Glossary
The words the app uses, in the sense it uses them. The [reference](../reference/) defines the same things in full; this page is for reading the app.
AUDIO IN, input, MONITOR, clip
AUDIO IN is the module that brings your own signal into a patch. An input is a microphone or an interface the browser offers, numbered from 1. MONITOR plays your input through the sound at the speakers; it starts off every time. A clip is the seconds of your input the model hears a sound with AUDIO IN through. See playing through Auracle.
TRACK, CAPTURE, take, kept safe
TRACK plays a chain from the pitch and the notes of an input. CAPTURE records what is patched into it: each time you press RECORD it makes a new take, played from the keys, an edit you keep with KEEP AS NEW. A sound whose take couldn’t be read is kept safe, out of the pool, until you record it again. See playing through Auracle.
Bank
The rail on the left, with three tabs: POOL (the sounds the model weighs and breeds from), SAVED (what you saved), and PRESETS (the hand-made library), and Find a sound under them. See the bank.
Brier skill
How much better than a coin flip the model’s guesses have been. 0 is a coin flip, 1 is perfect, and below 0 is worse than guessing. Its forecasts in LEARNING show it (13% sharper than chance).
Budget
The ceilings breeding searches within: 24 modules, a depth of 6, and a modulation depth of 3. PATCH shows a ceiling only when the patch is one short of it or at it (23/24 modules). Show measurements, in ⌘K, shows all three (8/24 modules · 4/6 depth · 1/3 mod depth). A patch at a ceiling has no room to grow.
Card
The picture of a sound you download to share it: its face, its name and where it came from, with the patch inside. See sharing a sound as a card.
Child, NEW
A sound a generation bred. The children of the latest generation lead the POOL tab under NEW · GENERATION 3, each tagged NEW, with a green dot until you hear it. Under a child’s name, the bank says which seed it grew from and what changed; click that line to compare the two.
Control
One of PERFORM’s round controls: the named controls on your panel (the six to start, up to eight), and WANDER at the start of the pads. BLEND is a slider under the faces in the well while B holds an offer.
EVOLUTION, what each generation did
What each generation did, step by step, opened from WHAT EACH GENERATION DID under EVOLVE POOL, over the foot of EVOLVE’s cards. Each step names the seed and the child, what changed, and how much more the model guessed you’d like the child than its seed (liked +0.06). See what each generation did.
Face
A sound’s drawn shape, beside its name everywhere: its spectrum from its own render, low at the base, wide where it has more than the bank’s sounds and narrow where it has less. See a sound’s face.
Fair-test picks
The pairs dealt at random, which is every pair EVOLVE and PATCH deal you; the line beside ANOTHER PAIR says so (◇ random pair · a fair test). LEARNING grades the model on them apart, as the number to trust, because you didn’t choose them.
Generation
One round of breeding. EVOLVE POOL walks a short way from each of the ten sounds the model rates highest, and adds each child that rates above the sound it would replace. When the generation ends (or you stop it), it replaces the lowest-rated sounds it can (not saved, nor kept as new and still waiting for a pick), and the toast names them. There is no crossover: every child grows from one seed.
⚡ evolve from this is one walk from the sound you’re playing, and counts as a generation of its own. GENERATIONS at the top of EVOLVE counts them.
Guess
The model’s guess about a sound: roughly how likely you are to pick it in a pair. It is always a percentage and a word, from one scale: a hunch (46–54%), leaning (55–69%, or 31–45%), or fairly sure (70% and over, or 30% and under), as in 59% · leaning. Under the model view, a bank row draws it as a percentage and a bar, with a block around the guess for how unsure it is; in PATCH it is the belief line the subtitle becomes (it’d like this 59% · leaning), with the qualities that count most in the readout.
PATCH's module guess is the module the model guesses you'd add next, dashed amber at its place; what goes here? (a module's ⋯, or Q) asks it for that module's place, and under the model view its two runners-up show with their lower bounds.
Job slot
The place in the menu bar where long work shows while it runs, just left of the sound you’re playing: a generation (⚡ breeding 3/10 · about 40 s), ⚡ evolve from this, or a refit. It has STOP where the job can be stopped. The amber lamp after the wordmark is lit exactly while it shows.
Keep as new
PATCH’s way to keep an edit: it joins the pool as a new sound, and the original stays as it was. It asks first, WHICH WOULD YOU REACH FOR?, and your answer teaches the model. PICK THE EDIT skips the question once. The sound you keep isn’t replaced until it has been in a pick after that: a pair with it in EVOLVE, a PERFORM offer you heard and answered while playing it, keeping an edit of it as new with an answer (the card, or PICK THE EDIT), or a cut. Its own card doesn’t count, nor do stars (the bank).
⌘K
The one list of every command, with its key, and every sound, by its face: ⌘K (Ctrl K), Find or do anything in the menu bar, or ? away from PERFORM’s controls. Type part of what you want, choose with the arrows, and press ↵. It took in the old ⋯ menu; the old ? card’s key map is the keyboard page (one space).
KEYS ⋯
At the right end of the keys bar, beside VOL, MIDI and ● REC: the rest of what the keybed does, HOLD, UNI, ARP (and its settings), SYNC, GLIDE, ⇕ TALL, SPAN and ◼ SILENCE. It is lit while HOLD, UNI, ARP or SYNC is on. See the keyboard map.
Leans
Under the model view in PATCH, each module's edge is tinted by which way your taste leans on its kind: amber toward, red away, stronger where the model is surer. It was a toggle in the layout's ▾; holding ⌥ (or tapping MODEL, which stays up across a reload, as the toggle did) is its home now. In PERFORM, each control carries its lean: an amber arc toward the end your taste leans to, dashed while it is a guess (which way your taste leans).
Levels
PERFORM, PATCH, EVOLVE, TASTE and LEARNING are levels of one space around the sound you’re playing: zoom out to TASTE (the sound among all sounds) and LEARNING (how it learns), in to PATCH (what the sound is made of), and beside it to EVOLVE (what it could become). The cross at the stage’s right edge shows where you are; click a stop to go there, or use ⌥↑, ⌥↓, ⌥←, ⌥→ and ⌥1–⌥5, ⌥ and the wheel, or a pinch (the keyboard map, one space). The menu bar names the level you’re at, and a move carries the sound’s face from one level to the next.
Lock
Holding a knob, a module, or the whole wiring, so breeding can’t touch it. A locked place in the patch can’t be changed, deleted, or created.
LUFS
The loudness unit every sound is normalized to (−18 LUFS). A louder sound reliably wins a comparison, so without it the model would learn “I like loud” and pass it off as a taste in timbre.
Measurements (φ)
The 44 numbers the model hears each sound through: 18 of the standard render’s sound, and 26 counts of how the patch is built. If a taste of yours doesn’t show in these, it can’t be learned.
Menu bar
The row across the top: the wordmark and its lamp, the level you’re at and what it is, the film of that level, the job slot while long work runs, the sound you’re playing (its face, its name and ▶, which is Space), TAUGHT, MODEL (the model view), and Find or do anything ⌘K, the one list of every command and every sound (one space).
Model view
What holding ⌥ (or MODEL in the menu bar) shows: what the model believes, over whatever level is up. The bank’s guesses and the pool in the order the model rates it, TASTE’s halos, EVOLVE’s guess for the pair before you pick, in PATCH the belief line, the leans, a worth chip per kind and the guess's runners-up, and in PERFORM each control's lean. A tap on MODEL keeps it up, across a reload too. See reading what it learned.
Module, catalog
A module is one part of a patch: a VCO, a filter, a reverb. The catalog, headed ADD A MODULE, is the list you add them from: ADD MODULE (or /) opens it over the left of PATCH's well. See wiring and the catalog.
Named control
One of PERFORM’s controls named for what you hear: BRIGHT, SNAP, MOTION, BODY, GRIT, and SPACE to start, and any of the twelve more in the palette. Each has the same name and the same two end words on every sound. What it turns is measured for each sound: up to four of that patch’s knobs, the ones that move the sound most purely that way. Until it’s measured, it reads listening… and does nothing.
See the named controls.
Offer, B
A variant grown from the sound you’re playing, held in a second set of voices called B that plays every note you play. Its face stands in amber beside your sound’s in PERFORM’s well. You hear it with BLEND or PEEK, at matched loudness, and it becomes your sound only if you press TAKE; NEXT and PASS pass on it. An offer may add or change a module; Wander never does. See Blend, Peek, and B.
Palette, panel
PERFORM’s palette is the eighteen controls the instrument can measure, in six families. Your panel is the ones you place on PERFORM, up to eight, in your order; ARRANGE places, hides, and orders them. See the palette.
Pair
The two sounds you pick between, A and B. EVOLVE deals them, and so does the TEACH strip in PATCH. ANOTHER PAIR deals a new one without picking.
Patch, sound, preset
A sound is what you hear, pick, save, and breed. A patch is how it’s built: its modules, knobs, and cables. A preset is a sound from the library, made by hand. Open a sound in PATCH to see its patch.
Phrase, sample
The standard five seconds every sound is heard on: the same notes for every sound, so sounds can be compared. ▶ PLAY on an EVOLVE card plays it. It is a measuring instrument, not a demo: play the sound from the keybed to judge it.
Pick
Any choice between two sounds: an EVOLVE pair, a PERFORM take or pass of an offer you heard, the warm start, or keep as new. TAUGHT counts picks, stars, and cuts.
Pickup
Soft takeover for a MIDI knob: it does nothing until it passes through the control’s current position, and then follows your hand. See soft takeover.
Pool
The POOL tab: the 40 sounds the model weighs and breeds from. The engine’s own default is 48; the app asks for 40.
Quarantine
What happens to a sound that fails its check: it is never played or shown, and the search learns to avoid where it came from.
Rating…
What the guess above the rack in PATCH ends with while the model rates an edited sound again.
Refit
The model fitting again from everything you have taught it: a few seconds of work at most, off the audio thread, every sixth pick. Between refits each answer is folded in at once. The amber lamp after the wordmark lights while a refit runs, and EVOLVE’s line says ● learning from your last 6 picks… until it lands, then ● it just learned.
Replaced
What happens to the pool’s lowest-rated sounds when a generation ends, or when a preset joins the pool: the lowest it can replace, which leaves out a saved sound and one kept as new that hasn’t been in a pick yet. The toast names them, and REPLACED · GENERATION 3 at the foot of the pool lists what the latest generation replaced. Only their names are kept.
Search control
A named control drawn in amber with a dashed ring: this patch’s knobs can’t make the change it names. Turn it past the notch and let go. Either the patch gets something to turn (a tone EQ for BRIGHT and BODY, a longer release for SPACE turned up), or an offer grows in B, aimed the way you turned it. See search controls.
Seed
The sound a child grew from. A generation breeds from the ten the model rates highest; hover EVOLVE POOL and the bank marks them SEED. (A random number generator’s seed is always called a random seed.) Opened in PATCH as it was bred, a child's subtitle says from ‹seed› · 3 changes, a tick marks each module the generation changed, and a pale pointer on a knob shows the seed's value.
Set aside
Anything you unplug, delete, or bypass is set aside instead of vanishing, and stays across a reload: SET ASIDE n at the foot of PATCH's well opens the shelf you drag it back from, and the catalog lists it first.
Stage mode
⇧F in PERFORM (or ⇧F in the well’s corner): the sound you’re playing on the whole screen, drawn from what you hear. See stage mode.
Standardizer
The scaling that puts the 44 measurements on a common footing. It is saved with your taste, always, because what the model learned means nothing without it.
Style
One side of your taste, named for what it leans toward (analog sustain) until you name it. A sound is rated by the style that likes it most, which is how you can like several unrelated kinds of sound at once. Up to five; a style claiming almost none of the pool is idle.
TAUGHT
The counter in the menu bar: everything the model learned from. Its tooltip splits it (52 picks · 4 stars · 2 cuts).
Vetting
The check every sound passes before it can be heard or measured: finite samples, a peak under a ceiling, not silent, and not mostly DC offset. Breeding does produce screaming resonance and silent duds; this is why you never hear them.
Wander
PERFORM’s dial for how alive the sound is on its own: still, ideas (variants appear in B), drift (the knobs glide through nearby settings), and roam (bigger and faster). It never changes the patch’s structure, it pauses while your hands are on the other controls, and a tap (or Enter on it) freezes it. It leads PERFORM’s pads. See Wander.
Warm start
Picking three of nine presets on a first visit, under PICK THE THREE YOU’D REACH FOR. It teaches the model 18 picks in half a minute, and your three are saved. Run it again from ⌘K: Re-run the three-pick warm start.
Without this module
In PATCH, the dashed outline over the face at OUT while a module is selected: the face of the patch without it (a processor bypassed, a source's socket empty, a modulator unplugged), measured by rendering that patch. When the patch would be silent without it, the readout says silent without it.
Worth
Under the model view in PATCH, a chip for each kind of module the patch holds: what one more of that kind is worth to the model (filtering +0.12). The model counts how many of a kind a patch has, not which is where, so two filters share one figure (shared by 2). It is the price the catalog quotes for a module in your hand.
Your taste, the model
Your taste is what the model has learned; the model is what learns it. It guesses how much you’d like any sound, including ones it has never played you, and how sure it is of each guess. The reference has what the model holds in full.