Playing through Auracle

AUDIO IN brings your own signal into a patch: a microphone, a guitar through an interface, a drum machine’s line out. Patch it into a filter or a delay and play through it, or into a follower and let it move the knobs.

Add AUDIO IN

1. Open a sound in PATCH.
2. Press ADD MODULE and, in the catalog, under SOURCES, click audio in. Every socket it can take lights up.
3. Click a lit socket. AUDIO IN takes it, as any source does.
4. The browser asks for a microphone or an interface. Allow it.

The browser is asked only then: never when Auracle opens, and never when you open a sound that already has AUDIO IN. Once you’ve allowed an input, a sound with AUDIO IN opens it by itself wherever the browser says it remembers your answer (Chrome and Edge do). Otherwise its module shows ALLOW INPUT.

What AUDIO IN hears stays in this browser. Nothing is sent anywhere.

The module

AUDIO IN has three settings and a row under them:

Hear it: MONITOR

Monitoring starts off every time Auracle opens, and it turns off when you open a sound with no AUDIO IN. While it is off, your input moves the level and nothing else, and the keys play the sound with its AUDIO IN silent.

1. Put on headphones. A microphone near your speakers hears the sound it is making and feeds back.
2. Press MONITOR.
3. Play into your input. You don’t need to hold a key: the sound is held open for you.

The sound is held open as if C4 were held, so your input runs through the whole patch, the amp envelope included. It settles at the sustain level, as a held key does. The keys play over it.

Your inputs

The first time you allow an input, the microphone or interface the browser opens is input 1, and each other one it lists gets the next number. The number stays with what you plugged in: a sound saved on input 2 reads the same interface next time, and one you plug in later takes the next free number. There are eight.

To change a module’s input, click its input line and pick one. It is one undo step, like any setting.

One input, one stream. An input is opened once, however many modules read it, and every one of them shows its level.

The keys hear one input. The sound you play takes one input at a time: the first AUDIO IN’s, in the patch’s order. Another AUDIO IN set to a different input shows that input’s level, and its input line says meter only. In the sound, it hears the first one’s input.

Unplugged. If an input goes away, its modules say unplugged and go silent, and a toast says so. Plug it back in and it opens again by itself, and MONITOR picks up where it was.

Refused. If you refuse the browser’s question, AUDIO IN stays in the patch, silent, and its module says input refused. To allow it later, allow the microphone for this site in the browser’s settings, then press ASK AGAIN.

The clip: what the model hears

Your input is never the same twice, so the model can’t rate a sound by what it does to your input live. It hears a sound with AUDIO IN through a clip instead: six seconds of the input it reads, captured the first time that input carries a signal while a sound you’re playing or recording reads it. Until then, the model hears it through a built-in plucked phrase.

• Each input has a clip of its own. A sound that reads two inputs is heard through each one’s clip, and each input is captured the first time you play into it.
• A toast says when a capture starts (Capturing 6 s of …, naming the input), and when the model has the clip.
• The clips are saved with your session, in this browser. A session saved before inputs had clips of their own comes back with its one clip, and the model hears every input through it until that input has its own: each input is still captured the first time you play into it, the input the old clip came from too, and the sounds on it are rated again.
• NEW CLIP captures its module’s input again, even on a module whose input line says meter only. Play what you mean to play through the sound while it runs. Every sound with AUDIO IN on that input in the pool is rated again with the new clip.
• ▶ on a sound with AUDIO IN plays it through its inputs’ clips, as the model hears it. The keys and MONITOR play it with your input, live.

The reference has how the clip is made, stored, and measured.

Play it with your voice: TRACK

track, under DYNAMICS in the catalog, plays a chain from the pitch and the notes of what it listens to: sing, whistle, or play a line into an input, and the chain follows you.

1. Click track, then click a lit socket after the chain you want to play. The chain goes into TRACK’s first socket, and an AUDIO IN into its second (listen). Placing it asks for an input, as AUDIO IN does.
2. Put on headphones and press MONITOR on the AUDIO IN.
3. Sing or play into the input. The chain plays your notes.

There is one input and one pitch in it, so every note a chord plays inside TRACK’s chain is the note you sing. Keys still play over it: each key sounds the tracked note through the rest of the patch, and stops when you let it go.

Record into it: CAPTURE

capture, under SPACE, records what is patched into it, up to four seconds, and plays the take from the keys.

1. Click capture, then click a lit socket after the chain you want to record. Until you record, it is silent.
2. Patch an AUDIO IN into it to record your input, or leave the chain that was there to record that.
3. Press RECORD on the module and play. Press STOP to end it; it stops by itself at four seconds.

Each time you record, RECORD makes a new take. It goes into the sound as an edit: one undo step, and the module says how long it is (take · 2.4 s). PLAY sets how a key plays it: once to its end, while the key is held, or round and round. Recording doesn’t need MONITOR, and it doesn’t interrupt what the keys are playing.

The take is part of that edit, like a knob you turned. To keep the sound with it, press KEEP AS NEW (keeping an edit); until you do, the sound in the bank still holds the take it had. Moving to another sound while RECORD is lit stops it, and that recording is dropped: Recording stopped: you moved to another sound.

Kept safe. If a saved sound’s take can’t be read when Auracle opens, and the take was all it played, the sound is kept out of the pool and listed at the foot of POOL under KEPT SAFE. Press RECORD AGAIN on it and play into the input it reads: it gets a new take and joins the pool again.

Breeding it

A sound with AUDIO IN breeds like any other. ⚡ EVOLVE FROM THIS and a generation walk it through its inputs’ clips, and every child keeps its AUDIO IN on the input you set, while its gain, its channel, and everything around it can change. No generation adds AUDIO IN to a sound by itself: an input is in a sound only because you patched it in. A TRACK or a CAPTURE stays where you put it too, and a CAPTURE keeps its take.

What it doesn’t do yet

• One input for the keys (above). The model hears a sound that reads two inputs through each one’s clip, but the keys play it from the first one’s input.

What to try next

• Put a filter after AUDIO IN, then sweep the cutoff with MONITOR on.
• Patch a follower into that filter’s mod slot: the louder you play, the further it opens.
• Put AUDIO IN in a ducker’s key socket under a pad, or in a vocoder’s voice socket, and let your playing shape a sound the keys play.
• Read the PATCH guide for the rest of the rack.