The Automatic import is a way to convert audio files to UltraWaves - including the attack sample and wavetable cycles.

File Split page

Use this page to choose the audio you want to import.

• You can choose multiple files and import them as individual sounds in the UltraWave osc. Ultrawave will create hybrid sounds between any notes or velocities you import.
• If your audio file contains multiple sounds, this page can split them up so that the notes can be individually imported
• Noise Threshold Slider
  Some files have long periods of silence. Adjust this slider to automatically select the region you want to import.
  The slider can also be used to create sections for wav files that contain lots of individual sounds.
• Manual Adjustments
  You can drag areas of the waveform graph to select regions, and then choose to add or remove these regions to the selection. Use this feature to trim off unwanted sections, or manually choose where you wan the imported sound to start.

Automatic Import Settings Page

On this page, you adjust import settings and your wav file is imported into the ULTRA engine as an UltraWave. You can play the imported sound with your MIDI keyboard, and compare it to the original wav.

File list

If you have chosen to import multiple sounds, the left side of the page shows a list of those sounds.

Set Pitch Rules button
The import will detect the root pitch of each sound, and base the decisions around creating Wavetable cycles on this pitch.
Sometimes the detected pitch is not correct. If your sounds have a consistent pattern (you might be loading 2 samples per octave) you can use this button to set and apply rules which hard code the detected pitch for each sound.

Source Waveform

The waveform at the top of the page shows the original source audio.

• Attack section
  The green box shows the attack transient sample, if one has been detected or selected.
• Wavetable cycles
  The blue boxes show the automatically selected cycles that make up the wavetable / body section of the UltraWave.
  You can click a cycle area to add or remove it from the wavetable.
• Tail noise threshold
  The red line indicates the tail section of the wave.
  This can be adjusted using the tail noise threshold slider.
  Cycles in the tail usually contain noise, and are not great candidates to be used as wavetable cycles.
• Zoom controls
  You can zoom in and out of the waveform, horizontally or vertically, by clicking the zoom buttons or using your mouse wheel
• Auto Zoom
  When the page loads a new sound, the graph will zoom to the extents of the source wave. You can disable this by de-selecting the auto zoom button. This is sometimes useful if you have zoomed in to look at the attack section, and want to keep this zoom when loading subsequent sounds.
• Left / Right channel buttons
  If your source sound is stereo, you may wish to import only the left or right channel. Use these buttons to de-select the unwanted channel.

Engine waveform

Whatever attack or wavetable cycles that have been chosen combine to create an UltraWave. The graph at the bottom of the page shows the resulting UltraWave after the import has been completed.
It has been loaded into the engine, and can be played using your MIDI keyboard.

The middle row of controls

Left section

• Play original & Play Engine buttons use these buttons to compare the original wav and the UltraWave in the engine
• Root Note this dropdown shows the detected pitch of the source waveform. If the note is wrong, the import will usually fail spectacularly! This can happen with very high frequency sounds. You can tell this has happened when the cycles in the source graph look to contain more than one waveform. Adjusting this parameter will re-run the import for the current wave.

Cycles Grid

Using the detected root note, the import will break the source materials into a gird of cycles. Those cycles are then analysed and the import will chose whether to add them as wavetable cycles or not.

The grid is created using one of three detection modes:

• Variable pitch mode
  Good for sounds where the pitch changes - vocal phrases with multiple notes, kick drums etc.
• Steady pitch mode
  Good for sounds where the pitch doesn't change. Cycles that don't have a similar pitch to the root note, will not be eligible to become wavetable cycles
• No pitch mode
  In this mode, the cycle grid is created at every zero crossing. This mode is best for drums or drumloops.
• Manual Edit mode in this mode, you can click in the source graph to split cycles or merge them

Experiment with the modes and see which one is best for the sound you are importing.

Attack Section

An UltraWave can contain an optional attack transient sample. This section controls the automatic creation of that sample.

• Attack enabled switch
  Toggle this switch to hear the engine with or without the attack sample. This is non-destructive, the sample will still be imported.
• Auto attack switch
  This switch controls whether the automatic import will try to create an attack sample or not. Changing this option when there is no attack will re-run the automatic import
• Delete attack [x]
  You can manually remove the attack if you don't want it
• Create from selection
  Drag in the source graph to manually select an area to be used as an attack, then click this button to import it

Tail Noise Threshold Section

• Tail noise threshold slider
  Cycles in the tail usually contain noise, and are not great candidates to be used as wavetable cycles. Adjust this slider to exclude the tail cycles from the wavetable. Adjusting the slider will re-run the import.

Wavetable Cycles Section

This section controls how wavetable cycles are selected from the cycle grid.

• Adaptive
  This mode chooses cycles based on which ones will make the UltraWave sound most like the source material. It will add as many cycles as it needs to, up to the max cycles limit.
• Loudest cycles
  This mode chooses the cycles with the loudest peak values in the graph.
• Evenly spaced
  This mode will choose cycles evenly over time.
• Max Cycles
  Controls how many wavetable cycles can be created.

Pitch & Amp Curve Sections

An UltraWave can store pitch and amp information in addition to wavetable cycles. This information controls the pitch or volume of the cycles as they play back over time.

The pitch and amp curves are detected and created using the cycle grid.

For the chosen root note, a single cycle has specific length. For instance, then note A4 is 440 Hz, which is around 100 samples in length.

Cycles that are longer than the root note are lower pitch and cycles that are shorter are higher pitch.

Changing the cycle grid algorithm or the root note will re-run the import and create a new pitch curve.

Amp curve points are created using the volume of each cycle.

Both curves can been smoothed if desired, using the smooth buttons.

Further fine-tuning can be done once the UltraWave import is complete, using the sound edit pages.

Import Results page

This page lets you see all of the imported sounds in the context of a sound map.

Sound Map

This shows where individual notes (sounds) have been placed in the note / velocity map.

Discard options

You can choose to discard any imported attacks, pitch or amp curves, as well as converting any stereo sounds to mono. You can enable looping on the patch.

Velocity options

If you have imported multiple sounds, you will have options relating to their position in the map, and whether to preserve the source sound volumes.

The three options will re-position the sounds in the map vertically.

Volume options

You may have imported sounds of varying volumes. The volume of the original source material will be stored in the UltraWave sound. This means that very quiet samples will be played back quietly, and similarly with loud samples.

• Scale volumes
  Increases the volume of all sounds so that the loudest sound is at full volume. Use this if you have finished importing.
• 100% volumes
  Sets all sounds to full volume. Use this when the sounds are similar in volume and any multi sampling is more like a round-robin situation
• Leave volumes
  Does nothing. This is useful if you intend to import more sounds into your UltraWave map and want to retain the volume information and scale all the volumes when you have finished.