Table of Contents
Advertisement
Quick Links
Advertisement
Table of Contents
Related Manuals for Nektar BOLT
Summary of Contents for Nektar BOLT
- Page 1 BOLT™ Harmonics Synthesizer User Guide www.nektartech.com www.nektartech.com...
-
Page 2: Table Of Contents
Modulation Envelope FX Section General Parameters Loading and Saving Patches Factory Patches and Patch Selection User Patches and Patch Saving Share Patches with Host Tutorial Simple Saw Bass with one Oscillator First XM-Experiments: Bolt‘s FM arsenal Nektar Bolt User Guide www.nektartech.com... -
Page 3: Introduction
Thank you for purchasing the Nektar Bolt Harmonics Synthesizer! BOLT is the first of its kind and employs a new form of synthesis based on a concept by Professor Dr. Udo Zoelzer of Helmut Schmidt University (HSU) in Hamburg, Germany – a scientist with decades of experience in digital signal processing. Originally, he came up with the MSO-technology (multi sine oscillator) to synthesize voices, but once we heard it, we just had to join in and help develop this into a full- blown synthesis engine. -
Page 4: Installation And Activation
Install Bolt There are two ways to authorize Bolt: If you have an internet connection, you can do it online – if your computer is not connected to the in- ternet, you will have to go via a different computer to the user account on the Nektar Website and we’ll mail you the authorization key. You may install Bolt on up to three machines. -
Page 5: Online Activation
Bolt will not need a connection to run. Here’s how you activate Bolt: 1. Open your DAW, load Bolt onto an instrument track and open the plugin window. How this is done, is described in your DAW’s manual. -
Page 6: Offline Activation
In your Nektar user account, you will see a list of the activated computers (as shown on page 4). Deac- tivate a Bolt authorization by clicking on “Remove” in your user account. This will allow you to free it up and move it to another computer. -
Page 7: System Settings Dialog
More details on page 16 “Loading and Saving Patches”. Once you have edited a parameter, the change is confirmed and active. In the case you are running several instances of Bolt in your pro- ject, reload your project for the changes to take effect in all instances. -
Page 8: Getting Started: User Interface Controls
Getting Started: User Interface Controls In this chapter we are taking you on a tour of Bolt’s user interface and explain what each control does. This manual assumes that you are already familiar with synthesizer terminology. If not, there are many excellent books on the subject such as “Synthesizer Technique”... -
Page 9: Oscillator
This is helpful for fast A/B comparison of settings. ODD – If you switch this on, the oscillator will generate odd harmonics only. If you additionally engage DEEP, the wave displayed in Bolt’s oscilloscope display will look close to a square wave shape. - Page 10 LEVEL – Adjusts the oscillator’s output gain from -40 dB to +6 dB. If the signal passes the clipping threshold of 0dB (digital scale), the au- tomatic protection Limiter will engage and show up red in Bolt’s main display. At the bottom fader position, the oscillator output is muted and the parameter display reads “MUTE”.
- Page 11 64th note triplet or up to 4 bars. CYCLE – Most LFOs simply keep on running, and always have their cycle set to on. Bolt’s LFO allows you to switch it to one shot mode: With Cycle off, the LFO will stop after one cycle of the selected waveform.
-
Page 12: Lfo - Low Frequency Oscillator
Modulation Envelope Generator Bolt is slightly different from conventional synthesizer concepts insofar, that you won’t find the typical subtractive filter section with cutoff and resonance parameters. This is due to the Harmonics Synthesis concept: The sound is shaped directly in the os- cillator simply by adjusting HARMONICS and ROLLOFF and with the MODULATION EG you can then modulate this shaping. - Page 13 User interface controls (cont.) Master Section In this section you set Bolt’s Output Level, DYNX, FM and X-MOD settings. What’s more, the waveform display shows the synthe- sizer’s generated overtone structure in realtime. DISPLAY – Shows the shape and overtone structure of Bolt’s waveforms. Toggle between Oscilloscope and Spectrum views by clicking on the display.
-
Page 14: Fx Section
1.00 the stereo field expands to full width. TONE alters the reverb tail‘s sound and EQ: Move it to the left for dark and dull reverbs – to the right for bright reverb tails. Nektar Bolt User Guide www.nektartech.com... -
Page 15: General Parameters
Bolt on page 4 “Installation”). VOICE MODE – Poly or Mono mode. The maximum polyphony of Bolt is 12 voices, the default setting is 10. This may be changed in the SETUP dialog, rule of thumb: less voices, less CPU performance required. Note: This setting affects all loaded instances of Bolt. So if you are running out of performance, decreasing the voice count will free up resources across all loaded instances in a project upon next reload. -
Page 16: Loading And Saving Patches
Saving Patches: Click on [S] in the display (1.). This will open up your computer’s file selection dialog. Then, pick the location you want to save your patch to. If you’d like your User Patches to show up in Bolt’s file dialog automatically (2.), you have to save them to the default location as described on the next page. -
Page 17: Share Patches With Host
Now use your operating system’s file browser to choose a new location. As stated above, the change is activated immediately in this instance of the plugin. If you have multiple instances of Bolt in your session, the other instances are still pointing to the User Patch Folder that was active at the time of their loading. -
Page 18: Tutorial
10. OK - now we have a bare-bones saw-y bass sound. Too soft we hear you say? not enough bass? OK: Bring OSC 1’s SUB-OSC parameter up to 50.0 to add a sub-octave and engage DYNX in Bolt’s Master Section. Set DYNX to 0.43. DYNX allows you to reduce the normalization we introduce to make up for the level increase when harmonics are added. -
Page 19: First Xm-Experiments: Bolt's Fm Arsenal
(Tip: if you have a wheel mouse, hover over the control and move the wheel. Easier that way! - Unison Voice Double: Set VOICES to 2 and DETUNE to 1.2, leave WIDTH at 0 for a bit of unison feel. If you engage voice double, Bolt adds additional instances with the same settings –... - Page 20 Designed by Nektar Technology, Inc v 1.0)