Plogue Bidule

From what I understand, "plogue bidule" is French for "plug thingy". I've been playing with the software of the same name for much of the last week. I am pretty sure I will pay the $75 for the non-demo version. Despite some weaknesses (e.g. envelope generators and note extractors act a little weird), it seems like a very powerful tool. One use I envision is to gradually replace my Nord Modular, since P.D. seems more powerful. I like that I can save groups/modules to reuse. One of the more interesting modules I created is a note extractor that outputs various equal-tempered scales, e.g. 19 notes/octave. In conjunction with this, I built another module that converts an arbitrary frequency to a (closest) MIDI note and pitch bend correction. What's interesting about this, is that Plogue can take any monophonic synth patch and easily turn it into a polyphonic patch. So the pitch bends from the individual notes all go to separate monophonic synths or samplers, so arbitrary tunings can be achieved easily. Note that when doing this with a normal poly-synth, pitch bend is applied to all notes at once so you can't have it different for each note. So I created a polyphonic patch made of clones of VSamp set to single-note polyphony, and was instantly able to play them in alternative scales without reprogramming. Since in most cases, the sample set was spaced every semitone, there was not that much pitch bend that needed to be done, avoiding the "helium" effect.

The first thing I did with Plogue was a bit simpler, but also useful. It is very easy to take a single MIDI channel, and split the keyboard up into sections to play different sounds. This is important to me right now since my friend and I are thinking of creating a live-performance synth duo. I can control synths, samples, and sequences all from one MIDI keyboard.

The sound quality seems very good as well. I was able to use the delay lines to create a Karplus-Strong plucked string effect, which I couldn't do on the Nord due to the very short delay lines. Actually, I take that back- the Nord couldn't do the low frequency ones, and Plogue can't do high-frequency ones because of the buffer delay. There may be a way around it (pitch shifting?) to extend the range. I like the band-limited oscillators, as they give a cleaner sound than the Nord (G1) as well.

I was less impressed with some of the modules like the ADSR- the range of times is limited (no really long decay or release), and there is some sort of weird interaction between the decay and release times, and maybe the sustain level (haven't quite figured it out yet). Also, the note extractor, in a monophonic patch, only seems to work correctly in lowest-note priority mode. The default setting left a lot of cut-off and missing notes unless I released one key before pressing the next. Other modes, like newest-note priority would be desirable. Other weaknesses include the system for selecting bidules; it involves holding down the mouse button and goign through a tiresome multi-level pull-down menu structure. The "palette" sidebar seems to be an attempt to correct for this, but it doesn't quite cut it. Something like the tabs in the Nord Modular editor are a better approach, since organization is more thought out, and it's easy to find and drag things into the canvas. To be fair though, Plogue has a lot more modules to choose from so there may be no easy way to improve this. Maybe a "favorites" menu? (my "groups" menu is becoming de facto the equivalent of my "favorites").

Despite the weaknesses, I'm impressed overall, and think it's a very nice tool. I'm looking forward to improvements as I and others shell out some money and demand them in return.