Marbble

1. VintageMarbble Tre1voice
   plus Unison and PolyThree oscillators and a mixer that overdrives, into a 24 dB transistor-ladder filter that self-oscillates in tune. Two contours with a Decay switch, glide, oscillator drift, and osc 3 and noise as modulators.
2. VintageMarbble Sei6voices
   one DCO eachSaw, pulse and a sub an octave down, a 24 dB filter, one envelope with a VCA gate, a four-position high-pass, and a stereo bucket-brigade chorus with modes I, II and I+II.
3. VintageMarbble Cinque5voices
   two oscillators eachPoly Mod from the filter envelope and Osc B, to Osc A's pitch and width and the filter, separately in every voice. Sync, a wheel for LFO or noise, and a slop control for how far voices wander.
4. VintageMarbble Uno1voice
   one oscillatorA diode ladder, accent with its sweep, and slide, made for a bass line played from a MIDI region: overlapping notes slide, high velocities accent, and with the resonance up, accents close together climb.
5. VintageMarbble Sedici16voices
   six operators eachFrequency modulation with 32 algorithms, four-rate envelopes and keyboard scaling, running at a fixed 49.096 kHz whatever the project's rate, with a switchable low-resolution converter character.
6. ModernMarbble Onda16voices
   up to 7 unison per oscTwo wavetable oscillators with position scan over band-limited tables generated in code, seven filters, three envelopes, two LFOs and eight modulation slots you route yourself.

The traces are textbook waveforms of each kind of engine, drawn for this page, not recordings of the instruments. Five of the six follow a specific instrument's documented behaviour: the Guide says which, and how far that goes. None has been compared with the original, and every constant marked as a guess in the architecture notes is still to be tuned by ear.

1. IN

   Region or instrument

   Audio, MIDI or a pattern; a VST3 or built-in instrument.

2. EQ

   Channel EQ

   Eight bands, with an analyzer.

3. FX

   Audio FX

   Eight slots: built-in or VST3, with plug-in delay compensation.

4. SND

   Sends

   Eight, pre- or post-fader, to aux buses.

5. FDR

   Fader and pan

   Peak readouts, gain-reduction bar, groups and VCA faders.

6. OUT

   Output

   Routing to any bus, up to Stereo Out and its automation.

Sixteen built-in effects

In any Audio FX slot, with docked, floating or separate-window panels, presets and automatable parameters. The Compressor has five modelled circuits, and it, the Noise Gate and the De-Esser take a side-chain from any track, pre- or post-fader. Effects guide

Dynamics

• Compressor
• Limiter
• Noise Gate
• De-Esser

Space and modulation

• Reverb
• Delay
• Chorus
• Flanger
• Phaser
• Tremolo

Drive

• Overdrive
• Distortion

EQ, utility, metering

• Linear Phase EQ
• Gain
• Tuner
• Loudness Meter

VST3, kept at arm's length

Instruments and effects are scanned in a separate process. Every plug-in's output is checked, so NaNs and runaway levels are silenced and the plug-in is named in a message. Side-chain inputs, multi-output instruments, and undo for a knob moved in a plug-in's own window. Plug-ins guide

VST3 only: no CLAP, AU or VST2. Editor windows open on Linux (X11) and macOS, and not yet on Windows.

Tracks across cores

Independent tracks play at the same time on a small pool of real-time threads, and the output is the same sample for sample however many play it.

1 thread56%

Automatic (6)14%

Audio load, with a tick at the peak: one measurement, of a copy of one real project with five heavy VST3s at 512 samples on Linux, with its output turned down. It's not a benchmark, and nobody has listened through it yet. Automatic stays on one thread on Windows and macOS for now. How it works

Recording

Audio from any input, mono or stereo per track, with latency compensation; MIDI with controllers, pitch bend and aftertouch. Count-in, pre-roll, Autopunch, Replace mode, Step Input. Crash-safe takes.

Comping

Cycle-record into take folders and swipe across takes to build a comp. Several comps per folder, crossfaded boundaries, and MIDI take folders.

Tracks area

Move, trim, split, loop, fade and nudge with Smart snap, musically across tempo changes. Eight tools, five drag modes, fade curves, Strip Silence and section edits.

Editors

A Piano Roll with eight tools, quantize and a velocity and controller lane; an Event List; a Step Sequencer with pattern regions; an Audio Track Editor with Split at Transients.

Arrangement

Track stacks, groups, Freeze, Track Off and track alternatives. Markers and an Arrangement track whose sections move and copy with their content.

Automation

Off, Read, Touch, Latch and Write on volume, pan, mute, sends and plug-in parameters. Several lanes per track and curved segments.

MIDI Learn

Assign a controller's knobs, faders and buttons to mixer controls, plug-in parameters and the transport.

Bounce

Offline bounce of a project or section, and export of tracks or a region, as WAV, AIFF or FLAC at 16-bit dithered, 24-bit or 32-bit float.

Projects

Folders with templates, alternatives, backups with Revert to, autosave, crash recovery and undo for every edit.

Interface

Separate windows for the Mixer, editors and panels, five themes, interface scaling from 90 to 200%, and rebindable key commands shown the way your platform writes them.

Not there yet: Flex Time and Flex Pitch, a Score editor, control surface protocols such as Mackie Control, MP3 and AAC bounces, and ASIO on Windows. The full list