REALMS

Imagine yourself places you can observe, like rooms, cities or landscapes.
In Realms these are called 'Rooms' and you are the observer of sounds in these rooms, where sounds can be 'Near' or 'Far'.

Realms can morph through seven of these rooms, like going from one place to the other.
For instance, from a calm forest, to the next where the critters and birds in the back are replaced by thunderstorms, but you are still near the calm creek.
The next Room can slowly take you to the city with crowded noises and cars. Next you will enter a factory, eventually invaded by zombies...

What story you tell, consisting of sounds or melodies, is up to you!

An incoming sound can also be processed, from Near to Far, from Left to Right. All this in stereo!

Realms is an concept created by Robert Pabst (Cinematic Laboratory) and written for the Nebulae V2 by Ian Hoogeboom (Studio48).

Download

Realms (zip, 60MB, including .flac files) - v1.0, 2024-07-17


Also check out my other alternate instruments: Avalon and Mars Affects.

Instructions

Loading Realms

An Alternate Instrument you simply put on the USB thumb drive and load it afterwards when the Nebulae is turned on. It's not Firmware you need to flash. Realms runs on Nebulae's stock firmware.

Place sound files (maximum of 14 sound files, 2 per room) and the realms.instr on the (empty) root of a USB stick. Previous content can be moved to a separate directory if needed.
Put USB stick in the Nebulae and turn on the Nebulae V2 / your modular.

Press and hold [Speed] knob until 3 or 4 LEDs surrounding it are green.
Rotate [Speed] CCW until top left LED and bottom 2 LEDs are green. This is the .instr selection menu.
When you placed the realms.instr on an empty USB stick, only the left most button at the bottom is lit. This corresponds to the only one .instr on the USB stick.
Press that button and press Speed again. (If you have multiple .instr files on the USB stick, press the corresponding button; see manual).

*NOTES*:

During loading of the sound files, cyan LED and Button animations will show which can take up to 30 seconds, if you loaded up to 75MB of sound files.
After that, all files must be decompressed if applicable (in case of .flac) and processed for loop detection which might take up to 60 seconds more after the cyan LED animation.
With 75MB of .flac (lossless compression) files, it should not take more than a minute and a half to load/decompress and loop-checked and sound should be played after that.
If in doubt, when it is still silent, the [Freeze] button should be able to be toggled on and off after the cyan LED animation. If it toggles, the Nebulae is still processing...
If you still don't hear anything, check that Pitch Alt is not fully CCW.

After loading the Realms instrument, press and hold [Source] + short press [Pitch] simultaneously to reset all Alt (secondary) parameters to their default values.
Previous secondary values from a previous different loaded instrument are not reset when loading a new one and you might get unwanted results.
You can always revert to the stock internal Granular Looper by long pressing Speed again, rotate to "12 o'clock" and press the first button (Record) and short press Speed again.

Manual

Knobs and Buttons

Speed       - Room selection. (CCW) is first room, (CW) is last room. A maximum of 7 rooms (with First and Second sound files) can be loaded.
Speed Alt   - Gain of the Input signal. (CW) is maximum (right LED = purple). Default functionality of the Nebulae V2.
Pitch       - Pitch selection of all rooms (1v/oct).
Pitch Alt   - Output gain between x0 (CCW) and x4 (CW). (12H) = 1x (Purple LEDs off). LEDs will blink when reaching minimun (x0) and maximum (x4).
Start       - In Stereo mode, Near (CCW) to Far (CW). In 2x Mono mode, at (CW) Left is Near and Right is Far.
Start Alt   - Volume crossfade between Near and Far.
Size        - Swap First and Second sound files in Near and Far effect chains; at (CCW) First 100% in Near, Second 100% in Far.
Size Alt    - From no tail (CCW) to very long (CW). Also effects Pre-delay.
Density     - Pan incoming signal from Left to Right. In 2x Mono mode, Near and Far are panned opposite each other.
Density Alt - Moog Ladder Cutoff frequency on the Far signal (Ambient + Incoming signal).
Overlap     - Rotates Near/Far to Left/Right and Left/Right to Near/Far. Like turning your head!
Overlap Alt - A 'filter-ish' effect on the reverb tail. Changing the character of the reverb.
Blend       - Volume crossfade between Audio Incoming signal (CCW) and Room files (CW).
Blend Alt   - When in Clock mode, 4/4 with a bpm between ~100 and ~180 bpm during the shortest file. In Random mode, pulse length between 15ms (pulse) to 13 seconds (gate).
Window      - Volume crossfade between First and Second sound file.
Window Alt  - Dry/Wet Mix of Reverb/Original Far Signal. At (CCW) the Far Signal is 100% dry and (CW) the Far Signal is 100% wet.

Record Alt  - Off: Stereo panning from Left to Right; On: 2x Mono mode. Left and Right are mono inputs. Far is panned opposite to Near.
File Alt    - Off: One pulse Length long pulse (a gate); On: two short pulses (2x triggers), one at the start of a loop (see Source) and one at the end of the pulse length.
Source      - Off: Clock mode, pulses based on the shortest sound file loop; On: Random mode, a pulse is generated on every sound file loop restart with a (1/#rooms)th chance.
Reset       - Off: "Jezar's Freeverb"; On: "Feedback Delay Network (FDN) Reverb".
Reset Alt   - Turn Reverb Pre-delay On or Off. re-delay time changes with Reverb Tail Time [Size Alt], from 0 to 200 ms.
Freeze      - Disable Room Rotation. Same as [Overlap] = 12H.
Freeze Alt  - When activated and [Overlap] hits (CW) or (CCW), turning [Overlap] back, will continue the rotation direction to make a 'full circle'.
'Alt' is holding the 'Source' button and turn or press the referred knob.

See realms.txt in the zip file for many more explanations and an 'initial position' starter patch.

Tips

If you don't hear anything, but pressing [Freeze] does make the LED go on/off, check that Pitch Alt is not fully CCW.
If you think Far/Near and Left/Right is messed up, it could be [Overlap] is not at 12H. Press [Freeze] to disable Rotation.

Text file in .zip contains more information if the above description of Realms is not sufficient.

Have fun!

Demos and worthful mentions

Cinematic Laboratory demo: Realms for Nebulae V2.

Cinematic Laboratory usage: ENNER - by Soma Laboratories.
Cinematic Laboratory usage: Catharina | Soma Enner, Melotus Versio, Realms 0.3, BitBox.
Cinematic Laboratory usage: Modular World 25, part 1.
Cinematic Laboratory usage: Modular World 25, part 2.

Main functions

PDF in .zip:


Signal Flow