Chromaphone

“Resounding hits

Chromaphone strikes in full dynamics with acoustic sharpness and precision.

Melodies, beats, and crazy soundscapes

Chromaphone uses acoustic resonators to create drums, percussion, mallet, string, and other unique instruments. They get sparked into life by a mallet and a flexible noise generator.

Library

Chromaphone 2 is packed with more than 650 presets from the best sound designers. Instruments span from warm and mellow pitched percussions for melodies to punchy one-shots and kits for rhythm tracks. Twisted, they generate unique textures and soundscapes that will move any film score. Whether real, other-wordly, or with an ethnic touch, Chromaphone will fill your music with rich and organic tones.

Performance

Chromaphone 2 ships with premium performance features: unison, vibrato, and a complete set of MIDI features. And for even more action, Chromaphone provides a user programmable pattern arpeggiator and shortcuts to the high quality effects.

Edition

Modeling based synthesis gives you access to all source and resonator parameters. Customize instruments to perfectly fit your project or follow your inspiration and build entirely new ones for really creative and innovative sound design.

Effects

The Effects panel wraps up Chromaphone 2 as an all-inclusive package with awesome polishing tools.

One-shot revolution

One-shots are no longer limited to the velocity dimension. Chromaphone uses the entire keyboard range to modulate volume, mallet noise and stiffness, noise filter frequency and density, hit position, and coupling to open a whole world of expressive sounds—and that in a totally stepless fashion.

Creative drum kits

Chromaphone ships with ready-made creative kit patches where each note provides a new sound slightly different from the previous one. Over the entire keyboard range the sound morphs from bass drum to snare to hi-hat. Discover a mixture of electronic and acoustic qualities intertwined to form highly playable, addictive, and always fresh drum sounds.

Performance

Chromaphone 2 will match your playing style or musical context with ease thanks to the tap tempo and sync to host clock options; up-to-4-voice unison; and the flexible vibrato.

Arpeggiator

Ready, willing, and able, Chromaphone 2’s arpeggiator offers various syncing resolutions, playing algorithms, and rhythmic patterns that will spruce up any chord progressions into percolating melodies or pulsing sequences.

Mix and match

Chromaphone is an atelier for musicians and producers. At the turn of a few knobs, become an instrument maker, shaping metal, carving wood, and stretching skins. Craft and play expressive and responsive instruments that have a real-life presence.

Resonate

Instruments are created by combining acoustic resonators. A wooden bar makes a xylophone, turned metallic it becomes a glockenspiel. Adding a tube transforms it into a vibraphone or marimba. Plates shape up in bells and cymbals. A drumhead combined with a cylinder becomes a bass drum, snare, conga or bongo. Mix and match strings, plates, drumheads, membranes, beams, bars, and tubes to reproduce real-life instruments or create original ones.

Perfect couples

Chromaphone is the first synthesizer that takes into account the effect of coupling between resonators. Bringing together acoustic objects, for exemple the string and soundboard at the bridge of a guitar, changes the way each of them vibrates. A proprietary technology models precisely how objects interact and exchange energy thereby capturing key acoustic behaviours of musical instruments and resulting in sounds that have a real-life presence.

The perfect stroke

Shape the attack with the Mallet module which provides the triggering impact. Use the Amplitude and Stiffness controls to craft different type of sticks, mallets, and beaters, and the Noise parameter to bring texture to the hit. All can be modulated by keyboard velocity and pitch to provide great playing dynamics.

Get noisy

Sustain is provided by a flexible noise source. An envelope generator and filters provide tailored excitation to complement impacts from the mallet. A density parameter controls the rate at which noise samples interact with the resonators from random individual particule-like hits to a fully continuous flow. Loud or quiet, bursting or evolving, dense or porous, broadband or filtered, this noise source is the key to unusual and creative effects.”