Whatever you play runs through all three of them, and the partials they share with it keep ringing after you have let go.
One held C3, drawn in X-Y. VST3 for Windows.
Three oscillators, a ladder filter, two envelopes, an LFO and an effects rail, laid out where you expect them. What is new is the block on the right: three convolvers, each holding one struck note, and one knob that says how much of them you hear.
Oscillator A and B with independent tuning and up to seven unison voices, a sub with its own shape, pink or white noise, and a zero-delay ladder filter with four responses.
Each of the three slots holds one struck note. SAMPLE picks which note it is, NOTE picks the pitch it is tuned to, SYMPATHY sets how much the three of them ring and DRIFT how far their LFOs wander.
One held C3 through preset 06 “Hornet Wire”, bounced by the plugin’s own harness. Tail window +1.0 to +1.8 s after release.
Every cycle of one held C3, drawn on top of the last. The key is released halfway through and the band thins to a thread: that thread is the three convolvers, still answering a note nobody is playing.
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The whole spectrum of one held note, measured twice: bare, and through the resonators. Nothing new arrives, because convolution cannot add a pitch. Six partials simply come back louder than they went in.
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Each note drawn against itself a quarter period later. A piano settles into a shape because its partials are near enough whole multiples of its pitch. A bell never settles, and that is why it answers you with something you did not play.
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Every note a convolver can hold, drawn as the shape of its own decay. Most fall away from the hit. Four of them start at nothing and swell instead, which is why a chord held against a cello bow arrives late and a marimba never does.
Learn moreSlide 1 of 4: Resonate
The instrument has one display and three things to show on it. Pick a page with the key above it, the way you would on the bench instrument this panel is drawn from.
A bank is a named collection of sounds together with every sample those sounds need. It leaves your machine as a single file, so a set that plays here plays there.
The audio a sound depends on travels inside the bank, not beside it, which is the whole reason the format exists. Cover art goes in the same file.
An open bank is written in the clear: anyone can read it, take the audio back out and edit the bank itself. That is the right setting for something you are giving away, and for your own working banks. A sealed bank keeps its contents closed in ordinary use.
Said plainly, because the plugin says it plainly: sealing raises the bar, it does not close the door. ASTRO has to open a sealed bank in order to play it, so the key ships inside the plugin, as it does with every client-side scheme. Do not sell a bank on the promise that the samples in it can never be recovered.
Each category was written against a different half of the instrument, so moving between them changes more than the sound. On top of these come banks: whole sets in one file, downloaded from your account rather than built into the plugin.
Counted by the plugin’s own audit, not estimated: Bass 32, Lead 25, Keys 25, Pad 23, Arp 18, Texture 17, FX 12, Pluck 10, Perc 8. BUTTERFLY adds 268 more as a bank.
Grab the plugin, drop it where your host looks, rescan. There is nothing to activate.
02 · UnderstandShared partials, in one picture and one paragraph. It is the whole instrument in about a minute.
03 · PlayEvery sound that ships, with what each one was built to do written beside it.
A VST3 instrument for Windows. A macOS build with an Audio Unit is on the way.
No. ASTRO does not phone home, does not check a licence and does not need the FL Connect app running. Install it and it plays.
One of thirteen struck notes: Piano, Rhodes, Bell, Glass, Marimba, Nylon Pluck, Cello Bow, Choir Ah, Singing Bowl, Music Box, Sub Pluck, Brass, String Pad. Or a sample of your own, dropped straight onto the slot. Each of the three slots is set independently.
No, and it cannot. A convolver is a linear, time-invariant process: it can only make quieter or louder what is already there. What sounds like a new voice is a partial you played being held on.
Yes. Save them into a bank and hand over the file. A bank carries the samples its sounds need inside it, so it does not stop working on the other machine. The banks that ship with ASTRO are made the same way.
Three oscillators with hard sync and drift, a sub, pink and white noise, a ladder filter with four responses, two envelopes, an LFO, glide, eight voices, an effects rail, three convolvers, and 170 factory sounds.
Load ASTRO, pick a sound, turn SYMPATHY up and listen to what is left when you stop.