Introducing the legacy plugin Plex 2
I'm yosi, the caretaker of Chillout with Beats.
Introducing Plex 2 made by Wolfgang Palm, the developer of PPG WAVE, as it was distributed free of charge.
I haven't even touched it, but when I listened to Waldorf's PPG Wave demo, it was impressive to hear a beautiful sparkling sound.
Plex was developed by such a great person, but to be clear, I will use Plex 2 now.There is little merit.
Originally Plex was a VST released by Steinberg (the developer of Cubase) for a fee ($ 249).
And at the time of its release (2002), I think there were quite a few people who gave up after seeing the price ($ 249), even though they wanted to buy it. (I was also a student, so I couldn't afford to buy it at all)
You can play to the extent that you miss those days.
As for the tendency of sound, it feels like a hardware PCM sound source.
(Thin and a little muffled)
However, it is also a sound that cannot be produced by recent soft synths.
I played a little.
I hang a side chain.The bass drum comes with FL Studio and the base is Sylenth1.
Overview of Plex 2
Plex is a "reconstruction synthesizer".The original sound is divided into four components: low spectrum, high spectrum, filter characteristics, and amplitude envelope, using a new audio analysis technique.You can replace each component and combine it with other elements.The result is a thrilling "natural" sound.
Plex 2 main features
-A new synthetic approach by "PPG Legend" Wolfgang Palm.
-Real-time exchange between 33 sound source components.
-Includes 97 special pre-analyzed sources.
-Three ADSRs, three syncable LFOs, and a global pitch LFO.
-Modulation section with stereo delay and flanger effect.
-Includes up to 64 voices and 300 presets.
-All parameters accessible via a MIDI controller.
How to use Plex 2
Basic concept
PLEX 2 uses a new analytical / synthetic technology developed by Wolfgang Palm.This concept provides a way to divide all kinds of sounds you can imagine into four components, and apply them together to recreate the original sound.Each component is selected to contain certain specific properties of the sound.These are:
• The timbre of the original sound will gradually change over time.A time-varying digital filter is used for approximation. In the PLEX 2 programYellow iconRepresents this filter component.
• Low frequency spectrum of the rest of the signal. In PLEX 2,Red iconRepresents this base component.
• Top frequency spectrum of the rest of the signal. In PLEX 2,Green iconRepresents this superordinate component.
• Base and top signal level expansions, or gain envelopes, that can be set in the base and top views of the ADSR envelope section and applied to other presets using the preset parameter selector fields in the preset group section.All cover the same spectral range, but the top components of a piano sound, violin, or trumpet each have a different structure.Each component contains only a specific acoustic area.The bass component contains only the bass of the original sound.It does not include tone color or volume change information. The Top component is similar, but instead contains high frequencies.The time-varying filter component contains only the timbre over time, but does not contain any other information about the rest of the signal, such as cycle length or noise intensity.This tight separation of important characteristics allows, for example, the free exchange of all basic components with each other to maintain their natural sound character or sequence.The analysis process is very complicated.For this reason, PLEX 2 comes with over 90 predefined factory sound resources.
Filter component
The yellow icon represents the filter component.This represents a gradual timbre change over time for the first analyzed instrument / sound. PLEX 2 uses a time-varying digital filter for approximation.The filter component does not "recognize" the characteristics of the rest of the signal, such as cycle length and noise intensity. The Filter component contributes to the overall sound by changing the tones of other basic components. The Filter component does not use the usual low-pass filters commonly used in analog synthesizers.Here, the characteristics of the filter are controlled by the position of the yellow part component icon in the sound palette.That is, the associated sound resource controls the characteristics of the filter.
Base component
The red icon represents the base component.The basic component contains the low frequencies of the rest of the signal, the bass of the original sound, but not the color or volume change information of the sound.
Top component
The green icon represents the upper part component that contains the upper spectrum of the signal. The degree to which the Top and Base components contribute to the overall sound of the preset is controlled by the Top and Base sections of the LFO and ADSR envelopes.
Sound palette
The left part of the PLEX 2 window is called the Sound Palette.The ellipse is divided into separate fields.
Sound palette editing
To create a new preset sound, load up to 33 of all available sound resources into the fields of the Sound Palette or use the default presets.
You are free to assign any available sound resource to any field in the sound palette.Loading a sound resource automatically replaces the resource that previously existed in the field.Follow these steps:
• Right-click (PC) or Ctrl-click (Mac) a field in the Sound Palette and select the desired sound resource from the local menu that appears.
• If you use the wheel mouse, move the cursor to the desired field and use the wheel to select a sound.
Preset group section
Like all other PLEX 2 editing sections, the preset group section is on the right side of the sound palette.
This is where you temporarily store and load a single preset sound. The first time you load PLEX 2, the default bank will be automatically loaded from disk. Contains 8 Instruments.Each program can hold four PLEX 16 preset groups, each consisting of 4 presets.Some groups in the default bank contain predefined presets, while others can create and save their own sounds. PLEX 2's sound resources and preset groups are designed by renowned German sound designers Hubertus Maaß, CS, and Wolfgang Palm.Each preset contains a complete set of parameters for one sound.
• To open the Preset Group section, click the Preset button in the upper right corner of the PLEX 2 window. PLEX 2 has four groups: A, B, C and D.Each group has 4 preset slots, and all four groups contain 16 sounds.
How to apply the preset parameters of another preset to the currently selected preset
To the right of each preset slot in the group is a small field called the Preset Parameter Selector.Its functionality is simple but powerful.You can use it to quickly swap all parameter settings for the currently selected preset sound with the sound parameter settings in the preset parameter selector field you clicked on.
This allows you to assign a fourth component (bass and top signal level development) and all global PLEX 4 settings to another preset sound very quickly. You can also use the preset sound parameter settings for PLEX 2 Group A, B, C, or D.
Introductory summary of legacy plugin Plex 2
It was very attractive at the time, but now it feels a little unsatisfactory.
Nowadays, it is possible to produce sounds that are close to those of analog, and it is also possible to produce sounds that are rich in expression even in digital, so technological progress is wonderful.
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