er amt on the given destination Since ENV1 is hardwired to the filter frequency cutoff the left button always controls the time related change of the filter frequency over time With ENV3 it s more complex since this ENVELOPE can control 11 different targets which also may have other controls which can affect them this will be explained later Turning the ENV AMT knob clockwise increases the influence and vice versa If you click on the ENV3 AMNT knob with CTRL CMD key held it will default to 50 which is actually NOT the center This makes it easy to have the ENV3 set to exactly one octave if pitch is selected as the target This will also be explained later MODE SWITCH This switch has been introduced to the ATC 1 as an option back in 2002 but until today it s not mentioned anywhere by StudioElectronics At least it is missing in their manuals Good to see that it is accurately described on the front panel It M mode selr allows you to switch between two d
67. ooked too ugly with this beautiful nostalgic LCD font The PAN law is OdB GLIDE Last but not least the MFA offers a powerful GLIDE section oh which can be found on the right bottom side of the MAIN 7 PAGE Glide also known as portamento means that the 7 E rj ay pitch of two successive notes is bended so that the second z note starts from the pitch of the first note and reaches its mas Su rairigger own pitch after a chosen time This works in both monophonic standard and polyphonic mode though the result of the gliding in polyphonic mode appears to be quite random since it depends on the exact note order that has been played before hitting the successive notes It s still a great effect for adding subtle nuances to your polyphonic performance The MODE knob has three settings OFF AUTO and ON Since you are a smart synth professional guess you already have an idea what OFF does You are right The ON setting applies glide to any successive note no matter if you release all keys in the meantime or not The AUTO setting will only apply glide to notes that are played legato overlapping The TIME knob lets you dial in the speed of the pitch transition between two notes If it s turned fully counterclockwise the transition is done very quickly it will be almost inaudible Turning it clockwise the transition time increases Be careful with very high settings because the algorithm is quite CPU hungry The INTERVAL butto
68. quite soon If this happens turn it off with the blue TARGET button or if you have an 88 keyboard just hit the lowest note A 1 which serves as a keyswitch for this function The latch mode can also be temporarily activated by pressing the sustain pedal DURATION This determines how long the generated notes will sound in relation to the repetition speed The maximum is 99 because you don t want to have overlapping notes in general To achieve glides or patterns with sustained notes you can use the DURATION PATTERN mode see below By default the DURATION knob is wired to CC 11 EXPRESSION PEDAL RANGE OCTAVES This setting tells the arpeggiator over how many octaves it shall repeat the played notes chord The maximum range is 2 2 octaves If the arpeggiator goes out of the boundaries of the selected sounds it will mute the affected note SWING Also known as shuffle this knob determines how straight the repeated notes are played The further you move from the default O setting the more it will play a triolic pattern Technically speaking Values above zero increase the time position of every second note values below zero decrease it PATTERN EDITORS To push things further and to minimize the machine gun effect the MFA EXTENDED also features two PATTERN modes one for velocity and one for the note duration As you might have noticed there is a small lilac triangle in the lower right corner If you click on it
69. racking the result of the filter would appear quite strange to the musicians though it would be mathematically correct Imagine you set a low cutoff around 220Hz with a 24db octave steepness and play an A5 Since the root frequency of the note is 880Hz and all harmonics are necessarily far above 880Hz you would hear almost nothing The root key would be attenuated by 24dB and the harmonics would be inaudible The balance across the keyboard would be completely messed up rendering the sound useless That s where the keyboard tracking enters the game As more tracking is used the more the filter will open while ascending the keyboard This makes the filter sound musical again The knob defaults to about 30 if you click it with CTRL CMD This is a very common setting and reflects the default behavior of the ATC hardware And I ve also implemented a little gem If you click on the small gray circle that is next to the KBD TRACK knob it will light red That s nice but not all If it s lit up the keyboard tracking will be reversed recommend loading the MFA EXTENDED preset patch LD EasterEGG What s going on here Since we have some self oscillation of the chosen filter and unlike other controls like the mysterious G Spot its existence is proven and objective and a reversed keyboard tracking the resonance frequency will increase the lower you play on the keyboard Funny ain t it LOWPASS BANDBASS This button switch
70. ree lower knobs in the oscillator area control how much of the signal from OSC1 OSC2 and the NOISE generator is fed into the output signal If clipping occurs you can use these controls to lower the mee i volume If you hold the CTRL CMD key during clicking the output will be set to an internal value of 114 which means an attenuation of approx 6dB The NOISE knob has a double function since when you set it to zero fully counterclockwise the NOISE generator is completely turned off i e not using any voice The MFA EXTENDED has no main output volume control since this can alrerady be found in the KONTAKT standard header The MFA EXTENDED also has no built in dynamics processors such as compressor or limiter since they would do harm to the sound In these days of heavy compression and limiting some patches may appear to be too quiet at first touch Well feel free to crank the levels up inside your DAW But keep in mind that you also have a volume control on your monitors or headphones don t you To make the confusion perfect the display shows 64 to 63 But yeah a range from 50 to 49 is identical to the hardware and unlike the majority of all VSTIs is absolutely correct Just think about it Got it SPECIAL THE OSCILLATOR SECTION within the MFA ONE Since the MFA ONE instrument unlike the MFA EXTENDED VY LUMEENVELOPE instrument is completely based on original or custom samples that already contain all the oscillator
71. s The CHORUS and the REVERB sections First let s have a look REAL CHORUS 2a JIMMY PHASER u 7 sm a Dg JA JVUVIDY VOICES DETUNE SPATIAL RATE DEPTH FEEDBACK PHASE REVERB ECHO 2 oe J O CATEGORY PRESET J SEND FEEDBACK NB iy Y J 2 y J2 9 SEND PREDELAY LOWCUT HIGHCUT TIME DAMPING STEREO E srowseR MAINPAGE a E PHRASEIATOR SETTINGS The Effects Page As you can see there are six different effects that can be controlled in the EFFECTS tab e CHORUS e RANDOM PAN e DISTORTION e PHASER e ECHO e REVERB The first four of them are serial inserts the other one are parallel sends That means that CHORUS RANDOM PAN DISTORTION and PHASER are also sent to DELAY and REVERB Thus you have send levels for DELAY and REVERB showing how much of the signal goes into those processors If activated the other effects also feed DELAY and REVERB This is probably the most common way to set the effect chain but of course you are free to use all the nice stuff you have on your DAW to take another approach CHORUS It is important to know that CHORUS is very different from the other effects since unlike all other effects it s not artificially generated but instead takes 2 4 different samples and detunes and spreads REAL CHORUS RANDOM PAN them at taste You have three parameters e VOICES e DETUNE e SPATIAL 8 J 7 a oJ If you crank up the VOICES up to three additiona
72. s properly During measuring AUTOMATION TIME STRETCH of the ATC units I ve found that the tune changed with the load of software driven parameters It was just a few cents but it did Resampling that would have been impossible so decided to implement it as a default feature Pitch bending is not identical to the real units if you go for more than a few semitones No way If you want to have the full 24 semitones being bended in a realistic way with all voltage controlled envelopes going on plus the errors that are introduced by real analog hardware consider buying an ATC You will never ever regret it The basic tune for the oscillators is restricted to 24 semi tones for a good reason This tuning feature might look simple but it is actually not The original units are well capable of torturing your neighbors dog with freqs up to 40 or 50 kHz But despite the fact that found that this is not necessary unless it s a really ugly and aggressive dog there are a few technical restrictions First sampling above 9 000Hz which is roughly the highest note that captured is all but precise with a sample rate of 44 100Hz That would mean that less than 5 sample points 44100 10000 are left for a waveform which is quite random then And again you should question why you would ever need that because even the best speakers must follow the law of inertia Second the KONTAKT engine for transposing samples is extremely good when set to
73. s that you have activated in the MULTIWAVE MODE interface will stay in memory even if you deactivate the corresponding step slot If you run out of RAM you can optimize your memory by removing all unnecessary samples Just SHIFT click the first preset LOAD button on the BROWSER PAGE see Chapter 8 for details If you load another patch later the memory will of course be automatically optimized again REPETITIONS This indicates how often a step will be repeated in the complete chain until the next sound slot will be triggered To change the repetition value you can either use the vertical arrows on the right of the display or drag amp slide the display itself in a vertical direction The maximum number of repetitions for one step slot is 16 the minimum value is 1 As you change the value and have the step slot switch set to ON the TOTAL STEPS display will change its value accordingly LISTEN BUTTON The listen button can be used if you want to only hear one of the selected waveforms in order to decide if it meets your demands or not Think of it as a SOLO button if it is pressed lit orange only this step will be heard overriding all chain settings on the MULTIWAVE MODE page Only one LISTEN button can be activated at a given time as you already guessed STEP DISPLAYS To let you see what s going on in your MULTIWAVE chain you will find a quite PLAYCOUNT TOTAL STEPS prominent display area in the bottom right RESET
74. s to sound thin and lifeless like any NordLead or VirusTI or most VSTi stuff So leave it just like it is It s intended The retrigger mode which I m pretty sure is already the best ever seen in a sample based synth aims to reflect the behavior of analog hardware as well as possible Within the MFA ONE in mono mode it is perfect there is no difference The MFA EX also works great in mono mode though it has some problems with long attack times As for today Kontakt 5 03 this is not fixable But you can always find a workaround that is completely acceptable ever thought about using the MOD WHEEL haha Unfortunately it doesn t work in poly modes yet Though this is identical to the majority of all analog hardware I m convinced it would be technically possible to implement it but this is a very stony road have done one version that offered it in a beta but since synths are time critical applications and the math that was needed to make it sound good used far too much CPU time have deleted the gt 600 lines of code again will start another approach after the instrument is released but please understand that this is a nice to have feature IMHO so decided to do it in a future update The trial version of the MFA EX has the following restrictions Limited note number still quite a lot before a pop up appears MoogFilter only Just pure waveforms no analog mixes per oscillator No pulse width but 50
75. s with their ability to create hollow sounding static waveforms and _ stringish chorusing warmth when their width is modulated don t we This feature was impossible to be left out when realizing the ATC units but what found when analyzing the waveforms to program the MFA EXTENDED was very surprising The ATC OSCs are far away from producing square patterns in the oscilloscope They produce well something This something resides between SAW and SQR and looks quite crippled in the analyzer STORY MODE ON couldn t believe that initially waiting for some extreme squarish sound a la Prodigy Everybody in the place Bam bam bam ba baam bam bam ba baam bam bam ba ba bouw bouw bouw bouw It wasn t there Days of investigation were spent digging into the deepest physics theory and testing countless VSTis and some analog gear The digital KORG Mono Poly seemed to deliver the most squarish sound but once stripped the unit down to single OSCs it was close to a SAW sound again Still unable to believe what I ve heard rented an analog Mono Poly for a shitload of but with similar result yeah it sounded better than its digital brother but also surprisingly close a great job by KORG programmers After all those experiences came back to the topic The something STORY MODE OFF It s likely that the ATC generates the square wave and the PWM by a trick Adding a saw and a reverse saw you get a
76. server could place an individual stamp on the samples that you ve downloaded There are many myths about watermarking when it comes to VSTis or libraries and even more discussions in the relevant forums in the web don t know why the process is so much voodoo but indeed it s quite tricky It protects the developers and the honest customers in two ways First off once there is any illegal copy appearing on filesharing sites it s just a matter of seconds to determine who has leaked his copy The sounds itself contain an individual serial number that is connected to the mail address and personal info that was provided during the payment process There is no known way of removing the watermark from the samples without destroying them completely Unlike DeCSS for DVDs the methods of watermarking are just similar mostly relying on time shifting but not standardized and thus it s impossible to tell where there is watermarking since every developer can only retrieve data from his original files and with the chosen decoder Second it is even possible to analyze music material that has been created with the watermarked library retrieving the serial number This method has a lot of restrictions since many effects that are applied in the mixing or mastering stage can destroy the serial number as well as layering too much other sounds Generally speaking it depends on the amount of applied effects sounds and on the kind of chosen effects Ti
77. setting is set globally for all MFA EXTENDED instruments and will be remembered next time you start the MFA or a new instance it doesn t change when loading patches SYNC LFO2 TO MIDI CLOCK PATCH SPECIFIC Select this option if you want to have the LFO2 RATE synchronized with your host tempo or the MASTER tempo if you re using the stand alone version of KONTAKT Once activated the LFO2RATE knob on the MAIN PAGE will change to a note icon indicating that the LFO2 is now in sync The speed divisors are WHOLE HALF QUARTER QUARTER TRIPLET EIGHT EIGHT TRIPLET SIXTEENTH and SIXTEENTH TRIPLET The display will show you the selected divisor This feature is based on a logarithmic approximation since KONTAKT unfortunately doesn t allow time based settings to be modified from the outside This means there will be deterioration over time But it still works very well unless you hold one note over the whole song PITCH DEVIATION OVER TIME GLOBAL As with all analog gear the MFA EXTENDED will get out of tune over time The longer you use the MFA EXTENDED the more all three instruments will have pitching problems that are quite randomly spread over the keyboard The average detune is about 1 cent per 8 hours MFA ONE or 3 hours MFA EX of usage If you don t want this just uncheck the button But don t believe that this will repair the unit It will just freeze the detune status This is set globally for all three instruments and wi
78. settings In the ORI PATCHES the retrigger engine works completely different and gives fantastic results with any setting Once NI addresses this issue the MFA will be updated can t wait can t wait But don t be afraid it s absolutely no showstopper it s just not as perfect as I d like to have it If you like you should also read the EXPERT SECTION about this function Chapter 4 MULTIWAVE MODE MFA ONE Inspired by today s dubstep productions the MULTIWAVE MODE allows you to chain different sounds in a very easy way More than that it also lets you bring real life into arpeggiated or programmed melody lines by slightly or radically alternating the timbre of each note Last but not least it s a great toy for extreme sound manipulation and often brings up outstanding results when you least expect them It can be accessed by clicking on the MAIN PAGE button again i e the MAIN PAGE button has a double function and toggles between MAIN PAGE and MULTIWAVE MODE Due to its nature it is only available with the MFA ONE and probably all future add ons Let s have a look at the interface MFA TENDED dick MAIN PAGE to exit ee 6 me ee WAVEFORM REPETITIONS LISTEN OFF ON d4 WAVEFORM gt REPETITIONS LISTEN OFF ON ee E 7 m d WAVEFORM P REPETITIONS LISTEN d WAVEFORM P REPETITIONS LISTEN g A 1 a WAVEFORM P REPETITIONS OFF ON d WAVEFORM gt REPETITIONS LISTEN d WAVEFORM gt REPETITIONS LISTEN bas
79. since it is the main slot and holds the sample bank that is needed for the preset or user patch To select a sound use the gray arrows that are located below the waveform display They allow you to step all of the available sounds If you hold the ALT OPT key when you click one of the arrows the step width is increased to 10 making it more convenient to quickly select a sound Once you ve changed the waveform of a step slot the slot s OFF ON button will switch to OFF automatically so that the respective step will be skipped in your chain This is necessary because in most cases the sound will not be present in your system s memory If the switch were to remain ON you would most likely hear silence as long as the corresponding step is triggered and though silence can be really nice from time to time it would not make sense here To load the selected waveform into the RAM and activate the step just click on the OFF ON switch To remove the step from the MULTIWAVE chain just switch it OFF again As you might have noticed some of the waveform displays are red where others are blue The color indicates if the chosen waveform is already loaded into RAM or not This makes it convenient to decide which steps can be immediately activated and which ones need to load the samples into RAM first If you are on a system that has very little RAM it s important to know that the MULTIWAVE MODE partially overrides the DynamicPurgeMode All waveform
80. t PLAY COUNT TOTAL STEPS RESET MODE c IKEY d WAVEFORM amp REPETITIONS LISTEN E sRowseR EFFECTS E PHRASEIATOR E SETTINGS The MultiWaveMode Page As you can see there are 8 different slots Each slot represents a different sound waveform bank the slot number indicates at which position the selected sound will be played WAVEFORM DISPLAY and OFF ON SWITCH The display on the left of each step slot shows the name of the selected sound Notice that the sound names are not identical to the preset patch names as they represent the rough sample banks instead of finished d WAVEFORM amp sounds You can choose between 75 different sample banks for each of the available step slots 2 8 All accessible sound names start with a categorization BS for Bass CH for Chord FX for FX KY for Keyboard and so on When we say rough sounds that doesn t mean the sounds were really naked They of course undergo all further FX processing and are of course subject for the CHORDER and or the ARPEGGIATOR and so on They even will be smoothly cross faded when playing legato in mono mode That means if you play legato the first note will make a transition to the next waveform that is selected in your very chain Ah MONO MODE Please unless you love surprises stick to it Using MULTIWAVE with POLYPHONIC MODE well it works but is hard to be explained in this manual Step slot 1 doesn t allow changing its waveform
81. th The latter enables you to program glide effects as well as sustained notes if a mute follows a long note Please notice that the DURATION knob on the main page is still working to let you relatively change all note lengths at once To choose the amount of steps you can again use the small slider below the pattern display This slider is independent from the slider in the velo mute section Admittedly things are getting quite complex at this point since the total amount of steps can be set independently in both pattern editors If you find all this too confusing just leave the DURATION editor switched off with the metal switch turned to the left but encourage you to check it out have done an in depth video tutorial about the pattern editors which is highly recommended FIX INPUT VELO If this menu item is set to ON the arpeggiator will ignore the velocity that you play on the keyboard and use a fixed amount of 127 i e full velocity instead If you want to keep the expressiveness of your playing intact only relatively modified by the pattern leave this OFF Chapter 7 SETTINGS PAGE The SETTINGS page gives you control over all parameters that are either related to the different playing style assignments such as MODULATION VELOCITY etc or that modify the engine system settings etc MFA TENDED MOD WHEEL PITCH WHEEL E A a n PRESSURE POLYPHONIC MODE e IGNORE FX ON PRESET LOAD SYNC LFO2 TO MIDI CLOC
82. the blue button to the right of the target display The available destinations for the ENV 3 are 1 OSC1 FREQUENCY 5 LFO2 RATE 9 OSC2 VOLUME 2 OSC2 FREQUENCY 6 LFO2 DEPTH 10 NOISE VOLUME 3 LFO1 RATE 7 PITCH 11 RESONANCE 4 LFO1 DEPTH 8 OSC1 VOLUME For 1 and 2 frequency means the pitch for the corresponding oscillator The maximum pitch modulation that can be achieved with the ENV3 is two octaves up down TIP If you want to control the pitch over exactly one octave just click on the ENV3 AMNT button while holding CTRL CMD With the sustain set to 127 fully clockwise the selected target will then hold at 12 semitones What makes the ENV3 so complex and will sometimes lead to quite unexpected results is the fact that the targets 3 6 and 8 10 can also be controlled by one ore even more other settings If for example you set the ENV3 AMT to 127 fully clockwise and set the target to NOISE VOLUME it may well happen that you still hear no noise Turning up the NOISE MIXER knob would greatly help in this case Another thing that is important to know is that if you select VOLUME 8 12 as the target it will override the ENV2 for this sound source i e the ENV2 and ENV3 will NOT sum up For that reason the ENV3 AMT knob is grayed out if VOLUME is selected as ENV3 TARGET as seen in the illustration to the right erwi gird env amt To make the complexity complete Let s assume you set the LFO DEPTH 4 or 6 as the ENV3 target
83. the instruments envelopes or all together according to the modulation matrix mixer that you see in the illustration to the right If you have loaded an ORI preset from the MFA ONE the first two knobs which control the ENV1 and ENV2 depth will be blocked because these two ENVELOPES simply do not exist with such patches Turning the knobs clockwise increases the impact of the VELOCITY on the selected ENVELOPE And again here is a specialty with the ORI patches If you have such an ORI patch loaded into the current memory the knob to the right will read OFFSET instead of ENV3 That means that you can now control the sample start position with your playing velocity Depending on the sample this allows you to actually control the filter sound volume attack or both which makes the ORI patches almost as versatile as the HYB or EXT patches But you always stay in the analog domain If you turn up the knob the VELOCITY speed will have an increasing impact on the starting point of the sample Tweak it it s really fun PITCH WHEEL The PITCH WHEEL can control the pitch yeah and the CUTOFF The left knob determines the maximum range of the pitch wheel in semitones and can be set between zero and one octave 12 semitones To reset the default setting of 2 semitones click on the knob while holding down CTRL CMD The CUTOFF knob controls how much the PITCH WHEEL affects the filter cutoff frequency Bending upwards will op
84. too great to stay away from the big screens Push me push me You re the ads and marketing girl so get things going Thanks for sharing your contacts and kicking me in the ass Thanks for your critical eye on this very manual wish you all the best your music is just too great to stay away from the big screens I m not connected with any of the companies that are mentioned in this manual except Eventide Inc Little Ferry NJ for whom worked as a demo preset creator occasionally Last but not least unfortunately there is also no connection with StudioElectronics It has been said in this manual for several times but it s important for me to close with the words If you LIKE this library you will definitely LOVE the real hardware which goes beyond the possibilities of any digital stuff If you LOVE this library you will get multiple orgasms once you get yourself a real ATC or one of its successors Believe me MFA SONIC 2013
85. ts or heavy filters this may introduce distortion The REVERB will be the culprit in most cases but it may also happen with some FILTER settings especially when using the REAL CHORUS or with long release tails on ENV2 in POLYPHONIC MODE or or or But that s no problem If digital distortion occurs just lower KONTAKT s main volume slider haven t found any settings that would lead to an internal distortion STORY MODE ON The issue when programming the ATC1 mono patches was to make them as well balanced as possible without using tools like a limiter But the hardware sampled filters sound so much louder present with the same VU readings than the KONTAKT filters it s just incredible Balancing the preset patches between ORI and HYB was one compromise after another since all filters from inside KONTAKT are just very poorly stable over the whole spectrum They generate peaks and lows where you would least expect them leading to a weak overall sound in many cases Unlike the hardware which is absolutely reliable whatever you do even with the craziest settings STORY MODE OFF Gliding from high to low notes with filtered samples leads to an over attenuation of the initial glide part This sounds as if there was a filter opening for a short time In fact this is a pretty inevitable artifact from pitching samples which is needed to perform the glide Once the lower sample starts with an artificial upward pitch all of its harmon
86. tting of zero As with the whole library decided to prefer a perfect sounding solution over a toyish one FILTERS DIGI DISTORTION GLIDE With the complete MFA EXTENDED and many MFA ONE HYBRID instruments made use of the built in filters that KONTAKT provides They do not sound as smooth as the hardware which is very obvious when you listen closely but they are quite okay Many HYBRID and MFA EX presets try to get as close as possible with great success IMHO but they can never reach the diversity and dirt of real analog stuff recommend playing no notes when switching between filter modes Moving the filter cutoff in real time seems to lead to crackles zipper noises in some situations am writing seems because it actually is just jumping very quickly without smoothing It s identical in the generic KONTAKT engine tried a lot of modifications but with no satisfying results unless we would accept an extreme CPU load on filter changes Fortunately there are a lot of workarounds and the most obvious one is to assign the cutoff to the modwheel or pressure This will work absolutely smooth and can of course be automated Yes the definitely unwanted digital distortion is very likely to appear in some situations The preset patches will not distort by themselves but they were programmed with loudness in mind that s marketing thinking admit so they are often very close to the limit If you now add effec
87. ty over fast loading times It s more likely that many of you have fast HD systems rather than spending 10 000USD on a 16 or more core system If you want to try the NCW compression it s no problem to resave both instruments after a batch compression By the way You are of course free to modify the two instruments if you find something disturbing which is hopefully not the case But even if you are an expert be warned Both instruments structures are pretty complex Without large Excel tables and a custom Wiki system it would have been impossible for me and I m the developer to edit the MFA EXTENED library with all its exceptions and fine tunings There are so many parameters that are controlled written AND read with almost every note you play by the MFA s custom code that you will probably ruin the instrument pretty soon A better idea would be to drop me an e mail or even better post to the forum if you find any bugs or have any recommendations and or update wishes hear you The NOISEFLOOR programming is quite tricky since the added standby noise floor will be reduced in volume once you play any sample from the MFA This effectively prevents double noise since of course the samples already contain the original noise floor The simulation is not 100 accurate though KONTAKT has no ability to let one group be controlled by a side chained compressor which would be the ideal solution for the MFA EX and the almost ideal

MFA-EXTENDED User Manual (English Version) v1.0

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