mxm-poly-06 manual

Thirty-one parameters. Six voices, each a digitally controlled oscillator into its own filter and amplifier, meeting at a global high-pass filter and the built-in stereo chorus. It follows the Roland JUNO-106.

Each voice gets one ADSR, driving both its filter and its amplifier. A second envelope would make the instrument more flexible and would also remove the coupling that shapes its patches.

Ranges and Init values below are read from the plugin itself. Where the panel shows a percentage, the figure underneath it is given too.

Modulator

LFO rate — 0.10 … 30.00 Hz, Init 5.00 Hz

The LFO’s speed, in hertz. One LFO serves every voice.

LFO delay — 0 ms … 3.00 s, Init 0 ms

How long the LFO takes to fade in after a note starts.

LFO to pitch — 0 … 100 % (0 … 7 semitones), Init 0 %

Vibrato depth, applied to every voice at once. Full scale is seven semitones — a fifth — so ordinary vibrato lives in the first few percent.

Wheel to LFO — 0 … 100 %, Init 50 %

How much the modulation wheel adds to the LFO’s depth. Init is halfway, so the wheel does something useful on a fresh patch rather than needing to be set up first.

Oscillator

The DCO does not drift. Saw, pulse and sub all come from one ramp, so switching on more than one shape does not produce beating between them — a stability that is the point of a digitally controlled oscillator and the reason the chorus exists to put movement back.

Range — 16’, 8’ or 4’, Init 8'

Octave register, in organ footages. 8’ is concert pitch.

Saw — Off or On, Init On

The sawtooth, as a switch rather than a level. Init has it on: the Init patch is one saw through an open filter.

Pulse — Off or On, Init Off

The pulse, at whatever width the controls below produce. A switch, not a level — the shapes are mixed by being on, not by being balanced.

Pulse width — 5 … 95 %, Init 50 %

The pulse wave’s duty cycle. 50 % is a square, and the sound thins either side of it.

This is the manual width, and it survives a switch to LFO modulation — which is why width and depth are two controls rather than one.

PWM depth — 0 … 100 %, Init 0 %

How far the LFO swings the width, when PWM mode is set to it.

PWM mode — Manual or LFO, Init Manual

Whether the width sits where the knob leaves it or moves with the LFO.

Sub — 0 … 100 %, Init 0 %

Sub-oscillator level, one octave below and locked to the same ramp.

Noise — 0 … 100 %, Init 0 %

White noise level. A separate source, added rather than switched.

Filter

Each voice has its own low-pass. The high-pass is global and sits after the six voices meet.

HPF — Boost, Flat, Cut 1 or Cut 2, Init Flat

The global high-pass, in four positions — and the first of them does not cut at all.

Boost lifts the bottom by 10 dB below 250 Hz. That is the position people reach for without realising it is not a bypass. Flat is neutral. Cut 1 and Cut 2 are the only positions that actually remove low end, cornering at 226 Hz and 721 Hz.

The editor plots this response together with the low-pass, so the boost is visible rather than hidden behind a switch position.

Cutoff — 20.0 Hz … 20.0 kHz, Init 16.0 kHz

The per-voice low-pass corner, in real hertz. Init is almost fully open.

Resonance — 0 … 100 %, Init 0 %

Feedback around each voice’s filter. From about 90 % the filter is seeded with an inaudible excitation so it can self-oscillate from silence — and with six voices, six of them will.

Envelope amount — 0 … 100 % (0 … 7 octaves), Init 0 %

How far the voice’s envelope moves its cutoff. Full scale is seven octaves, chosen so the top of the slider sweeps the whole audible range from a closed filter.

Envelope polarity — Normal or Inverted, Init Normal

Whether the envelope opens the filter or closes it. Inverted makes a note start bright and darken as the envelope rises.

LFO to filter — 0 … 100 % (0 … 3 octaves), Init 0 %

How far the LFO moves the cutoff. Full scale is three octaves.

Key tracking — 0 … 100 % (0 … 1:1 with the keyboard), Init 0 %

How much the played note moves the cutoff, pivoting on middle C. At 100 % the cutoff follows the keyboard octave for octave, so chords keep an even brightness up and down the range.

Envelope

One ADSR per voice, reaching both that voice’s filter and its amplifier.

Attack — 2 ms … 3.00 s, Init 2 ms

Time to full level.

Decay — 2 ms … 12.00 s, Init 400 ms

Time from full level down to the sustain level.

Sustain — 0 … 100 %, Init 80 %

The level held while a key is down, as a proportion of full. A level, not a time.

Release — 2 ms … 12.00 s, Init 300 ms

Time from the sustain level to silence after the key is let go. Because the envelope is shared within each voice, this also decides how long that voice’s filter takes to close.

Amplifier

VCA mode — Envelope or Gate, Init Envelope

What opens each voice’s amplifier. Gate opens it fully for as long as the key is down, which turns the shared envelope into a filter-only envelope.

Level — −60.0 … 0.0 dB, Init −2.0 dB

Patch level, and it sits before the chorus. This is the control that decides how hard the chorus is driven, so it travels with a preset and changing it changes the sound, not just the loudness.

Volume — −60.0 … 0.0 dB, Init −6.0 dB

Master level, after the chorus. This changes only what leaves the plugin.

Chorus

Chorus mode — Off, I, II or I + II, Init Off

The built-in stereo chorus: two bucket-brigade delay lines sharing one triangle in opposite phase.

The three active positions are speeds — I runs the triangle at 0.5 Hz, II at 0.8 Hz, and I + II at 1.3 Hz. Depth and wet level are fixed inside this instrument because the source machine did not expose them; mxm-chorus-06 is the same DSP with those opened up.

A source unit hisses through its chorus while idle. This plugin fades the noise floor and reaches exact digital silence when no voice or tail remains, so a host can sleep the processor. That is a deliberate local deviation.

Voice

Key assign — Poly 1, Poly 2 or Unison, Init Poly 1

How notes are given to the six voices.

Poly 1 takes the first free voice, so a repeated note tends to reuse the same one. Poly 2 rotates through all six, including their small tolerance differences — which is what makes a repeated note sound slightly different each time. Unison puts every voice on one note, in phase and with no added detune: it gets louder, not wider.

The voice display shows which voice each note took and how far its envelope has moved, so a seventh key visibly steals one of the six rather than looking like a dropped note.

Portamento — 0 ms … 2.00 s, Init 0 ms

Glide time between notes.

Bend range — 0 … 24 st, Init 2 st

How far pitch bend travels, in semitones.

Bend to filter — 0.0 … 4.0 oct, Init 0.0 oct

How far the bend lever also opens the filter, stated directly in octaves rather than as a percentage.

The Parameters view

Every control on one page as an editable slider, with direct text entry. It is the same parameters as the panel, laid out for reading and for typing an exact value rather than for playing.